The Priest at Prayer for August 10, Devotion to Our Lady

The Fourth Part - Some Means of Perseverence

Devotion to Our Lady

Second Meditation - Priestly Motives

I. The Church in every age, and now more than ever, has professed such devotion to Mary that Protestants rabidly accuse her of Mariolatry, as though we Catholics venerated the Blessed Mother of Jesus as God. It is gross calumny; for in this, as in everything pertaining to piety, we know that the Holy Spirit comes to the aid of Christ's Bride, safeguarding her from all error.

How enthusiastically the faithful, saints and sinners, acclaim the Virgin of Nazareth! With what assured con­fidence they prostrate before her shrines! The face of the earth is decked with countless wonderful monuments to Mary: no name in history has them more numerous and more beautiful. O Mary, thy own prophetic utterance is ever being fulfilled with brilliant accuracy:

Behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed!

But who is called upon to guide, to consolidate, and to extend this veneration, so vital to the Church of God, if not the priest, by his fervent word and the holy inspiration of his daily example? A priest without devotion to our Blessed Lady would indeed be a strange and baffling phenomenon for the Catholic laity.

II. We priests belong so closely to Jesus Christ, that, within His Scheme of Redemption, we must consider ourselves His necessary complement. It is only through our lips that He teaches the world His heavenly doctrine: Going therefore, teach ye all nations. ­(Matt. xxviii, 19). It is through our ministry that He incorporates members into His Mystical Body, pardons and purifies them: Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them. (John xx, 23). The keys of the King­dom, both in its transitory phase here below and in its everlasting triumph, are completely under our control. Which means that, in authority, in word, and in office, I continue the saving life of Christ: alter Christus.

Who, then, dear Virgin Mother, can claim by so many titles as I the right to occupy in thy motherly affections the same place as thy Divine Son? Whose place will it be if not mine, seeing that, for thee, I am like another Christ?

But, in return, O Mother, it is my bounden duty to reserve in my soul for thee the throne whence thou didst reign in the Heart of Jesus.

No wonder the first to receive Mary for his Mother from the hands of the dying Saviour was a priest, John the Evangelist!

And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own.

To his own! To his heart and home. So, from today, dear Mother, I shall follow his example; I receive and welcome thee into the home of my heart, as someone inseparably mine, as my most cherished treasure.

III. The Divine Word surrenders Himself into my hands every day, belittles, conceals, abases Himself to greater feebleness and silence than in the early years of His infancy; He surrenders to me as He did to Mary when He came into the world, as He did to His heavenly Father, when leaving the world: Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

In this wonderful office of mine, as tutor, master, and father and mother of Thy Sacramental Being, O divine Saviour, where shall I turn for lessons in reverence, tenderness, and chaste and loving dealings towards Thee, but to Thy own Mother? Only she ministered thus unto Thee during Thy life on earth. That I, wretched and
stained, should inherit from her these sacred tasks seems unbelievable.

How is it possible that I have lived a single day of my priestly life without having recourse to Mary, asking her on bended knees to teach me how to treat the Son of her womb in the Sacrament of our altars? To treat Him with that deep love and reverence with which she wrapped Him up in swaddling clothes, and served and kissed Him in the stable of Bethlehem, along the desert roads of Egypt, in the silent home of Nazareth?

IV. Auxilium Christianorum is one of Mary's titles. Strength in our weakness, help in our struggles, guide in our darkness, support in our wavering: this is the firmest foundation of every popular devotion to Mary. The fallen, the attacked, the weak, will always seek refuge in Mary, by God's command. Every prayer voiced by the Church on earth throbs with all these human longings for protection: Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death; Mother of mercy. . . turn thine eyes of mercy towards us. . . .

And I, a priest, am only too conscious of my weak­ness; in the midst of powerful enemies, who perhaps time and time again have worn me down and taken me captive, I definitely feel weak, the same as any other mortal man, and, I suspect, even weaker sometimes than they. All the powers of hell are up in arms against me and give me no respite; under the weight of so many and such heavy obligations my weak shoulders tremble.

Unto the merciful eyes of Mary, Help of Christians, therefore, I shall turn my own afflicted gaze; within the shelter of her protecting mantle, which gathers and keeps
from harm her little children, as the hen gathers her chickens under her wing, I shall hide myself in life and in death.

Resolutions
1. To attach the greatest importance to Mary's Feasts in my dealings with the faithful, announcing them in good time, bringing great numbers of souls to Confession and Communion in her honour, carrying out the liturgical Offices with pomp and splendour; and last, but by no means least, going to Confession myself on the eve of the Feasts.

It is an established fact that the above is very often the final and most effective means of bringing souls back to God and to the practice of religion, in cases of rebellion or of forgetful carelessness.

2. To start and build up one or more of those Marian Associations - Legion of Mary, Children of Mary, Miraculous Medal Association, etc. - which have proved their worth by the holy examples and actions with which they have become an inspiration to the whole Christian world.

3. To preach about Mary, about her life, her virtues, her prerogatives, not disdaining to mention well ­authenticated miraculous occurrences deriving from her intercession. Let the faithful know and love her well, not merely by instinct or tradition, but with insight and depth of knowledge.
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Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.

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Please pray for our priests and pray for vocations to the priesthood!