It was a late Monday night in Spring. I couldn’t sleep. My undergrad courses were getting more and more intense as I was planning on graduating the following Winter. My mind was literally anywhere and everywhere—but my body was in bed, so it was time to catch some Z’s. I reached towards my night stand to turn the bedside light on and find a book to help ease the transition into dreamland, but was redirected when something else caught my eye.

Under a thin layer of dust and in a tangled pile near the edge of my bedside table was the Confirmation gift I received from my fiancee weeks before… a Rosary, with wooden beads and a Miraculous Medal above the Crucifix. I had put off praying a Rosary since my conversion and sacraments because I still had reservations about devotions to the Blessed Mother. But there it was, like a loyal friend in time of need. So I picked it up, shook off the dust, and started into the prayers.

It was Monday night, so I meditated on the Joyful mysteries. I was sincerely amazed at what followed. When I would study the events in the lives of Jesus and Mary before, all too often I would do so in isolation. What I mean is, when I’d consider a sacred mystery like the nativity of our Lord, I would consider that mystery out of context, so-to-speak. I would consider it without really considering the mysteries that came before it or the ones that would come after it, and how they were all coherently interconnected. But as I thumbed through each Ave, I saw the face of Christ take shape as if reflected in the eyes of His Mother.

In her eyes, wide with wonder, curiousity and pierced with ecstasy, I envisioned the Archangel joyously proclaiming his salutation and the Holy Name, “Hail, full of Grace…you shall call His name Jesus.” In her eyes, softened with consolation and charity, I saw the humbled & joyous face of her kinswoman as she uttered, “blessed are you among women…and how is this that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?” In her eyes, fixated in adoration, I saw the face of a tender child—the fruit of her womb and the glory of God. In her eyes, clouded with tears of pre-emptive sorrow, I could see St. Simeon, his arms wrapped around the divine infant and his face wrapped in profound concern for the Blessed Mother, “this child is destined to be a sign that is contradicted…and a sword shall pierce your own soul also.” In her eyes, still tender from three days of tearful searching for her lost son, though now welling up once more with tears of solace and joy, I saw that same divine infant…the one announced by the Angel, the one born of her womb, now in that same temple He was presented in on the day of His circumcision, amongst the Rabbis of His time and “about His Father’s business.”

Our Holy Father, the Venerable Pope Pius XII, said “the Rosary is the compendium of the entire Gospel.” In the Rosary, it’s as if the whole of the Gospel narrative is strung together, so we can see the face of Christ in it’s richest context—through the eyes of His pure and all-holy mother. In Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, we are introduced to the Way the Truth and the Life. In the Holy Rosary, we are planted into the very pages and words of scripture and tradition so that we may walk the Way, hear the Truth, and experience the Life in a personal and mystical way.

For the rest of that night, I slept like a babe in the arms of his mother.

“It was [Mary] herself who on that morning of the 8th of May placed her Jesus into my soul.”

– St. Thérèse of Lisieux

 

“The priest is Mary’s privileged child. It is she who trains him to piety in youth and shields his virtue; she it is who nourishes his fervor, who leads him by the hand to the foot of the altar and presents him to the Bishop, as once she offered Jesus in the Temple.”

– St. Peter Julian Eymard

Today is Holy Thursday. Today, we celebrate the institution of the Most Holy Eucharist and the beginning of the Catholic priesthood. Today we are given everything, and the Ever Blessed Mother of God is an inextricable part of that gift. Not as if she were an addition to these gifts, that is, we are not given the Eucharist, the Priesthood, and Mary, but rather we are given the Eucharist and the Priesthood by way of Mary according to the fruit of her spousal union with the Holy Spirit. The above quotes say it all. On the occasion of St. Thérèse’s first communion, Mary was there, reconciling her daughter to her Son. In every priestly ordination Mary is there, fulfilling her office of handmaid and presenting the priest, who ministers in the person of Christ, in the new Temple which is the Holy Catholic Church.

