Unity in the Church Through Mary(Catholic/Orthodox Caucus)

There are many titles by which we address Our Lady, in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. In the most recent of these titles, we say, “Mother of the Church, pray for us.”

What are we asking for when we make this invocation? We are asking Our Lady to obtain for us all the graces we need to live up to what we profess when we say, “We believe in the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.”

The first of these graces for which we pray, and the most fundamental is unity. It is also the one grace that on the testimony of the modern popes, the Church most desperately needs. Pope Paul VI lamented that, “there is so much talk of unity; and so many trying to go their own way” (Dec. 3, 1969). In the past two decades, the situation has not changed, except that the need for unity has become increasingly grave.

Over the centuries, the Church has turned to Mary in time of crisis. Today it is the crisis of disunity.

If we are to recover that unity in the Church which is her primary mark of identity, we must look to Mary, follow her example, and beg her to obtain from Jesus what He so earnestly prayed for on the night before He died.

If we further ask what it is that unites the Church’s members, in Christ and with one another, the answer is easy. Faith, obedience and love unite the members of the Mystical Body, even as unbelief, disobedience and selfish refusal to love always divide.

Mary’s faith made her the object of the heavenly Father’s choice when she was invited to become the Mother of His Divine Son. She believed in Him whom she conceived at Nazareth. She believed in Him to whom she gave birth at Bethlehem. She believed in Him as she stood watching Him bleed to death on Calvary in Jerusalem.

After His Ascension, Mary was with the Apostles and the disciples, who waited for the coming of the Holy Spirit. St. Luke tells us that, “All these with one mind continued steadfastly in prayer, with the women and Mary” (Acts 1:14). No wonder they all had “one mind since they were all united with Mary in one faith which accepted everything that Christ had taught them over the years.

Tradition tells us that Mary remained on earth some twelve years after her Son’s Ascension and her own bodily Assumption into heaven. During these years, she helped to sustain the faith of the early Christians and strengthen them in their loyalty under trial.

Ever since Elizabeth told Mary how “blessed is she who has believed,” the Blessed Virgin has been the model of faith for all true believers in her Divine Son.

No less than Mary believed in spite of her Son’s persecution and crucifixion, so we are called upon to believe in Him.

Also no less than Mary believed in spite of the weakness and cowardice of even her Son’s closest disciples, so we are to believe in His Divinity in spite of the pathetic humanity of so many of His followers and even some of His chosen ones.

There will be as much unity in the Church as there are faithful Catholics in the Church. They are not afraid to suffer the martyrdom of not conforming to the world and of rejection by the world which crucified Mary’s Son and is now crucifying those who firmly believe in Him.

At the Annunciation, Mary told the angel, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” In one sentence, she was teaching all believers until the end of time the indispensable condition for union with God and unity among the followers of Christ.

Obedience to the will of God, as manifested through His appointed representatives, is the precondition for unity in the Church founded by Christ.

During His public ministry, Christ told the Apostles, “He that hears you, hears Me, and he that despises you despises Me.” He told Peter that he was the Rock on which the Church would be built, so that whatever Peter bound on earth would be bound in heaven, and whatever Peter loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven.

After His Resurrection, it was Peter again to whom Christ gave the triple commandment, “Feed my lambs … tend my sheep … feed my sheep.”

After Christ’s Ascension, it was again Peter who took the initiative on Pentecost Sunday and guided the young Church by his Christ-given authority.

As Catholics we simply take for granted that obedience to Church authority means obedience to the successor of the Apostles under the successor of Peter. We have no difficulty recognizing that, although Mary was the Mother of Christ, she was obedient to the Vicar of Christ in her day. We further take for granted that since apostolic times, the unity of the Church depended on obedience to the divinely established authority in the Church.

Every break in Catholic unity, since the first century and into our times, has been the result of disobedience to ecclesiastical authority finally vested in the Bishop of Rome.

Moreover, every division among Catholics can be finally traced to the same cause. The enemies of Christ know this. That is why they try to sow the seeds of discord among professed members of the Church. They know that Catholics are the most powerful force on earth in defending the stability of the family, the indissolubility of marriage, and the sanctity of unborn human life. But on one condition; Catholics must be united among themselves if they are to present a united front for the rights of God to a proud and self-willed humanity.

Invoking Mary as the Mother of Catholic solidarity is an imperative in modern society. But on our part, we must co-operate with the graces that our prayers obtain through Mary. We must be obedient to those whom Christ has appointed and ordained in His Church to exercise authority in His name. We must especially recognize in the successor of St. Peter the visible foundation of Christian unity.

