Claimed by Mary: Under the Patronage of Mary in Her Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Guadalupe

This week in the United States, we celebrate two great Marian feasts: the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, our country’s patronal feast day, and the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who has been repeatedly declared the empress of – not just Latin America – all America. How did it come to be that America would fall so clearly under the patronage of our Lady? And what do these two aspects of our Lady mean for us today?

America is under the patronage of our Lady because, from the first, she has claimed us as her own.

This is something several bishops and popes have observed. How is this? The conception of our Lady had long been honored and celebrated in Christian Europe when Christopher Columbus made his voyage across the Atlantic to land on the shores of what would come to be called America. In fact, some historians say the full name of his lead ship was Santa Maria de la Concepcion and the second island to which he came, he named Santa Maria de la Concepcion (the first island he dubbed San Salvador). Then, with more Spanish explorers came missionaries, who brought their love and devotion of the Blessed Virgin to the native people.

Yet the missionaries had great difficulties in preaching the Gospel to the native people of America. Their religion had a deep hold on them and included dark practices, including human sacrifice. Additionally, some of the explorers were ruthless in their quest for fame and riches and at times resorted to harsh treatment, violence, and cruelty against the native people. Don Juan de Zumárraga, a Franciscan friar who was named the first bishop of Mexico, worked valiantly to defend the native peoples and preach the Gospel to them, but the situation escalated to the point he knew a miracle would be necessary to both protect the native people and to have their minds and hearts be open to the Gospel and coming to Christ. He redoubled his commitment to prayer and fasting, asking our Lady for her intercession.

It was then that our Lady appeared to a simple native man, Juan Diego, who had converted to Christianity. Beginning on December 9, 1531, she appeared to Juan Diego and asked that he go to the bishop and convey the message that she desired a Church to be built on the hill where they were standing, that the people might seek her aid and she might be of aid and comfort to the people. When Juan Diego relayed our Lady’s message to the bishop, he was cautious and skeptical. So our Lady sent Juan Diego back to the bishop with a sign – a bouquet of Castilian roses arranged by her own hands in Juan Diego’s tilma, or cloak. She gave Juan Diego instructions to not open his tilma until he was with the bishop. Now the sign of the roses was already miraculous, for it was not the season for roses and Castilian roses are not native to Mexico. But something even more remarkable was to happen – when Juan Diego opened his tilma and let the roses fall, an image of Our Lady was to be seen on the tilma, an image not made by human hands and extraordinary in every detail.

The chapel was built as our Lady had requested and, suddenly, the people gave up human sacrifice, idolatry and vices and flocked to the Christian faith in astounding numbers. This was before national boundaries were established, and our Lady made it clear that she was the mother of all in this “new land”, a claim recognized by bishops and popes throughout history since.

Fast forward about 300 years – it is May 13, 1846 and the bishops of the United States are gathered in the city of Baltimore for a council. On that day, they issued a decree announcing that they “unanimously approve and consent that [they] have chosen the Blessed Virgin Mary, conceived without sin, as the Patroness of the United States of America…” Subsequently, they submitted a request to the Holy See that their decision be approved by the pope, which was done by decree on July 2, 1847. Since that time, Mary’s patronage of the United States in her Immaculate Conception has been reaffirmed.

As we celebrate these two great Marian feasts, we should, especially during these times, meditate on these titles of our Lady and what we can learn through them. Both the Immaculate Conception and our Lady of Guadalupe hold for us many graces and virtues, especially faith, hope and charity particularly when facing suffering, darkness, and evil.

In her Immaculate Conception, Mary, who was to be the Mother of the only-begotten Son, is “ever resplendent with the glory of most sublime holiness and so completely free from all taint of original sin that she would triumph utterly over the ancient serpent” (Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX, Dec. 8, 1854). This was a singular gift of God, in consideration of the salvation Jesus would obtain for us by his life, suffering, death and resurrection. By God’s grace, Mary has completely triumphed over Satan and the powers of evil.

