Aug
10
2018
0
By Anonymous (not verified)
Catholic tradition holds August as the month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. To begin this month, Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC, is sharing reflections and insights on the great prayer "Hail, Holy Queen." We continue with the tenth line: "Show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus."
Why do we ask her this?
When you see someone's face, they are no longer just an idea or a thought, but a person. That is why we have images of people in our homes or wallets. Seeing a person draws us into a relationship, into a dialogue, into a personal encounter. We're changed because of it. When we encounter God, obviously we are changed for the better. Remember Moses in the Old Testament. After he'd gone up the mountain to see God, his countenance was like light (see Ex 34:29-35). Through Our Lady, the mother of Jesus, the Mother of God, we can experience that encounter with God "face to face." We are asking Mary to show us the blessed fruit of her womb, Jesus, the Son of God. Mary is the great monstrance of God. The word monstrare, from which we get the word "monstrance," means "to show." When we place the consecrated Host in the monstrance, we see Jesus, hidden under the appearance of bread.
In the previous article in this series, you said we're on a journey, not just to get back to Paradise, but to be elevated even beyond that. What did you mean?
What's been offered to us is better than the Garden of Eden. As the liturgy says, "O Happy Fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer." Through Jesus, we are transformed into sons and daughters of God, and will come to live, not only in Paradise on earth with Him, but in celestial Heaven. That's what's offered to us in the New Covenant, in our Savior.
Can we see Jesus fully without His mother?
We can know a lot about Him, and we can know Him, but we won't really know the fullness of who He is and what He came to give to us unless we know her. For example, where do Matthew and Luke get their infancy narratives for their Gospels? During the first Noel, they had no idea the Messiah had even been born. So obviously there had to be some communication by Mary to the early apostles about things they were completely unaware of: His birth, but also about her Visitation, about how He was lost in the Temple for three days. Where would they get these stories? These are things that Mary fills in, because nobody knows Jesus better than His mother. That's not some secret knowledge - that's family knowledge. Just like my mother would tell you about me if you asked her. "What did little Donnie do when he was five?" "Well, let me tell you ... !"
Why is Mary the guarantor of orthodoxy?
Like Fulton Sheen says, she is like the key and Jesus, the treasure box. We want the treasure that's in the box, but if we don't have the key, then we can't really get in. Our Lady is the embodiment of the mysteries of Christianity in her immaculate person. She shows that the saving mission of her Son is a success. He has the power to transform us into immaculate beings and gives that gift to her at the beginning of her existence. He wants to take all of us, body and soul, into Heaven at some point to live with Him. We're called, as St. Paul says, to be holy, without blemish, spotless, and immaculate (see Eph 5:25-27). She
really personifies what God wants us to be. Without her, Christianity could seem like an ideal, a possibility, or a philosophy. She personifies the reality: "This is what it's about. It works. I'm the prototype, the blueprint of realized Christianity."
What happens to the Christian faith if Mary's role isn't fully recognized and welcomed into lived faith?
It simply becomes a bunch of rules and regulations, an institutionalized religion and not the family of God that God intended. When you take out the Marian dimension, you're taking out the maternal, the heart of the home. As the Pope said recently, Christians who try to follow Christ without Mary are living without a mother. They're like orphans in the spiritual life, and that's not what God intended.
Do you think that loss of the sense of the Church as a family is one of the sources of the modern mass apostasy in the West?
It's at the root of it.
Share the Hail, Holy Queen with your family, friends, and community with our prayercard. To order, visit ShopMercy.org or call 1-800-462-7426.
Read the whole series at marian.org/hailholyqueen
Why do we ask her this?
When you see someone's face, they are no longer just an idea or a thought, but a person. That is why we have images of people in our homes or wallets. Seeing a person draws us into a relationship, into a dialogue, into a personal encounter. We're changed because of it. When we encounter God, obviously we are changed for the better. Remember Moses in the Old Testament. After he'd gone up the mountain to see God, his countenance was like light (see Ex 34:29-35). Through Our Lady, the mother of Jesus, the Mother of God, we can experience that encounter with God "face to face." We are asking Mary to show us the blessed fruit of her womb, Jesus, the Son of God. Mary is the great monstrance of God. The word monstrare, from which we get the word "monstrance," means "to show." When we place the consecrated Host in the monstrance, we see Jesus, hidden under the appearance of bread.
In the previous article in this series, you said we're on a journey, not just to get back to Paradise, but to be elevated even beyond that. What did you mean?
What's been offered to us is better than the Garden of Eden. As the liturgy says, "O Happy Fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer." Through Jesus, we are transformed into sons and daughters of God, and will come to live, not only in Paradise on earth with Him, but in celestial Heaven. That's what's offered to us in the New Covenant, in our Savior.
Can we see Jesus fully without His mother?
We can know a lot about Him, and we can know Him, but we won't really know the fullness of who He is and what He came to give to us unless we know her. For example, where do Matthew and Luke get their infancy narratives for their Gospels? During the first Noel, they had no idea the Messiah had even been born. So obviously there had to be some communication by Mary to the early apostles about things they were completely unaware of: His birth, but also about her Visitation, about how He was lost in the Temple for three days. Where would they get these stories? These are things that Mary fills in, because nobody knows Jesus better than His mother. That's not some secret knowledge - that's family knowledge. Just like my mother would tell you about me if you asked her. "What did little Donnie do when he was five?" "Well, let me tell you ... !"
Why is Mary the guarantor of orthodoxy?
Like Fulton Sheen says, she is like the key and Jesus, the treasure box. We want the treasure that's in the box, but if we don't have the key, then we can't really get in. Our Lady is the embodiment of the mysteries of Christianity in her immaculate person. She shows that the saving mission of her Son is a success. He has the power to transform us into immaculate beings and gives that gift to her at the beginning of her existence. He wants to take all of us, body and soul, into Heaven at some point to live with Him. We're called, as St. Paul says, to be holy, without blemish, spotless, and immaculate (see Eph 5:25-27). She
really personifies what God wants us to be. Without her, Christianity could seem like an ideal, a possibility, or a philosophy. She personifies the reality: "This is what it's about. It works. I'm the prototype, the blueprint of realized Christianity."
What happens to the Christian faith if Mary's role isn't fully recognized and welcomed into lived faith?
It simply becomes a bunch of rules and regulations, an institutionalized religion and not the family of God that God intended. When you take out the Marian dimension, you're taking out the maternal, the heart of the home. As the Pope said recently, Christians who try to follow Christ without Mary are living without a mother. They're like orphans in the spiritual life, and that's not what God intended.
Do you think that loss of the sense of the Church as a family is one of the sources of the modern mass apostasy in the West?
It's at the root of it.
Share the Hail, Holy Queen with your family, friends, and community with our prayercard. To order, visit ShopMercy.org or call 1-800-462-7426.
Read the whole series at marian.org/hailholyqueen
JBK