It was from Mary that the Word of God received His flesh and blood, and so it is from Mary perpetually and mystically that we receive His flesh and blood at every Holy Communion. This is an inexaustable mystery to reflect upon. By going to Jesus through Mary, the reality of the Incarnation becomes incredibly dense—as through flesh and blood. It is that “density” that we are after in our Holy religion. You see, when God became man, it was His desire to become man eternally. His will was to establish an everlasting principle of communion between God and man. The theologians call this principle the “Incarnational” principle. This is why we have sacraments. This is why we have sacred images. This is why we have bells, incense, candles, holy oil, holy water, holy salt, chant, all those things that add that “density” to our worship are there for this purpose and because of this principle. And it is by the birth of our Savior through the heart and womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and by extension in the Holy Eucharist, that this reality receives its density. In the words of St. Athanasius,

“The Saviour of us all, the Word of God, in His great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, half way. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which He, the Word of God, did in the body”(On the Incarnation, § 15).

Just as we cannot have Jesus without Mary, and thereby His flesh and blood in Holy Communion without her divine motherhood, we cannot have any of it without the Priesthood. “Do this in memory of me,” were the words of our Master to the Apostles on that first Holy Thursday. This mandate, was not merely a command to give and receive bread and wine in the same manner, but to speak the words of the Incarnate Word over bread and wine and transform them into His Incarnate self. In order to fulfill this charge, the Church teaches that the ordination of priests causes a change in there person that allows them to minister in the very person of Christ, the son of Mary. You see, it is all interwoven. Bread and wine cannot be transformed in and of itself into our Divine Savior without the priest. The priest cannot simply change bread and wine into our Divine Savior without the words of that same Savior. Our Savior couldn’t give us His words without first being given to us through the womb of His Ever Blessed Mother. And we would never have heard of such a thing without the ministry of Christ’s priesthood throughout the ages, which He established on that Thursday 2,000 years ago.

Pray for your priests, stay close to our Lord in Holy Communion, and do it all through Mary to her Son, the Eternal High Priest.

Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, pray for us!

On the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25th), Byzantine Christians sing the following hymn (which is known as an irmos):

“Let no uninitiated hand touch the living Ark of God; but let faithful lips, singing without ceasing the words of the angel to the Theotokos, cry aloud in great joy: Rejoice, O Full of Grace the Lord is with you.”

This hymn opens the believer’s eyes to the reality that the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament was a foreshadowing of the Mother of God, the Ever Blessed Virgin Mary. As the ark constructed by the children of Israel held the presence of God in the unique way that would lead to creative expressions in The Raiders of the Lost Ark (which itself hearkens back to accounts from the Old Testament where those who were not supposed to approach the holy ark were struck down for doing so) so too did Mary, the Living Ark of God, bear God’s presence through the Incarnation of Christ God.

God took on humanity in one particular person. This was not a grace bestowed to you, or to me, to Mother Teresa, or to whomever you currently look up to most on earth assuming you have not come to see the special importance of the Ever Blessed Theotokos. But granting that you have spent the time to ponder the awesome mystery of the Annunciation, you will see her as the living Ark of God, and you will follow the angelic witness who cried aloud by saying “Hail, Full of Grace”. You will see her as the one who held Grace Himself, first in her womb, then in her arms, and always in her heart.

Spend some time to think of our world prior to the Incarnation. In the Old Testament God appeared as an angel, in flames of fire and other manifestations that speak to mankind without taking on human nature. At this point which is 9 months before the celebration of the Birth of Christ, human history takes on a new level of intimacy with God. God does not merely speak to us, He becomes us, dwelling among us first in the womb of the Ever Blessed Virgin Mary.

What praise can we render to such a reality? What thanksgiving? What adoration? Nothing that we can compose will exhaust the beauty of this feast. Instead, we must approach in gratitude and love, and thank God for dwelling among us to save us.

It all began with the Annunciation. Thankfully, it will never leave us. We have a New and Living Ark of God who bore God Himself, born as an infant babe.

–J. Andrew Deane
J. Andrew Deane blogs at:
www.calledtocommunion.com
prayerofsaintephrem.wordpress.com

He is the “renowned offspring of David,” a Judahite and in the line of the great king. Being a king himself by right of his noble birth, he is placed as Lord over his master’s household, to be called “father” by the Father of all creation.

He is the “light of Patriarchs,” the beacon that all fathers and patriarchs of old were oriented towards. Greater than Abraham, more luminous than Jacob, though without seed outnumbering the stars, he holds in his arm and under his vanguard the Eternally begotten seed of the Father of lights.

He is the “spouse of the Mother of God.”

