Posted on May 2, 2021 View all news
Laudetur Jesus Christus! Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!
Sia lodato Gesù Cristo! Praised be Jesus Christ!
Today we celebrate First Holy Communion at Old St. Mary’s. Congratulations to all who will receive their First Communion today and last week at Sacred Heart. Being able to receive our Lord in Holy Communion is a great gift that has been given to us. We look for and flock to claims of miracles all over the world, and they rightly edify our faith. However, the greatest work that God does occurs each day on our altars, when He gives us His body and His blood. May we never take that for granted! And may the fervor we see in our First Communicants today fill us with great faith in the Real Presence in Holy Eucharist. May our actions, in Church and out of Church, always show that we believe!
May has been traditionally devoted to the Mother of God. It is a time when we honor all mothers, and in particular, the mother of the re-creation in Christ. So I give a reflection on the Mother of God by St. John Henry Newman today. Have a blessed week ahead!
“As soon as we apprehend by faith the great fundamental truth that Mary is the Mother of God, other wonderful truths follow in its train; and one of these is that she was exempt from the ordinary lot of mortals, which is not only to die, but to become earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Die she must, and die she did, as her Divine Son died, for He was man; but various reasons have approved themselves to holy writers, why, although her body was for a while separated from her soul and consigned to the tomb, yet it did not remain there, but was speedily united to her soul again, and raised by our Lord to a new and eternal life of heavenly glory.
And the most obvious reason for so concluding is this—that other servants of God have been raised from the grave by the power of God, and it is not to be supposed that our Lord would have granted any such privilege to anyone else without also granting it to His own Mother.
We are told by St. Matthew, that after our Lord’s death upon the Cross “the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints that had slept”—that is, slept the sleep of death, “arose, and coming out of the tombs after His Resurrection, came into the Holy City, and appeared to many.” St. Matthew says, “many bodies of the Saints”—that is, the holy Prophets, Priests, and Kings of former times—rose again in anticipation of the last day.
Can we suppose that Abraham, or David, or Isaias, or Ezechias, should have been thus favoured, and not God’s own Mother? Had she not a claim on the love of her Son to have what any others had? Was she not nearer to Him than the greatest of the Saints before her? And is it conceivable that the law of the grave should admit of relaxation in their case, and not in hers? Therefore we confidently say that our Lord, having preserved her from sin and the consequences of sin by His Passion, lost no time in pouring out the full merits of that Passion upon her body as well as her soul.” – St. John Henry Newman