The beginning of the Jubilee Year of Mercy has joyfully sunk into my average Catholic mind. Pope Francis declared the Jubilee Year of Mercy to start Dec. 8, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, and it will extend until Nov. 20, 2016, Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the liturgical year.
Watching Pope Francis opening the Holy Door at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, to kick off this grace-filled moment in Church history, made me realize how blessed we Catholics are. To be able to receive the richness of the Father's mercy through Holy Mother Church this Jubilee Year is truly a very special grace.
However, in the next few lines, I want to talk about our other Mother: the Mother of Jesus, the Mother of the Church and the Mother of Mercy.
After he concluded Mass for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the opening of the Holy Door at St. Peter's Basilica Dec. 8, Pope Francis made his way through the heart of the Eternal City to venerate a statue of the Immaculate Conception at the famous Piazza di Spagna.
"Gazing toward you, our Immaculate Mother, we recognize the victory of divine mercy over sin and over all its consequences," the pope said at the feet of Our Lady's statue. "May it reignite in us the hope of a better life, free from slavery, resentments and fear."
Intellectually, I quickly grasped the symbolism behind choosing the Immaculate Conception of Mary as the beginning of the Year of Mercy. Mary, by her Immaculate Conception, was the first person redeemed by Christ's Passion, death, Resurrection and Ascension into heaven. In anticipation of Christ's victory over sin and death, Mary from the very beginning was kept from any stain of original sin.
But mercy is a matter of the heart, I believe. Mary is not only the Mother of Mercy, she is the door that leads to the Heart of her Son Jesus, the Fountain of Infinite Mercy. Part of the pope's Jubilee Year of Mercy prayer reads, "(Lord Jesus Christ) You are the visible face of the invisible Father." Because of the intimate union of the two Hearts, Mary's Immaculate Heart is the perfect mirror of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the visible Heart of the invisible God Himself.
We know that Mary was 'full of grace' from the moment of her conception. Jesus says in the Gospels, "Much will be required of the person entrusted with much," (Lk. 12:48). For that reason, her Heart also shared to capacity the sufferings that Jesus endured during His life, especially during His Passion, when Our Lord preached His greatest sermon from the Cross. We read in the Gospels that Mary stood by the foot of the Cross while her Son was dying, a suffering that had been foretold by Simeon during the presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple, "(And you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed," (Lk 2:35).
We know in our hearts the need to receive God's mercy. And His mercy needs to be experienced in our hearts before we can extend it to "those who trespass against us."
Our Mother of Mercy is the quickest and safest way to get to the Heart of Jesus.
Let us pray that we will take advantage of this great Jubilee Year of Mercy and receive abundant mercy from the Father of Mercies in the coming months. At the same time, let's be missionaries of mercy to those around us. Let's take refuge in the Immaculate Heart of Mary this year, and ask Mary to lead us to her Son, and obtain for us His mercy and love.
Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope...
Rico De Silva is the Hispanic Communications Reporter for the Catholic News Herald.
I've always liked Emily Dickinson's definition of hope as "the thing with feathers that perches in the soul." Have you ever walked a wooded path and in the surrounding silence suddenly sensed the thump of wings as if they were right upon you, or even emanating from you?
And it occurs a mere second before you see some large fowl sweeping off above you, some hawk or huge owl making its way further up the path. It's an almost enchanted moment, a signal from another world. Those wings and their might make something known before the other senses take over. Perhaps this near mystical type of experience can be closely identified with hope. It is more than anticipation; it is, rather, the first part of a continuing action. But before full flight the creature with wings doesn't just sit. It readies itself – that is, it perches.
Is this too poetic a version of Advent? After all, the season calls us to penance just like Lent, except with different images and expectations. If I think about it, though, I'm not so sure there can be too poetic a version of Advent. I've never viewed penance as self-flagellation, but instead as some kind of discipline leading to right or corrected direction, to getting back on the path.
In this penitential Advent season, all we are doing is riding with Joseph and Mary along the rough path to Bethlehem.
Fathers: Remember the last days of your wife's pregnancy? Recall the worry in the deepest places of your heart about how you were going to feed, clothe, educate and care for the child to come?
Don't forget to call to mind that the Blessed Mother was, on that rough road, a tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament – and His Presence lit up the night. That's our Advent. The journey of the Holy Family is our journey – the growing sense that something takes flight in human history, in the history of each of our souls.
To those of you new to the liturgical seasons of the Church, explore the devotions, deepen your prayer life, and cultivate some of the lovely traditions of the holidays as we anticipate the event that changed the world. If you are new to the Catholic faith, you will see that Bethlehem is getting ready to be ubiquitous for us, hopefully as pervasive as the secular season's rampant consumerism and denial even of the Name of Christ. You will see it in the liturgical readings, where we hear of St. John the Baptist, a "voice crying in the wilderness," telling us that our "...winding ways will be made straight and the rough roads made smooth," and St. Paul telling us that the Lord is near and to make our requests known to Him.
You will see Bethlehem in the Advent wreaths that symbolize victory and the candles within them that, when lit, remind us all of the glory of the Christ Child's birth. And you'll see it in the Advent calendars and the accompanying prayers and the opening of the windows of our souls. While frenetic Black Fridays abound in stores and cyberspace, our Christ Child awaits patiently in another room, for a little while apart from the intricately carved and painted Mary and Joseph and the glued manger and the animated shepherds and the cloth snow and the painted wooden star.
And we wait in this season of Advent, for the children to hold Him delicately and bring Him to His manger of straw on Nochebuena or on the morning of His birth. And we wait in this season of Advent for the sorrow for our sins to turn to joy. And we wait, in this most beautiful of seasons, for the Christ Child to come once again in perpetual innocence and love and wonder. And we feel Him, peaceful and sure winged, perching in our souls.
Fred Gallagher is an author, book editor and former addictions counselor. He and his wife Kim are members of St. Patrick Cathedral in Charlotte.
Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune – without the words,
And never stops at all,And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.— Emily Dickenson