Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Grant us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that we, who celebrate the solemnity of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, may be defended by her protection, and be worthy to obtain peace in the present and glory in the future. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with Thee in unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen. Prayer – Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary

We read in the Bible (Eccli. XLV, 14) that when Aaron was consecrated to the priesthood, a crown of gold was placed upon his mitre. The crown had a second fillet of blue lace, a color chose as the type of Heaven, “an ornament of honor, a work of power, and delightful to the eyes for its beauty.” Over this crown was a golden diadem, with the inscription, “Holiness to the Lord.” The diadem, a fillet of silk, was two inches wide, sometimes white, sometimes blue, sewn with pearls or other gems and enriched with gold. It may be noted that the diadem, not the crown, was the real insignia of royalty. How applicable to Mary, the Queen of Heaven, is the diadem with its blue fillet, her own color, the color of the firmament.

One of the loveliest and truest titles of Mary is that of Queen – Mary, by the grace of God, Queen and Empress of the world. St. Athanasius says: “If the Son is a King, the Mother who begot Him is rightly and truly considered a Queen and Sovereign.” And St. Bernadine of Siena – “No sooner had Mary consented to be the Mother of the Eternal Word, than she merited by this consent to be made Queen of the world and all creation.” The church has guaranteed that royal title to her. In the Mass of the Seven Dolors she sings – “Holy Mary, the Queen of Heaven and Mistress of the world, stood by the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ full of sadness;” and in the Mass of Our Lady of Mount Carmel – “Most noble Queen of the world, Mary, ever-virgin.” Three of the four antiphons of Our Lady salute her as Queen, the Regina Coeli, the Ave Regina Coelorum, and the Salva Regina – “Hail, Queen of Heaven, Hail, Mistress of Angels!”

So also are applied to her the words of the Psalmist (Ps. 44, 11) “The Queen stood on Thy right hand in gilded clothing.” -Listen, Mother of God

Father Carl Pulvermacher, O.F.M., Cap.

Requiescat in pace - 29 May 2006

Please join us in praying for the repose of the soul of Father Carl.

O Almighty God, Judge of the living and the dead, so fit and prepare us, we beseech Thee, by Thy grace, for that last account which we must one day give; that when the time of our appointed change shall come, we may look up to Thee with joy and comfort, and may at last be received together with him whom Thou has now taken from us, and with all that are near and dear to us, into that place of rest and peace where Thou shalt Thyself wipe away all tears from all eyes, and where all our troubles and sorrows shall have an end, through the merits and for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Blessed Savior and Redeemer. Amen.

Pardon and Peace (Part 3)

Alfred Wilson C.P.

Nothing to Tell
(Concluded)

WHY WE MUST PUT OFF THE BLINKERS

1. Self-knowledge is necessary because self-deceit undermines peace of mind.

Self-deception, whether deliberate or indeliberate, is fatal to peace of soul. It is evident that our real motives do not cease to be there (anymore than an ostrich’s attackers cease to be there because it buries its head in the sand) because we chose to ignore them. Neither do they cease to influence us. We become blind to their influence - that is all. We work in the dark and become subject to all the terrors of the night. We do not know what we really want and therefore cannot satisfy our most real wants, and the result is a vague feeling of dissatisfaction and frustration. We are vaguely conscious of a sense of unrest, insincerity and unreality. Life seems to be cheating us, and we tend to become cynical and bored, and like the bad workman blame our tools, our neighbor, the clergy, the local administration – anything but the real culprit, ourselves. Civil war rages within us, we have conflicting wishes and desires, one part of our nature is at war with another, and because of our deliberate self-deception, we cannot recognize the adversaries, much less effect a reconciliation between them. The result is unhappiness, and the outcome may be dissipation, a vain attempt to escape the battleground, or morbid and excessive introspection. Probably we shall alternate between the two moods and become weather-cock personalities. In all our moods, we shall be fundamentally unhappy.