Mary’s practice of charity was the outgrowth of her love of her Son. No sooner did she conceive Him at Nazareth than she hurried to bring Him, yet unborn, to her kinswoman Elizabeth who was with child. At Cana, her concern for the guests — “They have no wine” — prompted her to ask for a premature miracle that she was sure Jesus would perform, which He did. On Calvary, Christ entrusted all of us, in the person of John, to be mothered in the spirit by His Mother in the flesh.

All of this tells us that Mary is at once our model and mediatrix of charity, as the irreplaceable ground of unity in the Church.

Historians of early Christianity tell us that one of the main reasons for the phenomenal growth of the Church was the phenomenal practice of charity among the Christians.

The Savior’s prediction that, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another,” was literally fulfilled. It was the superhuman charity of the followers of Christ which attracted whole nations to accept Christianity.

So it has been for two millennia. Where professed Catholics live out the charity they profess to believe, the Church has remained united.

But when charity wanes, unity declines. And where love weakens, discord follows as sure as the night follows day.

The same Paul VI who complained about disunity in the Church, on the same occasion said, “There is so much talk about charity, yet in certain ecclesiastical circles there is a wind of bitter criticism, which cannot be that of Pentecost.”

By now some of us have memorized St. Paul’s discourse on charity in his Letter to the Corinthians. To be noted is that he speaks of “charity,” and not merely “love.” Christ is love, indeed, but a love which is not merely natural. It is love that is born of grace and infused into the soul by God.

To obtain this kind of supernatural love, we need constant help from Christ, through the intercession of His Mother Mary. In the measure that we receive this divine help, and put the grace into practice, we shall be fostering unity in the Catholic Church.

Another name for the Church is the “Community of Love.” But this means a lifetime of sacrifice. It was the price which Christ paid to bring the Church into being on the Cross. It was the price that Mary paid when she offered her Son of Calvary. It is the price we must pay by surrendering our dearest possession, which is self, if we wish to fulfill Christ’s prayer, “that all may be one, even as You, Father, in Me and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You have sent Me” (John 17:21).

Selfless charity is the cost of peaceful unity in the Church. It is also the magnet which, for two thousand years, has attracted millions to enter a Society whose members witnessed to the presence of Christ on earth as the Incarnation of Divine Love.

A deacon is embraced by an unusual apparition of the Blessed Mother
By adminPublished: April 26, 2011
Posted in: Testimonies
Tags:

Comments [0]Digg it!Facebook

The family of Finns on Easter Sunday, 2011, with Deacon Ken and his wife, Marie, in the center
The following is Deacon Ken Finn’s account of his remarkable interactions with Mary, the Mother of God.

My first encounter with the Blessed Mother happened when I was travelling in an RV with my wife, Marie. We co-authored a Catholic Bible-study, called The Bread of Life, and we were making a grand circle, clock-wise through the outer states of the country, introducing our study to parishes. One night, at the beginning of our trip, we parked our RV in the parking lot of the mission in Santa Barbara, and as we lay down to go to bed, our conversation turned to the sadness of people who are unable to bond with their mothers from birth. My wife and I had adopted three children, who were about eight weeks when we got them, and we wondered if they might have been deprived of the precious gift of early bonding.

The next morning, as my wife lay asleep next to me, I felt very much alone, as my mind wandered through thoughts about how I didn’t get much bonding from my own mother. My mom had lived in a tenement house in Boston, and one icy cold early morning, when she was seven months pregnant with me, she stepped outside, slipped on the ice, and fell down a flight of stairs.

She began to hemorrhage severely and was rushed to the hospital. In the emergency room, I was immediately delivered. When the doctors caught sight of all of two pounds of me, lifeless and quiet, they placed me on a table, and left me for dead. Turning all their attention on my mother, they did their best to try to stop her bleeding and keep her alive. After a few minutes passed, they heard a small squeak coming from my direction. “He’s alive!” they realized, as they refocused their attention on me.

Seventy-five years ago, when I was born, there were no antibiotics. There were no incubators. I went through a lot of trauma as a newborn, and I was separated from my mother for the first several months of my life. My mother recovered from her fall, and not having a car, she travelled every day on foot, in ice-cold weather, through the snow, to the hospital, so that she could bring me her breast milk. On her way there and back, she’d talk to Jesus and the Blessed Mother, praying with great faith that they would love me and take care of me.

As I lay in the RV that night, feeling lonely and sad, thinking about the first few months of my life away from my mother, I suddenly saw a vision standing at the end of my bed. It looked like the figure of the Blessed Mother. I could not see her clearly, but could make out her body, which appeared as if in a mist. Lovingly and compassionately, she spoke to me in a clear voice, saying, “You never were away from my presence while you were in the hospital, as well as when your mother fell down the stairs in the cold, snowy, bitter, morning. I was there with you when you coughed, when you were bleeding, when you cried out in fear. I bonded you with me and your mother with me. She got her strength and hope to know that you would survive because you had so much love at your birth.”

