My dear parishioners,
Peace! On the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, 7 October, 2019, Pope Francis established the feast of Our Lady of Loreto, to be observed each year on the 10th of December. At the same time Pope Francis proclaimed a Lauretan Jubilee Holy Year to run from 8 December, 2019 through 10 December, 2020. There are fifty-one invocations in the Litany of Loreto. The following is a reflection on the first invocation: Holy Mary, pray for us.
Holy Moses interceded on behalf of God’s people in prayer (cf. Numbers 14:11-19).Saint Peter asked the prayer of God’s people (cf. Acts 8:24). Saint Paul may be alluding to prayer for one another when, inspired by God, he asks us to “bear one another’s burdens” (cf. Galatians 6:2). Saint James asks that we “pray for each other” (cf. James 5:16). In the Litany we ask Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, to pray for us. Surely the prayers of Saint Mary, who is forever “the handmaid of the Lord” (cf. Luke 1:38) are at least as powerful with God as those of Moses (who killed a man: cf. Exodus 2:12-13), Peter (who denied Christ: cf. Matthew 26:69-75; John 18:27) and Paul (who persecuted the Church: cf. Acts 8:3; Galatians 1:13, 23).
There are over six-hundred verses in Sacred Scripture with more than six-hundred and fifty references to “holy.” The Sabbath day is “holy” (cf. Exodus 20:8). People, places and vesture are to be holy (cf. Exodus 22:31; 26:33; 28:2, 4). The Name of God is holy (1 Chronicles 16:10). There are “holy vessels” and “holy things” (cf. 1 Chronicles 26:20,26). But there is “none holy as the Lord is” holy (cf. 1 Samuel 2:2).
Saint Mary the Virgin is holy because she is “full of grace” (cf. Luke 1:28). Our Lady’s outward service of the Lord required that she be set apart, consecrated, no less than the priests and Levites (cf. Exodus 29:1; Leviticus 8:12, 30). Our Lady, Saint Mary, was set apart unto the Lord is another way that she is holy (cf. Luke 1:34; Numbers 6:5). Besides ceremonial holiness there is also an ethical and spiritual holiness which Our Lady enjoys. The Holy God who has made us in His image calls us to be holy, rejecting sin, Satan and the glamor of evil. Holy Mary not only sought to reflect the holiness of God but does indeed (cf. Leviticus 19:2). Saint Mary is holy as the temple of the Lord for the first nine months of the Incarnation (cf. Psalm 15:1-). Saint Mary is holy because of her humility (cf. Isaiah 57:4; Luke 1:48). Saint Mary is holy because of the mercy she showed to the young couple at the Marriage in Cana and the intimate knowledge of God which she has (cf. Hosea 6:6; John 2:1-5). If Saint Mary the Virgin were not holy, why would Sacred Scripture say of her that “all generations will call” her blessed (cf. Luke 1:48)? Mary prays for us!
Father John Arthur Orr