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 Celebration of Our Lady of Czestochowa Feast
Sunday, August 28th
Holy Mass at 12:30 PM, Procession at 3:30 PM
Uroczysto¶ć Matki Bożej Częstochowskiej
Niedziela, 28 sierpnia 2011 roku
Msza ¶w. o godz. 12.30 pm, uroczysta procesja o godz. 3.30 pm
prowadzona przez Kardynała Adama Maide
The everyday, practical norm for Marian Devotion within the Church is Our Blessed Lady's directive to the waiters at the wedding feast in Cana in Galilee: "Do whatever He tells you."(Jn.2:5). All Marian devotion is Christocentric; it points toward JESUS. A quick rehearsal of all the references to Our Lady in the New Testament brings out this quite clearly. For Mary is never referred to in the Scriptures without at least an implicit reference to her divine Son.
At the Annunciation, Mary is asked to be Jesus' mother (Lk.1:26-38). St. Matthew's mention of her in his genealogy is immediately followed by the phrase "of whom was born Jesus" (1:16). The account of the Visitation is narrated within the context of the Christ-event. Luke's incomparable Christmas scene focuses directly not on Mary, but on the newborn Christ. So, too, Luke's record of Our Lady's pilgrimage to the Temple. Again, Mary's anxiety over the Christ Child's being lost is retold not from Mary's viewpoint per se, but from the aspect of a mystery involving Jesus and his mission.
Even St. Luke's few sentences about Mary's home life at Nazareth are related to her Divine Son. At Cana, Mary asks Jesus to perform his first recorded miracle. Again, Christ is with Mary during the visit to Capernaum. When St. Matthew interrupts his narrative to mention Our Lady during Christ's public ministry, he is recalling an incident pertaining directly to Christ. And the final glimpse we have of Mary before the Resurrection is as the Madonna beneath the Cross of Jesus.
How Marian devotion must be essentially Christocentric can be seen in what is one of the Church's principal nonliturgical prayers; namely the Rosary. If one really thinks carefully about it, one sooner or later must come to the conclusion that the Rosary is addressed directly not the Virgin, BUT TO CHRIST. The Rosary is a series of meditations, accompanied by vocal prayers, on the Christ event; MARY STANDS IN THE BACKGROUND. The Church, incidentally, can only preach about Mary what it reads in revelation. The most obvious datum it finds in the Bible is that Mary is truly Mother of the Lord. This is the same as saying that Mary is the Mother of God; so the Council of Ephesus declared in 431. Thus, the very first truth one should recall regarding
Our Lady is that she is not just another woman. On the contrary, SHE, of all women, was chosen to be the mother of the Word made Flesh. But, what does this mean, actually? If you and I read the most pertinent Marian texts -in Luke and Matthew- we find that they do not overly emphasize Our Lady's physical maternity. The scriptural emphasis is on Mary's consent, by which the Eternal Word became incarnate within her. Motherhood is not simply a physical state. It entails a deep
mystery; one which implies a free, personal commitment on the part of a woman. In Mary's
case, her consent bound her; physically and spiritually, in the closest way possible to the
Eternal Word of God, Jesus Incarnate, the Savior of all humankind.
So, when you see pictures of Our Lady such as Our Lady of Czestochowa, look well at her
hands and find where they are pointing...not to herself, but to her Son. Allowing us to
recognize Mary's power to intercede for us as we pilgrimage through our lives to and before
God the Father.
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