Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 12:29pm

Mary and Us

It has always been the habit of Catholics  in danger and in troublous times to fly for refuge to Mary.

Pope Leo XIII

 

Pope Francis at noon CST today will be consecrating the world today to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  Non-Catholics I think have a hard time understanding what Mary means to us.  Chesterton,  a Catholic convert, comes close I think to conveying some of what Mary means to us in The Ballad of the White Horse:

And when the last arrow
          Was fitted and was flown,
          When the broken shield hung on the breast,
          And the hopeless lance was laid in rest,
          And the hopeless horn blown,

          The King looked up, and what he saw
          Was a great light like death,
          For Our Lady stood on the standards rent,
          As lonely and as innocent
          As when between white walls she went
          And the lilies of Nazareth.

          One instant in a still light
          He saw Our Lady then,
          Her dress was soft as western sky,
          And she was a queen most womanly—
          But she was a queen of men.

          Over the iron forest
          He saw Our Lady stand,
          Her eyes were sad withouten art,
          And seven swords were in her heart—
          But one was in her hand.

          Then the last charge went blindly,
          And all too lost for fear:
          The Danes closed round, a roaring ring,
          And twenty clubs rose o’er the King,
          Four Danes hewed at him, halloing,
          And Ogier of the Stone and Sling
          Drove at him with a spear.

          But the Danes were wild with laughter,
          And the great spear swung wide,
          The point stuck to a straggling tree,
          And either host cried suddenly,
          As Alfred leapt aside.

          Short time had shaggy Ogier
          To pull his lance in line—
          He knew King Alfred’s axe on high,
          He heard it rushing through the sky,

          He cowered beneath it with a cry—
          It split him to the spine:
          And Alfred sprang over him dead,
          And blew the battle sign.

          Then bursting all and blasting
          Came Christendom like death,
          Kicked of such catapults of will,
          The staves shiver, the barrels spill,
          The waggons waver and crash and kill
          The waggoners beneath.

          Barriers go backwards, banners rend,
          Great shields groan like a gong—
          Horses like horns of nightmare
          Neigh horribly and long.

          Horses ramp high and rock and boil
          And break their golden reins,
          And slide on carnage clamorously,
          Down where the bitter blood doth lie,
          Where Ogier went on foot to die,
          In the old way of the Danes.

          “The high tide!” King Alfred cried.
          “The high tide and the turn!
          As a tide turns on the tall grey seas,
          See how they waver in the trees,
          How stray their spears, how knock their knees,
          How wild their watchfires burn!

          “The Mother of God goes over them,
          Walking on wind and flame,
          And the storm-cloud drifts from city and dale,
          And the White Horse stamps in the White Horse Vale,
          And we all shall yet drink Christian ale
          In the village of our name.

          “The Mother of God goes over them,
          On dreadful cherubs borne;
          And the psalm is roaring above the rune,
          And the Cross goes over the sun and moon,
          Endeth the battle of Ethandune
          With the blowing of a horn.”

Mary to us, as we repeat in the Salve Regina, is our life, our sweetness and our hope.  She is our mother just as she is the mother of God.  She is a never failing source of aid through her Son.  In times of trouble she is the first, last and best refuge for we poor children of Eve.

Pope Leo XIII said it best in his encyclical Supremi Apostalus Officio in 1883:

The efficacy and power of this devotion was also wondrously exhibited in the  sixteenth century, when the vast forces of the Turks threatened to impose on  nearly the whole of Europe the yoke of superstition and barbarism. At that  time the Supreme Pontiff, St. Pius V., after rousing the sentiment of a common  defence among all the Christian princes, strove, above all, with the greatest  zeal, to obtain for Christendom the favour of the most powerful Mother of God.  So noble an example offered to heaven and earth in those times rallied around  him all the minds and hearts of the age. And thus Christ’s faithful warriors,  prepared to sacrifice their life and blood for the salvation of their faith  and their country, proceeded undauntedly to meet their foe near the Gulf of  Corinth, while those who were unable to take part formed a pious band of  supplicants, who called on Mary, and unitedly saluted her again and again in  the words of the Rosary, imploring her to grant the victory to their  companions engaged in battle. Our Sovereign Lady did grant her aid; for in the  naval battle by the Echinades Islands, the Christian fleet gained a  magnificent victory, with no great loss to itself, in which the enemy were  routed with great slaughter. And it was to preserve the memory of this great  boon thus granted, that the same Most Holy Pontiff desired that a feast in  honour of Our Lady of Victories should celebrate the anniversary of so  memorable a struggle, the feast which Gregory XIII. dedicated under the title  of “The Holy Rosary.”

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philip
philip
Sunday, October 13, AD 2013 6:31am

Consecration-Sanctification-Conversion-Victory!

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