While they awaited the coming of the promised Holy Spirit all with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
Mary, crowned with living light, Temple of the Lord,
Place of peace and holiness, Shelter of the Word.
Mystery of sinless life In our fallen race,
Free from shadow, you reflect Plenitude of grace.
Virgin-Mother of our God, Lift us when we fall,
Who were named upon the Cross Mother of us all.
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Heaven sings your praise;
Mary magnifies your name Through eternal days.
The Blessed Trinity and Our Lady's Heart
It was the morning of the feast of the Annunciation and the Hail Mary was of course being sung in Saint Gertrude's monastery. During the singing she had a vision in which three streams gushed forth from the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost and gently flowed into Mary's virginal Heart. The minute they reached Her Heart they bounded back to the source from where they had come.
From this Saint Gertrude learned that the Blessed Trinity has allowed Our Lady to be most powerful next to God the Father, the wisest after God the Son, and the most loving after God the Holy Ghost.
She also learned that every time the Angelic Salutation is said by the faithful the three mysterious streams surround Our Lady in a mighty, swirling current and rush into Her Heart. After they have completely bathed Her in happiness they gush back into the bosom of Almighty God. The Saints and Angels share in this abundance of joy as do the faithful on earth, who say this prayer.
(St. Gertrude: Revelations Book IV, Chapter II)
Why should we be devoted to Mary?
In Imitation of the Trinity
First of all to give ourselves to Jesus through Mary is to imitate God the Father, Who has given us His Son only through Mary, and Who communicates to us His grace only through Mary. It is to imitate God the Son, Who has come to us only through Mary, and Who, by giving us an example, that as He has done, so we do also (John xiii, 15), has urged us to go to Him by the same means by which He has come to us-that is, through Mary. It is to imitate the Holy Ghost, Who bestows His graces and gifts upon us only through Mary.
“Is it not fitting”, asks St. Bernard, “that grace should return to its Author by the same channel which conveyed it to us? “ Let me remind you again of the dependence shown by the three divine Persons on our Blessed Lady. Theirs is the example which fully justifies our dependence on her. The Father gave and still gives his Son only through her. He raises children for himself only through her. He dispenses his graces to us only through her. God the Son was prepared for mankind in general by her alone. Mary, in union with the Holy Spirit, still conceives him and brings him forth daily. It is through her alone that the Son distributes his merits and virtues. The Holy Spirit formed Jesus only through her, and he forms the members of the Mystical Body and dispenses his gifts and his favours through her.
It Honors Jesus
Secondly to go to Jesus through Mary is truly to honor Jesus Christ, for it denotes that we do not esteem ourselves worthy of approaching His infinite holiness directly and by ourselves because of our sins; that we need Mary, His holy Mother, to be our advocate and Mediatrix with Him, our Mediator. It is to approach Jesus as our Mediator and Brother, and at the same time to humble ourselves before Him, as before our God and our Judge. In a word, it is to practice humility, which is always exceedingly pleasing to the heart of God.
PRAYER
HAIL MARY, beloved Daughter of the eternal Father. Hail Mary, wonderful Mother of the Son. Hail Mary, faithful Spouse of the Holy Spirit. Hail Mary, my dear Mother, my loving Lady, my powerful Queen. You are all mine through your mercy, and I am all yours.
Take away from me all that may be displeasing to God. Cultivate in me everything that is pleasing to you. May the light of your faith dispel the darkness of my mind, your deep humility take the place of my pride; your continual sight of God fill my memory with his presence; the fire of the charity of your heart inflame the lukewarmness of my own heart; your virtues take the place of my sins; your merits be my enrichment and make up for all that is wanting in me before God.
My beloved Mother, grant that I may have no other spirit but your spirit, to know Jesus Christ and His divine will and to praise and glorify the Lord; that I may love God with burning love like yours.
– St. Louis de Montfort
And in what does this life of the Spirit in Mary consist? He Himself is uncreated Love in her; the Love of the Father and of the Son, the Love by which God loves Himself, the very love of the Most Holy Trinity. he is a fruitful Love, a "Conception."
Among creatures made in God's image, the union brought about by married love is the most intimate of all. In a much more precise, more interior, more essential manner, the Holy Spirit lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the depths of her very being. He makes her fruitful, from the very first instance of her existence, all during her life, and for all eternity.
This eternal "Immaculate Conception" [which is the Holy Spirit] produces in an immaculate manner Divine life itself in the womb or depths of Mary's soul, making her the Immaculate Conception, the human Immaculate Conception. And the virginal womb of Mary's body is kept sacred for Him; there He conceives in time the human life of the Man-God.
