The Memorial of the Presentation of Mary is celebrated on November 21st.  The theme of this Memorial is:  total consecration to the Lord through Mary.

Although not mentioned in the Bible, this ancient feast is based on information taken from one of the apocryphal Gospels, the Protevangelium of James.  In it we are told that at the age of three, Mary was taken by her parents to the Temple of Jerusalem, where she was presented and would remain until the age of marriage, in the company of other young girls in the charge of holy women.

The Dictionary of Mary [Catholic Book Publishing Co.] gives us some informaiton about the actual history of the Memorial:

This event was already commemorated in the 6th century in the East.  Gregory XI in 1372 heard of the feast, kept in Greece on November 21, and instituted it at Avignon.  In 1585, Sixtus V extended it to the Universal Church. 

If you’re anything like me, you may have wondered how Mary’s parents could possibly have given up their baby girl at the age of three to complete strangers; you may have felt very badly for Mary, assuming she would have felt very abandoned, lonely and frightened – traumatized, in fact. We have a tendency to forget that Mary’s human life was like no other, that she was imbued with mystical knowledge from the time she was within the womb of her mother, and from that very time within her mother’s womb she had no desire other than to serve God and be in complete union with His Will. Venerable Mary of Agreda shares her mystical visions of this time in Mary’s life [The Divine Life of the Most Holy Virgin, from the Mystical City of God]:

When the time arrived for the accomplishment of the vow which her parents had made, of consecrating her to the service of the Temple, she herself was the first to beg them, with all humility, to fulfill their promise without delay, and she most fervently entreated God to inspire them to do it promptly.  The Lord granted the humble prayer of His beloved, and her parents, obedient to the heavenly inspiration, parted with their amiable child, though not without the deepest sorrow.

The grief of St. Ann, in particular, exceeded even that of Abraham when commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac.  At the expiration of the three years St. Joachim and St. Ann, accompanied by many of their relations and by a great number of angelic spirits, who, during the journey, sang hymns of praise to the Most High, left Nazareth and journeyed to Jerusalem, bearing in their arms their young and happy child.

{I found the image at the Australian EJournal of Theology, which has some lovely artwork, as well as very interesting subject-matter.}

Readers have provided me with a couple of excellent links to sites where you can not only learn about the Rosary, but also pray it online.

My friend Carol highly recommends the Virtual Rosary site, and recent commentor Diane let me know about this excellent resource on Father Corapi’s website.

For the past couple of years I have been using the Rosary resources offered by Rosary Army, whose wonderful consecration podcasts I embedded on this site as well.  I downloaded their Rosary recordings onto my iPod, and am able to pray along with them as I ride the bus to and from work.  

The resources available to us now are seemingly endless; you can locate many other wonderful sites through your own search engines. If you spend some time on the sites I’ve linked to here, you will see that they provide information on many topics, along with the Rosary.

Thanks again, Carol and Diane, for sharing your finds, and thank you to all those who are behind the scenes setting up these resources for us. They are much appreciated.

Today is Wednesday. Would you like to pray the Glorious Mysteries with me (it doesn’t matter when you may be reading this, does it? After all, with God, there is no time) – together with Greg and Jennifer of Rosary Army? Let’s.

 [Virgin of Carmel Saving Souls in Purgatory, Circle of Diego Quispe Tito, Peruvian (Cuzco), 1611-1681]

For the Souls in Purgatory

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,
give eternal rest to the poor souls.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,
let perpetual light shine upon them.
May they rest in peace.

[From:  Favorite Prayers to Our Lady, by Anthony M. Buono]

In his book, “The Whole Truth about Fatima. Science and the Facts” (pgs. 293-303), Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité writes that while the crowd was watching the miraculous spectacle of the sun moving around in the sky, Lucy, Jacinta and Francisco were witnessing something else as well. 

The three seers were given a sequence of three pictures, and Lucy describes each one:

1. The Vision of the Holy Family: “After Our Lady had disappeared into the immense distance of the firmament, we beheld St. Joseph with the Child Jesus and Our Lady robed in white with a blue mantle, beside the sun.  St. Joseph and the Child Jesus appeared to bless the world, for they traced the Sign of the Cross with their hands.”
2. The Vision of Our Lady of Sorrows:  “When, a little later, this apparition disappeared, I saw Our Lord and Our Lady; it seemed to me that it was Our Lady of Sorrows.  Our Lord appeared to bless the world in the same manner as St. Joseph had done.”
3. The Vision of Our Lady of Mount Carmel:  “This apparition also vanished, and I saw Our Lady once more, this time resembling Our Lady of Mount Carmel.”  

Now, it was on this day, October 13, 1917, that the Blessed Virgin first introduced herself as Our Lady of the Rosary.  Frère Michel makes a connection between the three apparitions noted above and the rosary; he writes that the three visions are “three living images of the mysteries of the rosary.”

