Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary - August 22nd

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August 22 – The Octave of the Assumption (Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary)

Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger  (1841-1875)

He alone who could understand Mary’s holiness could appreciate her glory. But Wisdom, who presided over the formation of the abyss, has not revealed to us the depth of that ocean, beside which all the virtues of the just and all the graces lavished upon them are but streamlets. Nevertheless, the immensity of grace and merit, whereby the Blessed Virgin’s supernatural perfection stands quite apart from all others, gives us a right to conclude that she has an equal supereminence in glory, which is always proportioned to the sanctity of the elect. Whereas all the other predestined of our race are placed among the various ranks of the celestial hierarchy, the holy Mother of God is exalted above all the choirs, forming by herself a distinct order, a new heaven, where the harmonies of Angels and Saints are far surpassed. In Mary, God is more glorified, better known, more loved than in all the rest of the universe. On this ground alone, according to the order of creative Providence, which subordinates the less to the more perfect, Mary is entitled to be Queen of earth and heaven. In this sense, it is for her, next to the Man-God, that the world exists. The great theologian, Cardinal de Lugo, explaining the words of the Saints on this subject, dares to say: “Just as, creating all things in his complacency for his Christ, God made him the end of creatures; so, with due proportion, we may say he drew the rest of the world out of nothing through the love of the Virgin Mother, so that she too might thus be justly called the end of all things.”

As Mother of God, and at the same time his first-born, she had a right and title over his goods; as Bride she ought to share his crown. “The glorious Virgin,” says St. Bernardine of Sienna, “has as many subjects as the Blessed Trinity has. Every creature, whatever be its rank in creation, spiritual as the Angels, rational as man, material as the heavenly bodies or the elements, heaven and earth, the reprobate and the blessed, all that springs from the power of God is subject to the Virgin. For he who is the Son of God and of the Blessed Virgin, wishing, so to say, to make his Mother’s principality in some sort equal to his Father’s, became, God as he is, the servant of Mary. If then it be true to say that every one, even the Virgin, obeys God, we may also convert the proposition, and affirm that every one, even God, obeys the Virgin.”

The empire of Eternal Wisdom comprises, so the Holy Spirit tells us, the heavens, the earth, and the abyss: the same then is the appanage of Mary on this her crowning day. Like the divine Wisdom to whom she gave Flesh, she may glory in God. He whose magnificence she once chanted, today exalts her humility. The Blessed one by excellence has become the honor of her people, the admiration of the Saints, the glory of the armies of the Most High. Together with the Spouse, let her, in her beauty, march to victory; let her triumph over the hearts of the mighty and the lowly. The giving of the world’s scepter into her hands is no mere honor void of reality: from this day forward, she commands and fights, protects the Church, defends its head, upholds the ranks of the sacred militia, raises up Saints, directs Apostles, enlightens doctors, exterminates heresy, crushes hell.

Let us hail our Queen, let us sing her mighty deeds; let us be docile to her; above all, let us love her and trust in her love. Let us not fear that, amidst the great interests of the spreading of God’s Kingdom, she will forget our littleness or our miseries. She knows all that takes place in the obscurest corners, in the furthest limits of her immense domain. From her title of universal cause under the Lord, is rightly deduced the universality of her providence; and the masters of doctrine show us Mary in glory sharing in the science called of vision, whereby all that is, has been, or is to be, is present before God. On the other hand, we must believe that her charity could not possibly be defective: as her love of God surpasses the love of all the elect, so the tenderness of all mothers united, centered upon an only child, is nothing to the love wherewith Mary surrounds the least, the most forgotten, the most neglected of all the children of God, who are her children too. She forestalls them in her solicitude, listens at all times to their humble prayers, pursues them in their guilty flights, sustains their weakness, compassionates their ills, whether of body or of soul, sheds upon all men the heavenly favors whereof she is the treasury.

Let us then say to her in the words of one of her great servants: “O most holy Mother of God, who hast beautified heaven and earth, in leaving this world thou hast not abandoned man. Here below thou didst live in heaven; from heaven thou conversest with us. Thrice happy those who contemplated thee and lived with the Mother of life! But in the same way as thou didst dwell in the flesh with them of the first age, thou now dwellest with us spiritually. We hear thy voice; and all our voices reach thine ear; and thy continual protection over us makes thy presence evident. Thou dost visit us; thine eye is upon us all; and although our eyes cannot see thee, O most holy One, yet thou art in the midst of us, showing thyself in various ways to whosoever is worthy. Thy immaculate body, come forth from the tomb, hinders not the immaterial power, the most pure activity of that spirit of thine, which, being inseparable from the Holy Ghost, breathes also where it wills. O Mother of God, receive the grateful homage of our joy, and speak for thy children to him who has glorified thee: whatsoever thou askest of him, he will accomplish it by his divine power; may he be blessed for ever!”