The Feast of the Visitation
A blessed feast of the Visitation to all our readers, wherein we recall the meeting of no less than four chosen souls: Our Lady, Saint Elizabeth, and their respective yet-to-be-born children, the newly-conceived Son of the Most High, and Saint John the Baptist, six months along. One divine Person, and three human persons who were all saints, and one of them the Mother of the Divine Person, in His human nature. Quite the epochal event, if hidden from the world’s eyes.
The commemoration of this feast goes back to the Middle Ages, when it was originally celebrated on July 2nd, the octave after the Birth of Saint John the Baptist on June 24th. The feast of the Messiah’s precursor has been largely secularized, if not entirely forgotten – in Quebec it is now la Fete Nationale, the Catholic roots of la belle province all but withered, but still with some life. The liturgical revision after Vatican II in 1969 moved the feast to this last day of May, between the Annunciation (March 25th) and the Baptist’s birth, to harmonize more fittingly with the Gospel story.
The meeting of Mary and Elizabeth and their yet-to-be-born children, the six-month old John the Precursor who would prepare the way for Christ’s coming, is a poignant one for our age. With motherhood degraded, if not derided, unborn children expendable, not even considered ‘persons’, their lives dependent upon the whim – ‘choice’ in our euphemistic language – of the mother. But how can non-persons ‘leap for joy’? And if they can feel joy, so too sorrow and pain.
We need to recapture such joy, and hope, in motherhood, in children, in families, the very foundation of society. Elizabeth describes Mary as ‘blessed’ – makaroi in Greek, the term the pagans used for the ‘happiness of the gods’, but taken up by Christ in the beatitudes to mean the happiness of God Himself, offered to each one of us, if we but repeat with Mary, fiat be it done unto me according to Thy word. No wonder John, the first Evangelist, jumped for joy.
This feast also quite appropriately closes off the month of Mary, as we beseech her intercession. As Pope John Paul II declares in his commemorative homily in the first year of his pontificate:
But what is the mysterious, hidden source of this joy? It is Jesus, whom Mary has already conceived thanks to the Holy Spirit, and who is already beginning to defeat what is the root of fear, anguish and sadness: sin, the most humiliating slavery for man.
So, with the Mother, may our souls too ‘magnify the Lord, and rejoice in the Lord, our Saviour.’
Carney’s Amoral Majority
After five defections – euphemistically described as ‘crossing the floor’ – and three by-elections, Mark Carney and his Liberals how have their coveted majority. One wonders what bowls of pottage were offered in back-room deals. In the archaic monarchical system that is the Dominion of Canada, this majority allows the newly-minted Prime Minister to rule[…]Continue reading→
Saint Kateri , Canada’s Protectress
This was the title given to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, by Pope Benedict XVI, when he canonized her on October 28th, 2012, along with six others, in Saint Peter’ Square (she had been beatified by Pope John Paul II back in 1980). With Saint Joseph as our protector, along with the Canadian martyrs, we seem to[…]Continue reading→
A Tale of Two Benedicts
A grace-filled Holy Week to all our readers! As we await and prepare for the Resurrection about to dawn upon us, we might keep in mind two Benedicts: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, requiescat in pace, elected on this day in 2005; and today’s commemoration of the mystic pilgrim, Benedict Joseph Labre, who died on this[…]Continue reading→
My Name is Bernadette
April 16th is a propitious day, for besides the anniversary of Father de Valk’s death, who founded Catholic Insight in its print form decades ago, and the commemoration of the ‘two Benedicts’, mentioned in accompanying posts, today we also recall Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the young visionary to whom the Virgin Mary appeared numerous times at[…]Continue reading→
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam and Suffering Joyfully
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam (1380 – 1433) was one of the countless and glorious ‘victim souls’ in the history of the Church, those whose lives are filled with suffering, often of an unimaginable intensity, but who suffer joyfully. She was a fifteen-year old Dutch girl, out skating one day, when she fell and broke one[…]Continue reading→
The Glorious Martyrdoms of Martin and Maximus
As we enter into Eastertide, we recall on this 13th of April Pope Saint Martin I (+655), one of the noblest, if most tragic, of the successors of Saint Peter. Born in Umbria, Italy, he was of noble lineage, with great intelligence combined with charity and love of the poor and the Church. While still[…]Continue reading→
Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów
We celebrate Saint Stanislaus today (+ April 11, 1079), in light of this Easter Octave, a bishop and martyr who accepted the episcopacy only at the direct order of Pope Alexander II. He proved a wise and courageous leader of his flock, put to death by his own king, Boleslaus, for rebuking the monarch’s ‘immoral[…]Continue reading→
Saint Gemma Galgani
On this April 11th, in 1903 – the same year that the Italian Guiseppe Sarto was elected Pope later that summer as Pius X – a lovely, young Italian woman died, by the name of Gemma Galgani. She lived a brief life of 24 years, as did a number of other young saints, including Pier[…]Continue reading→
An Ideological and Improper Translation
I noticed something odd with the psalm reading at Mass the other day. Our bishops’ conference here in Canada has decreed that the Mass in English – Novus Ordo – use the ‘NRSV’, the ‘New Revised Standard Version’, an ‘updated’ translation of the original RSV, first published in 1952. This ‘new translation’ has the tendency[…]Continue reading→
Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle: A Teacher for Teachers
Jean-Baptiste de la Salle (1651 – 1719), a French nobleman, ordained a priest, founded the first order in the Church’s history entirely without priests, and this came about almost by accident. I say ‘almost’, for, of course, there are no accidents with God. Destined for ordination from an early age, Jean-Baptiste never looked back, even[…]Continue reading→