Teresa Monaghen, of Pro Sanctity and Fr. John Sianchuck, C.Ss.R., a Ukranian Byzantine priest do a great job of explaining the Western and Eastern understanding of this great mystery.

Take a listen to the discussion posted above, that Bruce and I had with Teresa Monaghen, from Pro Sanctity and Fr. John Sianchuk, C.Ss.R., a Ukrainian Redemptorist priest discuss the difference and similarities of Western and Eastern understanding of the Immaculate  Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

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From the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Immaculate Conception, 

“490 To become the mother of the Savior, Mary “was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.”¹³² The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of grace”.¹³³ In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God’s grace.

491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God,¹³⁴ was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:

The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.¹³⁵

 492 The “splendor of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son”.¹³⁶ The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”.¹³⁷

493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia), and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature”.¹³⁸ By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long. ”

“For with God nothing will be impossible”

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an excerpt from today’s reflection by Don Schwager:

What is the key that can unlock the power and grace of God’s kingdom in our personal lives? Faith and obedience for sure! When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they immediately experienced the consequence of their action – separation from the God who loved them. God in his mercy promised them a Redeemer who would pay the price for their sin and the sin of the world. We see the marvelous unfolding of God’s plan of redemption in the events leading up to the Incarnation, the birth of the Messiah. Mary’s prompt response of “yes” to the divine message is a model of faith for all believers. Mary believed God’s promises even when they seemed impossible. She was full of grace because she trusted that what God said was true and would be fulfilled. She was willing and eager to do God’s will, even if it seemed difficult or costly. God gives us grace and he expects us to respond with the same willingness, obedience, and heart-felt trust as Mary did. When God commands he also gives the grace, strength, and means to respond. We can either yield to his grace or resist and go our own way. Do you believe in God’s promises and do you yield to his grace?

“Heavenly Father, you offer us abundant grace, mercy, and forgiveness through your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Help me to live a grace-filled life as Mary did by believing in your promises and by giving you my unqualified “yes” to your will and to your plan for my life.”

for the full reflection visit : Daily Reading and Meditation

Episode 4 Discerning the Will of God: An Ignatian Guide to Christian Decision Making w/Fr. Timothy Gallagher.

This episode offers a look at the importance of the disposition of heart, which like the Blessed Virgin Mary,  seeks the will of God in whatever He wants.  How do we gain that disposition and what are the means of obtaining that grace is what discussed in the next several episodes.  In this conversation the importance of the retreat and even more importantly the role of sacraments is discussed.

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For other episodes in the series visit The Discerning Hearts “Discerning the Will of God” page

Father Timothy M. Gallagher, O.M.V., was ordained in 1979 as a member of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, a religious community dedicated to retreats and spiritual formation according to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.  Fr. Gallagher is featured on the EWTN series “Living the Discerning Life:  The Spiritual Teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola”.

 

“Discerning the Will of God: An Ignatian Guide to Christian Decision Making”  is the book on which this series is based.  It is published by Crossroads Books.

For more information on the “Oblates of the Virgin Mary”

 

For the other episodes in this series check out Fr. Timothy Gallagher’s “Discerning Hearts” page

 

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O God,
who by the Immaculate Conception
of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
did prepare a worthy dwelling place for Your Son,
we beseech You that,
as by the foreseen death of this, Your Son,
You did preserve Her from all stain,
so too You would permit us,
purified through Her intercession,
to come unto You.
Through the same Lord Jesus Christ,
Your Son, who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, world without end.

Amen.

Day 1

O most Holy Virgin,
who was pleasing to the Lord and became His mother,
immaculate in body and spirit,
in faith and in love,
look kindly on me as I implore your powerful intercession.
O most Holy Mother,
who by your blessed Immaculate Conception,
from the first moment of your conception
did crush the head of the enemy,
receive our prayers as we implore you
to present at the throne of God the favor we now request…

(State your intention here…)

O Mary of the Immaculate Conception,
Mother of Christ,
you had influence with your Divine Son while upon this earth;
you have the same influence now in heaven.
Pray for us
and obtain for us from him
the granting of my petition if it be the Divine Will.

Amen.

Outside of the Sacramental prayers of the Church, for me, there is no other prayer more important then the prayerful recitation/meditation/contemplation of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Our late great Holy Father, Pope John Paul II put it beautifully in His Apostolic Letter On the Rosary of the Virgin Mary:

“A path of contemplation”

“But the most important reason for strongly encouraging the practice of the Rosary is that it represents a most effective means of fostering among the faithful that commitment to the contemplation of the Christian mystery which I have proposed in the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte as a genuine “training in holiness”: “What is needed is a Christian life distinguished above all in the art of

The Rosary belongs among the finest and most praiseworthy traditions of Christian contemplation. Developed in the West, it is a typically meditative prayer, corresponding in some way to the “prayer of the heart” or “Jesus prayer” which took root in the soil of the Christian East.”-  His Apostolic Letter On the Rosary of the Virgin Mary

Please take some time to check out the Discerning Hearts “Holy Rosary Page”

Audio mp3 download/podcasts of the Holy Rosary

Joyful Mysteries

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Sorrowful Mysteries

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Luminous Mysteries

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Glorious Mysteries

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meditative music  provided by

 

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Msgr. Esseff reflects on the meaning of Our Lady of Sorrows. How do we connect that with the suffering of Christ?  All the suffering we endure is united with Jesus, and the Blessed Mother guides our way.  She is our mother and the power of her love is incredible.  Ask her to come to you in your suffering as she came to her Son. She is our Our Mother of Hope and Compassion.  God conquers sorrow with hope!