We must establish harmony between the conscious and the subconscious, if we want to maintain peace of soul. Subconscious motives of whose reality and influence we have a vague suspicion will continue to tantalize us until we bring them out into the open and subject them to control. Subconscious motives are like steam, useful if controlled; decidedly dangerous, if allowed to get out of control.

2. Self-knowledge is also necessary because self-deceits impedes growth in holiness, occasions loss of grace, and causes spiritual ineffectiveness.

Allers, speaking of sins and broken resolutions, says: “Of these we know sometimes; but there are others we never really know, though their presence is not absolutely hidden from us. There is the vanity which pervades all our actions, the egoism mixed up with all our most unselfish intentions, the pride which will boast secretly even of humility and sincerity, the ambition which is never satisfied by any success whatever, the unruly longing for praise, the ingrained tendency for envy – all those attributes of average human nature which are the powerful agents of most of our troubles”. The merit and value of our actions consists in our real purity of intention. It is of little avail to delude ourselves that we are acting solely for the love of God, if the real motivation of our actions springs from self-love. God is not deceived by our make-belief. “You are they who justify yourselves before men, but God knoweth your hearts”. (Luke 16:15) Whilst our motives are a polyglot of vaguely recognized, instinctive self urges, we cannot act solely for God. And until we act solely for God, we cannot become saints nor make the best effective use of our time.

To control and subordinate our natural and inevitably selfish urges, we must first have the honesty and the courage to admit and face up to them. Until we face the facts, our love of God is bound to be, in part at least, more fictitious than real. It is not asserted, be it noted, that the element of vaguely conscious selfishness in our actions deprives them of all merit, but simply that it decreases their merit and make perfection impossible. If natural imperfections completely destroyed the merit of our actions, it would follow that no one could merit unless and until he became a saint; in fact not even then, since the saints are constantly finding in themselves new and unsuspected roots of selfishness.

Father Carl Pulvermacher

We have received word that Fr. Carl Pulvermacher is nearing his eternal reward. Please join us as we join him in his final spiritual combat with your prayers. He is one of Our Lord's faithful priest and Satan would still love to claim his soul.

Saint Joseph, Patron of the dying, pray for us.

Pardon and Peace (Part 2)

Alfred Wilson C.P.

Nothing to Tell
(continued)

The purpose of Confession is not so much that we may attain self-knowledge as that we may lovingly and trustingly place our soul in the Master’s Hands that “His mercy may pardon and His grace help us.”

One might compare our souls to motor cars, and Our Lord to a perfect motor mechanic. In our examens we are expected to overhaul the car ourselves, while the Divine Mechanic stands by and helps us with suggestions and His grace. At Confession the Divine Mechanic takes over and, as it were, says to us: “Leave the car to Me! I’ll give it a look over.” He wills to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and if we have opened all the compartments, as far as we can, and kept nothing locked, He will give us a thorough overhaul. But He will not force the locks, because He has too much respect for the car.

It would be a pity to overlook this consoling aspect of the Sacrament of Penance. We can never be emancipated from the labor of trying to understand and overhaul the car, but we have every right to be thrilled and consoled and rest awhile if the Divine Mechanic comes to give us a hand with the work. Excessive anxiety about our preparation implies that ego has figured too prominently in our thoughts, and we have overlooked the part that the Divine Mechanic wishes to play, and by our foolish fussing have impeded His co-operation. We should be glad of the “breather” called Confession, when the work of overhauling is done for us; and we should gladly, gratefully and wholeheartedly let Our Lord take over. It would be foolish to worry because we cannot make the overhaul, when we are not asked to make it. All we are asked to do is to take the car back to the Maker’s, where, and where alone, the engine is perfectly understood. Once we have taken that much trouble, He will do the rest.

