Marian Solidarity

Taken from a homily by St. Gregory the Great (Hom. 26, 7-9: PL 76, 12010-1202), pope (d. 604 AD), this excerpt is used in the Roman Office of Readings for the Feast of St. Thomas, the Apostle, on July 3. Another certain thing known of St. Thomas’ life after Pentecost though, he is said to have subsequently preached the Gospel to the people of India. Since the fourth century the celebration of the transference of his body to Edessa has been commemorated on July 3.

Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. He was the only disciple absent; on his return he heard what had happened but refused to believe it. The Lord came a second time; he offered his side for the disbelieving disciple to touch, held out his hands, and showing the scars of his wounds, healed the wound of his disbelief.

Dearly beloved, what do you see in these events? Do you really believe that it was by chance that this chosen disciple was absent, then came and heard, heard and doubted, doubted and touched, touched and believed? It was not by chance but in God’s providence. In a marvellous way God’s mercy arranged that the disbelieving disciple, in touching the wounds of his master’s body, should heal our wounds of disbelief. The disbelief of Thomas has done more for our faith than the faith of the other disciples. As he touches Christ and is won over to belief, every doubt is cast aside and our faith is strengthened. So the disciple who doubted, then felt Christ’s wounds, becomes a witness to the reality of the resurrection.

Touching Christ, he cried out: My Lord and my God. Jesus said to him: Because you have seen me, Thomas, you have believed. Paul said: Faith is the guarantee of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. It is clear, then, that faith is the proof of what can not be seen. What is seen gives knowledge, not faith. When Thomas saw and touched, why was he told: You have believed because you have seen me? Because what he saw and what he believed were different things. God cannot be seen by mortal man. Thomas saw a human being, whom he acknowledged to be God, and said: My Lord and my God. Seeing, he believed; looking at one who was true man, he cried out that this was God, the God he could not see.

What follows is reason for great joy: Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed. There is here a particular reference to ourselves; we hold in our hearts one we have not seen in the flesh. We are included in these words, but only if we follow up our faith with good works. The true believer practises what he believes. But of those who pay only lip service to faith, Paul has this to say: They profess to know God, but they deny him in their works. Therefore James says: Faith without works is dead.

This piece on Sts. Peter and Paul is an excerpt from a sermon (Sermo 295, 1-2, 4, 7-8; PL 38, 1348-1352) by St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, who died in the year 430AD.  It is used in the Roman Office of Readings for the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul on June 29 and shows that as early as the fourth century, Christians celebrated this day in honor of these two apostles and martyrs who laid down their lives for Christ in the Eternal City.

This day has been consecrated for us by the martyrdom of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul. It is not some obscure martyrs we are talking about. “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world” (Ps. 19). These martyrs had seen what they proclaimed, they pursued justice by confessing the truth, by dying for the truth.

The blessed Peter, the first of the Apostles, the ardent lover of Christ, who was found worthy to hear, “And I say to you, that you are Peter” (Mat 16:13-20). He himself, you see, had just said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Christ said to him, “And I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” Upon this rock I will build the faith you have just confessed. Upon your words, ”You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” I will build my Church; because you are Peter. Peter comes from petra, meaning a rock. Peter, “Rocky”, from “rock”; not “rock” from “Rocky”. Peter comes from the word for a rock in exactly the same way as the name Christian comes from Christ.

Before his passion the Lord Jesus, as you know, chose those disciples of his whom he called apostles. Among these it was only Peter who almost everywhere was given the privilege of representing the whole Church. It was in the person of the whole Church, which he alone represented, that he was privileged to hear, “To you will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” After all, it is not just one man that received these keys, but the Church in its unity. So this is the reason for Peter’s acknowledged pre-eminence, that he stood for the Church’s universality and unity, when he was told, “To you I am entrusting,” what has in fact been entrusted to all. To show you that it is the Church which has received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, listen to what the Lord says in another place to all his apostles: “Receive the Holy Spirit; and immediately afterwards, Whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven them; whose sins you retain, they will be retained” (Jn 20:22-23).

Quite rightly, too, did the Lord after his resurrection entrust his sheep to Peter to be fed (Jn. 21: 15-19). It is not, you see, that he alone among the disciples was fit to feed the Lord’s sheep; but when Christ speaks to one man, unity is being commended to us. And he first speaks to Peter, because Peter is the first among the apostles. Do not be sad, Apostle. Answer once, answer again, answer a third time. Let confession conquer three times with love, because self-assurance was conquered three times by fear. What you had bound three times must be loosed three times. Loose through love what you had bound through fear. And for all that, the Lord once, and again, and a third time, entrusted his sheep to Peter.

