"Privileges of Mary". - talk of Fr. Raymond.

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It so happened to be the Feast of Our Lady of Aberdeen.  

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"Privileges of Mary".  - talk of Fr. Raymond.

     Pending Solemnity of St. Benedict - Chapter Sermon, Br. Philip......

Fw: Wednesday Community Talk about monastic life 

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PRIVILEGES OF MARY by Fr. Raymond

“Who is this that comes up from the desert flowing with delights?” “Who is she that comes forth as the morning rising?” Who is this?  Who is she?  By these poetic questions the Holy Spirit seeks to inspire in us a holy curiosity about Mary, a desire to know the purpose he had in so favouring her and placing her in the centre of his plan of Grace for the salvation of mankind.

Pope John XXIII gives is a clue to the answer when he says that: “Devotion to Mary is the way par excellence of reaching an understanding of the  teaching of the Divine Master.  It is the best way of learning how to conform our lives to the vocation by which we are called the children of God.  In effect, all of what we call Mary’s Privileges are essentially connected with the personal relationship of each individual one of us with our God.  Her privileges are not just great favours bestowed on her alone to raise her above us, rather they are in fact great divine pledges deposited in her as our representative to reveal the nature of God’s promises to mankind as a whole.  She is the perfect prototype or model, as it were, whose diverse graces of union with him are the ideal and perfect fulfilment of all that each of us may hope for.  The heart of the matter is that his dealings with her and his dealings with each individual soul are in a way, essentially the same; they differ only in manner and degree.  As Mary, for example was conceived immaculate in her beginning that she might be worthy to receive her God incarnate in her womb, so also shall we, in our end, will be  brought immaculate, without spot or wrinkle, into union with the same Lord.  So Mary’s privileges raise her above us only that we, her children may reach up to be where she is and to live ourselves on that same plane.  There were some in Our Lord’s own day who tried to distinguish between Mary’s relationship to him and our own:  “ Your Mother wants to speak to you”, they said.  But he answered in that  wonderful phrase: “It is all  of you who are mother and brother and sister to me.”

If we consider the privilege which all the other privileges were either a preparation for or a consequence of, namely her Divine Motherhood; even this, which is seemingly the most inaccessible of them all, is the one which affects us the most fundamentally.  Apart from inspiring us to enter into the spirit of that Fiat by  which she embraced the Incarnation, there is also the fact that from our very infancy we have grown up knowing this lady, this woman, this simple human creature like ourselves, and calling her Mother of God.  Thus, without realising it, we have instilled into our hearts that gracious and heavenly atmosphere off family relationship between God and man.  And thus the Holy Spirit finds our hearts perfectly dis “Abba, Father”.

Indeed as the Sun shines in the skies and calls forth life from nature by the very presence of its warmth, so does Mary shine in the spiritual atmosphere, calling forth the love of God from men just by what she is.

Thus Mary’s glories and privileges are  really revelations to us of God’s attitude towards us all.  We call her the Ark of the Covenant because she is the shrine in which he has placed the manna of heaven, the pledge of the eucharist; she is the Mirror of Holiness in which is reflected the fullness of the graces destined for all mankind.  Is it any wonder that we call her our sweetness and our hope?

For example, Mary’s, bodily assumption into heaven is a pledge and guarantee that the souls of all of God’s children will be reunited again with their bodies in eternity life, the same body, yet renewed and spiritualised, as St Paul tells us.

We might say that Mary is God’s second Word.  The first Word is his expression of himself as he is in himself and issues in the living Person of his Son, who became incarnate.  The second is his expression of himself as he is reflected in us and issues in the living person of Mary, full of grace.  Again, dare we say that Jesus cannot show us, in himself, the perfect relationship he desires us to have towards himself – relationship is a two-way thing – the One to the Other.  Mary is that perfect Other whom we must strive to imitate.  Jesus is the Song that the God of love sings to us, and Mary is the perfect personification of the Song that we should strive to sing back to God.    

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