Blessed Virgin Mary Chaplet - Immaculate Conception

St. Jouchim, St. Anne and the Child Mary

CHAPLET 

 of the

NATIVITY and INFANCY

of the

MOST HOLY VIRGIN MARY

Maria Bambina Santissima

 

(Recited daily during the novena for the Nativity of the Infant Mary)

THE FIVE JOYS OF THE INFANT MARY

(Recited upon the beads of the Rosary)

1. The Immaculate Conception of the Holy Infant Mary

     Let us meditate upon the First Joy of the Infant Mary, her    

     Immaculate Conception. 

     We offer Thee, O Jesus through Mary, this First Joy in honor of  

      the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Infant Mary.

Seven Hail Mary's, Glory be to the Father...

     We praise thee and we glorify thee, O Immaculate Virgin Mary,         as we rejoice and contemplate with love thy Immaculate   

      Conception.

       V. O Holy Infant Mary,

      R. Intercede for us who have recourse to thee!

2. The Holy Nativity of the Infant Mary

Nativity of the Infant Mary

    Let us meditate upon the Second Joy of the Infant Mary, her   

    Holy Nativity. 

   We offer Thee, O Jesus through Mary, this Second Joy in honor 

    of the Holy Nativity of the Infant Mary.

Seven Hail Mary's, Glory be to the Father...

    We praise thee and we glorify thee, O Immaculate Virgin Mary,   

     as we rejoice and contemplate with love thy holy Birth.

    V. O Holy Infant Mary,

    R. Intercede for us who have recourse to thee!

3. The Bestowal upon the Infant Mary of  

        Her Most Holy Name

     Let us meditate upon the Third Joy of the Infant Mary, the   

     Bestowal of her Holy Name. We offer Thee, O Jesus through 

    Mary, this Third Joy in honor of the Bestowal upon the Infant 

    Mary of Her Most Holy Name.

Seven Hail Mary's, Glory be to the Father...

    We praise thee and we glorify thee, O Immaculate Virgin Mary,

    as we rejoice and contemplate with love the Holy Name chosen  

    for thee by God.

    V. O Holy Infant Mary,

    R. Intercede for us who have recourse to thee!

4. The Presentation of the Infant Mary in the Temple

     Let us meditate upon the Fourth Joy of the Infant Mary, her Presentation in the Temple. 

We offer Thee, O Jesus through  Mary, this Fourth Joy in honor of the Presentation of the Infant Mary in the Temple.

Seven Hail Mary's, Glory be to the Father...

    We praise thee and we glorify thee, O Immaculate Virgin Mary,   

     as we rejoice and contemplate with love thy Presentation in the 

     Temple.

     V. O Holy Infant Mary,

     R. Intercede for us who have recourse to thee!

5. The Consecration by the Infant Mary of  

            Her Most Holy Virginity to God the Father

    Let us meditate upon the Fifth Joy of the Infant Mary, the Consecration of her most Holy Virginity to God the Father. We  offer Thee, O Jesus through Mary, this Fifth Joy in honor of the 

    Consecration by the Infant Mary of her most Holy Virginity to    

    God the Father.

Seven Hail Mary's, Glory be to the Father...

     We praise thee and we glorify thee, O Immaculate Virgin Mary, 

      as we rejoice and contemplate with love the holy Consecration 

      of thy Virginity to God.

     V. O Holy Infant Mary,

     R. Intercede for us who have recourse to thee!

Let us Pray

               

Mary as a Child

    O beloved of God, most Holy Infant Mary, do thou hear and   

    answer me. Thou didst consecrate thy entire self from thy very   

    childhood to the love of thy God; obtain that I, during the time   

    that I have yet to be on earth, may live for God alone. Do thou   

    obtain for me from thy Divine Son the grace to follow His   

    command to strip myself of all pride and to "convert and become

    as a little child," living always in the spirit of humble obedience.

