The Mother of God, Octave Day of the Nativity

Theotokos Unburnt Bush

Prayer for the Pope

O God, who in your providential design willed that your Church be built upon blessed Peter, whom you set over the other apostles, look with favor, we pray, on Francis our Pope, and grant that he, whom you have made Peter’s successor, may be for your people a visible source and foundation of unity in faith and of communion. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Theotokos of the Life-Giving Spring.

O Mary,

You are beautiful in every way,

there is no stain in you!

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A garden enclosed, my Queen, my Mother,

a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed!

Moses before the Burning Bush.

In the Bush seen by Moses

as burning yet unconsumed,

we recognize the preservation

of your glorious virginity,

O holy Mother of God,

intercede for us.

"Never be afraid of loving Mary too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did." - St. Maximilian Kolbe.

Pope Bl. Paul VI tells us that we can never venerate Mary at the level she merits, precisely because of the mystery that unites her to Christ.

Therefore our Blessed [St. Maximilian Kolbe] is not to be reproved, nor the Church with him, because of their enthusiasm for the formal religious veneration of the Mother of God. This veneration with its rites and practices will never fully achieve the level it merits, nor the benefits it can bring, precisely because of the mystery that unites her to Christ, and which finds fascinating documentation in the New Testament. The result will never be “Mariolatry,” just as the sun will never be darkened by the moon; nor will the mission of salvation specifically entrusted to the ministry of the Church ever be distorted if the latter honors in Mary an exceptional Daughter and Spiritual Mother. The characteristic aspect, if you like, and the original quality of Blessed Kolbe’s devotion, of his “hyperdulia” to Mary, is the importance he attributes to it with regard to the present needs of the Church, the efficacy of her prophecy about the glory of the Lord and the vindication of the humble, the power of her intercession, the splendor of her exemplariness, the presence of her maternal charity. The [Second Vatican] Council confirmed us in these certainties, and now from heaven Father Kolbe is teaching us and helping us to meditate upon them and live them. This Marian profile of our new Blessed places him among the great saints and seers who have understood, venerated and sung the mystery of Mary. - Source

Protection of the Theotokos.

Mother of the Church, pray for us.

“Devotion to Mary is not spiritual etiquette, it is a requirement of the Christian life.  If our faith is not to be reduced merely to an idea or a doctrine, all of us need a mother’s heart.  May the Mother, God’s finest human creation, guard and keep this year, and bring the peace of her Son to our hearts, and to the world.” - Pope Francis