He is the “chaste guardian of the Virgin,” shielding the New Ark of the Covenant from defilement, because within her is the law made flesh, a high priest greater than Holy Aaron, and the true Bread from Heaven.

He is the “foster father of the Son of God,” fashioned in the likeness of the Heavenly Father. To the Son, his arms bear resemblance of the eternal arms of the Godhead. In his chaste embrace, the Son is glorified, and Wisdom itself grows in wisdom.

He is the “diligent protector of Christ,” he protects the Woman and her seed from the usurper of his father’s throne, and so keeps this office of guardian for her heel, protecting the mystical Body from that rebel who desires to usurp God’s likeness.

He is the “head of the Holy Family,” the model of perfection for every head of every family, seeking to become holy.

Joseph most just, raising the Son of Justice Himself.

Joseph most chaste, vowed in virginal purity, and consecrated to the Immaculate.

Joseph most prudent.

Joseph most strong.

Joseph most obedient, Joseph most faithful, responding to the call of God’s messenger and fulfilling, with all worthiness of trust, the commands of God.

Mirror of patience, lover of poverty, rightly deserving the riches of David’s house, but choosing Nazareth and forsaking all to find all.

Model of artisans, taking to himself as an apprentice the Son of God, the one who would be called the son of a carpenter.

Glory of home life, whose home in Nazareth housed the Glory of the Father.

Guardian of virgins.

Pillar of families.

Solace of the wretched.

Hope of the sick, patron of the dying, passing from this life to the next in the presence of the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Terror of demons! Protector of Holy Church!

Pray for us.

The crowd roars. There are screams, insults, lamentation, orders and lashes from the guards, all in a terrible crescendo that never resolves, never plateaus.

 

She hears none of it.

 

Above this deafening symphony of sorrow, a mother & handmaid hears something louder. There are shortened breaths, the splintering of wood dragged over stone, staggered footsteps—which she matches, to keep at an empathetic pace—and a heartbeat rising in a more dramatic fashion than the loudness of the crowd around her. He falls, the crowd roars on, but It all stops.

 

She hears nothing.

 

A mother runs to meet her son. The lowly handmaid runs to meet the Most High God. As mother, she wants to offer the consolation of her face and voice. As handmaid, she wants to offer the consolation and reparation of her love.

 

Let it be done unto me. They have no wine.

 

This is her son, the flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone. This is her God, the mighty one of Israel showing the strength of His arm. Yet, pushed to the limit of rejection and exhaustion, He falls. Perhaps she says nothing. Perhaps she merely pushes through the crowd, lowers herself to Him as He once did to her, and locks her eyes to His. Staring deeply therein, they speak without words. He rises, and it hurts. She lost Him once in Jerusalem, and it’s about to happen again.

 

She hears everything.

 

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

“True devotion to the Blessed Virgin is tender. It is full of confidence in Mary, like a child’s confidence in its mother. This ensures that we will run to Mary in all our needs.” –St. Louis Grignion de Montfort

This is the third post in a 7-part series on St. Louis de Montfort’s formula for total consecration the the Blessed Virgin Mary. The previous post can be read here. In the above quote from St. Louis, he likens True Devotion to the tenderness and confidence of a child. There’s a lot to this, but let’s start with the obvious. Another word for tenderness is sensitivity. A child’s sensitivity to pain and excitement is comparatively much higher than that of an adult. Why is that? It’s because the longer a person is living, the less responsive they get to certain stimuli, and the less sensitive they are to the world around them. We become de-sensitized over time by the more pain and excitement we experience. This can be observed in our physical world, but it should be duly noted in the spiritual world.

When encountering an evil or threatening situation, a child will waste no time in running to his mother. This is mostly due to the fear of the unknown in a situation, but also because his fear immediately feeds his confidence that mom will waste no time in providing him refuge. The child is tenderly confident that mother knows best. On the other hand, a hardened sinner tends to not be so surprised or prompted to avoid those circumstances or persons—at least not right away. This is because the life of sin he leads is so routine that it is only natural that more evil should enter the picture. The only thing that would hold off an increase in evil, would be a “softening” of sorts to that individual’s routine. And, in my opinion, there is nothing in this world that does this better than the intervention of a mother. What if your mother found out about the life of sin you were leading? She would no doubt be disappointed in you, but even more-so, she would be deeply saddened that you did not seek refuge in her when you were faced with situations that threatened you spiritually. This would [hopefully] interrupt your sinfulness for the sake of her. The healthy ebon-flow of this would ultimately undermine a life of sin because each time you were tempted, the image of your mother with open arms would invade your thoughts. How much more with our Blessed Mother! If we were totally consecrated to her, she would take the first place of our affections and thoughts and would cause a constant interruption to temptation and sin. After all, if there was one mother we did not want discovering our sin, and if there was one mother we could be confident in for providing us refuge from a life of sin, it would be the all pure and all holy Mother of God!