There is one day for the passion of two apostles. But these two also were as one; although they suffered on different days, they were as one. Peter went first, Paul followed. We are celebrating a feast day, consecrated for us by the blood of the apostles. Let us love their faith, their lives, their labors, their sufferings, their confession of faith, their preaching.

This reading on the birth of John the Baptist was taken from a sermon of St. Augustine of Hippo (Sermon 293, 1-3; PL 38, 1327-1328)

The Church observes the birth of John as in some way sacred; and you will not find any other of the great men of old whose birth we celebrate officially. We celebrate John’s, as we celebrate Christ’s. This point cannot be passed over in silence, and if I may not perhaps be able to explain it in the way that such an important matter deserves, it is still worth thinking about it a little more deeply and fruitfully than usual.

John is born of an old woman who is barren; Christ is born of a young woman who is a virgin. That John will be born is not believed, and his father is struck dumb; that Christ will be born is believed, and he is conceived by faith.

I have proposed some matters for inquiry, and listed in advance some things that need to be discussed. I have introduced these points even if we are not up to examining all the twists and turns of such a great mystery, either for lack of capacity or for lack of time. You will be taught much better by the one who speaks in you even when I am not here; the one about whom you think loving thoughts, the one whom you have taken into your hearts and whose temple you have become.

John, it seems, has been inserted as a kind of boundary between the two Testaments, the Old and the New. That he is somehow or other a boundary is something that the Lord himself indicates when he says, The Law and the prophets were until John. So he represents the old and heralds the new. Because he represents the old, he is born of an elderly couple; because he represents the new, he is revealed as a prophet in his mother’s womb. You will remember that, before he was born, at Mary’s arrival he leapt in his mother’s womb. Already he had been marked out there, designated before he was born; it was already shown whose forerunner he would be, even before he saw him. These are divine matters, and exceed the measure of human frailty. Finally, he is born, he receives a name, and his father’s tongue is loosed.

Zachary is struck dumb and loses his voice, until John, the Lord’s forerunner, is born and releases his voice for him. What does Zachary’s silence mean, but that prophecy was obscure and, before the proclamation of Christ, somehow concealed and shut up? It is released and opened up by his arrival, it becomes clear when the one who was being prophesied is about to come. The releasing of Zachary’s voice at the birth of John has the same significance as the tearing of the veil of the Temple at the crucifixion of Christ. If John were meant to proclaim himself, he would not be opening Zachary’s mouth. The tongue is released because a voice is being born – for when John was already heralding the Lord, he was asked, Who are you and he replied I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

John is the voice, but the Lord in the beginning was the Word. John is a voice for a time, but Christ is the eternal Word from the beginning.

The link between devotion to Mary’s Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart of Jesus is shown in the following passage:

“…a short time after Pascal had carried out the first experiments in modern physics and Descartes had perfected the mathematical instruments which would make possible the development of the sciences, Jesus appeared to an obscure nun and, showing her his heart, said to her: ‘This is the heart that has so loved men.’

“Then, as men did not listen to the message of Paray-le-Monial and the corruption of the world continued, the Virgin Mary appeared to the children at Fatima; she showed them her heart and said: ‘The Lord wishes to establish devotion to my Immaculate Heart in the world. If what I say is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.’

“The remedy that God offers for the evils of the world is to show us his heart and that of his Mother. ‘We have learned to recognize the love God has in our regard, to recognize it, and make it our belief,’ said St John (I John 4.16).

“The Christian solution to the problem and desperate call of the world will always be to believe in love, to give ourselves up to it and so receive the will and the strength to serve others.” (Fr Henri Marduel, “The Christian Pursuit,” London, Burns & Oates, 1964, p. 22).

Historically, devotion to the Heart of Mary grew up in parallel, but at a lesser pitch than that of devotion to the Heart of Jesus, only starting to become more prominent during the time of St John Eudes.

Even then it was not until after the Apparitions at Rue du Bac concerning the “Miraculous Medal” made to Catherine Labouré in 1830, and the establishment of a society dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, at the Church of Our Lady of Victories in Paris in 1836, that this particular devotion became really well known.

Since then devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, has gradually grown more widespread in the Church, particularly since the apparitions at Fatima.

The main difference between these two devotions is that the one concerned with Jesus emphasises his divine heart as being full of love for mankind, but with this love for the most part being ignored or rejected, while devotion to Mary’s heart is essentially concerned with the love that her heart has for Jesus, for God.

