Society of Mary Annual Mass

Saturday 12 October 2024

Cathedral Church of Saint Paul

Springfield Illinois

(Our Lady of the Rosary)

Acts 1:12-14

Luke 1:26-38

 

 

(Please be seated)

 

First, I bring you greetings from the Officers and Council of the American Society of Mary. My sincere thanks to Bishop Burgess for his kind invitation to offer our Annual Mass here in Springfield today, and to Dean Hook and the Cathedral community for their gracious hospitality. It is a real pleasure to be here. And I look forward to meeting and talking with as many as possible in the luncheon reception following, and in particular to answering any questions you may have about the Society of Mary.

 

(In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.)

 

The two readings that we’ve just heard appear to be the New Testament’s first and last mentions of the Blessed Virgin Mary by name during her earthly life: in the Gospel, at the Annunciation in Nazareth; in the reading from Acts; with the disciples in the Upper Room after her Son’s Ascension into heaven.

 

Outside the New Testament, later writings and traditions tell us about Mary’s life before the Annunciation, including her conception and birth to her parents Joachim and Anna, as well as her childhood and upbringing in the Temple at Jerusalem. And other traditions tell us of the later years of her life, including her living with John the Beloved Disciple in Ephesus, in what is today Turkey, and again, back in Jerusalem, her falling asleep or Dormition at the end of her earthly life, followed by her bodily Assumption into heaven.

 

But whatever credibility we accord these stories—and I find some of them very credible indeed—they belong to Holy Tradition and not to the Sacred Scriptures. So, again, in the canonical New Testament, the first glimpse we get of Mary is at the Annunciation in Nazareth, and the last glimpse we get, at least of her earthly life, is in the Upper Room in Jerusalem in the days between the Ascension and Pentecost.

 

(I realize that I’m leaving aside Saint John’s vision of the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars, in Revelation 12, which is why I was careful to say that these are the first and last glimpses we get in the New Testament of Mary, mentioned by name, during her earthly life.)

 

In any case, both these glimpses of Mary appear in the writings of Saint Luke the Evangelist, the author of both the Gospel bearing his name and the Acts of the Apostles. And the parallels between these two glimpses of Mary in Luke’s writings are striking.

 

At the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Son of God is about to come down from heaven to take flesh in the Virgin’s womb. Conversely, in the Upper Room, the crucified and risen Lord has just returned to his Father in heaven. So here, we see the Blessed Virgin just before and just after her Son’s earthly Incarnation.

 

And in both episodes what comes next is a descent of the Holy Spirit. At the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel promises Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” And in the Upper Room, the apostles have just received the Lord’s promise before his Ascension: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”

 

Furthermore, in both cases, the Holy Spirit’s descent brings about a birth. At the Annunciation, Mary is empowered to be the Mother of God and so bring Christ to birth. And at Pentecost, the apostles are empowered to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth and so bring the Church to birth. Thus, Pentecost is sometimes called the birthday of the Church.

 

Part of the traditional interpretation of these verses is that Mary’s prayers in the Upper Room are instrumental in obtaining for the apostles the gifts of grace that they will receive on the Day of Pentecost. For among those present that day, she alone knows what it is to experience the Holy Spirit descending in power.

 

The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, in the Church’s calendar this past Monday on October 7th, reminds us that the Holy Rosary is one key spiritual practice by which we ask our Lady’s prayers for the gifts of the Holy Spirit as we seek to be faithful to our own God-given vocations in our own day.

 

According to tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary gave the Holy Rosary to Saint Dominic Guzman, founder of the Dominican Order, in the year 1208, when he was in southern France on a preaching mission against the Albigensian heresy. Before that time, Christians were already using beaded strings to recite 150 times a rudimentary form of the prayer we know today as the Hail Mary. (Since there are 150 psalms, this method of reciting the Hail Mary 150 times was known as the Marian psalter.)

 

But the new element that Dominic introduced—again, according to the tradition, following Mary’s instructions—was interspersing these prayers with sermons or spoken meditations on various episodes in the course of our Lord’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. Up until this point Dominic had not been able to make any headway in converting the Albigensians back to the Catholic faith. But this combination of prayers interspersed with meditations on the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries became a powerful spiritual weapon against a heresy that denied both the goodness of God’s material creation and the reality of the Lord’s Incarnation, death, and bodily Resurrection. In this way, the Holy Rosary enabled Dominic to fulfill his vocation to restore the Catholic faith in the south of France.

 

However, before the commemoration on October 7th was renamed Our Lady of the Rosary, it was known as Our Lady of Victory. This title commemorated the naval Battle of Lepanto on October 7th, 1571, when, against all odds, the fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Christian states, defeated a much larger fleet of the Ottoman Turks. By turning back the Ottoman naval power in the Mediterranean, this victory helped ensure the survival of Christian civilization in southern Europe. And credit for the victory went to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in response to a massive outpouring of prayer organized by dozens of rosary guilds and confraternities then active in Italy and other Catholic countries. So, both titles, Our Lady of Victory and Our Lady of the Rosary, are highly appropriate for this observance.

 

We see a pattern: the apostles in the Upper Room, Saint Dominic in southern France, the beleaguered mariners of the Holy League. All wondering what happens next, all wondering how they can possibly carry on in their mission against seemingly insurmountable odds. In all three cases, Our Lady’s prayers made all the difference, and they can make the same difference for us in our struggles today as well.

 

And, again, the perfect vehicle for seeking Our Lady’s prayers is precisely the Holy Rosary, in which we ask her, again and again, to pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death. Contrary to the misperceptions of some, this devotion to Mary leads us not away from Jesus but towards him—by concentrating our attention on his life, death, and resurrection. So, in the concluding prayer, we ask God to grant that by meditating on these mysteries of the Holy Rosary, we may imitate what they contain, and obtain what they promise—In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.