‘Mater Boni Consilii.’ You who profess a special devotion to the Mother of God may you obtain help and comfort from her for your renewed resolves to tighten the bonds of the common life and, exactly by reason of that interior strengthening of roots, to project that life to the whole Church.
May we above all obtain from her that higher ‘counsel’ which is discernment and sagacity in decisions, but even more the individualization of the increased spiritual needs of our age, vision of social and human reality in the light of the Gospel, and consequently courage to give adequate responses to these needs and that vision.
O Mother of Jasna Gora, I am, O Mother, all yours, and everything mine is yours! All that is mine, so also my homeland, my nation.
O Mother, I have been called to serve the Universal Church on the Chair of St Peter at Rome. Thinking of this universal service, I constantly repeat, ‘Totus tuus -- wholly yours’. I desire to be the servant of all!
Mother, everything that is mine is yours! What more can I say to you? In what other way entrust this land, this people, this heritage, to You? I confide them to you just as I can.
You are the Mother. You will understand and will accept.
Ref: cf “Prayers and Devotions from Pope John Paul II”, p170
The peace Our Lord gives His disciples
‘Peace be to you’, are our Lord’s first words to his apostles on the evening of his resurrection. Peace of the soul and of the heart; the only true happiness in this life. And he repeats them three times in two successive visits. Why three times? To make us understand the three kinds of peace he desires for us -- peace with God, our neighbor, ourselves.
How much do we value this highest of heavenly gifts, ‘peace with God’? This peace consists in the full and entire conformity of our will with that of God. His will is manifested through the commandments and counsels, the orders of our directors.
All we need do, then, is to ask, “How have I conformed my words, thoughts, and actions to these standards"? ”... after eight days, again his disciples were within, with Thomas. Jesus came, the doors being shut, stood in their midst, and said, ‘Peace be to you’.” (cf Jn 20:26-7)
Peace with God should always be united to peace with our neighbors. The fulness of this peace, based on charity and fraternal union, is what our Lord desired for his disciples. It was vital to them, for the least division can cause failure of their mission to reunite all nations of the earth by mutual faith, hope, and charity.
The conditions for preserving this peace are: 1) to bear with the defects of others; and 2) to give others nothing to bear from us. Does our rudeness disturb peace and union?
“He said, therefore, to them again, ‘Peace be to you’.” To possess the fulness of peace Jesus desires for his disciples, we must acquire ‘peace with ourselves’. This interior peace consists in a good conscience; the senses and passions subject to reason, and of reason to faith.
This peace is impossible in this world where the flesh and self-love always rebel against the will of God. The peace of our souls must be sought in a perpetual and resolute combat “... resisting the passions, not by serving them, that true peace of heart is to be found.” (Thomas à Kempis, “Imitation”)
Ref: cf “Practical Meditations” by a Father of the Society of Jesus, 1964, pp224-6
The communion of graces
The doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ shows the profound unity among Christians due to union with their head, Christ. “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.” (1 Cor 12:26)
This stable union of the faithful with one another led St Paul to ask for prayers from the first Christians at Rome. He always felt very united with his brothers in the Faith, whom he always addressed as ‘saints’ in his letters. (cf Phil 1:1)
From the beginning of the Church, Christians have professed among the principal truths of faith in the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the Communion of Saints”. It is a community of spiritual qualities from which everyone benefits. It is not a sharing of material, cultural or artistic favors, but of imperishable goods.
Offering Our Lord our work, prayer, joy and difficulties brings an immense good to people who are far from us and to the entire Church.
St Teresa, aware of the damage caused by Protestant errors in the Church, knew also of this desirable mutual support. “The things of God’s service are so bad that those of us who do serve Him have to stand back to back in order to make progress at all.” (St Teresa, “Life”, 7-8)
This doctrine was always practised throughout Church history. (cf St Ignatius of Antioch, “Letter to the Ephesians”, 2, 2-5; St Cyprian, “Letter 60”; St Clement of Rome, “Letter to the Corinthians” 36, 1 ff; St Ambrose, “Treatise on Cain and Abel”, 1 ff)
What does the Communion of Saints mean for us in practise? “... that all of us who are united in Christ, the saints in heaven, the souls in purgatory, and we on earth -- must be mindful of the needs of one another ... The saints ‘must’ love the souls whom God loves. The love the blessed in heaven have for the Souls in Purgatory and the souls on earth is not a passive love. ... [but] an active, ‘hungry’ love.
"The saints long to help onward to heaven all souls ... And if the prayer of a good man on earth has power with God, there is no estimating the power of prayers which the saints offer for us. ...” (Leo Trese, “The Faith Explained”, p146)
Ref: cf F Fernandez, “In Conversation with God”, 2:411-3
Our Lady -- “Holy Mary is the ‘Queen of peace’, and thus the Church invokes her. So when your soul or your family are troubled, or things go wrong at work, in society or between nations, cry out to her without ceasing. Call to her by this title: ‘Queen of peace, pray for us.’ Have you at least tried it when you have lost your calm? You will be surprised at its immediate effect.” (St Josemaria Escrivá, “Furrow”, 874)
Our Lady of Naïera, in Navarre. This image was found miraculously in the year 1048; Dom Garcias de Naiera, King of Navarre, built a church for it, which several kings of Navarre visited. — Andre Favin, liv. iii.. Hist. de Navarre. (“Catholic Gems or Treasures of the Church” Historical Calendar; http://www.bethlehemobserver.com)
Our Lady of Naïera, Navarre (1048). (www.iskandar.com/ourlady/ourladyfeasts.html)
Our Lady of Naïera(Navarre, France). (maryfest.htm / www.starharbor.com/santiago/m_feasts.html)
Our Lady of Good Counsel (www.iskandar.com/ourlady/ourladyfeasts.html)
Mother of Good Counsel (maryfest.htm / www.starharbor.com/santiago/m_feasts.html); (www.marylinks.org/Mary-Calendar.htm)
‘Nuestra Señora de Salera' (“The 1997 Catholic Directory of the Philippines”, p51)
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