I woke up Marie and told her about this immediately after it happened, and she said simply, “Well, you really bonded with the Blessed Mother. That’s why you have such a compassionate heart for the poor and for those who are sick and hurting. You know what they’re going through, and you know the love they need.”

This picture was taken at dusk. Unusual light rays, which weren’t present when the picture was taken, showed up in the photograph, landing on both Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Deacon Ken Finn.
It was true. My fifty years of marriage and ministry with my wife had always involved helping the helpless, the lonely, the imprisoned. We had personally befriended Mother Teresa and served alongside her with her Missionaries of Charity sisters in Tijuana, Mexico. We formed a non-profit to give away free Bible studies and pamphlets to prisoners. We lead a prayer group, which prays the rosary outside of an abortion center. As a deacon, I loved to preach the Good News and share the love of God with everyone around me.

And ever since birth, I’ve lived with ill health due to being premature. When I got older, my mother took me every Wednesday to the local cathedral to say a novena, hoping I’d be cured. I never did heal, but I never stopped living either. With half of both my lungs surgically removed and what’s left being diseased tissue, with ongoing lung infections, which doctors always say will kill me, with bronchiectasis and COPD, and oxygen strapped to me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week since 1993, I now go from one health problem to another; but I keep going. I feel I should work as much asI can now, because God has a reason for me being here. A friend of mine once said, “You’re a really nice guy. You’re not a man of your word, though. You’ve been dying for twenty-five years, but you keep on backing out.”

Deacon Ken and Marie Finn on their 50th wedding anniversary
The impetus for the ministry work my wife and I share, and what we had in common when I proposed to her (on our first date!), is our deep affinity for Jesus. I grew up very aware of my love relationship with Jesus, but less aware of my personal relationship with Mary. After the remarkable moment in the RV, when the Blessed Mother reassured me that she had bonded with me as an infant, I felt a deeper respect and appreciation for her, yet I wouldn’t say our relationship suddenly became intimately warm and personal. It wasn’t until something happened at of the annual Medjugorje Peace Conferences in Irvine, California that the Blessed Mother truly entered my heart.

I participated in the conference because, while Jesus remained the focal point of our intimate relationship with God, the appearances of Mother Mary in Medjugorje had greatly affected me and my wife’s spirituality for the better. I had no doubt that the Blessed Mother was alive and present and doing the work of her Son in Medjugorje, and knowing that she was active today, made God’s care for us and the Blessed Mother’s participation in our lives so much more real. Someone can say that so-and-so is alive on earth, or alive in heaven, but what does that mean without that person actively sharing in one’s day-to-day life? With Mother Mary actively participating in the world, now, her aliveness had so much more credibility.

At the Medjugorje Peace Conference, I was one of the deacons assisting in the Mass. I dressed in an alb and stole, along with the other clerics present, and when it was time for us to sit down, because there were so many of us, we sat in the bleachers at the side of the stage, which supported the altar. At the final part of the Mass, as I stood up amongst the priests and deacons, I was approached by a tiny, elderly woman, dressed in an old style Mexican dress, with a bandana tied around her head. She carried a little basket of spiritual trinkets, crucifixes and little medals and the like, and asked if I would bless them. This seemed so unusual to me because the conference costs money to get into, and one never sees a very poor person there. I took her little basket and blessed it, and then handed it back to her. The woman had tears in her eyes and was literally begging for support. Moved by compassion, thanksgiving for her courage, and a sudden burst in my heart of love for her, I then I kissed her on the forehead and said a little quiet blessing for her. She smiled at me, revealing a set of ugly cracked, black teeth, with even blacker spaces in between them. Then she spontaneously put her head on my chest, wrapped her arms around me, and started to sob softly. I looked down at her and hugged her. She then kissed me on the cheek and walked away from me, disappearing behind a large television camera. A priest standing next to me said, “What was that all about?” I wondered myself. We both waited for the woman to come out from behind the T.V. camera, but she never did, and there was no other way by which she could have left. She just disappeared.

At the conference, a select few people were invited to go into a room upstairs, where the Medjugorje visionary Ivan would have his apparition of the Blessed Mother that evening. I was fortunate to be one of them, so I climbed the stairs and entered the room, where several people knelt and began praying the rosary. I joined them, waiting and watching to experience some personal sign of the Blessed Mother’s presence, but I didn’t see anything happening. I felt tired, sick, and out of breath. I asked Mary to intercede and heal my lungs. But I didn’t feel anything. I asked her for a healing from a hernia. No response. And then I asked her to heal my arthritis. Nothing! I was hurting so badly. The apparition ended, and just before the people in the room left, a woman leaned over to me and said, “Wasn’t that wonderful!”