How much does He do for us in those regular sacramental overhauls, we shall know only in eternity. Let us spare an occasional prayer of thanksgiving for the unobtrusive and mostly unrecognized labor which the Divine Mechanic puts in on our souls. If regularly we place the car of our souls in His omnipotent Hands, we need not be unduly preoccupied about the working-condition of the engine, Our Confessions would profit us more if we spent less time worrying about the car and our defective workmanship, and concentrated instead in loving amazement on His staggering goodness. We could profitably meditate on the reality and efficiency of His Divine Workmanship, for then we should suffer far less from discouragement and dismay at our own utter incompetence. Let us leave something not merely to the Mercy of God, but also to the sacramental operation of Christ. The help we shall receive shall be proportioned to our faith. Expect Him to do great things for you and He will do great things.

Worry about our sincerity is not altogether a bad thing, provided we deal with it wisely. “The knowledge of our self-deceit,” says Father Faber, “is the nearest approach to its cure.” To admit our self-deceit is to take the first step towards curing it. It should be a source of consolation and reassurance to know that the acquiring of self-knowledge is difficult and slow work. “We cannot trust much to ourselves,” says the Imitation, “for grace and understanding is often wanting to us. There is in us but little light, and this we often lose by negligence. Oftentimes we are quite unconscious how interiorly blind we are.”

-Next time: Why self-knowledge is essential

Pardon and Peace

by Alfred Wilson C.P.

Nothing to Tell

Many earnest penitents are genuinely distressed because they find so little to say whenever they approach the Sacrament of Penance. It seems absurd that they, who have an almost habitual and cloying sense of sinfulness, should be not able to put their finger on definite sins, and they find it hard to reconcile such a purblind inability with sincerity and earnestness.

Inability to find matter for confession may be due to a bad memory. It is one thing to have committed sins and quite another thing to be able to remember them. It is consoling to find that St. Gertrude complained of inability to recall her sins. Inability to remember sins is an inevitable consequence of a bad memory, which could not be obviated without miraculous intervention by God.

The real trouble with most penitents, however, is not so much that they cannot recall their sins, as that they cannot detect them. They know that they are suffering from self-deceit, and it seems a shameful mockery to carry this self-deceit into the confessional; yet no matter how hard they try to unmask themselves and how carefully they prepare, they never seem to be able to focus the searchlight of truth on their souls. In consequence, they are never satisfied with their preparation, and never feel ready for Confession. If they go to Confession in this mood, they come away dubious of their own sincerity, discouraged and dissatisfied. If they defer Confession, in the vain hope of being more successful next time, they become even more dissatisfied.

The earnest desire to be absolutely sincere may make examination of conscience a positive agony. For the comfort of souls who suffer in this way, I want to make it clear that the acquiring of self knowledge is the work of a lifetime-not the work of ten minutes or a half hour before confession. As well expect to explore a continent in half an hour as expect to explore the unexplored (and without Divine Light – unexplorable) continent of the soul in the same time. Self-knowledge can be acquired only gradually and by degrees. At each confession we must do our bit to acquire it, but a bit is all we can do.

“The harder we sweep,” says the wise St. Phillip Neri, “the more dust we raise.” Complete self-analysis, made at one session, would imply a morale miracle, and would prostrate us. God cannot allow us to see how bad we are, until we begin to see how good He is. To cope with comprehensive and vivid self-knowledge, we should need a very outstanding development of the virtue of hope. Vaguely we suspect this, and hence we have a certain misgiving about praying for self-knowledge.

“Oh would some power the gift give us,
to see ourselves as others see us.”

If we adopted the words of Burns as a prayer, we should have a sneaking hope that the Lord would not take us too literally. Naturally we are puzzled and dismayed by the contradictions and apparent insincerity of our attitude. We want to be sincere and yet fear to be sincere. It may seem melancholy satisfaction to be told that this conflict of desires is inevitable; but it is real satisfaction to those who have been hoping, and yet not hoping, to do too much at each Confession.

