Our Lady and the New Evangelisation
by Donal Anthony Foley
All booklets are published thanks to the generous support of the members of the Catholic Truth Society
CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY publishers to the holy see
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Contents Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Our Lady and Evangelisation in the Early Church and the Middle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Marian Apparitions and Evangelisation . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Our Lady and Evangelisation in Modern Times . . . . . . 34 Recent Popes, Our Lady, and the New Evangelisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Our Lady and the New Evangelisation, Now and in the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Some Marian Prayers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Practical Aspects of Devotion to Our Lady . . . . . . . . . 65 Further Reading/References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
All rights reserved. First published 2015 by The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 40-46 Harleyford Road London SE11 5AY Tel: 020 7640 0042 Fax: 020 7640 0046. Š 2015 Donal Foley. ISBN 978 1 78469 073 1
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Foreword I am delighted to see this new booklet on Our Lady and the New Evangelisation. It captures beautifully, and succinctly, her essential place in the mission of the Church. It is from Mary that the Church learns true discipleship. For this reason, Our Lady has been given the title, ‘Star of the New Evangelisation’. Under her protection, we learn how to encounter the Lord Jesus more deeply, in prayer, in meditating on the Rosary, and in being led by her into a deeper love for him and his Church. With her guidance we accompany others in their discovery of him. We help them to realise that they are called to be part, not of an Institution, but a family which has a loving Mother who cares for all her children. I hope that many will be inspired by this booklet to draw close to Our Lady, to discover her Motherly patronage anew. May she intercede for us all. Through her Immaculate Heart, may she help us all to invite others to know and experience the loving and merciful heart of her Son, Jesus Christ. Bishop Mark O’Toole (Plymouth) Chair of the Bishops’ Conference Department for Evangelisation and Catechesis.
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Introduction This booklet looks at the role of Our Lady in the New Evangelisation, that “missionary” outreach which recent popes have emphasised as being crucial to the Church’s role in the modern world. Of course, the Church has been involved in evangelisation for the past two thousand years, ever since Christ, at his Ascension, gave his commandment to the apostles to “go and make disciples of all nations,” (Mt 28:19). But the principle of a New Evangelisation has assumed a greater urgency since the Second Vatican Council, given that society as a whole has undergone such tremendous changes in recent years, not all of them positive, while the Church has struggled to make the message of Christ known in an increasingly hostile atmosphere. To understand the Marian dimension of the New Evangelisation, it will be necessary for us initially to look back at the crucial role of Our Lady in evangelisation in the early Church and during the medieval period. Then we will look at the major Marian apparitions, in order to appreciate how important these were for building up the Church, before assessing the role of the modern popes in promoting both devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the New Evangelisation.
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Our Lady and Evangelisation in the Early Church and the Middle Ages The New Evangelisation The word “evangelisation” comes from the Greek, and means announcing good news, in this case the Gospel of Jesus Christ, whether to people who have not heard of it before, or to those who need to be re-evangelised. In reality, evangelisation is something every baptised Catholic should be doing, that is, reaching out to others in the name of Jesus, and proclaiming his saving message by their lives as much as by words. So evangelisation includes both befriending people and caring for their needs, while also sharing the Gospel with them with a view to their conversion. What the New Evangelisation is As for the New Evangelisation, this is the whole programme enacted by the Church, in various ways, from the latter part of the twentieth century onwards: the great movement to mobilise the Church for the evangelisation of the world in the third millennium in which we are now living. But “evangelisation” is not just a question of missionary activity, but also encompasses re-evangelising those cultures where Christian influence has diminished,
