Ave Maria!

Fr. Maximilian Dean and Michael Grogan sing O Holy and Immaculate Heart which is the title of their Next Two Concerts in the Bronx and in Carmel, Indiana. Listen to this spiritual song, preceded by a beautiful meditation about the need to aspire to?purity of Heart like that of Our Lady’s.

Ave Maria!

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Homily #080708 ( 07min) Play – The Lord came to do works of purity. Let us strive to defend Christ and His prerogatives.? Ave Maria! Mass readings +++

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Homily #081021 ( 5min) Play – Fr. Bonaventure McGuire preaches on the need to be prepared for the coming of Our Lord by girding our loins and keeping our lamps burning brightly, that is keeping ourselves pure in body and spirit.
Ave Maria! Mass readings
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The contemplation of the mysteries of Jesus will only produce such great fruit in us as we bring thereto certain dispositions which can be summed up into three: faith, reverence and love. Faith is the primordial disposition for placing us in vital contact with Christ. We celebrate mysteries, that is to say human and visible signs of a divine and hidden reality. To comprehend, to touch this reality, faith is needed. Christ appears as both man and God in each of these mysteries; often even, as in the Nativity and in the passion, the divinity is more than ordinarily hidden; in order to grasp it, to pierce the veil and reach to it, to see God in the child lying in the manger, or in the One who was “made a curse for us”, hanging on the gibbet of Calvary, or again in His Eucharistic appearances, faith is needed: Faith, for all defects supplying, where the feeble senses fail…

Without faith we shall never penetrate into the depths of the mysteries of Jesus; but with it, we have no need to envy Christ’s contemporaries. We do not see Our Lord as those who lived with Him, but it is given to us by faith to contemplate Him, to dwell with Him, and be united to Him in a no less efficacious way than it was for those who  

were His contemporaries. We sometimes say: Oh, if I had lived in His time, if I might have followed Him with the multitude, with the disciples; if I might have served Him like Martha, or knelt listening to His words like Magdalene! But He has said: “Blessed are they that have not seen; and have believed”. If we have faith, we will remain as united Jesus as could those who saw Him with their eyes or touched Him with their hands.

I will even add this: it is the measure of this faith that for our part, determines the degree of our participation in the grace of Jesus contained in His mysteries. See what took place during His terrestrial life: those who lived with Him, who were in material contact with Him, like the Shepherds and Wise Men at the manger, the Apostles and all who sought Him during the years of His public life, St. John and St. Mary Magdalene at the foot of the Cross, the disciples who saw Him risen and ascending to Heaven, all received grace according to the degree of their faith. It is always to faith that He grants the miracles asked of Him; every page of the Gospel shows us that He nade faith an indispensable condition for receiving His grace.        

We cannot now see Jesus with bodily sight. Christ has ascended to Heaven. But faith takes the place of sight; and the degree of this faith, as was the case with Christ’s contemporaries, is, with love, the degree of our union with Him. Let us never forget this important truth: Christ Jesus without Whom we can do nothing, and of Whose full­ness we must all receive, will only give us a share in His grace according to the meas­ure of our faith. St. Augustine says it is not in walking that we approach Christ, but it is in believing. Thus the stronger and deeper is our faith in Jesus, the Incarnate Word, the Son of God, the nearer we approach Christ.

Moreover faith gives birth within us to two other sentiments which must enter into the attitude of the soul in the presence of Christ. These are reverence and love. We must approach Christ with inexpressible reverence. For Christ Jesus is God, that is to say the Almighty; the Infinite Being Who possesses all wisdom, all justice, all per­fections; the Sovereign Master of all things; the Creator of all that is and the Last End of all that exists; the source of all beatitude. Wherever He may be, Jesus is always God, even when He gives Himself with the most benignity and liberality, He ever remains the One before Whom the highest angels veil their faces. In the manger, He allows Himself to be touched; the Gospel tells us that the multitude thronged Him on every side; and during His Passion, He lets Himself to be struck in the face, smitten and insulted; but He is ever God. Even when He is scourged, and spat upon, when He is nailed upon the Cross, it is ever He Who created heaven and earth by His power and governs them by His wisdom; and therefore whatever be the page of the Gospel that we read or the mystery of Jesus that we celebrate, we must adore Him. When we have a living faith, this reverence is so deep that it makes us fall at the feet this God-Man to adore Him. “Thou art Christ, the Son of the Living God”.

