At the cross, your sorrow sharing,
All your grief and torment bearing,
Let me stand and mourn with you.For Reflection:
This stanza from Stabat Mater draws our attention to the fact that Mary stood under the Cross. What does it mean to stand? Reverend Weaver offers one characteristic of Mary’s stance: bravery. He says, “United with her heroic Son, Mary gives a shining example of the fortitude which must be practiced in the battle of life.” And of what is this fortitude the fruit? Prayer, says Father Weaver: “…prayer which comes from a heart that is in harmony with the Heart of God has tremendous power.” To what extent is your prayer life yielding the fortitude you need to stand with Mary? In what one way can you improve it today?
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Mother, may this prayer be granted:
That Christ's love may be implanted
In the depths of my poor soul. For Reflection:
To love as Jesus loves. Mary lived this level of spiritual perfection. Dare we hope for it? Dare we wait for it? Henri Nouwen says that waiting is hope and tells us that “Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes.
In the Novena to Our Lady of Hope, we read these verses from Sirach. Church fathers tell us they refer to Mary: I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth; in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come to me all that desire me and be filled with my fruits (Sirach 24:24-26).
Mary makes us a promise. Come to her and she will fill us with her own beatitude. “O Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Grace, Hope of the world. Hear us, your children, who cry to you.”
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A group of feminists has launched a signature campaign protesting the creation of a new feminine-friendly line of the popular LEGO toys because it stereotypes girls in traditional female roles.
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The promotion of policies that threaten religious freedom has taken a toll on President Barack Obama's poll numbers with presumptive GOP candidate Mitt Romney now holding a commanding lead over the president among white evangelicals and Roman Catholics.
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Following a presentation this week by activist Sandra Fluke on contraception access, a group of more than 100 Georgetown students and alumni have petitioned University president John DeGioia to allow them equal time to present "the virtues of the Church's teachings on sexuality and contraception. . ."
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Just because a remedy is natural, doesn't mean it's good for you.
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Virgin, ever interceding,
Hear me in my fervent pleading:
Fire me with your love of Christ. For Reflection:
Perhaps that which hinders us most from attaining “open-ended waiting” is our limited capacity to love. Today’s GraceLine contains the solution to this – we need Mary’s love of Christ since our own love is so weakened by concupiscence and sinfulness. St. Louis de Montfort tells us that if we consecrate ourselves to Jesus through Mary, our Mother gives us the operations of her soul. That means, we can receive her own love of Christ as our own. Is God asking you to make this consecration? Renew it? Live it more fully? How can you begin to do so today?
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Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
History is the best teacher, but not everyone is willing to learn from it. This is certainly the case with Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization of Women (NOW), who recently appeared on CSPAN to offer the same worn-out solutions to the high rate of abortions in the US - universal birth control and comprehensive sex education.
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After a years-long investigation, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has called for major reforms in an association of women's religious congregations in the U.S., citing "serious doctrinal problems" with the way the organization has been conducting itself.
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Mary, fount of love's devotion,
Let me share with true emotion
All the sorrow you endured. For Reflection:
Rev. Bertrand Weaver, C.P. writes in his book, His Cross in Your Life, that God willed to have Mary at Calvary as an “associate teacher of wisdom.” He says that, “By accepting grief ‘great as the sea,’ she united with her Divine Son in giving mankind an example of bowing before the Will of God when it could not have been more difficult.” Nouwen may have put it this way: Mary’s life was a study of open-ended waiting, a characteristic of which is “giving up control over our future and letting God define our life.”
If you truly pray the above stanza of Stabat Mater you are asking for the same grace. You are asking to live open-ended waiting. To what extent are you really willing to pray for this? What would encourage you? What would hinder you? Give all to Mary, Fount of Love’s Devotion.
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