Author Topic: Are you despairing? Are you afraid you are going to hell? (Read 2460 times)

Hobbledehoy · « **on:** October 19, 2011, 02:28:17 PM »

The Catholic faithful of the Latin Occident never cease to proclaim the Blessed Virgin Mary and pray to her as the Refugium peccatorum in her Litanies (Litaniæ Lauretanæ Beatæ Mariæ Virginis, Rituale Romanum, Tit. XI, cap. iii.), for she has been given to us by our Crucified Savior as our Mother, saying to her, “Woman, behold thy son” (St. John ch. xix., 26): thus fulfilling the ancient oracles of Holy Writ, “Woman, behold thy son” (St. John ch. xix., 26).

The Saints, most especially St. Alphonsus Marie de Liguori and St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, have written most excellently upon this sacred mystery. Moreover, on the 16th of January, the Holy Ghost Fathers were wont to commemorate the Immaculate Heart of Blessed Mary the Virgin, Refuge of Sinners with a special Office and Mass. The Collect is as follows:

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O most clement God, Who, for the salvation of sinners and the shelter of wretches, didst Thou will the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of Thine only-begotten Son and the Administratrix of His graces: grant, we pray, that whilst we celebrate the festivity of the Heart of the same most lovable Mother, we may be made worthy to attain to the conversion of sinners and the abundance of celestial gifts for all the faithful. Through the same Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who together with Thee doth live and reign, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, throughout all ages of ages. ℟. Amen.

In our present times, the Lord God, in the excess of His unfathomable wisdom and clemency has vouchsafed us the admirable repetition of the sanctifying visit that the living Tabernacle of Word Incarnate paid to her kinswoman St. Elizabeth (St. Luke ch. i., 39-56) by having Our Lady of the Rosary visit the three children at Fatima and revealing her Immaculate and Sorrowful Heart as the refuge of sinners and the instrumentality whereby her Divine Son would restore civilization and Holy Mother Church.

Yet centuries before all this, the faithful of the Greek Church already intuited all these sublime and profound truths, and recognized amidst prayer and contemplation the central role that Our Lady as Refuge of Sinner has in reconciling the errant and wretched to the graces of her Divine Son.

The Byzantine Office of Paraclisis is one of the most beautiful and consoling devotions, a gem in the inexhaustible treasury that is our Catholic heritage.

Taken from the Byzantine Missal for Sundays and Feast Days with Rites of Sacraments, and Various Offices and Prayers published at Birmingham, Alabama, by St. George's R. C. Byzantine Church in 1958, (having been printed at Tournai, Belgium, by Société Saint Jean l' Evangéliste, Desclée & Cie), I gladly offer it to you, especially to those whose souls are thrilled by inexpressible horror at the coinquinations whereby they may have imperiled their eternal salvation and who are moreover terrified before the majesty and sanctity of the Lord God Who shall judge them at the Dies iræ. So long as you draw breath there is still hope, and our Crucified Savior gave us His most holy Mother as a refuge whereby we may attain to the graces He has won for us in His sacred Passion.

Here is the Troparia of Penitence, referenced in page 696.

Author Topic: Are you despairing? Are you afraid you are going to hell? (Read 2460 times)

Hobbledehoy

Are you despairing? Are you afraid you are going to hell?