“No it wasn’t,” I thought, sitting there feeling alone, discouraged, and disappointed, thinking of all my unanswered prayer requests.

Then as soon as I was alone, I heard the strong voice of a young woman talking to me. The hairs on my arms stood straight up. “Why are you so disappointed with me?” said the crystal clear female voice. I was startled and a little afraid. “Did you not recognize me when I put my head on your chest and sobbed softly, because so many people are still rejecting my Son and trying to hurt Him?” When you kissed me on the forehead in your compassion, I then kissed you on the cheek to tell you that my Son loves you very much and is very pleased with you.”

My fear left and turned into excitement and confusion. “Wow! What just happened?” I wondered. I left the room in a daze and shared with a priest, Fr. Steve Barham, what had transpired. He confirmed the reality of what I’d heard, and who it came from. For days, I couldn’t stop thinking and talking about it. The Blessed Mother hadn’t just spoken to me, she had hugged me, in the distressing disguise of a poor, elderly, Mexican woman.

About two weeks later, my wife and I traveled to Tijuana with Serving Hands International to go to the Missionary of Charity houses. There, Marie helped pass out food, blankets, and clothes, while I passed out free Bibles, Bible studies, and rosaries and blessed each person as they passed through the line. I started telling my friend Brian about the lady I saw at the Medjugorje Peace Conference Mass as the many people were filing by, taking what they needed, when I looked at the line, and I saw the same elderly lady with the same clothes she was wearing at the conference. Our eyes met, but she didn’t say anything to me. She just looked at me and smiled. Excitedly, I told Brian, “That’s her! She’s the one!” She continued to walk through the line, but didn’t take anything that was offered, and then stepped out the side door. Brian and I both ran to the door, which led to an outdoor courtyard, but she wasn’t there. She had disappeared again.

I feel special in the presence of the Blessed Mother now. Ever since she came to me, I have had a much stronger connection to her. If I met her today, I’d say with great hope and excitement, “It’s good to see you again!” Someone I respected very much has become my dear mother.

For more information about the ministries of Deacon Ken and Marie Finn, see stdismas.org.

Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary

V/ Lord, have mercy.
R/ Lord, have mercy.

V/ Christ, have mercy.
R/ Christ, have mercy.

V/ Lord, have mercy.
R/ Lord, have mercy.

V/ Jesus, hear us.
R/ Jesus, graciously hear us.

V/ God, the Father of Heaven,
R/ have mercy on us.

V/ God, the Son, Redeemer of the world,
R/ have mercy on us.

V/ God, the Holy Spirit,
R/ have mercy on us.

V/ Holy Trinity, One God,
R/ have mercy on us.

R/ for ff: pray for us.

Holy Mary,
Holy Mother of God,
Holy Virgin of virgins,
Mother of Christ,
Mother of divine grace,
Mother most pure,
Mother most chaste,
Mother inviolate,
Mother undefiled,
Mother most amiable,
Mother most admirable,
Mother of good counsel,
Mother of our Creator,
Mother of our Savior,
Virgin most prudent,
Virgin most venerable,
Virgin most renowned,
Virgin most powerful,
Virgin most powerful,
Virgin most merciful,
Virgin most faithful,
Mirror of justice,
Seat of wisdom,
Cause of our joy,
Spiritual vessel,
Vessel of honor,
Singular vessel of devotion,
Mystical rose,
Tower of David,
Tower of ivory,
House of gold,
Ark of the covenant,
Gate of heaven,
Morning star,
Heath of the Sick,
Refuge of sinners,
Comforter of the afflicted,
Help of Christians,
Queen of Angels,
Queen of Patriarchs,
Queen of Prophets,
Queen of Apostles,
Queen of Martyrs,
Queen Confessors,
Queen of Virgins,
Queen of all Saints,
Queen conceived without original sin,
Queen assumed into heaven,
Queen of the most holy Rosary,
Queen of Peace,

Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world,
R/ spare us, O Lord,

Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world,
R/ graciously hear us, O Lord.

Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world.
R/ have mercy on us.

Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R/ That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray. Grant, we beg you, O Lord God, that we your servants, may enjoy lasting health of mind and body, and by the glorious intercession of the Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, be delivered from present sorrow and enter into the joy of eternal happiness. Through Christ our Lord. R/ Amen.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.