On the 50th anniversary of Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius X promulgated a beautiful encyclical, On the Immaculate Conception. In it he highlights the darkness of the times and the brightness of the hope presented in the Immaculate Conception, and he highlights the great benefits of devotion to our Lady in her Immaculate Conception, particularly in combatting attitudes and ideas that remain prevalent and dangerous today.

First, there is a great temptation and trap to deny or minimize sin and to not admit we have fallen from grace, we cannot lift ourselves up by our bootstraps, that we truly need a Savior. Devotion to the Immaculate Conception demands we acknowledge the reality of sin and our need for a savior, and it gives us hope, because in Mary and the Immaculate Conception we see God’s superabundant grace, mercy and love for us, as well as a model of what it is to live without sin. As Saint Ambrose pointed out, “Such was Mary that her life is an example for all. Have then before your eyes, as an image, the virginity and life of Mary from whom as from a mirror shines forth the brightness of chastity and the form of virtue.”

Devotion to the Immaculate Conception also leads us to greater docility and submission to Christ and His Church. While Mary does not have productive power of grace – that belong to God alone – she has been deemed by God as the conduit of grace, by virtue of her being the mother of the Source of grace. “Divine Providence has been pleased that we should have the Man-God through Mary, who conceived Him by the Holy Spirit and bore Him in her breast, it only remains for us to receive Christ from the hands of Mary.” (On the Immaculate Conception, 6). And as Christ is our head, Saint Bernardine of Siena observes, “she is the neck of Our Head, by which He communicates to His mystical body all spiritual gifts.”

In his encyclical, Pope Pius X goes on to quote a passage from Revelation, “a great sign appeared – a woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars upon her head,” which brings us back to Our Lady of Guadalupe. In the miraculous image, we see a pregnant woman, clothed with the sun, standing on the moon with a cloak of stars. When Juan Diego had tried to evade meeting our Lady because he was worried about his uncle and was fetching a priest to give him last rites, Mary appeared to him on his detour and reassured him with these words: “Am I not your Mother?” Yes, “is not Mary the Mother of Christ? Then she is our Mother also.” (On the Immaculate Conception, 10). As we continue to meditate on the Immaculate Conception of Mary and on her appearances to us as our Lady of Guadalupe, we vividly see tender concern for all human life and the ultimate triumph of God’s grace and mercy in the face of seemingly overwhelming suffering and evil. Our hearts and minds are warmed and we can experience true freedom, peace, and reconciliation with all creation, and all people, in Christ, through Mary.

Advent is the perfect time to rekindle and renew our devotion to our Lady. As we prepare to welcome Christ at Christmas, let us seek Mary to journey with her and learn from her. It was she who shared intimately in the life and work of her Son, Jesus. If we want to know Jesus, who better to guide and instruct us than Mary? After all, it was

“with her alone of all others Jesus was for thirty years united, as a son is usually united with a mother, in the closest ties of intimacy and domestic life. Who better than His mother could have an open knowledge of the admirable mysteries of the birth and childhood of Christ, and above all the mystery of the Incarnation, which is the beginning and the foundation of faith?” (On the Immaculate Conception, 7).

Mary kept all these mysteries and pondered them in her heart. Let us ponder them too, especially in praying the Joyful Mysteries of our Lady’s Rosary.

Mary is also ever present to us with her maternal care, if we only will turn to her as her children. But we must turn with our whole heart and will. If our honor and devotion to our Lady does not keep us from committing sin, if it does not move our will to amend our lives, to turn from evil and vices and to learn to do good, to cultivate a life of goodness, truth and beauty and to shine forth the mercy of Christ to others, then we are deceiving ourselves and our devotion is false. Mary is there when we fall, when we lose our way in the darkness, when we “run out of wine” and don’t know where else to turn – we only need to ask with softened hearts and open minds. And if we cannot, then may we ask for the grace to do so. May the “Yes” of Mary’s fiat to God be the first and ever ready word on our own lips and may we learn from her the true meaning of life and love, freedom and victory.

