Immaculate Conception Church in Jamaica, NY on U.S. Flag
By Gloria M. Chang
On this Election Day, let us entrust the nation to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, the patroness of the United States of America. On May 13, 1846, the Catholic bishops of the United States unanimously proclaimed the Blessed Virgin Mary, under her title of the “Immaculate Conception,” patroness of the United States. Pope Pius IX formally ratified this decision on February 7, 1847, seven years before he officially defined the Immaculate Conception as a formal dogma of the Church.
Prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
O Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of our country, Heavenly beauty and splendor of the Father, we consecrate ourselves to You, our nation, and our leaders, asking for Your guidance, protection, and intercession. Amen.
As the Synod on Synodality proceeds in Rome, we can all participate as the listening Church, the Bride of Christ, sitting at Jesus’ feet like Mary of Bethany (Luke 10:38). Enveloped in his peace, we can attune our hearts and minds to the Spirit of truth sent to us from the Father by the Son (John 15:26).
In a world of distracting noise, the Lord invites us to listen to his voice in Sacred Scripture, the Holy Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, and personal prayer. Heard in the silence of the Spirit, the ancient words resonating from centuries past speak to the present generation with striking relevance. May the Lord grant us “ears to hear” his voice amid the din of the latest buzz (Matthew 11:14).
In a recent passage from the Office of Readings (October 11, 2024), St. Vincent of Lerins, a fifth-century French monk, seemed to jump out of the pages to address the Synod in Rome during its second week. In his vision, the organism of the Church grows and matures like a child to an adult, but preserves her essential form. Human skeletal structure, facial features, limbs, and organs develop with maturity but do not evolve into another species. The Body of Christ, the Church, in its heavenward journey also grows in the Holy Spirit into the perfect image of the Incarnate Son of God and not a distortion (2 Corinthians 3:18). May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, guide her sons and daughters in the Spirit to her Son, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
From the first instruction by Saint Vincent of Lerins, priest
The development of doctrine
Is there to be no development of religion in the Church of Christ? Certainly, there is to be development and on the largest scale.
Who can be so grudging to men, so full of hate for God, as to try to prevent it? But it must truly be development of the faith, not alteration of the faith. Development means that each thing expands to be itself, while alteration means that a thing is changed from one thing into another.
The understanding, knowledge and wisdom of one and all, of individuals as well as of the whole Church, ought then to make great and vigorous progress with the passing of the ages and the centuries, but only along its own line of development, that is, with the same doctrine, the same meaning and the same import.
The religion of souls should follow the law of development of bodies. Though bodies develop and unfold their component parts with the passing of the years, they always remain what they were. There is a great difference between the flower of childhood and the maturity of age, but those who become old are the very same people who were once young. Though the condition and appearance of one and the same individual may change, it is one and the same nature, one and the same person.
The tiny members of unweaned children and the grown members of young men are still the same members. Men have the same number of limbs as children. Whatever develops at a later age was already present in seminal form; there is nothing new in old age that was not already latent in childhood.
There is no doubt, then, that the legitimate and correct rule of development, the established and wonderful order of growth, is this: in older people the fullness of years always brings to completion those members and forms that the wisdom of the Creator fashioned beforehand in their earlier years.
If, however, the human form were to turn into some shape that did not belong to its own nature, or even if something were added to the sum of its members or subtracted from it, the whole body would necessarily perish or become grotesque or at least be enfeebled. In the same way, the doctrine of the Christian religion should properly follow these laws of development, that is, by becoming firmer over the years, more ample in the course of time, more exalted as it advances in age.
In ancient times our ancestors sowed the good seed in the harvest field of the Church. It would be very wrong and unfitting if we, their descendants, were to reap, not the genuine wheat of truth but the intrusive growth of error.
On the contrary, what is right and fitting is this: there should be no inconsistency between first and last, but we should reap true doctrine from the growth of true teaching, so that when, in the course of time, those first sowings yield an increase it may flourish and be tended in our day also.
Reference
The passage from St. Vincent of Lerins can be found in the Office of Readings for Friday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time.
“What is theology?” asked Professor Andrea Florendo to a group of young Catholic Scholars in the Passionist Monastery Chapel.
“The study of God,” responded a sophomore brightly in the front row.
“Yes, and where does theology begin?” Professor Florendo continued. Looking at each of the young faces, she exclaimed, “In a garden!” Following the creation account in Genesis, the story of God and humankind unfolds in the Garden of Eden. Flowers, trees, rocks, soil, animals, sun, moon, sky, water, humans—the whole natural world—declare the glory of God. Prayer and liturgy burst forth among flowering plants and birdsong in God’s garden of paradise.
On Sunday, October 6, 2024, seven Catholic Scholars from St. John’s University visited the Mary Garden at the Passionist Monastery in Jamaica, NY. Fr. Victor Hoagland, C.P., Professor Andrea Florendo, and Gloria Chang, founders of the Mary Garden Guild at the Passionist Monastery, welcomed the students warmly.
Fr. Victor, who has traveled extensively throughout the world on pilgrimages and missions, shared the global Passionist charism with the Catholic Scholars, who are preparing for a life of faith-inspired leadership. The Passionists, who received their mission from St. Paul of the Cross to keep alive in the world the love of Jesus Crucified as seen in His Sacred Passion, have expanded their charism to include the care of creation as taught by Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato Si. Inspired also by Fr. Thomas Berry, C.P. (1914-2009), a pioneer in ecology, the Passionists have redesigned their retreat center in Jamaica, NY, in his name.
Andrea Florendo, a retired theology professor at St. John’s University and designer of the Mary Garden, gave a tour, pointing out the significance of the enclosed garden as a symbol of Mary’s virginal womb, the fountain as Christ’s “fountain of living waters,” and the cross path as the four rivers in the Garden of Eden.
Our visit in the Mary Garden ended in praise and thanksgiving to God with prayers from Scripture and a reading from the Book of Genesis. May the Lord bless our Catholic Scholars abundantly with faith and grace as they continue their studies and formation at St. John’s University.
How great is your name, O Lord our God, through all the earth!
The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a prayer loved by countless Saints and encouraged by the Magisterium. Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third millennium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness. It blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian life, which, after two thousand years, has lost none of the freshness of its beginnings and feels drawn by the Spirit of God to “set out into the deep” (duc in altum!) in order once more to proclaim, and even cry out, before the world that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour, “the way, and the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6), “the goal of human history and the point on which the desires of history and civilization turn.”
The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at heart a Christocentric prayer. In the sobriety of its elements, it has all the depth of the Gospel message in its entirety, of which it can be said to be a compendium. It is an echo of the prayer of Mary, her perennial Magnificat for the work of the redemptive Incarnation which began in her virginal womb. With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love. Through the Rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer.”
The Victor's Place 