    On this day, in union with thee -- most Holy Infant Mary, I   

    renounce all creatures and the spirit of the world, and I   

    consecrate myself entirely to the love of my Lord. I also offer    

    myself to thee, my Immaculate Queen, to serve thee always. 

    Accept me as thy devoted servant in an especial manner, and    

    obtain for me the grace to be faithful to thee and to thy Son at  

    every moment of my life, that I may one day praise thee and love

    thee for all eternity in Heaven. Amen.

Borrowed to share with others from

http://www.salvemariaregina.info/Prayers/ChapletofInfantMary.html

 

Mary the Mother of God and Our Mother

Mary Our Mother

By Saint Aelred, abbot

Let us come to his bride, his mother, his perfect handmaid, for the blessed Mary is all of this.

But what are we to do for her? What kind of gifts shall we offer her?  Would that we could at least return what we are in duty bound to do, for we owe her honor and service, we owe her love and praise.  We owe her honor, for she is the mother of our Lord.  He who fails to honor the mother clearly dishonors the son.  

 Also, Scripture says: Honor your father and your mother.

What then, my brothers, shall we say? Is she not our mother?  Yes, my brothers, she is indeed our mother, for through her we have been born, not for the world but for God.

Once we all lay in death, as you know and believe, in sin, in darkness, in misery.  In death, because we had lost the Lord; in sin, because of our corruption; in darkness, for we were without the light of wisdom, and thus had perished utterly.

But then we were born, far better than through Eve, through Mary the blessed, because Christ was born of her.  We have recovered new life in place of sin, immortality instead of mortality, might in place of darkness.

She is our mother—the mother of our life, the mother of our incarnation, the mother of our light.  As the apostle says of our Lord: He became for us by God’s power our wisdom and justice, and holiness and redemption.

She then, as mother of Christ, is the mother of our wisdom and justice, of our holiness and redemption.  She is more our mother than the mother of our flesh.  Our birth from her is better, for from her is born our holiness, our wisdom, our justice, our sanctification, our redemption.

                

Praise the Lord in his holy ones, says the Scriptures.  If our Lord is to be praised in those holy ones through whom he brings deeds of power and miracles, how much more is he to be praised in her in whom he fashioned himself, who is wonderful beyond all wonders.

taken from Liturgy of the Hours, Advent Season

St. Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx

bbot of Rievaulx, homilist and historian (1109-66). St. Ælred, whose name is also written Ailred, Æthelred, and Ethelred, was the son of one of those married priests of whom many were found in England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. 

He was born at Hexham, but at an early age made the acquaintance of David, St. Margaret's youngest son, shortly afterwards King of Scotland, at whose court he apparently acted for some years as a sort of page, or companion to the young Prince Henry.  King David loved the pious English youth, promoted him in his household, and wished to make him bishop, but Ælred decided to become a Cistercian monk, in the recently founded abbey of Rievaulx in Yorkshire. 

Soon he was appointed master of novices, and was long remembered for his extraordinary tenderness and patience towards those under his charge. 

In 1143 when William, Earl of Lincoln, founded a new Cistercian abbey upon his estates at Revesby in Lincolnshire, St. Ælred was sent with twelve monks to take possession of the new foundation. His stay at Revesby, where he seems to have met St. Gilbert of Sempringham, was not of long duration, for in 1146 he was elected abbot of Rievaulx. 

Rievaulx Abbey, present day

In this position the saint was not only superior of a community of 300 monks, but he was head of all the Cistercian abbots in England.

Causes were referred to him, and often he had to undertake considerable journeys to visit the monasteries of his order. Such a journey in 1153 took him to Scotland, and there meeting King David, for the last time, he wrote on his return to Rievaulx, where the news of David's death reached him shortly afterwards, a sympathetic sketch of the character of the late king. 

He seems to have exercised considerable influence over Henry II, in the early years of his reign, and to have persuaded him to join Louis VII of France in meeting Pope Alexander III, at Touci, in 1162. 