Adoration is the first impulse of the soul drawn to Christ by faith: Love is the second.  Love underlies all Christ’s mysteries. The humility of the manger, the obscurity the hidden life, the fatigues of the public life, the torments of the Passion, the glory the Resurrection, all is due to love: Having loved his own, He loved them unto the end.  It is love, above all, that is revealed and shines out in the mysteries of Jesus. And it is above all by love that we understand them: We have believed the charity.

If we want our contemplation of Christ’s mysteries to be fruitful, we must contemplate them with faith, with reverence, but above all with love – the love that seeks give itself, to yield itself up to the divine good pleasure in order to accomplish it. ­It is then that the contemplation of the mysteries of Jesus bears fruit. “If anyone love Me,” says our Lord, “I will manifest Myself to him”. What does that mean? If anyone loves Me in faith, contemplates Me in My humanity, in the different states of My Incarnation, to him I will discover the secrets of My Divinity.

Happy, thrice happy, is the soul in whom so magnificent a promise is fulfilled! Christ Jesus will reveal “the gift of God” to her; by His Spirit “Who searcheth … the deep things of God”, He will make this soul penetrate into the sanctuary of this mystery hidden  which His mysteries are; He will open to her those “store­rooms” of the King  of which the Canticle of Canticles speaks, where she will be inebriated with truth and joy. Doubtless, this intimate manifestation of Jesus to the soul, while she is here below, will not reach to the Beatific Vision, which remains the privilege of the blessed in heaven; but it will fill her with divine enlightenment, fortifying her in her ascension towards God: to know the charity of Christ which surpasseth all knowledge.

This is truly the fountain of living water springing up for us unto life everlasting; for is not everlasting life to know God and His Divine Son, to confess with our lips and our lives that Jesus is the beloved Son in Whom the Father has placed all His delight, and in Whom He wills that we should find all things?

There is a third reason, one deeper and more intimate. Christ did not come only for the inhabitants of Judea, His contemporaries, but for us all, for all men of any nation and century. Do we not sing in the Credo: For us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven?  The “fullness of time” is not yet ended; it will endure as long as there shall be souls to save.  For it is the Church that Christ, since His Ascension, has left the mission of bringing Him forth in souls. “My little children“, said St. Paul the Apostle of Christ Jesus among nations, “of whom I am in labor again, until Christ be formed in you”.

It is this grace of a new birth that the Incarnate Word merited for us by His Birth at Bethlehem. However, we should remember that if Christ was born, and lived and died for us all, the application of His merits and the distribution of His graces are made according to the measure of the dispositions of each soul. Consequently we shall only share in the abundant graces that Christ’s Nativity should bring to us in proportion to our dispositions. The Church knows this perfect­ly and therefore she neglects nothing that can produce in our souls that inward attitude required by the coming of Christ within us. Not only does the Church say by the mouth of the Precursor: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, for “He is near”, but she herself, like a Bride attentive to the wishes of her Bridegroom, like a mother careful for her children’s good, suggests to us and gives us the means of making this necessary preparation. If we allow ourselves to be guided by her, our dispositions will be perfect, and the so­lemnity of the Birth of Jesus will produce within us all its fruits of grace, of light and life.

Our Lady:

Purity of heart.  Who was the best disposed for the coming of the Word to earth? Without any doubt, it was the Blessed Virgin Mary. At the moment when the Word came into this world, He found Mary’s heart perfectly prepared, and capable of receiving the Divine riches which He willed to heap upon her what were the dispositions of her soul?