Mary, Immaculate Virgin and our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

Sheltering-in-Place? Join Mary in the Upper Room

No doubt about it, we are living in painful and surreal times. As sheltering-in-place has become the “new normal”, some things in life have been forgone, others put on hold. But one thing that can and should grow and flourish is our faith and spiritual life. You are invited to join Mary in the upper room for a day of retreat, right where you are, as you are!

Wherever you are in life, whatever you’ve got going on, take a pause on Saturday May 30th to recenter and refuel. Bring your stresses, your worries, your shelter-in-place hair. Come as you are to live more authentically and fully.

Mary’s Retreat is a free one-day Catholic virtual retreat for young women (but all ages and men are welcome to register for the talks), taking place on Saturday, May 30th from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

We are created with beauty and potential, yet our world pressures us to fit a mold of perfection. Let’s set aside a Saturday to do something different, allow ourselves to be unfinished, and walk with each other towards greater wholeness as women.

The speakers include Sister Joseph Marie, O.P. of our community. Her talk is “Living Your Fiat” - “we all want to joyfully say YES to God. But how do we know His plan when we are faced with an overwhelming number of seemingly good choices in life? Sister Joseph Marie will share with you some principles to help you know God’s will and give you a few tools and examples for making wise decisions.” Other talks include: Mary, A Model for Discovering Our Feminine Identity; Superpowers from the Holy Spirit; God’s Plan for Healing; and What Women Saints Can Teach Us.

Plan to spend the day before Pentecost with Mary in the upper room in prayer and fellowship with other young women, right where you are, as you are. Visit Mary’s Retreat for more details and register today!

Celebrating Hope: Dominic and the Assumption of Mary

Hope. It’s a word we hear a lot - it even became a campaign slogan - but do we really know what it is? It sounds good and on some level, we instinctively want it, but how can we get it? We can learn a lot about hope by looking to our Blessed Mother and our Holy Father Dominic.

Generally speaking, hope is a desire for a good that is difficult to obtain, with the expectation of eventually obtaining it.

As a supernatural virtue, like faith and charity, it is infused in us as a gift of God and by it we long for God and to spend eternity with Him. Hope motivates us to do acts of virtue, to seek God, to love and serve Him with the expectation that He will do what He has promised and grant us eternal happiness with Him.  By supernatural faith, we “see” our ultimate target - God - and it is by hope and charity that we fly and soar to the heights.

We can also think of hope with this analogy: picture a toddler who wants to be picked up. They stand in front of their parent, looking up, reaching as high as they can, standing on tip-toe even. No matter how hard they try, they cannot get themselves in their parent’s arms, but they have the expectation that their parent will look down with kindness and lift them the rest of the way. Hope is that desire and expectation, and yet more. Because without God’s gift of hope, we would never look and reach up in the first place.

Our Blessed Mother’s assumption is a lesson in hope.

By this teaching of the Church - that at the time Mary’s life ended on earth, God granted her the privilege of not having to wait until the end of time for the resurrection of her body, but instead her body and soul were assumed into heaven - the glorious triumph of her Son Jesus over sin and death shines all the more brightly. Mary was granted singular graces not because she earned or deserved them, but solely due to God’s lavish gifts of mercy. She was uniquely chosen to walk in unity with the life and her Son, Jesus. And just as His body did not see the corruption of death, so too was Mary’s body preserved from this.

Mary’s assumption teaches us that our hope does not lie in the things of this world - our bodies and souls are destined to a loftier end: heaven.

Materialism, so prevalent in Western culture today, “threatens to extinguish the light of virtue and ruin the lives of men by exciting discord.”

