SPECIAL TO JCE : An Abiding Anchor -
A friend and I stopped to have a conversation one night after I finished teaching the RCIA class at my parish. We talked about how wonderfully made children with special needs are; how important they are to remind an ever calloused society what it means to sacrifice and love with a tenderness that can only come from caring for the most basic needs of another. She mentioned a young man and his family with whom she had become very close."People are afraid to engage him," she noted sadly, "they just don't know what to say."
Having a child with special needs, I understood her statement as fact. People are indeed afraid to engage because they fear the unknown, they fear offending, they are simply afraid of being uncomfortable and exposed.
"How did you overcome this obstacle?" I inquired.
"I got to know the son, by getting to know his mother," she beamed.
I looked her square in the eye and smiled knowingly.
She appeared momentarily perplexed, and then realized what she had said. In one sentence, she was given the grace, through a seemingly unrelated conversation, to understand Marian devotion!
He writes:
We fasten our souls to Your hope, as to an abiding anchor. It is to Her that the saints who have saved themselves have been the most attached and have done their best to attach others, in order to persevere in virtue. Happy, then, a thousand times happy, are the Christians who are now fastened faithfully and entirely to Her, as to a firm anchor! (Treatise on True Devotion, n. 175).Tethering our souls to the most perfected human creation -- Mary -- the woman so blessed as to be chosen, and then respected by God in her free choice to carry the the Son of God, will offer us graces beyond measure. She was the first to know God intimately, to contemplate the living God from within. Hers is an experience unlike any other, an experience from which we can gain both grace and wisdom.
Confidently, we should pursue a relationship with Jesus by getting to know His Mother. She will bring to light things about her Son that could be found no where else. And, with the establishment of that abiding relationship with the Mother of God, devotion to Jesus, The Holy Trinity, Mother Church, and all things holy will increase exponentially.
Created by Casimir Valla, a devotee who made his Consecration to Jesus through Mary more than two decades ago, his site had a title that should ring familiar: True Devotion to Mary, the Mother of God. But, this website is anything but ordinary. Truly unique in its purpose, it was designed to promote and help foster Marian devotion by making available works never before translated into English.
The books are not only valuable on a personal level to deepen ones own spiritual devotion, but are magnificent resources through which to share the devotion with others. Perhaps as the season of Advent draws nearer, these books might be a source of inspiration to you or to someone you love, deepening the understanding of who Mary is as the Mother of God, and our Mother, while also increasing appreciation for the Incarnation and birth of Our Savior.
For more information and to order your own copies, please visit:
"We never give more honor to Jesus than when we honor his Mother, and we honor her simply and solely to honor Him all the more perfectly. We go to her only as a way leading to the goal we seek - Jesus, her Son."--Saint Louis de Montfort
BY:
Kathy DiNovis Vestermark
Catholic wife and mother - MA in Theology - Catechetical Diploma.Catholic Distance University
Faculty Member, Student Life Coordinator at Catholic Distance University · Jul 2011 to present
Comments