We could also liken the tenderness of a child to the purity of gold. In the scriptures, pure gold symbolizes ideal perfection and holiness. The ark of the covenant was laden with pure gold (Exodus 25:10-12). The holy objects of the tabernacle were made out of pure gold (Exodus 25:29, Exodus 25:31). The interior of the temple was overlaid with pure gold (1 Kings 6:20). What is a defining characteristic of how “pure” gold is? Tenderness. The purer the gold, the softer and more malleable it is. It can be shaped easily, but it is fragile all the more. It requires care because of its vulnerability. When we think of purity, we should obviously consider the Immaculate Mother of God. Mary is immaculate, meaning, she is all pure and the stain of sin is not in her. She is therefore tender and sensitive like the purest gold. This is why her Immaculate Conception is compared to the pure gold that adorned the ark of the covenant. Free from impurities yes, but delicate. This is also why the devotion to her seven sorrows is so important. You see, since Mary is pure and tender, she is much more deeply affected by sorrow and suffering than anyone. And since, next to Christ, Mary endured the greatest sufferings known to man while watching the torture & death of her Son and God, something like the seven sorrows chaplet helps us understand the gravity of what our Savior endured. And also what it meant for Mary to say, “let it be done unto me according to thy word.” Let us become as pure as the one who is purer than the purest gold, let us have confidence in our Mother of Sorrows, let us become totally consecrated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

 St. Louis de Montfort, pray for us!

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

On the 11th of February, 1858, a meeting occured between two young peasant women that has since changed the lives of millions of Catholics around the world. Fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous, a poor girl from the French town of Lourdes, was on her way to gather firewood with her sister & friend and, falling behind because of her asthma, decided to explore the nearby grotto of Massabielle. While wading in the waters, young Bernadette felt a gust of wind coming from deeper in the cave. When she looked up, she locked eyes with a young and beautiful woman standing before her in the hollow of a rock. Upon seeing this beauty, Bernadette intuitively pulled out her rosary and started to pray. The lady followed, with a beautiful pearl-laden rosary of her own. They prayed together, and the beautiful lady of the cave vanished.

Bernadette did not know who this lady was, but on a day following this vision, the intuitive soul went back to Massabielle where she again met the mysterious lady. Eventually, Bernadette pleaded three times with the young woman to disclose her identity. After the third request, the young woman said in a tender and trembling voice, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” As it turns out this other young woman, a former peasant girl, was the Queen of Heaven.

Altogether, Bernadette encountered Mary at Massabielle 18 times that year. On one of the occasions, Bernadette was asked by the Woman to drink from a spring in the cave, which until then had gone undiscovered by the local townspeople. The water from this same spring would become the instrument of healing for thousands of pilgrims to our present day.

At our Lady’s request Bernadette appealed to her local priests and the bishop, who at first did not believe her, to build a Church on the site of the grotto and to let processions of pilgrims come. In 1862, the local bishop of the diocese approved Bernadette’s visions, and in 1873 the basilica of Lourdes was built and the pilgrimages were inaugerated. In 1933, Bernadette Soubirous was canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church by Venerable Pope Pius XII.

To the present day, millions of pilgrims have visited the grotto and have experienced miracles of healing from the waters of its spring. Something like 4,000 cures have been recorded and certified by the local medical clinic of Lourdes since the record began in 1867. To read more about the history of Lourdes and its miracles, read this article from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

There are many things we can take away from in our considerations of Mary’s apparitions to St. Bernadette. In her ‘Magnificat’, Mary sings,

“My soul does magnify the Lord. And my spirit has rejoices in God my Saviour. Because he has regarded the humility of his handmaid: for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. Because he that is mighty has done great things to me: and holy is his name. And his mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear him. He has showed might in his arm: he has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He has put down the mighty from their seat and has exalted the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he has sent empty away. He has received Israel his servant, being mindful of his mercy. As he spoke to our fathers: to Abraham and to his seed for ever.”

