Tag Archives: Mary

Traditions about St. Ann

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In my part of the world, novenas to Saint Ann have begun in churches and dioceses, like Scranton, PA. Where did the story of Saint Ann come from? From earliest times Christians wondered who the parents of Mary were and, as you would expect, that interest was particularly strong in Palestine. Ann and Joachim were first honored there as the mother and father of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ.

Around the year 550, a church in her honor was built in Jerusalem on the site where her home was said to be, near the Pool of Bethesda, where Jesus cured the paralyzed man. Since then, many churches honoring Ann and Joachim have been built throughout the Christian world; The saints appear frequently in Christian art.

Feasts of St. Ann

Feasts honoring Mary’s birth (September 8) and her presentation in the temple (November 21) – inspired by the Protoevangelium– were introduced into the liturgies of the Eastern churches in the 6th century. Feasts in honor of St.Joachim and Ann (September 9), the conception of St Ann (December 9), and St.Ann alone (July 26) have been celebrated from the 7th century in the Greek and Russian churches.

The western church, adopting the eastern traditions, has celebrated the feast of St. Ann on July 26 since the 16th century. In 1969 her feast was joined with her husband Joachim to become the Feast of Saints Joachim and Ann.

Why was the story of Ann and Joachim so popular?  Besides satisfying curiosity about the family background of Mary and Jesus, they supported traditional belief that Jesus is the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, a belief questioned by heretical elements in the church as well as outsiders of the faith from the beginning.

Ann and Joachim also offered inspiration to mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, grandmothers and grandfathers in their roles in family life.

Devotion to St. Ann in Europe

In the western church, devotion to St.Ann was fed by a popular belief that relics of her were brought to France by Mary Magdalen, Lazarus, Martha, and other friends of Jesus who crossed the stormy sea from Palestine to bring the Christian faith to the region around Marseilles.

Her relics were buried in a cave under the church of St.Mary in the city of Apt by its bishop, St. Auspice, the story goes. Barbarians invaded the area and the cave was filled with debris and almost forgotten, only to be unearthed 600 years later during the reign of Charlemagne. You can see why sailors and miners would be devoted to St. Ann.

Crusaders from Europe – many from France – went to the Holy Land in the 11th century, and they rebuilt the ancient church of St. Ann in Jerusalem. The date the crusader church was consecrated, July 26, is the day we celebrate the feast of Joachim and Ann in the western church today.

By the 14th century, devotion to St. Ann was on the rise throughout Europe as the Black Death struck the continent and raged everywhere for over 150 years, wiping out almost 30 percent of its population. Families bore the brunt of the catastrophe as they tended their sick and cared for the healthy.

They needed models like Mary and Joseph, Ann and Joachim, who supported their child and grandchild. Mothers and grandmothers were particularly important for raising children.

When the plague ended, Europe’s population expanded dramatically in the late 15th and 16th centuries; new towns and cities sprang up everywhere and families were uprooted from places and people familiar to them. Families needed help to stay together and survive.

Faith suggested Mary and Joseph, Ann and Joachim as models to be imitated.  Images of the nursing Madonna and the caring grandparents became important sources of Christian inspiration.

Christians joined Confraternities of St. Ann, dedicated to caring for widows, orphans and families under stress. Images of Mary and Ann, nursing their children, playing with the Christ Child and/or John the Baptist were more than pious pictures; they had a social purpose as well.

One picture from this era, still popular today, portrays St. Ann teaching her little daughter how to read.  Sometimes the words on the book are words of scripture; sometimes they’re basic numbers or letters of the alphabet: 1,2,3,4-A,B,C.

Playing with children, teaching them the ABC’s, passing on the mysteries of God to them are vital actions. Simple as they may seem, they’re holy actions and they can make those who do them saints.

St. Cyril of Alexandria (d.444)

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To be a saint doesn’t mean you’re perfect, Pope Francis says in his exhortation “Gaudete et exsultate“, on holiness in today’s world. That’s good to remember when we consider St.Cyril of Alexandria, the 4th century bishop of Alexandria and doctor of the church, whose feast is today, June 26th.

