Consecration Aids: 12: Stabat Mater
Fr. Christopher Lee, SMM
W hat I like about this True Devotion business is that I’m forever discovering something new – at least so far as my spiritual life is concerned. One such “discovery” is Mary’s active role in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I must confess that when I first entered upon Holy Slavery, I couldn’t for the life of me see how I would apply True Devotion in my daily attendance at Mass. Today – several years later – I still wonder how I could have been so stolidly stupid. But, I suppose it’s just another one of those things that God hides from the “wise and the prudent of this world, ” and which He reveals only to the “little ones.”
If that is so, then I can vouch that Our Lady has made of me a “little one.” Yes – one of the first things she has taught me in this Slavery of love is that she is there, taking an active part in each Mass. The “discovery” came about this way.
I was meditating one day upon these words of my True Devotion: “By this practice, faithfully observed, you will give Jesus more glory in a month than by any other practice, however difficult , in many years.” One of the reasons de Montfort gives is: “Because, doing your actions by Our Blessed Lady, as this practice teaches you, you abandon your own intentions and operations, although good and known, to lose yourself, so to speak, in the intentions of the Blessed Virgin, although they are unknown.” (No. 222)
That may be true for many actions, many practices of devotion, I thought, but surely not for the holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is, as every informed Catholic knows (and I was one of them of course!) the central act of worship in the Catholic Church. Certainly, I said to myself, Fr. de Montfort never intended Holy Slavery to interfere with the holy Sacrifice of the Mass. (Note the chord “interfere.” That’s how little I then knew of the intimate relation between the two! But more on that latter!)
In a word, I couldn’t see how we could associate ourselves and “abandon our intentions” for those of Mary in a Sacrifice that tended to unite us so intimately with Christ. (Again note that I was still under the illusion that union with Mary does not lead to union with Christ!)
Still, there was no getting away from it: Fr. de Montfort made no exceptions. Besides, I reflected, if he did make an exception for our assistance at Mass, then surely this Holy Slavery stuff would be of little value. After all, isn’t the Mass the central and most important act of Christian worship around which all other acts of piety and devotion should gravitate? If, therefore, Holy Slavery, or union with Mary, does not lead us to union with Christ in His august Sacrifice, then …
It was at this point that a new dawn began to break on the spiritual horizon of my soul. The scales fell from my eyes and I was brought face to face with this inescapable reality: nowhere are Jesus and Mary more intimately united, more inseparably associated than in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And the reason is simple: the Mass is nothing else but Calvary renewed on our altars.
Now, if it was God’s will that Mary should stand by The Cross of her divine Son, when that first Mass was observed on Good Friday; if it was His will that she should offer up with Jesus – in her own subordinate way of course – the same Sacrifice, then what right have I to think that she isn’t there, at every Mass?
Doesn’t St. Louis de Montfort say that Our Lord wished Mary to be present on Calvary “in order that He might make with her but one same sacrifice; and be immolated to the Eternal Father by her consent?” Doesn’t he say also that it was she who “nourished Him, supported Him, brought Him up and then sacrificed Him for us?” In a word, if Mary’s role on Calvary was a secondary sacrificial role, if she is the Co-Redemptrix of mankind, then how can I be so blind as not to see her playing the same role in every Mass!
Author: Fr. Christopher Lee, SMM
This is the twelfth in a series of articles covering Consecration Aids.
It now struck me that every time a priest mounts the altar steps, Christ mounts Calvary, and Mary, His Mother, stands by His side to offer up the same Sacrifice. Without having to leave her heavenly throne, where she now reigns as Queen of all the saints, Mary is able to stand by The Cross of her Son and renew the offering she once made on Calvary, namely, that of her divine Son to His heavenly Father.
Besides, I recalled, didn’t Saint Pope Pius X [a member of The Association of Mary, Queen of All Hearts] say that “by this community of pain and will between Christ and Mary, she merited to become in a most worthy manner the reparatrix of the lost world”? Now, I asked myself, has this ”community of pain and will” between Christ and Mary ceased to exist now that Calvary’s bloody sacrifice has been offered? or is it not renewed in every Mass?
It now struck me that every time a priest mounts the altar steps, Christ mounts Calvary, and Mary, His Mother, stands by His side to offer up the same Sacrifice. Without having to leave her heavenly throne, where she now reigns as Queen of all the saints, Mary is able to stand by The Cross of her Son and renew the offering she once made on Calvary, namely, that of her divine Son to His heavenly Father. Just as her intentions are one with His, as well as with those of the Church, the celebrant and the faithful.
And Jesus unites her spiritual sacrifice to His own ritual and mystical one, on the altar, in such sort that in each Mass there is but one and the same Sacrifice being offered up by the Son and by the Mother: by the Son, as the High Priest and Victim, by the Mother, as Co-Redemptrix of mankind.
One by one my fears and scruples began to vanish as the light penetrated little by little into my soul. My view of Calvary and the Mass broadened and took on new depths of meaning. No longer was I afraid to “lose” myself in Mary’s sublime intentions, at Mass. As a matter of fact, I wondered how a person could assist at Mass and over-look Mary’s active role in that august Sacrifice!
The words of Fr. de Montfort now began to make sense to me: “By this practice, faithfully observed , you will give more glory to Jesus in a month than by any other practice etc. . . , because . . . you abandon your own intentions . . . to lose yourself in the intentions of the Blessed Virgin … ” Imagine the sublimity of Mary’s intentions at every Mass! … And imagine me participating in them! . . .
