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Dear Sisters and Brothers in the Lord:
May has traditionally been the month of Mary for the
Catholic Church. While Mary and the saints are an integral part of
Catholic faith, it is important to keep them in perspective. Devotion
to Mary and to the saints must never become superstition, replace Christ
as the center of our Christian life, or supplant the Eucharist as the
focus of our worship.
In being cautious, however, there is danger of
neglecting this important aspect of our tradition. We could lose the
sense of wonder at God’s achievement in human life through the grace of
Christ or the mystery of the communion of saints to which we belong.
Catholics venerate, imitate and invoke the saints.
We venerate them as human beings transformed by the
grace of God. When we celebrate the feast of a saint, we give glory to
God who has done marvelous things in the life of one of us.
We imitate the saints because they offer examples of how
to be disciples of Christ. When the calendar was pruned after Vatican
II, it was not to downplay the role of the saints, but to ensure that
those who remained offered models of discipleship that are relevant for
the Church in all ages and places.
We invoke the intercession of the saints in the sense
that we ask them to pray for us through Christ the one mediator.
The liturgy shows how we can reclaim devotion to the
saints as part of our tradition and integrate them into the life of the
Church. In a typical month the liturgical calendar lists solemnities,
feasts, memorials and optional memorials of Mary or the saints.
Solemnities must be celebrated, and even take
precedence, over the Sunday celebration. Feasts are days of special
celebration with their own readings. Memorials are celebrated normally
without disturbing the continuous reading of the word of God for the
week in question. All three have the potential to draw us into the
mystery of the communion of the Church and the communion of saints in
its fullest sense. They offer us examples of God’s grace at work in
many different ages and places and inspire us to discipleship in our own
time and place.
The Feast of the Visitation, on May 31st, is the first
of two feasts of Mary on our liturgical calendar. It calls us to ponder
Mary as the woman who believed and obediently accepted the will of God.
This enabled her to play a most significant role in the saving work of
Christ.
In Marialis Cultus, the 1974 apostolic
exhortation on devotion to Mary, Pope Paul IV said: “far from being a
timidly submissive woman, Mary was a woman who did not hesitate to
proclaim that God vindicates the humble and the oppressed, and removes
the powerful people of this world from their positions of privilege”.
The Visitation demonstrates how celebrating feasts of
Mary and the saints can help us rediscover them as models for our own
age.
Let’s give our minds and hearts to the Lord!
Father Joe |
