The Holy Name of Mary

The Holy Name of Mary
In the monastic community we are awash with Scriptures and Theology and Lectio Divina, Spiritual reading. In practice prayer for the monk is the prayer of simplicity; the simpler the better. The simplest, the most familiar of the simplest prayers can fill all the monk's day, like, for example; - the Hail Mary - the Holy Mary.
The "Angelic Salutation", as we call it, has two invocation of the Name of Mary.
The first invocation, "Hail Mary" is greeting and praise and thanksgiving and proclamation.In great Cathedrals there is a feature known as the Galilean Porch, that is the main entrance to the sacred place.
Here it is the Visitation Porch, so to speak, that summonses us with the Name of Mary. When Elizabeth greets Mary, "Blessed is the fruit of your womb", it can be seen as a revolutionary feminist Proclamation. Elizabeth the expectant mother of John the Baptist, Mary the expectant mother of Jesus, leading us, in the most human approach, the birth of the Child Jesus, to the greatest Mystery, to the Incarnate the Son of God.
The second, "Holy Mary" starts us off, in the same way as we begin each Mass, recognizing that we are sinners. "Pray for us sinners", - NOW and at the hour of our death.- NOW is the only time. As one theologian put it, there is no NEXT life. There is only the NOW of the Divine Presence. The same applies to the HOUR of death. The NOW and that HOUR are part of the fullness of presence in God.

ORDINARY TIME: THE HOLY NAME OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. The Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, published by the Congregation of Divine Worship in 1986, is a set of 46 Masses intended for use at Marian shrines and for communities who wish to celebrate the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin on Saturday.
A memorial of the Most Holy Name of the Virgin is celebrated on 12 September A commentary on the Opening Prayer of the Mass itself forms a litany of the Holy Name of Mary.

"Lord our God, when your Son was dying on the altar of the cross, he gave us as our mother the one he had chosen to be his own mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary; grant that we who call upon the holy name of Mary, our mother, with confidence in her protection may receive strength and comfort in all our needs" (Marian Sacramentary, Mass for the Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary).

New Cathedral of Galloway - any memories of Bishop Mellon?

Subject: New Cathedral of Galloway - any memories of Bishop Mellon?
To: "Harry Conroy" info@scottishcatholicobserver.org.uk
Dear Harry, Thank you for your kind efforts to find a picture of Right Reverend William Mellon, Bishop of Galloway - 2nd February, 1952.
Happily I have been fortunate in obtaining a photograph of Bishop Mellon, from a friend, the Archivist of Paisley Diocese, Canon Canning. He had been given it by Mgr Kinsella, VG of Galloway, now retired in Nazareth House Cardonald.
I have also found, something which I think you mentioned, the Obituary - printed in the Catholic Directory for Scotland of 1953.
Abbot Raymond will be at the Consecration of the new Cathedral of St. Margaret's in Ayr on Fri 14th September. The above Obituary tells us something from, that the evolution of Galloway Diocesan territory and the transfer of its Cathedral from the South to other parts in the North has had quite a History.
No doubt Scottish Catholic Observer will have a full beam of spotlighting on the occasion.
My request had stemmed from a grand niece of the Bishop who came with her children to visit Nunraw. Her father, Ted Mellen, had tried his vocation as a monk at Nunraw from 1950. Before joining he had made the Holy Year Pilgrimage following Hilaire Belloc's "Path to Rome". In later year's he was surprised to find how much things had changed in the monastery (in the church). - His daughter had asked us to remember in our prayers "her father, Edward Farquharson Mellen, who was a novice at the Abbey in the 1950's. The 36th anniversary of his death, aged 46, is on 23rd August". Owing to a fire in the home in Edinburgh most of the family records perished. Some of the younger generation are now into restoring the Family Tree. Interesting in the Biographical Note of the Obituary of Bishop Mellon is the reference the Coat of Arms. "His coat-of-arms described him well. It shows a hand grasping a pastoral staff, together with some sheep. The motto he chose was the one attributed to St. Ninian, the first Bishop of Galloway: Fides Petri in Sede Petri"," (The Faith of Peter in the See of Peter). See also the Galloway Icon of St. Ninian. Much water has flowed under the bridge since those days.In 1950 Bishop Mellon was at Nunraw to Ordain Fr. Stephen. He was functioning in Edinburgh in the inter-regnum between the Acrchbishops Andrew Joseph MacDonald and Gordon Joseph Gray.
I look forward to seeing what SCO does for the profile of the present Bishop of Galloway. The memory of Bishop Mellon seems to have disappeared in the mists of Solway Firth. Perhaps we will hear more of him in the celebrations of the transferred Cathedra.