In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in his name. Who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Our next 54-day Rosary Novena – the first for this blog – begins this Saturday, January 31, which is the Eve of Septuagesima Sunday, and ends March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There is a strong but little known relationship between the two days, which I will proceed to explain.
The Season of Septuagesima
The Season of Septuagesima is composed of the three weeks prior to the First Sunday in Lent and begins on Septuagesima Sunday. Holy Mother Church, in the traditional Roman Calendar (pre-1969) gives us Septuagesima to prepare for Lent. Much of our spiritual progress depends on our Lenten disciplines. Our prayer life and our penance are vitally important to our salvation and the salvation of those we pray for. The habits of prayer and self-denial are cultivated when we practice them during Lent. By them, God excites us with a desire and a zeal for heavenly things, and increases our joy at Easter. Therefore, we prepare for Lent during Septuagesima.
According to Dom Gueranger in The Liturgical Year, the Season of Septuagesima is divided into three parts, each part beginning on Sunday and corresponding to a week. During this time, the Church ceases praying the Alleluia at Holy Mass and bids us turn our thoughts toward the mysteries of Lent, and Easter. It is the Church’s way of “quieting us down” so that our hearts may be more impressed by the solemn warning of Ash Wednesday: “Remember, man that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
Salvation history, according to the Christian tradition, is
divided into seven ages. The first three ages are commemorated during the three
weeks of Septuagesima. In the first week
of Septuagesima, the Divine Office commemorates the Fall of Adam and Eve. The second week commemorates Noah and the flood,
and during the third week, the Office reflects on the life and mission of
Abraham, our father in the Faith. Our focus here is the mystery of
Septuagesima, the Fall of Adam and Eve.
Eve and the Original Sin
Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?
There are many lessons that can be learned from the
Fall. Among them is the need to run from
the occasion of sin. Here, Eve should have
known better than to entertain the suggestions of the serpent and refused the
conversation. But her curiosity got the best of her, and she responds. She opens herself up to the occasion of
sin. Once she began to listen to the
deception of the evil one, like countless souls following her, the evil that
she found repulsive is considered, and the slide to error, sin and unhappiness
begins.
God gave to Eve and Adam all the riches of the earthly Paradise, and the promise of supernatural life. And yet, Eve has the temerity to entertain Satan’s deception: “No, you shall not die the death. For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” But God had already promised to make them “as gods”, that is, to give them and their posterity a share in His Divine life as adopted children of God. Eve should have felt a sense of holy indignation at Satan’s sacrilegious challenge of God’s justice. First Eve listens, then entertains the flattering lie, then consents. Eve, not content at her own fall, induces Adam to eat of the fruit. The Fall from Grace begun by Eve is complete. By her disobedience and Adam’s consent, the whole human race is fallen.
God, in His infinite goodness provides a remedy to the insolence of Adam and Eve, and calls them back to conversion. He exacts a punishment, but offers them the chance of redemption. As the Fall of mankind began with a woman, God makes it clear from the beginning: our Redemption begins with a woman as He reproaches the Old Serpent: “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.”
Mary, the New Eve
So, during our Novena, we begin with Septuagesima, whereby
we remember the Fall of Adam and Eve and we end with the Annunciation, which is
the reversal of the disobedience of
Eve, and the beginning of our Redemption.
As mankind fell by the disobedience of Eve, the salvation of mankind
begins with the obedience of Mary. This is a constant theme in Catholic
theology. The early Church Fathers proclaim this truth about Mary. St. Justin Martyr in 165 A.D. wrote: “… [Jesus Christ] became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin. For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her: wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God; and she replied, 'Be it unto me according to thy word." And by her has He been born, to whom we have proved so many scriptures refer, and by whom God destroys both the serpent and those angels and men who are like him; but works deliverance from death to those who repent of their wickedness and believe upon Him.” Tertullian (160-220 A.D.) echoes: “As Eve had believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced.”