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and also looking at the way that Catholic thought and practice can act as a “leaven” in improving society in a moral and cultural sense, as indicated in the parable of the leaven (Mt 13:33). In September 2010, Pope Benedict XVI issued a motu proprio apostolic letter, Ubicumque et Semper, establishing the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation. In this, he stated that “the mission of evangelisation, a continuation of the work desired by the Lord Jesus, is necessary for the Church: it cannot be overlooked; it is an expression of her very nature.” He also noted that the New Evangelisation requires a “constant interior renewal, a continuous passing, so to speak, from evangelised to evangelising,” that is, that the Church needs to be renewed in an interior sense before it can successfully go out to the world. Our Lady and the New Evangelisation As will become clear in the course of this booklet, devotion to the Blessed Virgin had a very important role during the first evangelisation of the cultures of antiquity, and this continued and deepened during the medieval period, when devotion to her was very widespread. Likewise, we will see how, after the Reformation, Our Lady was very important in the process of re-establishing Christianity as a force in society following the break-up of Christendom. In the more modern era, too, through her approved apparitions,
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she has been of great importance in strengthening the Church, and thus it can be argued that her role in the New Evangelisation must also be promoted and understood if this evangelisation is to be truly fruitful. To understand why Our Lady has traditionally been so highly venerated in the Church, though, it is necessary to look back over two thousand years of Church history. Hence this booklet will devote space to a necessary consideration of what has gone before, both in terms of the Blessed Virgin’s importance in theological and historical terms, and also her role in evangelisation in the past. Our Lady in the Gospels The Blessed Virgin has a crucial place in the Gospels, but devotion to her didn’t cease at that point, and even from the earliest days we find evidence of this in the writings of the Church Fathers - the important early Christian writers and teachers - particularly when they described her as the “New Eve”. The implication of this term was that she was in partnership with the “New Adam”. Christ, and that just as Eve caused Adam to sin when they stood before the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, and thus helped to drag down the human race (Gn 3), so Our Lady, by co-operating with Christ in our redemption, helped to raise up mankind. She did this particularly at the crucifixion, when she stood at the foot of the cross, the new “tree of life,” and offered herself with her Son in his redemptive sacrificial
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death for all mankind, as he conferred on her the role of Mother of the Church and of all believers (Jn 19:26-27). But her role clearly went right back to the Incarnation and birth of Christ, and even before that, so the Church teaches, to her Immaculate Conception in the womb of her mother, St Anne. This was the privilege of her being conceived without original sin, which of itself puts the Blessed Virgin in a unique category, and one which prepared her for her role as Christ’s mother. That fact, on its own, clearly indicates the extraordinary importance of her role in the economy of salvation, but her position in subsequent Catholic history was also vital. Devotion to Our Lady in the Early Church After her Assumption into heaven, which, like the Immaculate Conception, is now a defined dogma of the Church, we can assume that there certainly was devotion to Our Lady in the early Church, during the first three hundred years of its existence when it underwent severe persecutions. These persecutions, though, may have inhibited such devotion, and another factor may have been the idolatrous nature of religion at the time, with its focus on gods and goddesses. There was a real danger of Mary being taken for a “goddess”, and thus impeding the spread of a doctrinally orthodox Christianity. But when the persecutions ceased, and the influence of idolatry and paganism had diminished, then devotion to the Blessed
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Virgin blossomed marvellously, indicating that she had an important role in evangelising at the time. We can see this in the proclamation of her as the Theotokos, the God-bearer, at the Council of Ephesus in AD 431. This pivotal proclamation involved a belief in Jesus’s true human nature, while at the same time safeguarding belief in his divinity, such that in the hypostatic union between the divine and human natures of Christ, he was both Son of God and Son of Mary. Even before that, though, we have evidence of practical Marian devotion in the prayer Sub tuum praesidium, (“Under thy Protection”). The earliest text of this prayer dates from the third century: We fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God; despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin. Amen. Medieval Devotion to Our Lady After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Christianity suffered from the great decline in civilisation in the West, and it was mainly due to the Benedictine monasteries that the best of classical learning was preserved. Public Marian devotion in the Church began to grow again in the medieval period, which saw great saints such as St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), who was an outstanding devotee of Our Lady, and the main force behind the incredible expansion of the Cistercian order.
