The Transfiguration of Our Lord

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
6th August 2017

Mary, Mother of Mercy by Rev. Fr. Raymond O.C.S.O.

Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Octobri Mense, wrote: "How great are the goodness and mercy revealed in this design of God! What a boon to the frailty of man! We believe in the infinite goodness of the Most High, and we rejoice in it; we believe also in His justice, and we fear it. We adore the beloved Saviour who generously gave His blood; but at the same time we dread the inexorable judge. Thus do those whose actions have disturbed their consciences need an intercessor mighty in favour with God, merciful enough not to reject the cause of the desperate, merciful enough to lift up again toward hope in the divine mercy the afflicted and the broken. Mary is this glorious intermediary. She is the mighty Mother of God. But - what is still sweeter - she is gentle, exquisite in tenderness, and of a limitless love and kindness. As such God gave her to us".

That this Mother of Divine Grace is Mother of Mercy Leo teaches in the very next lines: "Having chosen her for the mother of His only-begotten Son, He taught her all a mother's feeling that breathes nothing but pardon and love. Such Christ desired she should be, for He consented to be subject to Mary and to obey her as a son a mother. And such He proclaimed her from the Cross when He entrusted to her care and love the whole race of man in the person of His disciple John. As such, finally, does she prove herself by her courage in gathering the heritage of the enormous labours of her Son, and in accepting the charge of her Son, and in accepting the charge of her maternal duties toward us all".

In another encyclical, Magnae Dei Matris (The Mighty Mother of God), this same Pope wrote: "When we have recourse to Mary in prayer, we are having recourse to the Mother of Mercy, who is so well disposed toward us that, whatever the necessity that presses upon us, especially in attaining eternal life, she is instantly at our side, even though she has not been invoked. She dispenses grace with a generous hand from that treasure with which from the beginning she was divinely endowed in fullest abundance that she might be worthy to be the Mother of God. By the fullness of grace which confers on her the most illustrious of her many titles, the Blessed Virgin is infinitely superior to all the hierarchies of men and Angels, the one creature who is closest of all to Christ. 'It is a great thing in any Saint to have grace sufficient for the salvation of many souls; but to have enough for the salvation of everybody in the world is the greatest of all; and this is found in Christ and in the Blessed Virgin'".