If you read his online biography in Wikipedia–where many today look for information about saints – you’ll find that he was deeply involved in the messy partisan politics of his time, when Christians, Jews and pagans fought and schemed to control over Alexandria, the city then probably the most important city in the Roman empire. Some called him a “proud Pharaoh;” “ a monster” out to destroy the church, an impulsive, scheming bishop in a riotous city. The Wikipedia biography mainly sees him that way.

He was a saint, other biographies say. Why a saint? Well, Cyril was absorbed in understanding and defending the Incarnation of the Word of God. How did the Word of God come among us? Who was Jesus Christ? Pursuing that mystery defined Cyril during life. It was at the heart of things for him, and the voluminous collection of sermons, letters, commentaries and controversial essays he left bears out that interest.

He thought and wrote extensively about this mystery. The way he came to express it was used at the Council of Ephesus (431) and became the way we also express it in our prayers. Mary was the Mother of God. The One born of her was not simply another human being. Her Son was true God, who would be truly human and eventually die on the Cross. God “so loved the world” that he came among us as Mary’s Son.

What we see as “the totality” of Cyril’s life, his “life’s jouney”, the “overall meaning of his person”, to use the pope’s words, is not his involvement in the violent politics of his day. Yes, that was there. But his abiding quest was to know Jesus Christ.

“‘The Word was made flesh’ [John 1:14], can mean nothing else but that he became flesh and blood like ours; he made our body his own and came forth man from a woman, not casting off his existence as God, or his generation of God the Father, but in taking to himself flesh remaining what he was. 

“This is the correct faith proclaimed everywhere. The holy teachers taught this and so they called the holy Virgin, the Mother of God, not as if the nature of the Word or his divinity began from the holy Virgin, but because that holy body with a rational soul, to which the Word, personally united, was born of her according to the flesh.”

— St. Cyril of Alexandria, First Letter to Nestorius

“When poisonous pride swells up in you, turn to the Eucharist; and that Bread, which is your God humbling and disguising himself, will teach you humility. When the fever of selfish greed rages in you, feed on this Bread; and you will learn generosity. When you feel the itch of intemperance, nourish yourself with the Flesh and Blood of Christ, who practiced heroic self-control during His earthly life, and you will become temperate. When you are lazy and sluggish about spiritual things, strengthen yourself with this heavenly Food; and you will grow fervent. Lastly, when you feel scorched by the fever of impurity, go to the banquet of the Angels; and the spotless Flesh of Christ will make you pure and chaste.”

The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary: May 31

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Faith gives you life and calls you to a mission. That’s what it did for Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary believed in the message of an angel at Nazareth. She welcomed the Son of God to be born of her, and he brought life to her and to the world.

He gave her a mission, Luke’s gospel says today.  Mary set out “in haste” for the hill country of Judea to visit Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah, who also was with child. Mary has a mission.                                                                                                                        

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb.” The infant who would be John the Baptist, leaped for joy, the gospel says.

Both of these women had exceptional faith. Mary, the younger woman, accepted what the angel asks, even as she questions how it will take place and the meaning of it all.                                                                                                                                 

Elizabeth, the older woman, conceives with her husband, Zechariah. But she’s an old woman, pregnant with a child. However miraculous her pregnancy was, she must have felt fear and uncertainty for having a child in her old age. Like Mary, she must have asked, “How can this be?” “What does this all mean?”

Mary’s visit took those fears away from her. The child in Elizbeth’s womb leaped for joy. Elizabeth’s fears were turned into joy. Faith gives you life and sends you on a mission. Exceptional faith, in the case of Mary and Elizabeth led to exceptional missions. 

In spite of what some people think, faith is not a burden that cripples you. Faith is a gift that empowers you. It takes you beyond your dreams and what you hope for. 

“Blessed are you who believed,” Elizabeth says to Mary.

“You too, my people, are blessed,” comments St. Ambrose, “ you who have heard and who believe. Every soul that believes — that soul both conceives and gives birth to the Word of God and recognizes his works.