-Pope Pius XII
Munificentissimus Deus

Many monastics and saints have commented that our world would be much more peaceful if the words “mine” and “yours” ceased to exist.  So many of today’s arguments, battles, and wars are over material goods that cannot add one moment to our life on earth, nor increase our true happiness.  Some of the richest people in the world are also the most miserable.  And that is one reason why our Holy Father Dominic urged his sons and daughters to “make your treasure from voluntary poverty.”  Actual poverty frees a person from worldly cares because they have nothing to lug around or protect from damage or thieves.  “Voluntary” poverty implies more than actual poverty – it requires a detachment of the heart from material goods, a true poverty of spirit.  A person can be poor in fact and yet still chained by the desire to possess what they do not have. By choosing to be poor, a person not only renounces actual possession of goods, but also the desire to possess those goods. It is this detachment of the heart that makes it light enough to fly up to God.

Mary’s assumption reaffirms the dignity and beauty of the whole human person - body and soul.

While our ultimate destiny is not this world, we must also remember that God’s creation is good, including our bodies, because that is how God created. Yet, because of sin, “we groan…awaiting the redemption of our bodies.” Because we still labor under the effects of sin, we must discipline our bodies and emotions to put them in right relationship with our intellect and ultimately God.  But we should not abuse our bodies – the human person is both body and soul.  Our holy Father Dominic began his preaching mission in earnest when he encountered a heresy that denied the goodness of the created world, including the human body.  Dominic preached tirelessly against this heresy and spent himself to help provide for the corporal needs of the poor, even to the point of selling all he had, including his books, to help feed starving people during a famine.  Dominic also left us the heritage of his “Nine Ways of Prayer”, descriptions of how he prayed using body postures, gestures and his voice to praise God and intercede for others.

Mary’s assumption should stir our hearts to a stronger piety toward our heavenly Mother, and move us with the desire of sharing in the unity of Jesus Christ's Mystical Body. 

That is, it should make us more receptive to God’s gift of hope. Because hope is a supernatural virtue, it is a gift. Yet, there are things we can do to make ourselves more receptive to it and to the extent we have it, we should exercise it. In his letter to the Romans, Saint Paul gives us a good place to start:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access [by faith] to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God.

Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us.

- Romans 5:1-5

From this we see that the road of hope passes through affliction. Our Blessed Mother showed us how to walk in this path as she walked it with her Son, for she endured affliction all the way to the foot of the cross on Calvary. And the saints also light this way for us. When things are darkest, that’s when we should look up all the more and wait for the dawn with desire and expectation - God will keep His promises! As the psalmist sings,

Those who sow in tears
will reap with cries of joy.

Those who go forth weeping,
carrying sacks of seed,
Will return with cries of joy,
carrying their bundled sheaves.

-Psalm 126:5-6

May we increase our love for her who shows her motherly heart to all the members of this august body.  And may our Mother Mary and holy Father Dominic intercede for us!

Mary, Our Patroness

Since Jesus told the beloved apostle, “Behold your mother,” at the cross, Christians have gone to Mary, as she is our mother in the order of grace. But Dominicans have a special devotion to Our Lady as she is our Patroness. Blessed Humbert of Romans declared that “the Blessed Virgin was of great help in the beginning of the Order…and it is to be hoped that she will bring it to a good end.” (Opera II< 70-71). From the very beginning of the Order, stories abound of how Mary helped bring our Order into existence and of her continual care and protection of its members. Here is one such story as told by one of the first nuns of the Order, Blessed Cecilia.

How the Blessed Virgin Appeared to [Saint Dominic] in Prayer and Revealed her Protection Over the Order

One night, after prolonging his prayers until midnight, he left the church and came to the dormitory, where he completed what he had come to do and, taking his place at one end of the dormitory, continued to pray. As he stood praying, he glanced at the other end of the dormitory and saw three beautiful women enter, but noticed that the one in the middle was a venerable lady far more beautiful and dignified than the other two. One of them was carrying a beautiful, shining vessel and the other an aspersorium which she handed to the lady in the center, who went from bed to bed sprinkling the brethren with holy water and blessing them.