It is not an end in itself, and really the love of her heart is meant to be a model for the way we should love God. So as in all things Marian, she leads us closer to God, rather than becoming an obstacle in our way. The fact that her heart is immaculate, that is sinless, means that she is the only fully human person who is able to really love God in the way that he should be loved.

Honouring Mary’s Immaculate Heart is really just another way of honouring Mary as the person who was chosen to be the Mother of God, recognising her extraordinary holiness and the immense love she bestowed on Jesus as his mother, the person who was called to share in and co-operate in his redemptive sufferings.

The whole aim of this devotion is to unite mankind to God through Mary’s heart, and this process involves the ideas of consecration and reparation. A person is consecrated to Mary’s Immaculate Heart as a way of being completely devoted to God. This involves a total gift of self, something only ultimately possible with reference to God; but Mary is our intermediary in this process of consecration.

There have been some criticisms of the whole idea of “consecration” to Mary, with some arguing that it is improper to speak in such terms, since it obscures the essential consecration to God. This position, though, seems to go against the traditional approach as exemplified by St Louis de Montfort, one that has been essentially accepted and acted upon by Pius XII and John Paul II in the twentieth century.

If it was unacceptable to consecrate the world to Mary’s Immaculate Heart then obviously the above popes would not have done so. To criticise the principle of Marian consecration is also to lose sight of the central reality of the various Marian apparitions, that they concern Mary rather than Jesus.

If Jesus had only wanted a consecration to his own Sacred Heart, then clearly he, rather than Mary, would have appeared repeatedly over the last several centuries. The fact that it is Mary who has appeared in so many places, and that the Church at its highest level has accepted this, indicates that Mary’s role is central and that consecration to her is not illogical, providing it is clearly understood that “belonging to Mary is a privileged means of belonging to Christ.”

In reality because of the strong analogy between Jesus and Mary, the consecration to Mary’s Immaculate Heart is closely linked to the consecration to Jesus’ Sacred Heart, although it is subordinate and dependent on it. That is, although the act of consecration is ultimately addressed to God, it is an act that is made through Mary.

This point is also illustrated by the strongly Christocentric nature of both the 1982 and 1984 acts of Consecration made by Pope John Paul II. Because Mary is so closely linked to Christ, and because she is mankind’s spiritual mother, he felt fully justified in carrying out the act of consecration to her Immaculate Heart. The Pope referred to Jesus’ words of self-consecration during the Last Supper, as found in St John’s Gospel: “And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

Here the word sanctify has the meaning of “consecrate oneself to God,” and Jesus’ self-consecration to the Father is taken as the model for the way that we too should be consecrated to God. This is to be accomplished by a consecration to Mary, since she is wholly consecrated to her Son. By joining with her we join with Jesus, based on the way that she united herself with Jesus’ sufferings on the cross in the most intimate manner possible.

Mary holds her position as intermediary in the process of consecration by reason of her dignity as Mother of God and her role as spiritual mother of all Christians. Because love and devotion shown to Mary are referred by her to God, it follows that acts of reparation for sin directed to her also apply to God, especially when we consider how closely united the hearts of Jesus and Mary were and are.

The theme of the need for reparation for sin, which is very prominent in the various Marian apparitions, has remained central to the preaching of Christianity from the time of the Apostles onwards: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt 3:2).

The idea of making reparation, both for our own sins and, because of a common membership of the mystical body of Christ, for those of others, is only an extension of this basic Gospel message, a message that continues to be valid. As St Paul said: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church …” (Col 1:24).

Sources: John F. Murphy, “The Immaculate Heart,” in Mariology, Vol. 3; The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. VII, s.v. “Heart of Mary;” Calkins, Totus Tuus.

Theotokos Catholic Website (www.theotokos.org.uk)

1. Every Christian is fundamentally and primarily consecrated in baptism. Through baptism, the Christian is consecrated to the Holy Trinity. The mission of Jesus, “to baptize them in the name …” (Mt. 28:19) means this: “to baptize them in the service of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.”

2.1 If we analyze what the baptism of an adult person involves, we will see that the first initiative comes from God who, by his grace, calls the human person to faith and conversion. In the second moment, this person responds to this call and vocation, by coming to baptism freely and in faith. In the act of baptism itself, it is God who consecrates the person being baptized. As St. Augustine says, “It is Christ himself who baptizes.” (Tract. in Ioannis Evang., 6, 7). Christ makes the baptized person holy. The baptized person is consecrated (”theologically passive”; the agent here is God.) This baptismal consecration, in one way or another, is renewed in every sacrament.