Mary is the lowly handmaid of the Lord who was exalted in her lowliness and made Mother of God and Queen of Heaven. It is fitting that she would appear to St. Bernadette, who shared that same lowliness of state and soul.

As Christians, we have all been sent on a mission by virtue of our Baptism. We have been called to be temples of Christ and to bear His healing light to the world until He comes again as judge. Mary is the missionary par-excellence. What I mean is, she is the perfect example of fulfilling the mission given to her by God—and then some. From the moment of St. Gabriel’s annunciation that she would be the Mother of God the Son, Mary consented to her mission and was sent forth. She “rose up” and “went with haste” to bring her consolation to her kinswoman, and she continues in this task for us her children to the present day. She literally became the temple of God and partnered with the Holy Spirit to become the “sign of salvation” (Isaiah 7:14). And so, she remains. You see, her mission of being the Mother of God and our Mother didn’t stop when she reached the glories of Heaven, it was taken to the next level. From the cave in Bethlehem to the cave of Massabielle, her solemn mission is the same: to “bear” the light of Christ to the poor and the wise alike, and to call the sick to repentance so as to receive healing from that Divine Physician—her Son and our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, pray for us!

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us!

Sacred Heart of Jesus, spring of life and holiness, have mercy on us!

Recently the United States Department of Health issued a statement on a new law that will require the Catholic Church to violate the law of God. Read the statement here, and listen to a sermon in response to this offense here.

For Catholics, contraception constitutes a grave and mortal sin. It defies the natural and moral law of God and it deprives Heaven of Saints—both of the parents committing this sin and of the plentitude of possible saints that their babies might have become had they been born. Moreover, the Holy See has defined it a number of times as a mortal sin. Pope Pius XI declared,

“…the Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense of the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that She may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of her divine ambassadorship and through Our mouth proclaims anew: any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and that those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of grave sin.”

When the enemy moves against the people of God, his strategies almost always involve a blasphemous retort to God’s plan of salvation. The devil can’t attack God directly, but he can indirectly by attacking us and our idea of God’s nature & law. The word blasphemy is made up of two words. It’s a combination of the Greek words meaning “to injure” and “reputation.” In other words, as the Catholic Encyclopedia states, blasphemy is “gross irreverence towards any person or thing worthy of exalted esteem.” Take for instance the Incarnation of our Lord. From the very moment that the God-man came on the scene in His earthly ministry, there was a high frequency of possessions by evil spirits. The Son of God becomes man in order to elevate human nature to Heaven, and so the devil answers back blasphemously, by possessing the bodies of men in order to drag human nature down to destruction. In other words, our Lord came to bring our nature to an “exalted esteem” and the evil one answered back by desecrating that same nature with the “gross irreverence” of demonic possession.

In my opinion, contraception is in itself a blasphemy…one that targets the very cause of our joy, the Immaculate Conception. In the book of Genesis, after the fall of Adam and Eve by the deception of the serpent, God spoke a curse over the serpent saying, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and your seed and her seed: she shall crush your head, and you shall lie in wait for her heel”(Genesis 3:15, D-R). From the beginning, the Church has understood this scripture as a prophecy of the Blessed Virgin Mary (aka the woman) and of her Divine Son: Christ (aka her seed) and His Body the Church (aka her heel). The Blessed Virgin is the mortal enemy of Satan. They stand in hostile opposition. The Blessed Virgin is “the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope”(Sirach 24:24-26), and Satan is “the father of lies”(John 8:44). The serpent was a sinner and a rebel from the beginning, and the Woman, our Blessed Lady, was filled with Grace from the beginning.

The “enmity,” that is, the element of opposition between the woman and the serpent, is sinlessness. When our Lady was conceived, she was preemptively redeemed and sanctified by the merits of the Cross. Her conception, as it were, is the crown jewel of Christ’s work of redemption. The power of His Cross knows no bounds, even time itself. It’s height reaches from time to eternity, and to demonstrate this power, our Lord saved the Ever Blessed at conception. She was conceived just as Eve was created in the Garden, un-fallen without the stain of original sin and kept from any stain of actual sin during her earthly life.

