Honoring Our Lady
GET INVESTED IN THE SCAPULAR
If you have not been invested in the scapular, Mary's month is a good time to do it. A scapular is an outward symbol of your consecration to the Blessed Mother, that you wear daily underneath your clothes.
The original and most common scapular is the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel which has special prayers and graces associated with it, namely the famous "Scapular Promise" that those who die wearing Our Lady's scapular will not spend eternity in hell. Most scapulars come with the proper prayer for investment (or enrollment) that the priest prays for you while blessing the scapular.
1. Consecration. The first gesture we should do every morning is prayer—a prayer of consecration to Jesus through the Immaculate heart of Mary. Start off the day right through Mary! St. Teresa of Calcutta moved by great love for Mary said: “Mary, give me your heart: so beautiful, so pure so immaculate; your Heart so full of love and humility that I May be able to receive Jesus in the Bread of Life and love Him as you love Him and serve Him in the distressing guise of the poor.”
2. Angelus/Regina Caeli. Traditionally this prayer is prayed at noon, but it came be prayed at any time. Why not pray it three times a day—at 9:00- a.m., 12 noon and 6:00 p.m. By doing this we will be sanctifying the morning hours, the afternoon hours, and the evening hours of our day. These Marian prayers call to mind Mary’s key presence in the Mysteries of our salvation—The Incarnation, Passion, death and Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Cure of Ars, St. John Vianney reminds us of the constant presence and action of Mary in our lives: “Only after the Last Judgment will Mary get any rest; from now until then, she is too busy with her children. To serve the Queen of Heaven is to reign there, and to live under her commands is more than to govern.”
3. Consecrate the Home and Family to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Prepare for the consecration by a nine-day Rosary novena.
4. Consecration of the Self. Go through the formal process of consecration of your whole begin of Jesus through Mary. You can choose various forms: Kolbe, or St. Louis de Montfort, or the modern one done by Father Michael Gaitely—”33 days to the morning glory”. If you have already done it then you can renew the consecration yearly and go deeper into the infinite reservoir of the love of God through Our Lady
5. Imitate Mary. If we truly love somebody, then we want to get to know them better, follow them more closely and finally to imitate their good qualities that we call virtues. St. Louis de Montfort in his classic “True Devotion to Mary” gives us a list of the ten principal virtues of Mary. Her deep humility, lively faith, perfect obedience, unceasing prayer, constant self-denial, purity, ardent love, heroic patience, angelic kindness, and heavenly wisdom.
6. Temptations: Call on Mary. Our life is a constant combat zone, until death. We should not fight alone against the devil, the flesh and the world. Rather, in the heat of temptation, when all seems to be lost call upon the Holy Name of Mary. As St. Bonaventure asserts: “Men do not fear a powerful hostile army as the powers of hell fear the name and protection of Mary.”
7. Mary and the Liturgical Year. Get to know the powerful presence of Mary in the Mystical Body of Christ which is the Church. Especially get to know Mary’s presence in the Liturgical Year—the Masses. The end purpose of Holy Mass is to praise and worship God the Father, through the offering of God the Son and through the power of the Holy Spirit. However Mary has a special place in the Liturgical Year. Mary is the Mother of God, the Mother of the Church and she is our Mother in the order of grace.
8. Reading on Mary. Read the Apostolic Letter of Saint John Paul II “Blessed Virgin Mary and the Rosary”. This spiritual gem combines both solid catholic doctrine (Mariology) with a tender love and devotion to Mary. The saintly Pope exhorts the entire world to contemplate the face of Jesus through the eyes and heart of Mary.” Mary is the quickest, shortest, easiest and most efficacious path to Jesus.
9. Marian Apostle. One of the most famous modern Marian saints is Saint Maximilian Kolbe and one of the apostolic methods that Kolbe used was to spread devotion to the Immaculata by means of the Miraculous Medal (Medal of the Immaculate Conception). He called these “spiritual bullets”. This Marian saint asserted with conviction: “The Immaculate alone has from God the promise of victory over Satan. She seeks souls that will consecrate themselves entirely to her, that will become in her hands forceful instruments for the defeat of Satan and the spread of God’s kingdom.”
10. The Most Holy Rosary. In Fatima Our Lady appeared six times to the Shepherd children—Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. In each and every apparition Our Lady insisted upon the praying of the most Holy Rosary. St. John Paul II in his writings on the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Rosary asked that the whole world pray the Holy Rosary for the salvation of the family and for world peace. The famous Rosary priest, Father Patrick Peyton put it concisely: “The family that prays together stays together” … and “A world at prayer is a world at peace. If done the family will be saved and there will be peace that the human heart so longs for.