“Let the soul of Mary be in each one of you, to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Let the spirit of Mary be in each one of you, to rejoice in God. According to the flesh only one woman can be the mother of Christ, but in the world of faith Christ is the fruit of all of us.”

As with Mary so with us, faith gives life and sends us on a mission..

Her Station Keeping

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The candles at Tenebrae lead to another reflection. The 15 candles stand for Jesus, his twelve apostles and the two disciples from Emmaus. As 14 candles are extinquished, we remember those who left him on Good Friday and fled. 

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is not represented in the Tenebrae candles. She stood by his cross on Good Friday, but she is not among those our candles represent. Where did she go after his death and burial on Good Friday?  Where was she on Holy Saturday?

She was among the women of Galilee who came up to the feast with Jesus. It’s likely they stayed in Bethany, the traditional place pilgrims from Galilee stayed. She must have been welcomed by the friends of Jesus, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Did Lazarus, raised from the dead, offer her hope? Still, his death was so unlike that of her Son. He died of some sickness; Jesus was brutally put to death.  

Would Mary have the same questions of God as Martha had of Jesus? Why? This was a day the piercing sword foretold by Simeon the temple struck most deeply into her heart. This was a day her faith was so fiercely tried.

In our calendars, Saturday is a day we remember Mary. We remember her today and ask her to pray that we may believe in the promises of Christ.

At the cross her station keeping,                                            stood the mournful mother weeping,                                             close to Jesus till the last. 

Monday of Holy Week

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Readings

As Holy Week begins, today’s gospel brings us to  a meal in Bethany  honoring Jesus after the resurrection of Lazarus. Raising Lazarus from the dead is the great sign in John’s Gospel for understanding the death and resurrection of Jesus. Lazarus is a symbol of humanity God reaches to save through the death and resurrection of his Son. (John 12,1-11) This is a meal Jesus eats with “his own.” His last meal will be a Passover supper.

Martha serves the meal. Lazarus newly alive, is at the table. But the one drawing most attention is their sister Mary. Sensing what’s coming, she kneels before Jesus and anoints his feet with precious oil and dries them with her hair. “And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.”

The precious oil, signifying her love and gratitude, also anoints Jesus for his burial. Our gospel makes only a passing reference to evil:  Judas, “the one who would betray him,” complains that the anointing is a waste, but his voice is silenced. Believers honor the one they love.

Lazarus is the brother of us all who “sit in the shadow of death.” Mary represents us all.

An artist friend of mine painted this picture of Mary anointing Jesus. How fitting that Holy Week begins with this gospel when we’re called to follow Mary and kneel and pour out the oil of our love on him whose life was poured out for us.

The Anointing. Duk Soon Fwang

“May the holy cross of our good Jesus be ever planted in our hearts so that our souls may be grafted onto this tree of life and by the infinite merits of the death of the Author of life we may produce worthwhile fruits of penance.” (St. Paul of the Cross,Letter 11)

Let my prayer rise up before you like incense,
The raising of my hands like an evening offering. Ps 141
We thank you with Mary of Bethany for your love and your promise of life. May we love you in return and believe in your promise.

Morning and Evening Prayer here.

Children’s Prayers here.

Belief and Unbelief

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Mark’s gospel today describes the arrival of Mary his mother and some of his relatives from Nazareth. (Mark 3: 32-35) They’re outside a house crowded with people gathered around Jesus, some looking to be cured, some to listen to what he has to say. Jesus and his disciples don’t even have time to eat, Mark says.

His family come because they want to take him home; some think he is out of his mind . (Mark 3:20-21) When people tell him ‘Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you.’ Jesus said to them in reply, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking around at those seated in the circle he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’” (Mark 3: 32-35)

Jesus sees people of faith as his family, his mother, brother and sister. He considers us who believe in him his family. 

But we continue to ask: Why does his own family think he is out of his mind?

His mother Mary is with them. What does she think? 

