Today’s another First Saturday. We have on-going First Saturdays up in the parish church. Mass at 9:00 AM, which has an opportunity for going to Holy Communion, of course. There’s preaching for a good 15 minutes by which to accompany Mary, meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary. Today will be all about the Visitation, which is the liturgical feast day in the TLM calendar. We also have a recitation of the Rosary and Confessions.
The flowers in this post were picked the other week at the friend’s house, you know, the one of altar rail and church sign, and bacon fame. I put up these all-purple flowers for Mary because of the royal significance. Purple dye back in the day was so very rare and so very expensive that it was reserved for kings. But Mary carried the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the Prince of the Most Profound Peace in her womb, just a few cells in size, as she visited her cousin Elizabeth, both she and John in her womb being sanctified by the Holy Spirit upon Mary’s greeting, Jesus with her.
Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi exclaimed with great enthusiasm:
- “Now the only-begotten Son of God embraced us in His infinite knowledge and undying love even before the world began. And that He might give a visible and exceedingly beautiful expression to this love, He assumed our nature in hypostatic union: hence – as Maximus of Turin with a certain unaffected simplicity remarks – “in Christ our own flesh loves us.” But the knowledge and love of our Divine Redeemer, of which we were the object from the first moment of His Incarnation, exceed all that the human intellect can hope to grasp. For hardly was He conceived in the womb of the Mother of God, when He began to enjoy the Beatific Vision, and in that vision all the members of His Mystical Body were continually and unceasingly present to Him, and He embraced them with His redeeming love. O marvelous condescension of divine love for us! O inestimable dispensation of boundless charity! In the crib, on the Cross, in the unending glory of the Father, Christ has all the members of the Church present before Him and united to Him in a much clearer and more loving manner than that of a mother who clasps her child to her breast, or than that with which a man knows and loves himself.
That’s true majesty. It’s good for us to take that in as we continue to celebrate the reversal of Roe v Wade by the Supreme Court. After all, Jesus said, what you’ve done to the least of these you’ve done to me.
You knew the whole drama of this visitation of God-with-us to get us out of this hell and off to heaven, Mary. Majestic flowers for you.
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 
For me, the 2nd Joyful Mystery brings Eucharistic Adoration and the pre-born Church to mind. The Apostle John represented us under the Cross when the Church was brought to birth but Elizabeth and her unborn son – the other, earlier John – represented us at the first recognition of His Real Presence. Today we can visit Him housed in the tabernacle of our parish churches because Our Lady brought Him to us. She was His 1st tabernacle, Our Lord housed in her womb when she visited Saint Elizabeth occasioning a mini pre-pentecost: “No sooner had Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, than the child leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth herself was filled with the Holy Ghost”. I imagine Saint Elizabeth then fell to her knees before Our Lord when she exclaimed of her cousin, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb”, asking “How have I deserved to be thus visited by the mother of my Lord?”. And so was acknowledged and confirmed that His Real Presence among man had begun.
As a small child I was taught to greet Our Lord in the tabernacle with the words “my Lord and my God” said silently when genuflecting upon entering a Catholic church, then later a priest taught us to say the same at the Consecration; and St Elizabeth’s words are part and beginning of it all. Eventually came the time when I could no longer genuflect and kneel, and in the end could no longer even get to church but there is the daily Rosary and St Elizabeth to remind me that God is present with us on earth no matter what.
I’m back from my own Visitation during this 4th of July with friends. I confirm that you were with me, in every way that matters, at the First Saturday Devotions. What a Joy Confession was to me. How sweet the penance, and how consoling the time spent with Our Lady.
Our Lady knows that I am, only now, fulfilling this wish of hers because of you, Aussie Mum, and not because of any holiness on my part. No, I am just doing what I am supposed to do, despite being an unprofitable servant.
I am slowly becoming less of a sinner. Thanks be to God!
One more to go. But not the last time, God willing.
Oh 007, it means more than I can express that you, my brother (or sister?) in Christ, have made it possible for me to make the Five 1st Saturdays in the only way still possible and “in every way that matters”, and My heart is brimming with joy for the grace being given both of us. God bless you.
I am truly your brother, in Christ.
There is a scene in a TV show called “Friends” where one expectant father is upset that the others know the sex of his child while he does not – and wishes them to keep it a secret from him. His sister exclaims:
Monica: I’m going to be an Aunt!
To which the simple, Joey, quickly adds:
Joey: “Or Uncle…”
🙂