CALENDARIUM ROMANUM FORMA ORDINARIA

“The favors of the Lord I will sing for ever” (Ps 88[89],2). These words of the Church at Easter re-echo in the fullness of their prophetic content the words that Mary uttered during her visit to Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah: “His mercy is…from generation to generation.” At the very moment of the Incarnation, these words open up a new perspective of salvation history. After the resurrection of Christ, this perspective is new on both the historical and the eschatological level. From that time onwards there is a succession of new generations of individuals in the immense human family, in ever-increasing dimensions; there is also a succession of new generations of the People of God, marked with the Sign of the Cross and of the resurrection… the absolute revelation of the mercy that Mary proclaimed on the threshold of her kinswoman’s house… Mother of the crucified One…, Mary, then, is the one who has the deepest knowledge of the mystery of God’s mercy. She knows its price, she knows how great it is. In this sense, we call her the Mother of mercy… she was able to perceive, through the complex events, first of Israel, then of every individual and of the whole of humanity, that mercy of which “from generation to generation” people become sharers according to the eternal design of the most Holy Trinity… Mother of the crucified and risen One; as the One who, having obtained mercy in an exceptional way, in an equally exceptional way “merits” that mercy throughout her earthly life and, particularly, at the foot of the cross of her Son; and finally as the one who, through her hidden and at the same time incomparable sharing in the messianic mission of her Son, was called in a special way to bring close to people that love which He had come to reveal: the love that finds its most concrete expression vis-a-vis the suffering, the poor, those deprived of their own freedom, the blind, the oppressed and sinners, just as Christ spoke of them (Lc 4,18; 7,22).

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team

It seems that the ineffable charity of God has provided for the fragility and misery of man; for, as he was always ready and inclined to offend his Creator, God, to save him, provided him with a remedy for his infirmity. The remedy for our infirmities is none other than the fire of love, and this love never goes out for us. The soul receives it as a remedy when it looks within itself at the standard of the Cross, which is planted there; for we have been the stone in which the Cross was fixed, whose wood and nails were not capable of holding the sweet Lamb without spot, if love had not held him. When the soul looks at this sweet and dear remedy, it must not fall into neglect; but she must rise up with love and desire, and stretch out her hands with self-hatred, as the sick man does, who hates his infirmity, and loves the remedy the doctor gives him. (…) Let us rise with the fire of ardent love, with the hatred and deep humility that the knowledge of our nothingness will give us, and place our infirmities before our physician, Christ Jesus. Stretch out your hand to receive the bitter medicine given to us. Yes, the medicine that man receives is often bitter. These are darkness, temptations, trouble of the spirit or other tribulations which come from without; they seem very bitter to us at first but if we do like the sick wise man, they will then be very sweet for us, considering the tenderness of the sweet Jesus, who gives them to us, and seeing that he does not not out of hatred but out of love, because he can only want our sanctification.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team