Ash Wednesday - Day 6 - continuing the journey

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Hopefully all of us can participate in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass and receive blessed ashes today. It is also a blessing that some parishes have persons who bring communion to the sick or disabled who can only be at Mass in spirit, and there are some who also bring blessed ashes to mark the foreheads of those in hospitals and in their homes who cannot be in Church with us today.

If you do not read the Mass readings for each day, I encourage you to make it a habit during Lent to read them from the USCCB website each morning or from a Catholic Missal if you have one or subscribe to another Catholic source.

Our Father gives us our “daily bread” and we need both the Bread of His Word and the Bread Consecrated which becomes Eucharist. We need food for the journey! Today we begin Day 6 and so have reaced the “halfway point” in our preliminary period of 12 days, seeking “to empty ourselves of the spirit of the world, which is opposed to the Spirit of Jesus” and consecrate ourselves totally to Jesus through Mary on. Mar. 25.

Let us listen to the Mass Readings for today with “the ears of our hearts.” In Reading 1 we hear:

Even now, says the LORD,
return to Me with your whole heart,
with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;
Rend your hearts, not your garments,
and return to the LORD, your God.
For gracious and merciful is He,
slow to anger, rich in kindness,
and relenting in punishment…(Joel 12:2-18)

Responsorial (Psalm 51) the “Miserere” of King David who sinned and asked for Mercy. Reading 2 is from St. Paul’s Letter (2 Cor 5:20 - 6:2):

…Working together, then,
we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.
For he says:

In an acceptable time I heard you,
and on the day of salvation I helped you.

Behold, now is a very acceptable time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.

Verse Before The Gospel

If today you hear His voice,
harden not your hearts. (Ps 95:8)

Gospel (MT 6:1-6, 16-18) Please let us read and ponder the Gospel in our hearts as Mary did.

For all who will be receiving Holy Communion, St. Louis de Montfort gives us these beautiful words, in his book: True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin:

Implore Mary to lend you her heart so that you may receive her Son with her dispositions. Remind her that her Son’s glory requires that he should not come into a heart so sullied and fickle as your own, which could not fail to diminish his glory and might cause him to leave. Tell her that if she will take up her abode in you to receive her Son - which she can do because of the sovereignty she has over all hearts - he will be received by her in a perfect manner without danger of being affronted or being forced to depart. “God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved.”

 

[hazcompat]

God offers us the Virgin Mary in the same way that He chose her for Himself; He entrusts us to her as He entrusted Himself to her.

Thus her place in our life is neither imagination, nor feelings, but our faith in the fact that the Lord was “conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.”

More than anyone else, Mary was a disciple of her son. Her life was entirely given to bringing forth the Word of God.

She was conceived of the Redemption, and lived her life at the service of the Redemption. Then, at the end of her time on earth, she was taken body and soul into the Heavenly Kingdom.

She is both hidden within God and offered to all of us. Mary is near us in the glory of her Assumption. She is forever the one in whom the Holy Spirit has fashioned the image of the Mystical Body, the Church, that we constantly become.

Let us not reduce Mary to a saint we should call on now and again. The maternal love of the Virgin Mary is ever present. In God, we are forever her children. Let us receive her in faith, as St John received her from Jesus on the Cross. Let us invite Mary into our lives, not just in our thoughts or in our spirituality, but in our Creed: with the whole Church let us profess Christ “conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.”

Bishop Louis Sankale

Former bishop of Nice (France) from 2005-2013

Adapted from: Aleteia

Read more on mariedenazareth.com:​

 

[hazcompat]

Lumen Gentium
Chapter VIII
54. Wherefore this Holy Synod, in expounding the doctrine on the Church, in which the divine Redeemer works salvation, intends to describe with diligence both the role of the Blessed Virgin in the mystery of the Incarnate Word and the Mystical Body, and the duties of redeemed mankind toward the Mother of God, who is mother of Christ and mother of men, particularly of the faithful. It does not, however, have it in mind to give a complete doctrine on Mary, nor does it wish to decide those questions which the work of theologians has not yet fully clarified. Those opinions therefore may be lawfully retained which are propounded in Catholic schools concerning her, who occupies a place in the Church which is the highest after Christ and yet very close to us.(4*)

 

[Vico]

Isaiah 1:

16
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
17
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.
18
Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.

From the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts (Clean Monday):

Commemorating our most holy, most pure, most blessed and glorious Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary with all the saints, let us commit ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God.

 

[Katherine438]

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear KBS,

Thanks for your “heart” on this Ash Wednesday. which lets us know you are continuing the journey for love of Jesus through Mary, and appreciating what God reveals to us in His Word, by His Grace, and through the intercession of the Mother He gave us from His Cross.

I trust Jesus and Mary are helping you and me and many others to grow in the desire to “empty ourselves of the spirit of the world which is opposed to the spirit of Jesus”, as St. Louis de Montfort encourages us to do in his 33 Day Preparation for Total Consecration. His words as I posted them in the OP this morning are taken from the “Supplement” at the very end of his book on "True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary". He shares much wisdom beginning with paragraph 266 as he describes practicing “True Devotion” at Holy Communion - before, after, and during our reception of Holy Communion at Mass.

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear hazcompat,

What a lovely tribute to our Mother written by Bishop Louis Sankale! Thanks for posting it. How I agree with Him! The final paragraph you quoted needs to be shouted from the rooftops!

…Let us not reduce Mary to a saint we should call on now and again. The maternal love of the Virgin Mary is ever present. In God, we are forever her children. Let us receive her in faith, as St John received her from Jesus on the Cross. Let us invite Mary into our lives, not just in our thoughts or in our spirituality, but in our Creed: with the whole Church let us profess Christ “conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.”

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear hazcompat,

There was much debate over the placement of Mary in the Official Documents of Vatican II – and the final decision was to include Mary in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, “Lumen Gentium” (Latin “Light of the Nations”). Chapter 8, from which you quoted, is the chapter dedicated to Mary and has many beautiful paragraphs.

Some Bishops and wanted a document that would be “exclusively about Mary” but in the end it was deemed more appropriate for Mary to be seen within the Document of the Church rather than in a separate one. God permitted that for good reason, for Mary cannot really be separated from the Church of whcich she is both Mother and Model.

I was so happy today at Mass to hear the priest in giving his homily on the significance of Lent to end with a very simple but totally sincere tribute to the Mother of Jesus and our Mother, who by her Yes, gave us Jesus, our Way, our Truth and our Life!

Thanks again hazcompat for another thought-provoking quote!

 

[MariaChristi]

Thanks for your reply, Vico. Though it was addressed to hazcompat, I wanted you to know your quote from the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, (Clean Monday) was especially beautiful to me:

“Commemorating our most holy, most pure, most blessed and glorious Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary with all the saints, let us commit ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God.”

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear Christian-ity and Stephie,

Thanks so much for your “hearts”. It is such an encouragement when persons let us know they share a special Love for Jesus through Mary. I cannot help but feel Jesus smiles on every child who loves His Mother Mary, for He gave her to us that we might know how precious she is to Him and to all who seek Him.

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear Katherine,

Thanks for your reply. Next to the words of the prayer Jesus taught us to pray: “Our Father…” the Hail Mary comes next. Our Mother must rejoice again and again each time she hears the message of the Angel sent to her from God, and to those words which Elizabeth spoke to her. How attentively Mary our Mother listens to our prayers, humbly taking them to God!

St. Louis de Montfort wrote that when we say “Mary” she says “God”