In order to damage the reputation of the Blessed Mother of God, her Divine Son, and His Body the Holy Catholic Church, the blasphemy of contraception has been running rampant. Christ preemptively saves His Mother from sin at conception, and the devil devises a method that preemptively strikes at her heel. After all, how can Christ save lives if there are no lives to save in the first place? There are many evils involved with the act of contraception, not to mention the probability that certain contraceptives can and do induce abortions, but this act of blasphemy is obviously directed towards our Queen and should not be taken lightly.

All fair art thou, O Mary!
The original stain is not in thee.
Thou art the glory of Jerusalem.
Thou art the joy of Israel.
Thou art the honor of our people.
Thou art the advocate of sinners.
O Mary!
Virgin most prudent,
Mother most tender,
Pray for us.
Intercede for us with our Lord Jesus Christ.
In thy conception, Virgin, thou wast immaculate.
Pray for us to the Father, whose Son was born of thee.

Immaculate Conception, pray for us!

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding contraceptives, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.

True devotion to the Blessed Virgin is internal, starting from the spirit and the heart. It flows from the esteem we bear toward Mary, the sublime idea we have of her greatness, and the love we feel for her.

–St. Louis de Montfort

This is the second post in a seven-part series on True Devotion to Mary—a formula for total consecration to the Blessed Virgin created by St. Louis de Montfort. The first post, which introduces this devotion, can be read here. In the quote above, St. Louis tells us that true devotion to Mary is internal. Now obviously, this is a necessary element for all forms of devotion and piety. If our religious actions are reduced to the exterior, they become touchy-feely and lacking roots. The result of this is a kind of skin-deep spirituality… something done for show, which our Master condemns all throughout the Gospels (see for instance Matthew 6:5).

There is however, what seems to be a second and third element to this first point—the spirit and the heart. Don’t get me wrong, the spirit and the heart are intrinsic to anything internal, but all too often I think that those words can become over-sentimentalized (or touchy-feely and skin-deep). I mean that they can lose their meaning, and become a kind of pious “word salad.”

In a Biblical context, when we think of the spirit, we should always think of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Most Blessed Trinity. He is the eternal Person of God that “proceeds from the Father and the Son” as the Nicene Creed professes. He is the love that the Father and the Son share. In the Sacrament of Baptism, we sinners are given our own portion of that same Spirit to participate in the love of God’s life.

When it comes to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit, our Catholic ears should start ringing. In order for our Lord to be born of our Blessed Mother while still preserving her perpetual virginity, St. Gabriel tells our Lady that “the Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you” (Luke 1:35b). The language used here is evocative of the presence of God overshadowing the Ark of the Covenant and the overshadowing protection that a husband provides his wife (Exodus 40:35, Ruth 3:9). This is part of the reasons why our Holy Mother the Church calls Mary the “Ark of the New Covenant” and the “Spouse of the Holy Spirit”. That same Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son, that mystically espoused the Blessed Virgin Mary, and that conceived our Divine Savior, dwells in our souls by virtue of our Baptism. What does it mean then for our devotion to start from the spirit and the heart? It means our devotion should start with the Holy Spirit, our portion of God’s life. In order to love God, that is, in order to share in the life of the Blessed Trinity, we must love what He loves. Purity, Holiness, the needy, His law, His Church, His Son, His Father, His Mother.

What does this look like? St. Luke gives us the icon in St. Elizabeth, our Lady’s kinswoman. In the first chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel we read,

And it came to pass that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost. And she cried out with a loud voice and said: Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold as soon as the voice of your salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed are you that have believed, because those things shall be accomplished that were spoken to you by the Lord.

Luke 1:41-45

Our hearts must be united with the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, so as to be “filled” with that same Spirit and His spousal fruit, “the love we feel for her”… And then we say in union with Him,

Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb!

For whoever finds me finds life and receives salvation from the Lord. But whoever does not find me hurts himself. They love death who hate me.
Proverbs 8:35-36

I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come over to me, all you that desire me, and be filled with my fruits.
Sirach 24:24-26

In the order of grace, God usually communicates Himself to human beings through Mary. If we want to go to Him and be united with Him, we must use the very means he used to come down to us. That means is a true devotion to our Lady.
–St. Louis de Montfort