 

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,
our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;
to thee do we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

Turn then, most gracious advocate,
thine eyes of mercy toward us;
and after this our exile,
show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

℣ Pray for us O holy Mother of God,
℟ that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Msgr. John A. Esseff is a Roman Catholic priest in the Diocese of Scranton.  He was ordained on May 30th 1953, by the late Bishop William J. Hafey, D.D. at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Scranton, PA.  Msgr. Esseff served a retreat director and confessor to Blessed Mother Teresa.    He continues to offer direction and retreats for the sisters of the missionaries of charity around the world.  Msgr. Esseff encountered St.  Padre Pio,  who would become a spiritual father to him.  He has lived in areas around the world,  serving  in the Pontifical missions, a Catholic organization established by Bl. Pope John Paul II to bring the Good News to the world especially to the poor.  Msgr. Esseff assisted the founders of the Institute for Priestly Formation and continues to serve as a spiritual director for the Institute.  He continues to  serve as a retreat leader and director to bishops, priests and sisters and seminarians and other religious leaders around the world.   

 

 

To obtain a copy of Msgr. Esseff’s book byvisiting here

 

Be sure to visit Msgr. Esseff’s website “Building a Kingdom of  Love”

 

I LOVE it…the birthday of the mother of all “moms”!  Happy Birthday to the dearest Mother of  all.  The Church celebrates 3 birthdays on the calendar…Jesus, John the Baptist, and the great Mother of God, Mary Most Holy.  We celebrate the day the Immaculate Conception was brought through birth into the world.   

From The Catholic News Agency -
“The Catholic Church will soon celebrate the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary on its traditional fixed date of September 8, nine months after the December 8 celebration of her Immaculate Conception as the child of Saints Joachim and Anna.

The circumstances of the Virgin Mary’s infancy and early life are not directly recorded in the Bible, but other documents and traditions describing the circumstances of her birth are cited by some of the earliest Christian writers from the first centuries of the Church.

These accounts, although not considered authoritative in the same manner as the Bible, outline some of the Church’s traditional beliefs about the birth of Mary.

The “Protoevangelium of James,” which was probably put into its final written form in the early second century, describes Mary’s father Joachim as a wealthy member of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Joachim was deeply grieved, along with his wife Anna, by their childlessness. “He called to mind Abraham,” the early Christian writing says, “that in the last day God gave him a son Isaac.”

Joachim and Anna began to devote themselves extensively and rigorously to prayer and fasting, initially wondering whether their inability to conceive a child might signify God’s displeasure with them.

As it turned out, however, the couple were to be blessed even more abundantly than Abraham and Sarah, as an angel revealed to Anna when he appeared to her and prophesied that all generations would honor their future child: “The Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive, and shall bring forth; and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world.”

After Mary’s birth, according to the Protoevangelium of James, Anna “made a sanctuary” in the infant girl’s room, and “allowed nothing common or unclean” on account of the special holiness of the child. The same writing records that when she was one year old, her father “made a great feast, and invited the priests, and the scribes, and the elders, and all the people of Israel.”

“And Joachim brought the child to the priests,” the account continues, “and they blessed her, saying: ‘O God of our fathers, bless this child, and give her an everlasting name to be named in all generations’ . . . And he brought her to the chief priests; and they blessed her, saying: ‘O God most high, look upon this child, and bless her with the utmost blessing, which shall be for ever.’”

The protoevangelium goes on to describe how Mary’s parents, along with the temple priests, subsequently decided that she would be offered to God as a consecrated Virgin for the rest of her life, and enter a chaste marriage with the carpenter Joseph.

Saint Augustine described the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary as an event of cosmic and historic significance, and an appropriate prelude to the birth of Jesus Christ. “She is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley,” he said.

The fourth-century bishop, whose theology profoundly shaped the Western Church’s understanding of sin and human nature, affirmed that “through her birth, the nature inherited from our first parents is changed.” - CNA

Fr. James Kubicki, the director of the Apostleship of Prayer,  shares insights of the Queenship of Mary

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a great mystical doctor of the Church.  What a heart for Jesus and the Blessed Virgin (I’m sure he still has).

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, was a Cisterian monk, who lived in France in the 12th century.  Living at a time when the great gothic cathedrals where born, St. Bernard, advocated for simplicity and austerity in life.  He was concerned about the temptations of worldly things and desires.  He wished to focus solely on the love of Christ and the Blessed Mother; everything else was folly.
To read more about the details of his life you can visit here.