St. Alphonsus de Liguori, in The Glories of Mary elucidates this truth: St. Bernard says, that as a man and a woman have co-operated for our ruin, so it was fit that another man and another woman should cooperate for our restoration; and these were Jesus and his mother Mary. Doubtless, says the saint, Jesus Christ alone was all-sufficient for our redemption: yet it was more fitting that each sex should take part in our redemption, when both took part in our corruption. For this reason blessed Albertus Magnus calls Mary the co-operatrix with Christ in our redemption: And she herself revealed to St. Bridget that as Adam and Eve sold the world for one apple, so her Son and herself with one heart redeemed the world. God could, indeed, as St. Anselm asserts, create the world from nothing; but when it was lost by sin, he would not redeem it without the cooperation of Mary. (Chapter V Section II)
“Christ crushed the serpent's head by his death, suffering himself to be wounded in the heel. His blessed mother crushed him likewise, by her co-operation in the mystery of the Incarnation; and by rejecting, with horror, the very first suggestions of the enemy, to commit even the smallest sin.” (St. Bernard, ser. 2, on Missus est.) "We crush," says St. Gregory, Mor. 1. 38, "the serpent's head, when we extirpate from our heart the beginnings of temptation, and then he lays snares for our heel, because he opposes the end of a good action with greater craft and power." The serpent may hiss and threaten; he cannot hurt, if we resist him.” (Haydock commentary)
Man’s Infidelity and God’s Promise in Our Time
Many times in history, man rebels and God holds out promise and awaits man’s response. The ancient city of Nineveh was wicked, and came under the judgment of God. God sent Jonah to inform the people of their coming destruction, and to preach repentance. The people fasted and did penance, and God showed them mercy. But God’s mercy is not guaranteed to any of us unless we repent and do penance. As Our Lord Jesus told the Jews of His day: “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they did penance at the preaching of Jonas. And behold a greater than Jonas here. (Matt 12:41)
Yet, the mercy of God is not assured to anyone unless he turn away from sin and repent. From the earliest ages of the Church, God sends His mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, to His people time and time again to sustain us and draw us to Him. In the year 40 A.D., Our Lady of the Pillar appeared to the Apostle St. James the Elder. A discouraged James sat on the bank of the Ebro River in Zaragoza, Spain, ready to forsake his mission to the people of the Iberian Peninsula. Our Lady, who was still living on this earth, appeared, standing on a pillar of stone. Our Blessed Mother instructed St. James to build a church there in her honor and assured him that the people of Hispania (now Spain and Portugal) would be converted to the Christian Faith and that they would be distinguished by a tender devotion to her. Thus, the world’s first Marian Shrine was built, almost at the inception of Christianity, and Spain began to be converted.
Then our Lady replied, "I want you to know that, in this kind of warfare, the principal weapon has always been the Angelic Psalter, which is the foundation-stone of the New Testament. Therefore, if you want to reach these hardened souls and win them over to God, preach my Psalter." Through many signs and the preaching and the recitation of the Rosary, the Albigensian heresy was vanquished. Throughout history, many times Our Lady has come to the rescue of her children.
Our Lady’s Intervention in Our Time
We live in an age of great wickedness. St. Pius X, had this to say in his first encyclical in 1907, E Supremi:
We
were terrified beyond all else by the disastrous state of human society
today. For who can fail to see that society is at the present time, more than
in any past age, suffering from a terrible and deep rooted malady which,
developing every day and eating into its inmost being, is dragging it to
destruction? You understand, Venerable Brethren, what this disease is -
apostasy from God, than which in truth nothing is more allied with ruin,
according to the word of the Prophet: "For behold they that go far from
Thee shall perish" (Ps. 1xxii., 17).
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Remarkably, even Benedict XVI describes Europe, the cradle of Christendom as being in a profound state of apostasy:
Is it not a cause for surprise that today’s Europe, while striving to position itself as a community of values, seems more often to contest the idea that there are universal and absolute values? Does not this remarkable form of “apostasy” from itself, even before [apostasy] from God, perhaps induce it to doubt its very identity?
By every metric one cares to weigh the situation of the
world today, we can hardly deny that it is a world turned away from God. Even
in the heart of the Church, there is unprecedented turmoil. There is a mass defection from the body of
the Church, and within her structures, there is an unprecedented disdain for
the most basic of her teachings. Priests
such as the recently deceased Fr. Richard McBrien, who openly proclaimed that
the Resurrection was not an historical event, are considered “priests in good
standing” while priests who proclaim the Catholic Faith in its entirety are
persecuted, hounded, suspended and outcast.
In such a situation, would not Our Blessed Mother come once again to rescue fallen man? Of course, she most definitely has, in the apparition to three shepherd children at Fatima, Portugal. God has ratified her message by the astounding Miracle of the Sun, on October 13, 1917. This miracle is completely unprecedented in the history of mankind. It was even recorded in the various “mainstream” newspapers of the day, controlled by Freemasons.
As in the Old Testament days of Nineveh, at Fatima, God gave a message to the world. As to the people of Nineveh, God will relent from punishing His people IF they return and are faithful. So, once more, God sends us a messenger to call us back to sanity and holiness … to salvation. Will we listen like the people of Nineveh? Or shall we perish as did those in Noah’s time in the Flood? Or as in Abraham’s time in the city of Sodom? Or to those who rejected their Messiah in the destruction of Jerusalem? Jesus Christ spoke harshly to those people who, having been given the Revelation concerning the coming of the Messiah, rejected Him. But what would He say to those of us who reject Him after His life, death on the Cross and Resurrection, and 2,000 years of His teaching and that of His Holy Church? What would He say to Catholics who reject Our Lady’s message or simply treat it with indifference? What would He say to Churchmen who, when offered Our Lady’s peace plan, interject their own in the halls of the United Nations or in the Spirit-of-Assisi pan religious gatherings?
If we do these things with a generous and sincere heart, in obedience to God through His holy mother, all will go well for us.
Finally, we must never let ourselves get discouraged. Our God is the God Who rose from the tomb on the third day. Our God has sustained His Church for 2,000 years, and He promises to restore her to her glory, even now. He sends His mother to us to assure us of her love and assistance along the way. We need not fear. The Gospel has always been, and remains now the Good News.
And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves;
Men withering away for fear, and expectation of what shall come upon the whole world. For the powers of heaven shall be moved; And then they shall see the Son of man coming in a cloud, with great power and majesty. But when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand. (Luke 21:25-28)
In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world. (Our Lady of Fatima, July 13, 1917)
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