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We can also see evidence of this Marian devotion in the great number of cathedrals dedicated to the Blessed Virgin all over Christendom in the Middle Ages, the high point of Catholic influence in Europe. Apart from the great cathedrals, there were also many other shrines and places of pilgrimage devoted to the Blessed Virgin in medieval Europe and beyond. These are practical examples of the great devotion to her which exercised a profound influence on culture and society at the time. In the broadest sense of the term, this was an evangelising movement, because the effect of preaching the Gospel does not remain constant for a given culture, but rather there is always a need for a continual re-evangelisation of each new generation. At that time, most people could not read and would have received their Christian instruction from preaching, or from religious art and mystery plays. Marian ideas and imagery acted as a leaven in society: people were presented with her as a model in popular forms of entertainment and culture, and this could not fail to influence society as a whole for the better. Here again we have a Marian “evangelising� movement within medieval society. In sum, the age of the cathedrals represents the flowering and triumph of Christianity in Europe, and it was not a coincidence this happened just at the time when there was a great upsurge in devotion to the Blessed Virgin. This was when the Church was at its most influential and so we might look to emulate this type of
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Marian devotion in the future, as a way of supporting a resurgence of Christianity. English Medieval Devotion to Our Lady Devotion to Our Lady was very much present in medieval England. Early English Marian apparitions and shrines associated with her contributed to the idea that England was the “dowry” or special portion of Mary, a land particularly dedicated to her. Thus we have the Marian shrines such as those at Glastonbury, Evesham and particularly Walsingham, which became one of the most visited shrines in Europe. At the start of the fifteenth century, Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury wrote that, We, the English, being the servants of her special inheritance and her own dowry, as we are commonly called, ought to surpass others in the warmth of our praise and devotion [to the Blessed Virgin Mary]. This text seems to indicate that this title of “The Dowry of Mary” was commonly being used for England at this time, perhaps indicating a much earlier origin for the term. An implication of all this, of course, is that England is still the Dowry of Mary, despite the effects of the Reformation and secularisation, and thus Catholics in England ought to be doing their utmost to promote devotion to Our Lady as a way of re-evangelising the country.
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The Brown Scapular Tradition had it that England was the place where the Brown Scapular, a sacramental worn around the neck, was revealed by Our Lady, to St Simon Stock, the English prior general of the Carmelite Order, on 16th July 1251. According to a long-standing tradition, she said to him: “This will be for you and for all Carmelites the privilege, that he who dies in this will not suffer eternal fire.” After this apparition to St Simon, the Scapular devotion spread throughout the Church. The Scapular promise implies that Mary will intercede to ensure that the wearer of the Scapular obtains the grace of final perseverance, that is, of dying in a state of grace, and this promise includes all Catholics who enrol in the Scapular. Over the centuries, the Scapular has been enriched with many indulgences and privileges by numerous popes, and particularly emphasised in recent times by Popes Pius XII and St John Paul II. The Scapular devotion has thus stood the test of time, and in fact Our Lady appeared during the last Fatima apparition as Our Lady of Mount Carmel and carrying the Scapular. In addition, Sr Lucia of Fatima pointed to its importance in saying, “The Rosary and the Scapular are inseparable.” The Marian Rosary It was during the medieval period that the Marian Rosary began to become popular in the Church. This devotion is
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traditionally associated with St Dominic (1170-1221), and with revelations made to him by Our Lady while he was engaged in his struggle against Albigensian heretics. St Dominic could well have preached sermons on the basics of the faith and interspersed them with “Hail Marys”, thus initiating the idea of “meditating” on the mysteries surrounding the life, death and Resurrection of Christ. A long-standing tradition in the Church sees this particular form of meditative prayer as the best form of devotion to Our Lady, and hence ultimately to God, since prayer to Mary is not an end in itself but leads to Christ. The majority of the popes from the late fifteenth century until the present have acclaimed the Rosary, which is really a prayerful Scriptural meditation with a mixture of vocal and mental prayer. As we will see, the devout and meditative praying of the Rosary has greatly contributed to effective evangelisation, not least following heavenly interventions involving the Blessed Virgin. Thus devotion to the Rosary has been a very powerful means of evangelisation in the past, and can also help to attain the goals of the New Evangelisation. Reformation and Catholic Reformation The sixteenth century saw the Reformation, the great Protestant revolt against the Church, which paradoxically began the process of secularisation which has led to the present state of modern society with its materialist
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opposition to the very idea of God. In the process, the old medieval Catholic culture was largely destroyed, and a new culture arose, strongly influenced by Calvinism and the new humanistic ideas which had developed during the Renaissance. This movement was given added impetus in the centuries that followed by the so-called Enlightenment, and then by the French and Russian Revolutions. But as the world became more secular, and thus moved further away from God, he responded by sending his Mother to earth to appear in various places to call people to prayer and repentance. We will look at four of the most important of these, namely, Guadalupe in 1531, the Rue de Bac in 1830, Lourdes in 1858, and Fatima in 1917. The main religious result of the Reformation was that millions of people were lost to Catholicism in Europe, and although much ground was regained through the Catholic or Counter-Reformation, the result was a divided continent, leading ultimately to the virtual de-Christianisation of present-day Europe. But while this was happening, in the New World of North and South America, Our Lady was spearheading a great evangelising movement, which she initiated through her Guadalupe apparitions in Mexico in 1531.
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