Our
Patroness, Mary Immaculate:
A Bicentennial Reflection
By
Cardinal Justin Rigali
The importance of beginnings
I think that we would all agree on the importance of beginnings. Our
very language reflects the emphasis we place on them. We are accustomed
to use expressions such as “starting off on the right foot”
or “getting a good start.” This week, I would like to reflect
on the place of Mary, our Blessed Mother, at two very important beginnings
for us: the beginning of our Redemption and the beginning of our country.
At both those beginnings, our Blessed Lady, under her title of the Immaculate
Conception, was present in an intimate way. Her immaculate conception
in the womb of her mother, Saint Anne, heralded the beginning of our
salvation and the early bishops of the United States placed our country
under her protection using this title. In this week’s reflection,
let us look at both of these beginnings.
Our first parents
In chapter three of the Book of Genesis, we read of the fall of our
first parents through their sin, which we call “original.”
Their act of pride and disobedience took a promising beginning, their
intimate relationship with God, and turned it into an act of betrayal
which affected the entire human race. “The account of the fall
in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event,
a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation
gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked
by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (Catechism
of the Catholic Church, 390).
Immediately after the sin of Adam and Eve and even before God imposes
His punishment, He proclaims the promise of our Redemption to be accomplished
through a woman. This is why verses fourteen and fifteen of chapter
three of Genesis are referred to as the Proto-Gospel, being the first
announcement to the human race of the promise of a Redeemer. In this
way, the promising beginning of the human race, thwarted through the
sin of our first parents, is promised a new beginning to be accomplished
through Mary. The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Second
Vatican Council teaches: “Considered in this light, she is already
prophetically foreshadowed in the promise of victory over the serpent
which was given to our first parents after their fall into sin. Likewise,
she is the virgin who shall conceive and bear a son, whose name shall
be called Emmanuel. She stands out among the poor and humble of the
Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from him”
(Lumen Gentium, 55).
A practical lesson
In the mystery of the fall of the human race and its promise of a Redeemer
through Mary, we find a very practical lesson for our own lives. Saint
Thomas Aquinas explains that God did not prevent our first parents from
sinning because “God allows evil to be done in order to draw forth
some greater good. Thus Saint Paul says, ‘Where sin increased,
grace abounded all the more’ (Romans 5:20); and the Exultet sings,
‘O happy fault which gained for us so great a Redeemer’”
(Summa Theologiae, 3). If we have taken our beginning of the Christian
life received at Baptism and betrayed it by sin, our loving and forgiving
Redeemer is always ready to restore us to a new beginning in our relationship
with Him by the miracle of His mercy. This mercy, promised at the Fall,
begun in the womb of our Immaculate Mother and fulfilled on the Cross,
is always living and available to us through the Church founded by Jesus
Christ. The victory of the devil over our first parents was not permanent
and it can never be permanent with us, their children, unless we refuse
the mercy of our Savior. This is why we give to Mary, among her many
glorious titles, the title of “Mother of mercy.”
Our Lady present in the New World from its beginning
“Devotion to the Mother of God is as old as the Church and is
inextricably woven into the fabric of Catholic life. It began in the
Cenacle and followed the spread of Christianity into Europe and then
beyond into other continents. It was spread to the ends of the earth
by the missionaries of the Age of Exploration. Wherever Christ Crucified
was preached, there also was preached Mary’s part in the Incarnation”
(Mary Immaculate, Patroness of America; Cardinal Richard J. Cushing).
In an earlier topic, in which we spoke of the richness of the Hispanic
community, we pointed out that the Hispanic presence in our part of
the world is nothing new. It has been a part of what came to be called
the “New World” from its beginning. The Spanish missionaries,
who accompanied the explorers to this part of the world, taught the
people the role of Mary in their salvation. Latin America and South
America are dotted with shrines to our Lady under many titles. Each
country and region claims her as its own and gives her its own title,
establishing a personal bond between Mother and children.
Long before many of our ancestors reached these shores and long before
our Republic was established, Mary showed her motherly care for this
portion of the world. She did so not taking upon herself the image of
the Spanish colonizers or the North Americans who would later populate
what we now know as the United States of America or even of the Native
peoples who were here before all the others, but the image of one of
mixed ancestry. It was this type of image of Mary that was miraculously
found on the cloak of Juan Diego in Tepeyac, near Mexico City, in 1591.
We know her as Our Lady of Guadalupe. Our Mexican people have brought
this devotion, the pledge and guarantee of their faith, with them to
the United States. Each year, the celebration of her feast on December
12 increases in solemnity in our Archdiocese. In last week’s Standard
and Times, you saw the listings of the some of the many celebrations
that take place in our Archdiocese surrounding this feast. This feast,
which may seem new to many of us, is actually a reflection of the very
early presence of Mary in the New World.
The Church in the early United States of America
The Catholic Church was reorganized in the infant republic of the United
States under the leadership of the first bishop of Baltimore, John Carroll.
His diocese, the mother diocese of all the local Churches in the United
Sates, was established on November 6, 1789. It was raised to the status
of an archdiocese in 1808, when our own diocese, later Archdiocese,
of Philadelphia was established. In Bishop Carroll’s first Pastoral
Letter, addressed to his flock which extended from Maine to Georgia,
he dedicated our country to the Mother of God. He wrote: “I shall
only add this my earnest request, that to the exercise of the sublimest
virtues, faith, hope and charity, you will join a fervent and well regulated
devotion to the Holy Mother of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; that
you will place great confidence in her in all your necessities. Having
chosen her the special patroness of this Diocese, you are placed, of
course, under her powerful protection.” In 1846, the bishops of
the United States gathered for the Sixth Provincial Council of the Church
in our country. Its first decree was to proclaim the choice of Mary
Immaculate as the Patroness of the United States and to make December
8 the patronal feast of our country. In their pastoral letter we read:
“We take this occasion to communicate to you the determination,
unanimously adopted by us, to place ourselves and all entrusted to our
charge throughout the United Sates, under the special patronage of the
holy Mother of God, whose Immaculate Conception is venerated by the
piety of the faithful throughout the Catholic Church. By the aid of
her prayers, we entertain the confident hope that we will be strengthened
to perform the arduous duties of our ministry, and that you will be
enabled to practice the sublimest virtues, of which her life presents
the most perfect example.”
Mary’s patronage preserved to our day
Near the second half of the nineteenth century, the great wave of immigration
to our shores began. Many of the newly-arriving immigrants were Catholics
and they brought with them their devotion to Mary, their heavenly Mother.
In many poor pieces of luggage they carried the image of Mary that was
dear to them in the homes they had left. They may have been illiterate
in their own language and in the new one of their adopted country but
the language of faith and the reassuring knowledge that Mary their Mother
was with them kept their faith alive. Through their sacrifice and generosity,
many Churches were built in honor of the Mother of God in their adopted
country. She was the guarantee of the purity of their faith and their
assurance of victory in every trial.
In this, our bicentennial year, we renew our dedication to Mary Immaculate,
patroness of the United States of America. At the beginning of the human
race, she was part of the promise of salvation in the midst of the darkness
of the sin of our first parents. In the beginnings of what came to be
called “the New World,” she came to these shores with the
zealous missionaries who proclaimed her motherly protection. At the
beginning of the new republic, the first bishop and his successors placed
us under the protection of this Immaculate Mother. At the completion
of our two hundred years as a diocese, we renew the dedication of this
local Church to Mary Immaculate and look forward to a bright future
under her loving protection.
December 13, 2007