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Dear Sisters and Brothers in
the Lord:
In the Catholic Church, May has traditionally been the
month of Mary. While Mary and the saints are an integral part of
Catholic faith, it is important to keep them in their proper
perspective. Devotion to Mary and the saints must never become
superstition, or 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 never
worship them or adore them. Worship and adoration belong
solely to God. 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 which remained
offered models of discipleship and genuine witness of Christian
holiness, virtues and life. These saintly and Christian witnesses 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, who is and always will be the focus of our prayers and
our 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 are celebrations of obligation and even take precedence over
the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist. Feasts, too, are days of
special celebrations 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.
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For instance, the Feast of the Visitation on May 31st,
the first of two feasts of Mary in our calendar year, 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. The Visitation demonstrates how celebrating feasts of Mary and
the saints can help us rediscover them as models for our own day and
time.
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”. Mary stands for all eternity as the model of
perfect Christian discipleship and the faithfulness encouraged from all
true believers in God’s providential care, presence and love.
Let’s give our minds and
hearts to the Lord this Easter Season! Father Joe
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