Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal

Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Mary: God's Perfect Creature

St. Maximilian Kolbe says, "God comes to this most perfect Creature, the Immaculate One; and the fruit of Their love is Jesus Christ, the Mediator between the Creator and all creatures..."

We desire so much to be perfect in all the different aspects of our life.  We want our days to go well, we want our relationships to go well, and most certainly we want special events to go even better...

But we are not perfect and cannot be perfect without God's help.  God helps us through the Blessed Mother...she is our help and in fact she is called "Mary Help of Christians..."  God uses every opportunity to use others to help us because God is by nature communal...so when we come to the Blessed Mother...we get to see her perfection evident in the things we do.

When I asked for her help for my ordination to the Diaconate...her fingerprints were everywhere...the day, the weather, the food, the people, the ceremony turned out so perfect because I went to my and Our Blessed Mother for the perfect help that only she and Jesus can give us...

Do you want to find Jesus? The speak with the one who has already found her: the Virgin Mary!

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

May the month of Our Lady


We don't often consider how beautiful Our Blessed Mother is, especially in her humility.  For the month of May, it would be a beautiful spiritual exercise to see how she had to travel the road of humility in order to follow her son to the Cross.  Many of these ideas and images are from Hans Urs Von Balthasar, a German priest who had a great love for the Blessed Mother. 

Mary was above all a woman of humility.  She came to know who Christ was and recognizing that he was God, she could have demanded for herself the respect of all people.  Instead, she sits in the background and accepts herself as just one of the crowd...as if God was testing her to see if she could be humble here on Earth.  She remained quiet and humble, simply contemplating the beautiful work of her Son, only to be highly exalted in Heaven so that we consider her our most Heavenly Queen!

She was humbled when Jesus had to obey his Father's desire to be in the Temple and she lost him for three days.  She was humbled when Jesus said, "Who are my mother and my brothers? They who do the will of the Father?"  She didn't get special treatment from Jesus! She had to submit to God's will just like everyone else.  Was this because he didn't love her? No, instead it shows how profound his love for her was, that he was willing to humble her in order to bring her through the royal road to Heaven.  Had he spoiled her with special treatment, then she might have given in to pride and comfort.  She was also humbled at the cross when she had to consent to giving the Father back her Son and receiving a disciple in return.  She had to renounce her own motherhood in order to accept a new motherhood, that of being mother of the Church. 

In this way, she perfectly imitates her Son who, "emptied himself and took the form of a slave" where she says, "behold the handmaid of the Lord."  O most humble Blessed Mother, pray for us that we may have your beautiful humility!