Monthly Archives: July 2004

Well, they are working on it, and there is a blog tracing the efforts:  Air Catholic – Canada.  Meanwhile, a rather busy day is over here and it’s time to pull out some 78 rpm records and relax (although you can’t relax for long with 78 records because you have to keep changing them).

Sitting at the front desk at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy.  It’s a fairly busy day, but no one is stopping by to talk to me currently.  The phone is not ringing either.  The 2 pm Mass is about to start.

So, you want to really get the latest on the Divine Mercy message and devotion?  You want the inside scoop?  Get the “Oceans of Mercy” DVD.  It’s for those who are really into promoting Divine Mercy and those who want to get all the facts straight.  It has over 5 hours of video on it.

Back in Stockbridge for a little while.  They’ve started giving special tours of Eden Hill here that explain the history.  The tours are more broadly-based with historical data while still talking about why the Marians are here.  (In the early years we came to find a place for the novitiate, and now are here for the Shrine of Divine Mercy and Marian Helpers Center.)  If you visit, you might want to try getting a tour.

Indeed…. there’s already a website:  Year of the Eucharist

I’ve never heard of Our Lady of Laus before, but I found some information on the shrine in a book, and then found a site that mentions it.  So here you go:  Our Lady of Laus.

Wow!  It’s actually quite a heavenly thought.  Anyhow.  There’s a site where you can make an MTV abstinence pledge–telling them that you will never watch the network again.  Cool.  Why didn’t I think of that?

subtitled “A Wreath for Our Lady” (I think that is what it means), this book is a collection of poems by Fr. Edumund of the Heart of Mary, C.P (Benjamin D. Hill), from 1898.  While it is a fairly rare book, I’m finding copies of it all over this library at the University of Dayton.  Of course the Marian Library has multiple copies, but the regular library has it also, and so does the U.S. Catholic Collection.  Some of the poems are quite impressive.  Here is part of “Via Immaculata” (A devotion for Holy Communion)

Mary, thou chosen, thou Immaculate Way
Whereby our Jesus came unto His own;
Behold, to me He comes, to make a throne
Of my poor heart for brief, but gracious, stay!
Let me by thee recieve Him:  for I may,
Since thus the world received Him–thus alone.
Lend me thy Heart, that treasure only known
At its full worth by Him who comes to-day.
Come to me, then O Jesus–come, my King!
For see, I offer Thee a sinless Heart–
The one which drew Thee earthward in the hour
When, swifter than the glad archangel’s wing,
Thou answeredst Mary’s answer!  Nor depart
Till she hath spoil’d thee a rich mercy’s dower.

Fellow Marian Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC, has edited a new book in honor of the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.  It’s called The Immaculate Conception in the Life of the Church.  You can order it from our Marian Helpers Catalog on this page (you have to scroll down the page).

Now I’m in Dayton, Ohio, at the Marian Library!  This is the largest collection of written materials on the Blessed Virgin Mary in the world.  I don’t think that any woman has had more written about her than the Blessed Virgin Mary.  She deserves it, of course.  It is always worth contemplating the one who brought the Savior into the world, the one who was chosen to give flesh to the God-Man and to care for Him on earth.  I’m taking a course on Mary in the Medieval Period, and it’s awesome.  Today, one of the gems was the dual-role Mary had as the provider for the human Christ (feeding, showing affection for, etc.) while being the servant and worshiper of the truely divine Christ (adoring Him as God).  It’s a balancing act that a fallen human being could not have done, so it makes sense that she was preserved from the stain of original sin.