The gospels, Matthew 13:54-58, Mark 6: 1-6, Luke 4:16-30 all point to Nazareth as a place where Jesus is rejected.  Luke’s gospel sees the rejection of Jesus at Nazareth in the harshest terms. They are ready to hurl him from the hill after the claims he makes in their synagogue. His visit to Nazareth is headed for violence, but a violence postponed, and no one takes his part. ( Luke 4:16-36 )

Mary lived there. What was it like for her?  What was it like to be with family members who thought her son was mad? What was it like to be day after day with people who didn’t believe in her son? No one from Nazareth is among the 12 disciples Jesus chooses. The rejection of Jesus by the people of his own town, his own family and relatives, was a sword that pierced her heart.

We might say Mary’s faith was strong and kept her secure, but was it a faith that knew everything? Did it save her from questioning?

I wonder if we can see Mary’s appearance at Lourdes and Fatima in some way related to her own experience at Nazareth. She appears in places when the faith of ordinary people is severely challenged by a world increasingly hostile to belief. 

She knows how to believe when everyone else does not. We welcome her today to be with us.

The Cross of Confusion: Mark 2:18-22

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Many followed Jesus in Galilee as he began his ministry, but a growing number found him hard to understand, Mark’s Gospel indicates.

Scribes come from Jerusalem and say he has a demon, the Pharisees begin to plot with the Herodians, the followers of Herod Antipas, about putting him to death. (Wednesday) When they hear about him in Nazareth, his relatives say, “No, he doesn’t have a demon. He may be out of his mind,” and they come to bring him home. (Saturday. 2nd week)

Besides the leading elite and people from his hometown, ordinary people begin to distance themselves too. They may be the people in Mark’s Gospel, (Monday) who question him “Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” (Mark 2, 18-22) Not only Jewish leaders and scholars, not only his own family and his hometown, but ordinary people of Galilee find him too much for them.

Jesus brought change, radical change, but change can be hard to accept. Jesus brought a new vision, a great vision, but vision can be hard to accept, especially if it seems delayed. Many who heard him weren’t ready for new wine, they preferred the old.

Commentators describe Mark’s gospel as a Passion Narrative with a prelude. In other words, Mark’s early stories predict the story of his Passion, Death and Resurrection. Jesus dies alone, forsaken by many ordinary people who flocked to him at first. Forsaken even by his friends.

Commentators also see Mark’s gospel written to help the Christians of Rome facing a surprising brutal persecution by Nero in the mid 60s. The persecution started by the arrest of Christian leaders, a usual step taken by Roman authorities when they dealt with the church, but this persecution seemed to strike at ordinary Christians as well. The senseless, arbitrary persecution left Rome’s Christians confused and wondering what this all meant. Mark’s account reminds his followers they must follow him without always understanding.

Confusion and lack of understanding are part of our world today, aren’t they? We are living in a time of rapid changes. For many, the old wine, the “old days” were clearer, better.

The Cross of Jesus may not come as hard wood and nails. According to Mark’s Gospel, it can come in today’s confusion and lack of understanding. A Cross hard to bear.

Now and at the Hour of our Death

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In the Hail Mary we ask Mary to pray for us sinners, “now and at the hour of our death.” These are the two most important moments in life. We have the past and the future, for sure, but they’re far less important than now and the hour of our death.

“Now” is the time we live in, the present moment. Whether it’s a time of joy or sorrow, a time of satisfaction or disappointment, a time of sickness or health, it’s the time we have to love, to give, to endure, to act, to live.

“The hour of death” is God’s time, when God brings us from this life to the next. It may be instantaneous or prolonged, but it’s the time when God who gave us life takes this life away.

Both of those moments benefit from faith. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was a believer who trusted in the power and presence of God through these same moments of life. They’re challenging moments.

After the angel left Mary in Nazareth, no other angel came; she walked by faith from the Child’s birth to the death and resurrection of her Son. As we face the mysteries of life, we ask her in our weakness to be with us as a believer and a mother, who knows the goodness and power of God as it is revealed in Jesus Christ her Son.