Assuredly she possessed all the most perfect dispositions; but there is one which shines with particular brilliancy: that is her virginal purity. Mary is a virgin. Her vir­ginity is so precious to her that it is her first thought when the angel proposes to her the mystery of the divine maternity. Not only is she a virgin, but her soul is stainless. The liturgy reveals to us that God’s special design in granting to Mary the unique privilege of the Immaculate Concep­tion was to prepare for His Word a dwelling place worthy of Him:  O God who by the Im­maculate Conception of the Virgin, didst PREPARE a worthy habitation for Thy Son.

Mary who was to be the Mother of God; and this eminent dignity required not only that she should be a virgin, but that her purity should surpass that of the angels and be a reflection of the holy splendor wherein the Father begets His Son in the brightness of the saints. God is holy, thrice holy; the angels, the arch­angels, the seraphim hymn His infinite purity: Holy, Holy, Holy.  The bosom of God, of an infinite purity, is the dwelling-place of the Only-begotten Son of God. The Word is ever in the bosom of the Father  but, in becoming Incarnate, He also willed, in ineffable condescension, to be in the bosom of His Mother, the Virgin Mary. It was necessary than the tabernacle that Our Lady offered Him should recall, by its incomparable pu­rity, the indefectible brightness of the light eternal where as God He ever dwells. Thus the first disposition that attracts Christ is a great purity. But as for ourselves, we are sinners. We cannot offer to the Word, to Christ Jesus, that immaculate purity which He so much loves. What is there that will rake the place of it in us? It is humility.

Do not let us forget that the Lord, the Son, only wills what His Father wills. If He becomes incarnate and appears upon earth, it is in order to seek sinners and bring them back to His Father:  “I came not to call the just, but sinners”. This is so true that later Our Lord will often be found, to the great scandal of the Pharisees, in the company of sinners; He will allow Magdalene to kiss His Feet and bathe them with tears.

We have not the Virgin Mary’s purity, but let us at least ask for the humility of Magdalene, a contrite and penitent love. 0 Christ Jesus, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come to me; my heart will not be for Thee a dwelling-place of purity for misery dwells there. But I acknowledge, I avow this misery; come and relieve me of it. 0 Thou who art mercy itself; come and deliver me, 0 Thou Who art  almighty:

A like prayer, joined to the spirit of penance, draws Christ to us because the humility that abases itself in its nothingness thereby renders homage to the goodness and power of Jesus: him that cometh to me, I shall not cast out.

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On January 21st the Church celebrates the memorial of St. Agnes, virgin and martyr. She came from a noble Roman family and was about thirteen years old when she suffered martyrdom. She was tortured and beheaded. Her name is included in the Roman Canon.

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When I received the Sacrament of Confirmation at the age of 10, I chose St. Agnes as my patron. How I wanted to be like her!  Yes, to be pure and brave and holy and to be a martyr for the love of God. I wanted to be like her then and I wish to be like her now. In these intervening years, I do not know that I have come any closer to this ideal but it is one I still place before my heart.  St. Agnes, pray for us!  Pray for our young people who see so much impurity in the world.  Help them, and help all of us, to love God as you did, even unto death.

(Sr. Joseph-Mary Maximilian  fti)

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St.  Ambrose wrote the following concerning St. Agnes in a work called ‘De Virginibus’:

She is said to have suffered martyrdom when twelve years old. The more hateful was the cruelty, which spared not so tender an age, the greater in truth was the power of faith which found evidence even in that age. Was there room for a wound in that small body? And she who had no room for the blow of the steel had that wherewith to conquer the steel. But maidens of that age are unable to bear even the angry looks of parents, and are wont to cry at the pricks of a needle as though they were wounds. She was fearless under the cruel hands of the executioners, she was unmoved by the heavy weight of the creaking chains, offering her whole body to the sword of the raging soldier, as yet ignorant of death, but ready for it. Or if she were unwillingly hurried to the altars, she was ready to stretch forth her hands to Christ at the sacrificial fires, and at the sacrilegous altars themselves, to make the sign of the Lord the Conqueror,34-3171–> or again to place her neck and both her hands in the iron bands, but no band could enclose such slender limbs.

