If you follow the Mass readings throughout Advent you can
plainly see the two great figures of the Gospels, besides Jesus, are John the
Baptist and the Blessed Virgin Mary.
John and Mary seem to be complete opposites. The Baptist is an ascetic living in the
wilderness calling people to repent, while our image of Mary is often one of
docile maiden. But I believe Mary had
the same boldness and courage as John the Baptist. How else would she have had the nerve to say
“Yes” to God’s messenger if she had not been “Full of Grace?” (Luke
1:28)
In Sunday’s Gospel (Luke
3:1-12),
John the Baptist doesn’t mince words. He
spoke truth to power. Convert, or
else! How many of us would be so bold or
have the courage as to challenge the authorities to, “Repent. The kingdom of
heaven is at hand.”
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Because Sundays’ in Advent displaces any feast days, today’s
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception has been moved to Monday. This feast proclaims that Mary was conceived
without sin. It’s not to be confused
with the Annunciation of the Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and
therefore without sin. To add to the
confusion, the Annunciation reading is the Gospel used for the Immaculate
Conception.
The foundress of the Redemptoristine Nuns, Bl. M. Celeste
Crostarosa (1696-1755) gave
daily reflections to her community in Foggia, Italy during the Advent of 1751. Today, I am going
to share what I gleaned from Celeste’s prayer style and how she praised the
Blessed Virgin Mary throughout Advent.
Celeste muses on the Annunciation for the first eleven days of
Advent. She continues for another six
days on the Visitation, and then Celeste devotes twenty days to the Canticle of
Mary. After 31 days of Advent, she
finally gets to the Birth of the Lord! Mind
you, the longest Advent can be is 28 days.
That is how effusive and lavish Celeste is in her prayer and in sharing
her meditations. In this talk I will
concentrate on the meditations on the Annunciation, which I will later apply to
the Immaculate Conception.
Bl.
Celeste’s style of prayer:
Celeste had a pattern to her meditations. She always began with Lectio Divina: Selecting a short verse to ponder over from the Gospel.
For instance: … the
Angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee called Nazareth, to a
virgin espoused to a man… (Lk
1:26-27)
Then Celeste would always invite herself, and her community,
to prayer. She uses a refrain like this
as an invitation: “Enter, my soul, in
meditation into this sea of grace and listen to this happy annunciation.” As each day passes she continues with the
next verse of the Gospel passage and repeats the invitation to prayer with
slight variations according to the passage:
“Enter my soul, to celebrate the marriage…of Mary and Joseph.” “Enter, my soul, with the light of faith.” Later
she switches to, “Consider, my soul, how this most Prudent Mother listens…” I can imagine Celeste being an eye-witness to
these exchanges of the Archangel with the BVM and watches Mary closely that she
in turn might emulate our Lady in all her responses.
Celeste was very descriptive in recounting the scene from Lectio Divina and draws her sisters in
to share for themselves what their Holy Mother foundress was experiencing. Celeste is often full of wonder and amazement,
and exclaims: “Oh admirable mystery!” “Oh incomprehensible gifts!” “Oh sweetness of love! Oh love of Sweetness!”
Bl. Celeste tends to speak with exclamation marks.
Celeste, as she is known to do, turns to the theme of humility. She often calls it ‘annihilation.’ But what she means is a total emptying of
self that she may be pure. She longs to
be like the Virgin Mary, and Jesus, who emptied himself to become Mary’s
child. In Celeste’s humility she asks
pardon for her pride and “disordered concerns” and asks for “true knowledge of
herself so that she may be worthy to possess God.” “I beg you,” Celeste prays, “not to refuse
the company of this most miserable creature.”
It seems to me, that those who are truly close to God see
themselves as empty and in darkness in comparison to the Glory of the Eternal
Father. In her darkness she prays to be
enlightened: “Oh Mother of Humility! Admit
me into your school to learn…holy fear.” Celeste continues, “Teach me how I am to
fulfil the will of God…”
Sometimes Celeste can be quite demanding. She boldly says: “Make me love God
alone.” “I shall not depart from your
most loving feet until you grant me what you yourself have obtained.” “Do it for me.”