To know ourselves is the hardest thing in the world…A truthful man is the rarest of all phenomena…The fact is, we are all of us thoroughly untruthful, those of us most so who think ourselves least so, those of us least so who think of ourselves most so…It is worth spending two-thirds of our life in doing this work alone, trying to be less of liars than we are. (Frederick W. Faber – Spiritual Conferences)

Two-thirds of our life! Not ten or twenty minutes, or even twenty hours, before Confession! Effective self-analysis is the work of a lifetime. “Perfect self-knowledge stands not at the beginning, but at the end of the path of virtue.” (Scharsch)

The comprehensive self-knowledge which we expect to acquire at each Confession cannot be attained all at once without a very exceptional grace. “Ad impossibile nemo tenetur” – “no one is obliged to do the impossible.” If a self-analysis were an essential requirement of the Sacrament of Penance, we could never approach it. Let us not expect too much. There is a latent pride and impatience in expecting to take the kingdom of heaven by storm at one attack. We can never be fully satisfied with our preparation for Confession until we realize how much (or, if you like, how little!) we can expect to do. Sufficiently prepared we can easily be; fully prepared we shall never be.

When it is insisted that a brief and relatively cursory self-analysis is sufficient for Confession, there is no intention of proclaiming emancipation from the laborious and insistent task of keeping a close watch on our motives and of striving to attain self-knowledge. All that is asserted is (1) that at Confession there is not sufficient time for adequate self-analysis, as there are then other more important things to do; and (2) that excessive self-analysis obscures the purpose of Confession.

-To be continued

Pilgrimage of the Immaculata

“In the end, My Immaculate Heart will Triumph!”

Come join the Legion of Mary of St. Mary’s Assumption Parish in St. Louis, MO in a pilgrimage honoring the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Where: Kaskaskia Island, on the site commemorating Pere Jacques Marquette’s Immaculate Conception Mission begun in 1675 (located 1 hour south of St. Louis)

When: Saturday, May 13th, 8 a.m. start. 1 p.m. Mass

What: An 8.5 mile pilgrimage on Kaskaskia Island, ending with a High Mass at the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception

Why: To give glory to God through honoring the Immaculate Heart of His Mother: “It was through the Most Holy Virgin Mary that Jesus came into the world, and it is also through her that He has to reign in the world.” – St. Louis de Montfort

For More Information email: theimmaculata@gmail.com

Meditate Upon These Things (I Tim. iv. 15)

The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die; and their departure was taken as misery; and their going away from us, for utter destruction; but they are in peace, and though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality. Afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded; because God hath tried them, and found them worthy of Himself.

As gold in the furnace He hath proved them, and as a victim of a holocaust He hath received them, and in time there shall be respect had to them. They shall judge nations and rule over people, and the Lord shall reign forever. They that trust in Him shall understand the truth; and they that are faithful in love shall rest in Him; for grace and peace are to His elect. For he that rejecteth wisdom and discipline are unhappy; and their works unprofitable. For the fruit of good labors is glorious, and the root of wisdom never faileth.

The just man, if he be prevented with death, shall be at rest. For venerable old age is not that of long time, nor counted by the number of years; but the understanding of man is gray hairs, and a spotless life is old age. He pleased God and was beloved, and living among sinners He was translated. He was taken away lest wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul. For the bewitching of vanity obscureth good things, and the wandering of concupiscence overturneth the innocent mind. Being made perfect in a short space, he fulfilled a long time. For his soul pleased God; therefore He hastened to bring him out of the midst of iniquities; but the people see this, and understand not, nor lay up such things in their hearts; that the grace of God and His mercy is with His saints, and that He hath respect to His chosen.

But the just that are dead condemneth the wicked that are living, and youth soon ended, the long life of the unjust. For they shall see the end of the wise man, and shall not understand what God hath designed for him and why the Lord hath set him in safety. They shall see him and despise him; but the Lord shall laugh them to scorn. Then shall the just stand with great constancy against those that have afflicted them, and taken away their labors. These seeking it shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the suddenness of their salvation, saying with in themselves repenting, and groaning for anguish of spirit: - These are they whom we had some time in derision, and for a parable of reproach. We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honor. Behold how they are numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints. -(Wis)