He sees the vision of the Holy Family and the blessing being given as illustrative of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary; the second vision, of Our Lady of Sorrows (and as Lucy later informed a priest, the Lord in this vision was dressed in red, “no doubt to remind us of the purple mantle in which he was dressed in the pretorium, during the scene of the outrages and the crowning with thorns”) he relates to the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary; the third vision, of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, he connects with the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary, because Mary was holding the scapular in her hand, offering it to the world. 

Isn’t it wonderful that Jesus and Mary leave nothing undone; they leave no loose ends.  As I was reading this interpretation by Frère Michel, of course the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary introduced by Pope John Paul II came to mind – and what would they correspond to on this special day of October 13, 1917?  Why, the main spectacle, of course – the Miracle of the Sun!

Mary has asked us over and over to pray the Rosary every day.

Isn’t it time, now? 

She asks so little of us, and she gives so much.

In my reference book, Dictionary of Mary, it states that the feast of Our Lady of Mercy (also known as Our Lady of Ransom), was linked to a devotion spread by the Order of Mercedarians.

The Mercedarians were a congregation of men founded in 1218 by St. Peter Nolasco. Along with caring for the sick in hospitals, they were also known for their efforts in rescuing Christian captives from the Moors. The New Advent online Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that Peter Nolasco was requested by the Blessed Virgin, in a vision, to found an order especially devoted to the ransom of captives.

Again, according to the Dictionary of Mary, because the feastday of Our Lady of Mercy was associated with the liberation of slaves, it was “deemed to be of lesser interest for the Universal Church today and so returned to particular calendars.”

In an article published by Zenit in 2006, the Mercedarians outline the state of affairs today in terms of slavery: Mercedarians Spotlight the New Slaveries. Read it and weep.

So I say thank you to the Mercedarians for their steadfast efforts in keeping the dreadful reality of slavery (human and spiritual bondage in all its many forms) before the eyes of the world, and for their continued invoking of Our Lady of Mercy’s intercession for all of humanity.

The image of our sorrowful Mother in the previous post is a “retablo” which I found while visiting the online art site at the New Mexico State University.

From the university’s website, we learn that “the word retablo, refers to sacred images painted on sheets of tin-coated iron which depict Jesus, the Virgin Mary, saints and religious figures. This artform flourished during the nineteenth-century Mexico. The University Collection of over 1,700 art works during the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries Mexico is now the largest collection of tin retablos and related materials held by any U.S. museum.”

To see the university’s beautiful collection of retablos, please visit NMSU – The Collection. It’s well worth the visit!

Excerpt from, “The Mother of the Saviour and Our Interior Life”, by Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (pg. 189):

From the moment when Simeon foretold the Passion – already so clearly prophesied by Isaias – and her compassion, she offered and did not cease to offer Him Who would be Priest and Victim, and herself in union with Him. This painful oblation was renewed over years. Of old, an angel had descended to prevent Abraham’s immolation of his son Isaac. But no angel came to prevent the immolation of Jesus.

Yesterday was the feastday of The Holy Name of Mary.  I was reading St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Hail Holy Queen!, Chapter Ten of which is dedicated to the “sweetness of the name of Mary”. The chapter is filled with the thoughts of many saints and other holy people on this subject, and I share some of them here:

St. Peter Damian:  “The name of Mary came from the treasury of the divinity.”

St. Bernard:  “O most holy Virgin Mary!  Thy name is so sweet and amiable that it cannot be pronounced without inflaming those who do so with love towards thee and God.”

Richard of St. Laurence:  “Thy name, O Mary, is far better than riches, because it can better relieve poverty.”

St. Methodius:  “Thy name, O Mother of God, is filled with divine graces and blessings.”

St. Bonaventure:  “Thy name, O Mary, cannot be pronounced without bringing some grace to him who does so devoutly.”

St. Ambrose:  “Thy most sweet name, O Mary, is a precious ointment, which breathes forth the odor of divine grace.”

St. Germanus:  “…as breathing is a sign of life, so also is the frequent pronunciation of the name of Mary a sign either of the life of divine grace, or that it will soon come; for this powerful name has in it the virtue of obtaining help and life for him who invokes it devoutly.”

♥  M A R Y  ♥

The Lord gave her [St. Anne] to understand that she should treat her child exteriorly as a mother treats her daughter, but that she should preserve interiorly the respect due to her dignity. The Angels venerated her as their Queen, in the arms of her mother, and those who were appointed as her guardians rendered themselves visible to her eyes; this was the first time in which she beheld them under corporeal forms. One thousand were commissioned by God to defend her, from the very instant of her conception. After they had rendered their homage, God sent the Archangel Gabriel to announce the good tidings to the holy patriarchs in Limbo.

[From: The Divine Life of the Most Holy Virgin, by Ven. Mary of Agreda, pg. 17]