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 twelfth invocation: Mother of Good Counsel, pray for us.
“Counsel” is among the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit enumerated in Sacred Scripture (cf. Isaiah 11:2). The Hebrew word etsah is often translated as “counsel”, advice, prudence. The Greek term boule is sometimes translated “counsel” as well as advice (e.g. Acts 20:27). There are nearly two hundred uses of “counsel” throughout Sacred Scripture. If we want to be wise all our days we must “listen to counsel and accept discipline” (cf. Proverbs 19:20). Saint Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mother of God not only followed the counsels of the Lord and accepted His discipline all her days on Earth, but even still in Heaven. We turn to Our Lady to receive her counsel and advice, even as she directed the waiters at Cana: “Do whatever He tells you” (John 2:5). Monks and Nuns, Religious Brothers and Sisters profess the three “Evangelical Counsels” of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The Lord Jesus and His Blessed Mother both were poor, chaste and obedient throughout their earthly lives as we read in the Gospel (Matthew 19:10-13, 16-22; Mark 10:17-22; Luke 18:18-23). Saint John Paul II (+2005) in his Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata reminds us that “the profession of the evangelical counsels” are “an integral part of the Church’s life and a much needed incentive towards ever greater fidelity to the Gospel” (VC, 3); 25 March, 1996). Saint Thomas Aquinas, OP (+1274) addresses the gift of counsel in his Summa Theologiae (II-II Q. 52, A. 1-4). Surely the gifts of the Spirit, counsel included, were not lacking in Our Lady who had been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit since her Immaculate Conception. Our Lady enjoyed a supernatural prudence accepting God’s will in her life and is able to intercede for us with her wise and prudent counsel to act similarly.
For more than six hundred years the Augustinian friars have fostered devotion to Our Lady under the title Mother of Good Counsel. The National Council of Catholic Women also foster devotion to Our Lady under this title. Pope Leo XIII included this title of Our Lady in the Litany of Loreto in 1903. There is a special Litany of Our Lady of Good Counsel attributed to the late Bishop of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Francis Joseph Klein (+1968), who participated as a Council Father during the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) which included an entire chapter on Our Lady in the Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 52–68. The feast of Our Lady, Mother of Good Counsel is 26 April.
Father John Arthur Orr