What captures my heart is his legacy of prayer and spiritual writings.  He truly deserves the title Doctor of the Church. What a feast he has left us!  Pope John Paul II has said that if we wish to learn to pray, look to the Mystical Doctors…he truly is one of those special souls.  There is so much, where can one begin?  Begin with Mary. Ask the Blessed Mother, she will lead you through his teachings.

REMEMBER, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly to thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee do I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.

St. Bernard on the Blessed Mother

St. Bernard on Holy Repentance

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Highly recommended reading introduction to St. Bernard would be - “The Fulfillment of All Desire” by Ralph Martin

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Lord Jesus Christ, You have destroyed the power of death and given the hope of eternal life in body and soul.

You granted your Mother a special place in your glory, and did not allow decay to touch her body.

As we rejoice in the Assumption of Mary, give to us a renewed confidence in the victory of
life over death.

You live and reign forever and ever.

Amen.

Day 2
Mary, Assumed into Heaven, we venerate you as the Queen of Heaven and earth. As you tasted the bitterness of pain and sorrow with your Son on earth, you now enjoy eternal bliss with Him in Heaven.

Loving Queen, intercede for us in our needs.

(mention your request)

We praise Jesus for giving us such a loving mother.

O Queen Assumed into Heaven, pray for us.

Amen.

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Lord Jesus Christ, You have destroyed the power of death and given the hope of eternal life in body and soul.

You granted your Mother a special place in your glory, and did not allow decay to touch her body.

As we rejoice in the Assumption of Mary, give to us a renewed confidence in the victory of
life over death.

You live and reign forever and ever.

Amen.

Day 1

 

Immaculate Virgin, Mother of Jesus and our Mother, we believe in your triumphant assumption into heaven where the angels and saints acclaim you as Queen of Heaven and earth.

We join them in praising you and bless the Lord who raised you above all creatures. With them we honor you.

We are confident that you watch over our daily lives and we ask that you intercede for us now.

(mention your request)

We are comforted by our faith in the coming Resurrection and we look to you for prayers and comfort.

After this earthly life, show us Jesus, the blest fruit of your womb, O kind, O loving, O sweet virgin Mary.

O Queen Assumed into Heaven, pray for us.

Amen.

meditative music  provided by

Holy Mary

From “Saints Speak”:

From heaven, in his own words, St. Alphonsus speaks on how the intercession of Mary is necessary for our salvation and shares the process of reviewing ones conscience before holy repentance..

Holy Repentance

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel…

I just love everything about this day!

A prayer to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel

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from About.com

“According to the traditions of the Carmelite order, on July 16, 1251, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Simon Stock, a Carmelite. During the vision, she revealed to him the Scapularof Our Lady of Mount Carmel, popularly known as the “Brown Scapular.” A century and a quarter later, the Carmelite order began to celebrate on this date the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

The Carmelites had long claimed that their order extended back to ancient times-indeed, that it was founded on Mount Carmel in Palestine by the prophets Elijah and Elisha. While others disputed this idea, Pope Honorius III, in approving the order in 1226, seemed to accept its antiquity. The celebration of the feast became wrapped up with this controversy, and, in 1609, after Robert Cardinal Bellarmine examined the origins of the feast, it was declared the patronal feast of the Carmelite order.

The feast celebrates the devotion that the Blessed Virgin Mary has to those who are devoted to her, and who signal that devotion by wearing the Brown Scapular. According to tradition, those who wear the scapular faithfully and remain devoted to the Blessed Virgin until death will be granted the grace of final perseverance and be delivered from Purgatory early.”

I’m all about the cloth scapular rather than the medal or wood ones. It’s intent is to be a habit…who wears metal or wood clothing?  I realize papal permission was given to wear the medal instead, but that was for missionaries in the jungle where the climate disintigrated the cloth quickly.  Really, would it really be a big problem, for those committed to the devotion, to wear the cloth scapular for solidarity sake?   Anyway…

Here are a few of the Carmelites dearest to my heart:

Also  THE SIXTEEN CARMELITE MARTYRS OF  COMPIEGNE, but that’s tomorrow….

USCCA12- Episode 12-  Mary:  The Church’s First and Most Perfect Member

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Archbishop Lucas offers insights on the US Catholic Catechism for Adults Chapter 12:

The Second Vatican Council remains us that Mary is a member of the Church who “occupies a place in the Church which is the highest after Christ and also closest to us” (LG, no. 54).  She is the first and the greatest of all the disciples of Christ.

The Most Reverend George J. Lucas leads the Archdiocese of Omaha. 

For other episodes in the visit our Archbishop George Lucas page

This programs is based on:

More information can be found here.

We wish to thank the USCCB for the permissions granted for use of  relevant material used in this series.
Also we wish to thank Fr. Ryan Lewis   for his vocal talents in this episode.

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Msgr. Esseff calls us to deeply ponder the role of the Blessed Virgin Maryduring the Passion of Christ, but also in our own lives as well.

Be sure to visit Msgr. Esseff’s website: “Building a Kingdom of Love”