In the Holy Spirit's union with Mary we observe more than the love of two beings; in there is is all the love of the Blessed Trinity; in the other, all of Creation's love. So it is that in this union Heaven and earth are joined; all of Heaven with the earth, the totality of eternal love with the totality of created love. It is truly the summit of love.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe
The Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles by Blessed Dom Columba Marmion, O.S.B.
The Holy Spirit appeared under the form of tongues of fire in order to fill the Apostles with truth and to prepare them to bear witness to Jesus. He also come to fill their hearts with love. He is the Person of Love in the life of God. He is also like a breath, an aspiration of infinite Love, from which we draw the breath of life.
On the day of Pentecost the Divine Spirit communicated such an abundance of life to the whole Church that to symbolize it "there came a sound from heaven, as of a violent wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they (the Apostles) were sitting." But it is also for us that the Holy Spirit has come, for the group in the Cenacle represented the whole Church.
The Holy Spirit came to remain with the Church forever. This is the promise of Jesus Himself. He dwells in the Church permanently and unfailingly, performing in it without ceasing, His action of life-giving and sanctification. He establishes the Church infallibly in the truth. It is He who makes the Church blossom forth with a marvelous supernatural fruitfulness, for He brings to life and full fruition in Virgins, Martyrs, Confessors, those heroic virtues which are one of the marks of true sanctity.
If every soul in a state of grace is an adopted child of God and a temple of the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Virgin is so par excellence and in the most complete manner, because the Triune God communicated Himself to her in the highest degree possible for a simple creature, to such a degree that Mary’s dignity, according to St. Thomas, touches "the threshold of the infinite" (cf. la, q. 25, a. 6, ad 4)'
This understood when we think that, from all eternity Mary was chosen by God to be the Mother of His Son. As the Incarnation of the Word was the first work of the mind of God, in view of which everything was created, so also Mary, who was to have such a great part in this work, was foreseen and chosen by God before all other creatures. Only one ray of hope illuminated the darkness of fallen humanity: “I will put enmity between thee and The Woman,” God said to the serpent…
Here Mary appears on the horizon as the beloved Daughter of God, as she who will never be, even for a single moment, a slave of the devil; as she who will be spotless and immaculate, belonging wholly to God…as she will be to the circle of His divine Family by bonds of the closest intimacy with each of the three divine Persons: Daughter of the Father, Mother of the Incarnate Word, and Spouse of the Holy Spirit.
Fr. Gabriel of St Mary Magdalene OCD (Divine Intimacy)
The era of the Church began with the coming, that is to say, with the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles gathered in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, together with Mary, the Lord’s Mother. Mary, who conceived Christ through the workings of the Holy Spirit, the love of the living God, presides over the birth of the Church on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit Himself descends upon the disciples and pours out life in unity and in charity upon the Mystical Body of Christians.
She, who at the start of the Redemption gave us her Son, now by her most powerful intercession obtained for the newborn Church the prodigious Pentecostal outpouring of that Spirit of the Divine Redeemer who had already been given on the Cross.
Mary is our path to a better disposition for greater friendship with the Paraclete and greater docility to his inspirations. The Apostles understood this: that is why we see them beside her in the Cenacle. The Blessed Virgin received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost with a unique fullness. This was so because her heart was the purest, the freest, the heart which most incomparably loved the Most Blessed Trinity.
The Paraclete came down upon the soul of the Blessed Virgin and filled it in a new way. He is the sweet Guest of Mary's soul. Our Lord had promised to him who loved God: we will come to him and make our home with him. This promise is fulfilled above all in Our Lady. She, God's masterpiece, had been prepared with immense care by the Holy Spirit to be the living tabernacle of the Son of God. Therefore the Angel greets her: Hail, full of grace.
The Holy Spirit, who had lived in Mary since the mystery of her Immaculate Conception, came on the day of Pentecost to dwell in her in a new way. All the promises Jesus had made about the Paraclete are fully accomplished in the soul of the Blessed Virgin.
Fr. Francis Fernandez (In Conversation with God)
PRAYER
Through Mary, the spouse of the Holy Spirit, we pray for a new Pentecost today where You send Your Spirit to everyone. May the fire of Your divine love, like the rays of the sun which shine on all, go out to touch, bless, help, and heal everyone. May the Holy Spirit, which flows from Your Eucharistic Heart, COME TO EACH ONE AND RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH, that there may be but one flock and one Shepherd.
(Fr. Martin Lucia)
Come Holy Spirit!
Come by means of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Thy well beloved spouse!