more excerpts

While on vacation I took much time on the beautiful Hilton Head Island to do some reading on the book Fr. Paul assigned me, Priests for the Third Millenium by Archbishop Timothy Dolan. I mentioned this book in a previous post. Here are some more Marian excerpts:

On how to "grow in our love with Jesus and his Church":

When we are in love with someone, we get to know that person's family and friends, don't we?... Well, we want Jesus and his Church to be the love of our lives. Get to know his family and friends! Particularly is this true of his Mother. So close are we to him that his Mother becomes our Mother. Thus has devotion to our Lady become a standard of priestly spirituality. We need to recognize that there are different ways of loving Mary. How we love her is an open question; that we love her is not. A filial devotion to the Mother of the First Priest is likewise a definite part of our spirituality and a practical way to grow in our love of Jesus. -- page 45

On fidelity:

We have the perfect example of fidelity in our Blessed Mother, Mary. We call her both "the cause of our joy" and "Our Lady of Sorrows." She is ever close to him, the faithful disciple and Mother, at the happiest moment of salvation history - Bethlehem; and the saddest - Calvary.

• from the wood of the manger to the splinters of the cross;
• from the swaddling clothes to the bloody shroud;
• from the bouncing new life to the lifeless body...
• faithful woman, whose only message to us would be her last recorded words, "Do whatever he tells you!"

I once heard a psychologist say that the first moment a child is conscious of his or her own unique identity is when that baby stares into the eys of its mother. you and I find ourselves in prayer staring into the eyes of our spiritual Mother - it might be the haunting eyes of Our Lady of Czestochowa, the soothing eyes of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, the confident eyes of the Salus Populi Romani (note: "salvation of the Roman People"). As we gaze into the eyes of our Blessed Mother, we become conscious of our identity: a child of God, beloved of the Father, redeemed by Jesus, called by the Eternal High Priest to be configured to him at the very depths of our heart. It is from the consciousness of that supernatural identity, learned from her, that fidelity to God, his Church, his call comes.

As Pope John Paul II said in his Holy Thursday Letter to Priests in 1995: "If the priesthood is by its nature ministerial, we must live it in union with the Mother who is the Handmaid of the Lord. Then our priesthood will be kept safe in her hands, indeed in her heart." -- page 74

Mary, Handmaid of the Lord, pray for us!