The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary - 8 September
8th September 2024
Happy Birthday to Our Blessed Mother Mary! 💐
Sacred Heart Catholic Church invites everyone to join us in honouring the birthday of Our Blessed Mother. There will be Rosary at 8.30am followed by Holy Mass at 9.00am.
In his book 'The World's First Love' (one of the most beautiful books written about Our Lady), Archbishop Fulton J Sheen explains in the most simple, yet exquisite way the wonder that is the person of the Virgin Mary. Here is a small excerpt in honour of her birthday:
"God has to have two pictures of us: one is what we are, and the other is what we ought to be. He has the model, and He has the reality: the blueprint and the edifice, the score of the music and the way we play it. God has to have these two pictures because in each and every one of us there is some disproportion and want of conformity between the original plan and the way we have worked it out. The image is blurred; the print is faded. For one thing, our personality is not complete in time; we need a renewed body. Then, too, our sins diminish our personality; our evil acts daub the canvas the Master Hand designed...We are in constant need of repairs; our free acts do not coincide with the law of our being; we fall short of all God wants us to be.
"There is, actually, only one person in all humanity of whom God has one picture and in whom there is a perfect conformity between what He wanted her to be and what she is, and that is His Own Mother. Most of us are a minus sign, in the sense that we do not fulfil the high hopes the Heavenly Father has for us. But Mary is the equal sign. The Ideal that God had of her, that she is, and in the flesh. The model and the copy are perfect; she is all that was foreseen, planned, and dreamed. The melody of her life is played just as it was written. Mary was thought, conceived, and planned as the equal sign between ideal and history, thought and reality, hope and realisation.
"That is why, through the centuries, Christian Liturgy has applied to her the words of the Book of Proverbs (Prov 8:22-35). Because she is what God wanted us all to be, she speaks of herself as the Eternal blueprint in the Mind of God, the one whom God loved before she was a creature. She is even pictured as being with Him not only at creation but also before creation. She existed in the Divine Mind as an Eternal Thought before there were any mothers. She is the Mother of mothers - she is the world's first love."
Prayer for the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
O Virgin immaculate, you who by a singular privilege of grace was preserved from original sin, look in pity upon our separated brethren, who are nevertheless your children, and call them back to the centre of unity. Not a few of them, although separated from the Church, have kept a certain veneration for you; and do, generous as you are, reward them for it, by obtaining for them the grace of conversion. You were conqueror of the infernal serpent from the first instant of your existence; renew even now, for it is now more necessary than ever before, your ancient triumphs; glorify your divine Son, bring back to Him the sheep that have strayed from the one fold and place them once more under the guidance of the universal Shepherd who holds the place of your Son on earth; let it be your glory, O Virgin who destroys all heresies, to restore unity and peace once more to all the Christian people. Amen. 🙏💖💐