Ultimately, Bl. Celeste works herself up to a fever-pitch thanking
the Lord. With exalts of joy she is driven to say many times, “What a work to
make every loving soul crazy with love!”
“Oh unheard of excesses that makes every faithful soul crazy with love
and joy!”
In her childhood, Celeste was known for her exuberant ways. In Scala, when Celeste was a young religious,
she was inspired by the Lord to form a new religious Order. At that time, people called her crazy. Thankfully, years later, she was able to form
the Redemptoristine Nuns in Foggia in peace, despite of what was being said of
her, because Celeste’s pure faith and trust led her to follow the Redeemer
unreservedly.
What
can we glean from Celeste about the Immaculate Conception from her meditations
on the Annunciation?
She says, “Who can describe the greatness of Mary? The Eternal Father looked with love on Mary as
His daughter; the most holy among the children of Eve.” She was predestined before the foundation of
the earth to be “immune from the fault of Adam.”
God knitted Mary in the womb of her mother Ann with all the graces
and virtues of Jesus the Christ, and adorned her with faith and hope; a true
knowledge of her lowliness combined with trust, boldness of heart, courage and
pure love.
Celeste exclaims, “God who has no beginning and is Creator
of all, why so many excesses?” She answers herself, “I can hear God replying,
‘Only for love, only for love, only for love.’ Oh fortunate Maiden, you are the only one who
has had such favors! What a splendid work to make every loving soul crazy in
love with God!”
Let me read some of the Third Day of Advent Meditation to
give you an idea of her exuberance in prayer and sharing. It’s as if in her Lectio Divina she is eavesdropping on the conversation between the
Blessed Virgin and the Archangel Gabriel, and then wishes to share the lights
of her own contemplation.
She begins with the Lectio
Divina of the Gospel passage from Lk
1:28, 42 And the angel Gabriel came to her and said,
“Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with
you! Blessed are you among women… and
blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
“Enter,
my soul, with this divine and heavenly ambassador, into the little house of
Nazareth and look at your Lady Mary there.
See how this fortunate and humble virgin, hidden away from the world and
all its creatures…for she is great only before the most pure eyes of her
God. And while she is absorbed in her
most profound contemplation, behold, the Archangel Gabriel! After bowing profoundly before her, his
greeting follows, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women and blessed is
the fruit of your womb.’
“Hear
the Angel of the Lord call her fortunate and blessed among women. O my Lady and Queen! You are full of grace because the Lord is with
you. You are full of God, because you
are the Temple and the Ark of the divine Wisdom. ….Oh blessed fruit of Mary’s womb!...Not only
did Jesus repair the ruin that the sin of our first father Adam had caused in
our human nature, but still more, Jesus raised our human nature to
indescribable dignity!
“O
divine Lady! Obtain the possession of
God for me. Obtain that humble hiddenness, that feeling of lowliness in myself;
a true knowledge of my own nothingness, so that I may be worthy to possess God
and be filled with God. Make me love God
alone, so that God may live in the Life of my heart.”
So we see that Bl. M. Celeste’s style of prayer was full of
fervor, humble yet bold. She addresses
Mary with such familiarity. We hear in
her ponderings of the Gospel what she mined of the spiritual truths and
enthusiastically shared them with her community.
Theologians had been pondering the
Immaculate Conception since the twelfth century. Celeste was contemplating the
Immaculate Conception one hundred years before this important article of faith
was officially proclaimed by Pope Pius
IX as ineffable in 1854. The tenet of
faith is that Mary was free from original sin by
virtue of the merits of her son Jesus. The Church teaches that
God acted upon Mary in the first moment of her conception, keeping her
"immaculate." This is
referred to as Mary's pre-redemption by Christ.
It is amazing how Bl. Celeste
encapsulates the doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception especially in the Fifth Mediation as she explicitly says, “Oh
most fortunate Maiden, you are the only one who has had such favors. What
grace, my beloved Lady! The divine
Father, from God’s holy Eternity, looked upon you as His highly favored daughter,
immune
from the fault of Adam… From eternity you were predestined, before the foundations of
the earth were made, when the depths were not as yet formed, before the
mountains and valleys existed, and before the sources of the water were
created, in you God delighted.”