A new kind of martyrdom!  Not yet of fit age for punishment but already ripe for victory, difficult to contend with but easy to be crowned, she filled the office of teaching valour while having the disadvantage of youth. She would not as a bride so hasten to the couch, as being a virgin she joyfully went to the place of punishment with hurrying step, her head not adorned with plaited hair, but with Christ. All wept, she alone was without a tear. All wondered that she was so readily prodigal of her life, which she had not yet enjoyed, and now gave up as though she had gone through it. Every one was astounded that there was now one to bear witness to the Godhead, who as yet could not, because of her age, dispose of herself. And she brought it to pass that she should be believed concerning God whose evidence concerning man would not be accepted. For that which is beyond nature is from the Author of nature.

What threats the executioner used to make her fear him, what allurements to persuade her, how many desired that she would come to them in marriage! But she answered: “–>It would be an injury to my spouse to look on any one as likely to please me. He who chose me first for Himself shall receive me. Why are you delaying, executioner? Let this body perish which can be loved by eyes which I would not.”–> She stood, she prayed, she bent down her neck. You could see the executioner tremble, as though he himself had been condemned, and his right hand shake, his face grow pale, as he feared the peril of another, while the maiden feared not for her own. You have then in one victim a twofold martyrdom, of modesty and of religion. She both remained a virgin and she obtained martyrdom.

We do not know for sure exactly when St. Agnes was martyred. It had been thought that it was at the time of the persecuation of Diocletian about 304, but it may have been some years before that, perhaps in the persecuatino of Decius.

The body of the virgin martyr was placed in a separate sepulchre on the Via Nomentana, and around her tomb there grew up a larger catacomb that bore her name. The original slab which covered her remains, with the inscriptions Agne sanctissima, is probably the same one which is now preserved in the Museum at Naples. During the reign of Constantine, through the efforts of his daughter Constantina, a basilica was erected over the grave of St. Agnes, which was later entirely remodelled by Pope Honorius (625-638), and has since remained unaltered. In the apse is a mosaic showing the martyr amid flames, with a sword at her feet. A beautiful relief of the saint is found on a marble slab that dates from the fourth century and was originally a part of the altar of her church.

Since the Middle Ages St. Agnes has been represented with a lamb, the symbol of her virginal innocence. On her feast two lambs are solemnly blessed, and from their wool are made the palliums sent by the Pope to archbishops.

A Legend of St. Agnes:

Agnes is one of the most glorious saints in the calendar of the Roman Church. The greatest Church Fathers vie with one another in sounding her praise and glory. St. Jerome writes: “All nations, especially their Christian communities, praise in word and writing the life of St. Agnes. She triumphed over her tender age as well as over the merciless tyrant. To the crown of spotless innocence she added the glory of martyrdom.”

Our saint’s name should be traced to the Greek hagne – the pure, rather than to the Latin agna – lamb. But the Latin derivation prevailed in the early Church. The reason may have been that eight days after her death Agnes appeared to her parents with a train of virgins, and a lamb at her side. St. Augustine knew both derivations. “Agnes”, he writes, “means ‘lamb’ in Latin, but in Greek it denotes ‘the pure one’. The Latin interpretation occasioned the yearly blessing of the St. Agnes lambs; it takes place on this day in the Church of which she is patron, and the wool is used in weaving the palliums worn by archbishops and, through privilege, by some bishops. In the church built by the Emperor Constantine over the saint’s grave, Pope Gregory the Great preached a number of homilies. Reliable details concerning the life of St. Agnes are very few. The oldest material occurs in St. Ambrose’s De Virginibus.

