Nov. 22 - Christ the King and Mary the Queen

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

What a glorious Feast Day! As we experience the close of this Liturgical Year and look forward to the beginning of the New one on the First Sunday of Advent we experience both a taste of God’s Glory in Heaven and His Suffering for us in coming to earth.

Today, in continuing St. Louis de Montfort’s “True Devotion”, we hear this saint explaining how Devotion to Mary, the Mother of God, helps us in growing closer to God Himself. St. Louis continues to show us what this Devotion, by God’s Grace can do in our souls:

1. This produces in his soul, if he is persevering, a great distrust, contempt, and hatred of self, and a great confidence in Mary with complete self-abandonment to her. He no longer relies on his own dispositions, intentions, merits, virtues and good works, since he has sacrificed them completely to Jesus through his loving Mother. He has now only one treasury, where all his wealth is stored. That treasury is not within himself: it is Mary. That is why he can now go to our Lord without any servile or scrupulous fear and pray to Him with great confidence. He can also share the sentiments of the devout and learned Abbot Rupert, who, referring to the victory which Jacob won over an angel, addressed our Lady in these words, “O Mary, my Queen, Immaculate Mother of the God-man, Jesus Christ, I desire to wrestle with this man, the Divine Word, armed with your merits and not my own.”

How much stronger and more powerful are we in approaching our Lord when we are armed with the merits and prayers of the worthy Mother of God, who, as St. Augustine says, has conquered the Almighty by her love!

1. Since by this devotion we give to our Lord, through the hands of His holy Mother, all our good works, she purifies them, making them beautiful and acceptable to her Son.

(1) She purifies them of every taint of self-love and of that unconscious attachment to creatures which slips unnoticed into our best actions. Her hands have never been known to be idle or uncreative. They purify everything they touch. As soon as the Blessed Virgin receives our good works, she removes any blemish or imperfection she may find in them.

Come Holy Spirit, fill us with the Fire of Your Love. Enable us through Mary’s intercession, to end this Liturgical Year with hearts filled to overflowing love and gratitude for all God has given us through Mary who – by Your power, she conceived Jesus the Incarnate Son of God! She is Mother and Model for us, as we hear Jesus say to John and to all of us from His Cross:

“Behold Your Mother”

Mary my Queen and my Mother I am all Yours! Totus Tuus!

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear GioG12,

Thanks for your “heart”, which again reveals your love for Jesus through Mary. How precious is that relationship between Mother and Son; between Mary and Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, who became her Son by the power of the Holy Spirit, conceiving Jesus in her womb, and her giving birth to Him in the humble manger at Bethlehem!

What an example Jesus and Mary have given us in their Perfect Humility and Charity! Mary is only a human person, yet by God’s Plan she was filled with His Plentitude of Grace, to become a living tabernacle for the Word Made Flesh in her womb.

Hail to the King of Heaven and Earth, Jesus Christ, Lord of ALL Creation, and Hail Mary, Full of Grace by God’s Almight Plan of Love!