The lady said to Blessed Dominic: “I am the one you call upon in the evening. When you say, ‘Turn therefore most gracious advocate thine eyes of mercy toward us,’ I prostrate myself before my Son and ask him to preserve this Order.” After this she continued to sprinkle and bless all the others and then disappeared.

When she was gone Blessed Dominic returned to pray in the place he stood before. Suddenly, he was rapt in spirit before God and saw Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin sitting at His right. It seemed to Blessed Dominic that Our Lady was wearing a cape of bright blue, the color of sapphire. As Blessed Dominic looked around, he could see religious of all the orders but his own around the throne of God, so that he began to weep bitterly and stood far away, not daring to approach the Lord and His mother.

Then Our Lady motioned for him to come near. But he would not dare, until Our Lord Himself also called him. Then Blessed Dominic cast himself before them weeping bitterly. But Our Lord told him to rise, and when he did, Our Lord asked him, “Why are you weeping so?” “I am weeping because I see all the other orders here but no sign of my own.” And the Lord said to him, “Do you want to see your Order?” And he answered, “Yes, Lord.”

Then Our Lord, putting his hand upon the shoulder of the Blessed Virgin, said to Blessed Dominic, “I have entrusted your Order to my Mother.” Then he asked him again, “Do you still wish to see your Order?” And against he answered, “Yes, Lord.” Then the Blessed Virgin opened the cape which covered her and spread it out before Blessed Dominic, to whom it seemed vast enough to cover the entire heaven and, under it, he saw a large multitude of the brethren. Then, prostrating himself, Blessed Dominic gave thanks to God and to Blessed Mary His Mother.

Detail from an altar card illuminated by the Dominican nuns of our monastery.

In Silence and Waiting Is Our Salvation

The Annunciation by Fra Angelico

In the midst of Lent, we celebrate the beautiful Solemnity of the Annunciation, the pivotal event which turned our world upside down, at least from our perspective. From God’s perspective, this was His plan all along, but if we stop and consider His plan - that the Divine would take on the flesh of a lowly creature, so as to secure their eternal salvation - it should leave us awestruck.

What was Mary doing in the moments just before the Archangel Gabriel appeared? Artists have usually depicted her doing ordinary things in serene silence - sewing, praying, reading (or in the East, drawing water). Ordinary, mundane things of life. But then, the announcement: she, full of grace, was chosen to be the mother of God. And then silence as heaven waited for her response. God awaited her agreement to this divine plan “because,” says Saint Thomas, “she represented the whole human race to whom God, in honor, left the merit of concurring freely in the work of salvation.”

Scarcely did Mary say her “Fiat”, when heaven descended to earth and men became capable of attaining Heaven - a moment unique in the world’s history. It is therefore not without good reason that on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, when mention is made of the Incarnation, we kneel, to give thanks to the great mercy of God, Who alone can work such miracles.

God forms an alliance with us through Mary. Yet we must understand, that which is done for us cannot save us without our own consent. God waits for us, for our humble concurrence to His plan for our lives. Through Mary’s intercession, may her humble “Yes!” become our own, and may her Son grow and be made manifest in our own hearts and lives.

Prayer: “O my God, You are Beauty, I am deformity. You are Light, I am darkness. You are Wisdom, I am folly. You are Life, I am death.” - Saint Catherine of Siena

Something to consider: It is tradition in the Church to stop three times each day and pray the Angelus, in the morning, at midday, and in the evening (usually about 6 a.m., Noon, and 6 p.m.). If you haven’t made this part of your daily devotional/prayer life, consider starting today (just schedule a daily reminder for the times you want to pray). For those of us who already practice this custom, we can ask ourselves, with what fidelity, devotion, and external reverence do I recite the Angelus?

Meditation quotes in part “March 25: The Annunciation” from Saints and Saintly Dominicans edited by Rev. Thomas a Kempis Reilly, O.P. (John Murphy Company, 1915).