From such liturgical sources we may construct the following “life of St. Agnes”. One day when Agnes, then thirteen years old, was returning home from school, she happened to meet a son of the city prefect. At once he became passionately attracted to her and tried to win her by precious gifts. Agnes repelled him, saying: “Away from me, food of death, for I have already found another lover. I love Christ, into whose chamber I shall enter, whose Mother is a virgin, whose Father knows not woman, whose music and melody are sweet to my ears. When I love Him, I remain chaste; when I touch Him, I remain pure; when I possess Him, I remain a virgin”. I am betrothed to Him whom the angels serve, whose beauty the sun and moon admire. For Him alone I keep my troth, to Him I surrender with all my heart”.

Incensed by her rebuff, the young man denounced Agnes to his father, the city prefect. When he threatened her with commitment to a house of ill fame, Agnes replied: “At my side I have a protector of my body, an angel of the Lord”.  When Agnes entered the house of shame, she found an angel of the Lord ready to protect her. A light enveloped her and blinded all who tried to approach. Then another judge condemned her to the stake because the pagan priests accused her of sorcery.

 Surrounded by flames she prayed with outstretched arms: “I beseech You, Father almighty, most worthy of awe and adoration. Through Your most holy Son I escaped the threats of the impious tyrant and passed through Satan’s filth with feet unsullied. Behold, I now come to You, whom I have loved, whom I have sought, whom I have always desired.” She gave thanks as follows: “O You, the almighty One, who must be adored, worshipped, feared – I praise You because through Your only begotten Son I have escaped the threats of wicked men and have walked through the filth of sin with feet unsullied. I extol You with my lips, and I desire You with all my heart and strength.”

After the flames died out, she continued: “I praise You, Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, because by Your Son the fire around me was extinguished”. And now she longed for union with Christ: “Behold, what I yearned for, I already see; what I hoped for, I already hold in embrace; with Him I am united in heaven whom on earth I loved with all my heart”. Her wish was granted; the judge ordered her beheaded.

Patron: Engaged couples; bodily purity; chastity; Children of Mary; Colegio Capranica of Rome; crops; gardeners; Girl Scouts; girls; rape victims; diocese of Rockville Centre, New York; virgins.

Symbols: Lamb; woman with long hair and a lamb, sometimes with a sword at her throat; woman with a dove which holds a ring in its beak; woman with a lamb at her side.

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Marycast #90 ( 10min) Play – In this episode Dr. Mark Miravalle explains the importance of the message of Our Lady of America, the need for purity in America and how this is key to get God’s blessing sand avoid His curse.

To ask questions regarding Mary, email Dr Mark Miravalle: marycast@airmaria.com
Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

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Homily #091216 ( 04min) Play – On Christmas, the best gift we can give to Our Lord is purity of heart. So, let us first ask Him for this gift during this season preparation.
Ave Maria! Wednesday of Ember Week in Advent – Mass: EF, Rorate Coeli – Readings: 1st: isa 2:2-5 – 2nd: isa 7:10-15 – Gsp: luk 1:26-28

Audio (MP3)

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Marycast #109 ( 11min) Play – Dr. Mark Miravalle relates the message that Our Lady of America gives to the youth in America in her message to Sister Mildred, asking them to be torchbearers of purity to their fellow youth out of Divine Charity.

To ask questions regarding Mary, email Dr Mark Miravalle: marycast@airmaria.com

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

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Marycast #113 ( 12min) Play – Dr Miravalle finishes this miniseries on Our Lady of America by pointing out our Responsibility to respond to the messages given to us over fifty years ago. Mary is pleading for America to lead the world in peace and purity and if not we will experience great tragedy. If we do, we will receive incredible graces.

To ask questions regarding Mary, email Dr Mark Miravalle: marycast@airmaria.com

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

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