In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us sinners, St. Joseph, pray for us sinners,
and saints, and guardian angels.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
On this, the first Saturday of September, we are once again reminded of Our Lady's five first Saturdays
and the graces that she wants to give to those who offer their communion and rosary
and meditation on the mysteries for 15 minutes,
and go to confession.
To make reparation to Her Immaculate Heart.
One of the ways that we can especially make reparation to Our Lady's Immaculate Heart
is by loving Her and imitating Her,
since that is really the essence of all love,
is wanting to imitate the one we love,
and showing our greatest devotion to them is wanting to be like them.
This particular devotion of Our Lady's Immaculate Heart,
has been placed before us as a sign to us of,
especially in our day and age, with the message of Our Lady at Fatima,
to once again return to Christ through His mother.
She is the way to Him.
We recently, the Academy of the Immaculate, published a new book called The Virtues of Mary,
and it might be called this a little infomercial,
but it's a book that was reprinted from the early 1900s,
and it is a very little treasure of a book,
because it talks about the virtues of Our Lady,
because as Father Peter mentions in the foreword of this book,
he says that it's in the virtues of Mary that we know her as a person.
You want to know?
You want to know who Our Lady is?
Study her virtues, and that'll tell you who she is.
You know, it's one thing to know about the virtue of justice in this abstract manner,
or the virtue of purity in an abstract manner,
but we don't really learn virtue in an abstract manner.
The best way to learn virtue is to see someone,
a person who is just, a person who is pure,
a person who is prudent.
That's where we get.
We get to understand, and we can best imitate those virtues
and seeing them incorporated, impersonated, you might say, in someone,
and especially with regards to the virtues.
Our Lady is the queen of all virtues.
She's the mediatrix of all graces, and Father Peter points out
the reason why she's the mediatrix of all graces
is because it's to help us to acquire the virtues.
Her point, you know, we become holy.
It's really to the degree that we practice the virtues,
which are opposite of the vices.
You know, we want to incorporate in our life and to be virtuous people.
That is really the essence of holiness.
And even St. Teresa of Avila says that that is an essential part of the spiritual life.
It's not just that we pray and do penance,
but we have to also practice the virtues.
And our Lord has given us,
His mother, as that person to imitate.
She's the mirror of justice, mirror of holiness,
and she's only reflecting Christ, who is the son of justice,
the one who radiates that holiness to all the church,
but in a preeminent way and in a most perfect way,
Our Lady is the recipient of that and reflects it back in all of its perfection.
And since the church,
the church is the Bride of Christ,
Our Lady is the one who really is the model and the,
everybody in the church wants to be like her,
because she is the preeminent member of the members of the body of Christ.
She has been given to us as that standard, you might say, to imitate.
And that is what, when St. Maximilian Kolbe talks about becoming transubstantiated into the Immaculate,
meaning that we've begun,
to become like her and we begin to act like her,
what is that but starting to live the virtues of Our Lady?
In this little book, the author was a Rosminian priest, Father Lanzoni.
He talks about the virtues of Our Lady in relationship to God,
how she practiced those virtues,
how she practiced those virtues in relationship to man, her brothers and sisters.
And then the virtues of Our Lady in relation to herself.
And someone has mentioned to me, you know, the importance of the virtue of silence today.
And in many cases, you know, we talk about the age of communication and the whole internet, you know.
It just seems that we're just one big chatterbox, you know.
The big thing is to chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat.
Internet becomes interchat.
And,
all we do is we communicate.
But the thing is, it's not a multiplication of words that somehow makes us a better communicator.
It's that we communicate the right things.
And sometimes it's the importance of silence in our own particular spiritual life.
Silence helps us to then appreciate that when we do speak,
when we do have something to say, that we say that which is important.
That's the sad thing about our hearts.
That's the sad thing about our whole mass media today.
We say a lot of things, but most of it's not important.
You know, probably if you take CNN and Fox News and all them,
and you were to boil down the 24 hours, seven days a week news they give you,
probably one hour of it at most is probably of any important information that you get.
Because we are so into, really, gossip more than news.
We're not giving much information that is of any help to anyone.
Because we haven't appreciated the virtue of silence.
Our Lady reflected much on what our Lord said and did.
And she put into practice those things and lived them out.
And when our Lady did speak in the scriptures,
she said those things which were essentially important,
and conveyed what was important to us.
Especially at the message of Our Lady of Fatima.
Our Lady came and said in a very concise and brief manner
those things that were essential for us to reform our lives.
She didn't have to come and chat for 24 hours a day.
So we need to be able to first, with silence, hear what God has to say to us.
And God will not, as He says, He will not, you know, shout over the noise of the world.
He's that still small voice, that whisper, that little breeze as Elijah heard in the cave.
Our Lord was, God was not in the fire, He wasn't in the earthquake,
you know, kind of like the mass media of today.
He was in that still small voice, that little breeze.
And if we're not silent, we won't hear it.
And we will miss out on the most important things that we need to hear,
so that we can put them into practice.
So today, as we begin, you know, once again, we reflect on Our Lady's Immaculate Heart.
I encourage you, if you would like to have a little resource,
the Virtues of Mary, published by the Academy of the Immaculate,
is a good little book to begin with.
And to see the virtues in Our Lady.
And that way we will be able to better imitate them,
because we see them impersonated.
You know, it's one thing, that's why it's so important for children,
for parents, to be virtuous.
That they learn the virtues by seeing them in their parents.
First and foremost.
And to the degree that we live around virtuous people,
we will therefore start, you know, I'd say,
imitating that, and also reflecting that back.
And that's why it's so important, maybe,
that we need to reform the mass media and the entertainment industry,
because virtue is not being portrayed,
but rather vice is being glorified.
So we wonder why we have all the vice,
and all the imitators of crime,
and other low things,
is because we aren't asking people to strive
to a higher ideal,
but rather always presenting them the lowest.
That's why the Church wants to hold up to us the saints.
But particularly Our Lady,
as Our Lord did.
Behold Your Mother.
She is the One.
She is the Queen of all virtues,
the Mediatrix of all graces.
And She is our model,
and our way to Christ.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Amen.