Throughout her life, Celeste’s main desire was to be united
with Jesus. Her spirituality was of
being a ‘viva memoria: a living memory of Christ.’ This is evident at the end of the Third Meditation
where she says:
“Who
can bless You, Jesus, as they ought and give You thanks according to Your
merits! And, just as You awaited the
precious hour of Your Incarnation with infinite love, so unite Yourself to my flesh
in the womb of Mary. I long so for that precious
hour when I shall be united with You and transform myself into You, the true
Life of my heart.”
In today's Gospel, John the Baptist calls us to repent.
Tomorrow’s Gospel points to Mary Immaculate as ‘Full of Grace.’
What is our response to such a “stupendous and divine
work?” This work began with our baptism
and continues with our repentance, our self-emptying, and our contemplation
guides us into the transformation of our soul into God. How
can we respond? How about being bold,
be crazy in love with God and say, “Yes!”
The Associates made these tissue paper roses at the feet of our lady.
This poem is an invitation to use
your imagination in pondering the Annunciation and answer the angel’s call in
our lives.
ANNUNCIATION
Were others asked?
A lassie from an isle in a distant sea?
A maiden in
North Africa
or a slave girl from the Congo?
How many times were angels sent
and returned, unheard, unheeded?
Was Mary tenth on salvation’s list.
Or the hundredth?
or a slave girl from the Congo?
How many times were angels sent
and returned, unheard, unheeded?
Was Mary tenth on salvation’s list.
Or the hundredth?
And you, my
soul.
was fiat spoken
was fiat spoken
when the
angel came?
Bishop Robert Morneau
This
week we are treated to three feasts of our Lady: Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Loreto, the newest one
promulgated just this year by Pope Francis, and the much beloved, our Lady of Guadalupe.
The Immaculate Conception became doctrine in 1854. Three years later, the 14 year old Bernadette
Soubirous, an ignorant peasant from the foothills of the Pyrenees, described her vision at Lourdes: “…out of the
dark niche came a dazzling light, and a
white figure of a small young lady appeared wearing a white veil, a blue girdle
and with a yellow rose on each foot.”
After asking her name many times, on the Lady’s 16th
appearance, she answered, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” If you haven’t seen it in a while, I recommend
you see the beautiful 1943 movie, Song of
Bernadette.
According to
tradition, on Dec 10th , the Holy House of Loreto was carried by
angels from Nazareth to the Italian hillside town of Loreto that night in 1294,
after making a three-year stop in Croatia. Custodians of the shrine have said the
stones of the house were removed from the Holy Land and carried by ship by a
member of the Angeli family. In either
case, tradition holds that the small house, made of three stone walls, is the
place where Mary was born, where she was visited by an Archangel Gabriel and
conceived Jesus through the Holy Spirit, and where the Holy Family later
lived. The decree said the shrine in
Loreto "recalls the mystery of the Incarnation."
Despite the
possibility that the house came by way of ship, Our Lady of Loreto is still the
patron saint of air travel.
The Blessed Virgin appeared four times to Saint Juan Diego at
Tepeyac in 1531, On the fourth visit on 12th of December, after
failing to get the local bishop to agree to build a church in our Lady’s honor,
the Virgin Mary reappeared to Juan Diego and told him to bring her flowers from
the top of the Hill of Tepeyac, whose cold, stony summit was normally barren at
this time of year. To reassure Juan, Guadalupe identified herself as the Virgin Mary, "Mother of the very true God"
and said, “Am I not here, I who am your mother?”
He followed her wishes, and to his surprise found roses
growing. He brought them to the Lady, who arranged them inside his cloak,
and she told him to go show them to the unbelieving bishop. When Juan
Diego saw the bishop, he opened his cloak, the flowers fell to floor, and lo
and behold, on the fabric was the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Her likeness on the tilma shows a young pregnant
woman with a dark complexion, a mixture of indigenous and Spanish features,
signifying Our Lady of Guadalupe represents the unity of all people. She is
the patron of the Americas, especially of the indigenous and the poor.
