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 thirty-second invocation: House of gold, pray for us.
What does it mean to say that Saint Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mother of God is a “House of gold”? There are hundreds of references to “gold” throughout Sacred Scripture. A “house of gold” may refer to the “building materials” or to “that which is within.” The Blessed Virgin Mary is a house of gold in both ways. A house built of gold would be very precious. Saint Mary is very precious, not only in the eyes of God but in the eyes of believers. In that the precious Lord Jesus spent His first nine months of His human existence within Our Lady’s Immaculate womb, He who was within is likewise precious. In the Olympic Games the winner receives a gold medal symbolic of greatness and victory. Our Lady is great and with her Son victorious over sin and Satan. Our association with the Lord Jesus and His Blessed Mother makes us great and victorious similarly. Gold has been used as a form of wealth for thousands of years with gold coins first made around 700BC. The United Kingdom and the United States of America both abandoned the gold standard in favor of fiat currency in 1931 and 1933 respectively,
Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman (+1890) wrote about Our Lady in his Meditations and Devotions “She is the house and the palace of the Great King, of God Himself. Our Lord, the Co-equal Son of God, once dwelt in her. He was her Guest; nay, more than a guest, for a guest comes into a house as well as leaves it. But our Lord was actually born in this holy house. He took His flesh and His blood from this house, from the flesh, from the veins of Mary. Rightly then was she made to be of pure gold, because she was to give of that gold to form the body of the Son of God. She was golden in her conception, golden in her birth. She went through the fire of her suffering like gold in the furnace, and when she ascended on high, she was, in the words of our hymn, ‘Above all the Angels in glory untold, Standing next to the King in a vesture of gold.’” Our Lady is greater than Fort Knox. Generously she dispenses the treasures of grace and mercy from the treasury of merits. Our Lady, Saint Mary, is the Queen of Heaven standing at the right hand of the Lord arrayed in gold (cf. Psalm 45:9).
Father John Arthur Orr