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 twenty-fifth invocation: Cause of our joy, pray for us.
What does is mean to say that Saint Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mother of God is the “cause of our joy?” The Lord God teaches us in Sacred Scripture that He came and spoke to us that His joy might be in us and that our joy might be complete, that we could be filled with joy (cf. John 15:11). Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior came to us through Our Lady, cause of our joy. He was able to speak to us in human language thanks to His human mother, Saint Mary cause of our joy. Facing trial for the sake of the Gospel should be considered “pure joy” (James 1:2). Saint Mary, cause of our joy, surely faced trial for the sake of the Gospel on Good Friday. Joy is even included among the twelve fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). The Hebrew term simchah is translated as joy, blithsesomeness, mirth or glee (cf. 1 Samuel 18:6).
Our friends at Merriam-Webster remind us that joy is “a state of happiness or felicity; a source or cause of delight” as well as an “emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires” or the “expression or exhibition of such emotion.”
Pope Francis (b. 1936) published his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November, 2014) which mentions “joy” more than one hundred times, reminding us that sharing the Gospel is a joy and a delight (EG, 9-13). The future Benedict XVI (b. 1927) published Ministers of Your Joy (26 April, 1989) as a collection of sermons preached at ordinations. Before both of these, Saint Paul VI (+1978) and the Council Fathers at Vatican II (1962-1965) published the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et spes (7 December, 1965) which reminds us that “The Lord is the goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart and the answer to all its yearnings” (GS, 45). There seems to be a great emphasis on “joy” over that last fifty-five years. Whether we are lacking in joy, if we are sad, mad, bad or not, let us always turn to Our Lady, cause of our joy, asking her intercession. She knows the victory of our faith (cf. 1 John 5:4; Revelation 2:26; 3:5, 21) and the reason for our hope and joy is her Son (1 Peter 3:15).
Father John Arthur Orr