Although suffering from a complication of most painful maladies, he journeyed to France to attend the general chapter of his Order. He was present in Westminster Abbey, at the translation of St. Edward the Confessor, in 1163, and, in view of this event, he both wrote a life of the saintly king and preached a homily in his praise. 

The next year Ælred undertook a mission to the barbarous Pictish tribes of Galloway, where their chief is said to have been so deeply moved by his exhortations that he became a monk. 

Throughout his last years Ælred gave an extraordinary example of heroic patience under a succession of infirmities. He was, moreover, so abstemious that he is described as being "more like a ghost than a man." 

His death is generally supposed to have occurred 12 January, 1166, although there are reasons for thinking that the true year may be 1167. 

St. Ælred left a considerable collection of sermons, the remarkable eloquence of which has earned for him the title of the English St. Bernard. 

He was the author of several ascetical treatises, notably the "Speculum Charitatis," also a compendium of the same (really a rough draught from which the larger work was developed), a treatise "De Spirituali Amicitiâ," and a certain letter to an anchoress. All these, together with a fragment of his historical work, were collected an published by Richard Gibbons, S.J., at Douai, in 1631. 

A fuller and better edition is contained in the fifth volume of the "Bibliotheca Cisterciensis" of Tissier, 1662, from which they have been printed in P.L., vol. CXCV. The historical works include a "Life of St. Edward," an important account of the "Battle of the Standard" (1138), an incomplete work on the genealogy of the kings of England, a tractate "De Sanctimonialide Watton" (About the Nun of Watton), a "Life of St. Ninian," a work on the "Miracles of the Church of Hexham," an account of the foundations of St. Mary of York and Fountains Abbey, as well as some that are lost. 

 No complete edition of Ælred's historical opuscula has ever been published. A few were printed by Twysden in his "Decem Scriptores," others must be sought in the Rolls Series or in Raine's "Priory of Hexham" (Surtees Society, Durham, 1864).

Article taken from  http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01172b.htm 

Incarnation by St. Gregory Nazianzen

Saint Gregory Nazianzen

The Marvel of the Incarnation

St. Gregory Nazianzen the Theologian

The very Son of God, older than the ages, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the incorporeal, the beginning of beginning, the light of light, the fountain of life and immortality, the image of the archetype, the immovable seal, the perfect likeness, the definition and word of the Father: he it is who comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul, to purify like by like.  He takes to himself all that is human, except for sin.  He was conceived by the Virgin Mary, who had been first prepared in soul and body by the Spirit: his coming to birth had to be treated with honor, virginity had to receive new honor.  He comes forth as God, in the human nature he has taken, one being, made of two contrary elements, flesh and spirit.  Spirit gave divinity, flesh received it.

He who makes rich is made poor; he takes on the poverty of my flesh, that I may gain the riches of his divinity.  He who is full is made empty; he is emptied for a brief space of his glory, that I may share in his fullness.

What is the wealth of goodness?  What is this mystery that surrounds me?  I received the likeness of God, but failed to keep it.  He takes on my flesh, to bring salvation to the image, immortality to the flesh.  He enters into a second union with us, a union far more wonderful than the first.

Holiness had to be brought to man by the humanity assumed by one who was God, so that God might overcome the tyrant by force and so deliver us and lead us back to himself through the mediation of his Son.  The Son arranged this for the honor of the Father, to whom the Son is clearly obedient in all things.

The Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep, came in search of the straying sheep to the mountains and hills on which you used to offer sacrifice.  When he found it, he took it on the shoulders that bore the wood of the cross, and led it back to the life of heaven.

Christ, the light of all lights, follows John, the lamp that goes before him.  The Word of God follows the voice in the wilderness; the bridegroom follows the bridegroom’s friend, who prepares a worthy people for the Lord by cleansing them by water in preparation for the Spirit.

We need God to take our flesh and die,  that we might live.  We have died with him, that we may be purified.  We have risen again with him, because we have died with him.  We have been glorified with him, because we have risen again with him.

taken from the Liturgy of the Hours, Book 1 Advent Season