praise be jesus and mary today we celebrate this votive mass in honor of our lady
under her title mother of the lord and the entrance antiphon for today's mass says this
you have been blessed oh virgin mary above all other women on earth by the lord the most high
god for god has so exalted your name that human lips will never cease to praise you
so we see these words which are paraphrase of from the book of judith and applied to our lady
says that god has exalted our lady's name that she is blessed above all other women on earth
in fact saint bonaventure says
that this dignity of our lady to be the mother of god is the greatest dignity that god could
confer on a creature that god could not exalt a creature to a greater dignity than that of
mother of god
and the gospel that we read in which saint elizabeth is filled with the holy spirit and
cries out
a loud voice and praises our lady teaches us what kind of disposition we should have
with respect to our lady so elizabeth is filled with the holy spirit and she cries out she cries
out almost as if to proclaim to the whole world what is taking place before her and what does she
cry out she says most blessed are you
among women and so again this is the holy spirit testifying through saint elizabeth most blessed
are you among women and so we see that our lady is not like everyone else but she is most blessed
among all women in fact she is the immaculate virgin mother of god
saint elizabeth continues
and how does this happen to me
that the mother of my lord should come to me
here we see where the mass gets this title of our lady mother of my lord should come to me
and so we see in saint elizabeth
a disposition of humility
reverence
and gratitude
for the presence of our lady
and so we can say that
all souls who are authentically moved by the holy spirit
will in some way or another
share these same sentiments and have these same desires
that is the soul will have a desire
to cry out with a loud voice
that is to make our lady known and loved
to increase devotion towards her
throughout the world
it's a sign of the action of the holy spirit
in the soul
and again
if the soul
recognizes first acknowledges our lady
as the mother of god the mother of our lord it jesus christ
and has this
disposition of humility
reverence
and gratitude
towards our lady
the action of the Holy Spirit in that soul. And so this is exactly what we should strive to
cultivate within our soul, right? A desire to make Our Lady known and loved, to be humbled by the
fact that Our Lady regards us as her children, or rather that she really is our spiritual mother.
That should humble us. We should revere Our Lady for that, and then be filled with gratitude,
be thankful for that great gift of having the Blessed Virgin Mary as mother of our Lord
and our mother as well. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Amen.