“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

Mary, Mother of Mercy

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“Hail Holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope.” Why is Mary called “mother of mercy?” First of all, because she knew she had received the mercy of God which, like the oil poured on kings and priests, gave her power “to fulfill what is beyond human capabilities.” (Anthony Bloom)

Her cousin Elizabeth declared her “blessed among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
Mary’s responded: ‘The Lord who is mighty has done great things to me, holy is his name.” She knew God’s mercy was a work in her to restore the human race. (Luke 1, 43-48)

How, then, was Mary merciful? How did she do what Jesus taught “Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful?” How did she live a merciful life? How did she do those works of mercy that tradition ascribes to the merciful person:
• Feed the hungry
• Give drink to the thirsty
• Clothe the naked
• Shelter the homeless
• Visit the sick
• Visit the imprisoned
• Bury the dead

• Admonish the sinner
• Instruct the ignorant
Comfort the sorrowful
Bear wrongs patiently
• Forgive all injuries
• Pray for the living and the dead

The scriptures say hardly anything about her. “Do whatever he tells you.” she says at the marriage feast of Cana. She had no teaching of her own, but always  points  to the teaching of her Son. The mystery of the Incarnation says that  Jesus took his human nature from Mary, his mother. Can we say he who became like us became like her and Joseph, the man who raised him as a child and into his adult years? From Jesus we can tell what Mary was like, a woman of mercy, and her first school was Nazareth. Now she is a teacher in the church.

Mary, Mother of Jesus, Mother of God

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Mary is an important figure in the events of Advent and Christmas Time. The angel visits her at Nazareth, she visits  her cousin Elizabeth, the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, the coming of the Magi, the flight into Egypt, the presentation of the Child Jesus in the temple, the finding of the Child Jesus in the temple after his loss for three days. All events in Luke and Matthew’s gospels where Mary has a role.

We remember her especially on her feast during Christmas time:  the Feast of Mary, the Mother of God. (January 1st)

Because they focus on Jesus, the gospel writers touch lightly on Mary, but she is an important witness to his humanity and divinity just the same. “For us and our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.” (Creed)

Through her, the Christmas liturgy reminds us, Jesus took “a body truly like our own.” (Collect, Monday of Christmas Time) Jesus “accepted from Mary the frailty of our flesh.” (Collect, Monday of Christmas Time) She’s the way the Word became flesh.  The First Letter of John, read in Christmas Time, calls this a fundamental truth of faith.

By taking a body “truly like our own” and accepting “from Mary the frailty of our flesh,” Jesus humbled himself, assuming the limitations that come from being human. Mary is his way, giving him birth, nursing him as a infant and raising him as a child.

“Can anything good come from Nazareth?” For 30 years Jesus led a silent hidden life in that small town in Galilee, and Mary was his mother. “I confess I did not recognize him,” John the Baptist says twice when Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptized. (John 1,29-34) His own in Nazareth did not recognize him either.

He went unrecognized, and so did Mary, who shared his hidden life. She performed no miracles, did not publically teach; no angel came again after the first announcement to her.

We can pass over the Hidden Life that Jesus embraced too quickly, even though the Christmas mystery invites us to keep it in mind. We forget that to be transformed into glory means accepting “the frailty of our flesh,” which Jesus did.

“…though invisible in his divine nature, he has appeared visibly in ours;
and begotten before all ages, he has begun to exist in time;
so that, raising up in himself all that was cast down,
he might restore unity to all creation
and call straying humanity back to the heavenly kingdom.”
(Preface II of the Nativity)

St. Mary Major is the main church in Rome dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God. You can visit it in the video above. It was built in the 5th century to honor Mary’s role as witness to his divine and human natures. The church is also called “Bethlehem in Rome” because many of the Christmas mysteries were first celebrated there; relics from Bethlehem were brought there after the Moslem invasion in the 8th century.

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The great mosaic of Mary in heaven crowned by Jesus, her Son, stands over the altar in the church as its focal point. Companion in his hidden life, she was raised up by her Son, who was human and divine,  through the mystery of his resurrection.