2.2 Every baptized person is bound to live in a way that is in keeping with the character of a “holy person,” that is, as one consecrated to the service of the Holy Trinity. This implies not only the effort to live a personal life of holiness, but also the generous striving to give evangelical witness in the world. The Christian who lives a life of holiness, is truly a witness to Christ; this witnessing life will of course include a confession of faith explicitly made (in word). It is for this that he/she has been consecrated in baptism; for this that Confirmation comes with further strength and energy; for this that the Eucharist is received as food and nourishment. These three steps in Christian initiation all lead to the same objective. Every other gift of the Spirit invites him/her to move forward, with fidelity, toward the same purpose. Thus every Christian is not only called to his/her own conversion, but he/she must be a servant of the conversion of others, of all peoples, and servant of their oneness in the Holy Spirit.

2.3 The spiritual tradition of the Church, however, also recognizes other “consecrations” which come after baptism. These are acts by which the Christian commits himself/herself, in one way or another, to lead a more stable way of life which will enable him/her to fulfill more readily the consecration of baptism, and to live that consecration in all its consequences.

Thus, all other post-baptismal consecrations have no other purpose than the baptismal consecration itself. In these other consecrations there must be found both the desire and will for personal holiness and authentic apostolic intent.

2.4. The way we speak of these post-baptismal consecrations shows the profound difference between them and the consecration which God himself makes of the baptized person in baptism. When we speak of post-baptismal consecrations, we say the person consecrates himself/herself (in the reflexive mode, rather than the theologically passive mode).

2.5. We must point out that a person makes these acts of consecration under the influence of grace, which impels him/her to an ever fuller gift of self. On the other hand, the Christian who thus consecrates himself/herelf to God, asks God to receive his/her oblation and to give the grace necessary for living out this consecration in life itself.

3. The same spiritual tradition of trhe Church also recognizes consecration to Mary. Let us not wonder (or be surprised) that the term of these acts of consecration, at first blush, is a human person. In truth, Mary is not the “absolute term” of these acts. Every act of consecration to serve Mary and to imitate her, seeks — through her — more closely and more deeply to serve and imitate the Lord Jesus himself.

4. The personal consecrations made to the heart of Jesus and the heart of Mary take these hearts as points of reference for more fully fulfilling, in life, the baptismal consecration.

This implies that a person commits himself/herself to considering, venerating and thus, under the impulse of grateful love, imitating the inner life of Jesus and the inner life of Mary, which the word “heart” really means. “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” (Mt. 11:29; St. Ambrose, in De virginibus, 2: 7 applies this text to Mary). Further, this implies that such a person hopes to receive grace to live in this way of holiness through the intercession of Jesus and of Mary, and this intercession itself comes forth from their hearts.

5.1. We cannot demand that the structures of the spiritual life should correspond, in all rigor, exactly and strictly with the harmony and balance of the total complex of the Christian faith. Often enough, it is really impossible to demand this total balance from popular piety.

5.2. However, we should try to have the mystery of salvation, in which Mary is so closely associated with Christ her Son, reverberate “correctly” in the spiritual life. This means that we must make the effort to have the consecration to the heart of Mary understood in such a way, and explicitly expressed in such a way that it is seen as the way by which a person ultimately consecrates himself/herself to Christ. For the imitation of Christ, and in fact the imitation of his inner life, is the ultimate term (even if a never fully-attainable term) of the spiritual life. (This has been understood thus from the very beginnings of Christianity.)

5.3. Similarly, it is fitting that the consecration to the heart of Jesus should be joined with the consecration to the immaculate heart of Mary. Thus, a person who begins with one of the two hearts always really consecrates himself/herself to both hearts. This linking-up reflects the indivisible Alliance, which truly exists between the heart of Jesus and the heart of Mary.

6.1. The words of Jesus, “And I sanctify myself for them so that they too may be sanctified in truth” (John 17:19) illuminate the meaning of collective consecrations, even the consecration of the entire world, to the hearts of Jesus and Mary.

6.2. The person who pronounces the act of consecration, consecrates himself/herself, that is, he/she commits himself/herself to live a life which imitates “the inner states” of these two hearts. He/she also entrusts all those referred to and included within the formula of consecration to the protection of the heart of Jesus and/or the heart of Mary (cf. John Paul II, the Act of consecration/entrustment of the entire world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, 13 May 1982).

6.3. Thus can we understand the desire of the Holy Father that as many faithful as possible should join him in making these acts of consecration so that they may all join him in begging for the ever more efficacious help of the hearts of Jesus and Mary.