Celebrate Mary’s feasts by imitating her virtues, Mary: Day 069

Celebrate Mary’s feasts by imitating her virtues

What’s the best way to celebrate Marian feast days? St. Alphonsus suggests that we practice penance and cultivate a virtue.

The best way to celebrate the novenas before Our Lady’s feasts is to prac- tice certain interior penances. For example, we can get alone and observe silence. We can refrain from speaking to others impatiently. We can bear challenges and opposition with grace. All these interior penances can be practiced with less dan- ger of vanity and with greater merit.

The most useful spiritual exercise is to resolve from the beginning of the novena to correct some fault into which we fall the most frequently. For this purpose it would be well, when making visits to Our Lady, to ask pardon for past faults, to renew our resolution not to commit them anymore, and to implore Mary’s help.

The devotion most dear and pleasing to Mary is to endeavor to imitate her virtues. So it would be well always to commit ourselves to the imitation of some virtue that corresponds with the festival. For example, we can imitate on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception her purity of intention; on her Nativity, renewal of spirit, to throw off lukewarmness; on the Presentation, detachment from some- thing to which we are most attached; on the Annunciation, humility in bearing contempt; on the Visitation, charity toward our neighbor, in giving alms, or at least

in praying for sinners; on the Purification, obedience to superiors.
Finally, on the Feast of the Assumption, let’s endeavor to detach ourselves from the world, do all we can to prepare ourselves for death, and order each day of our lives as if it will be our last. —St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
Have I been careful to observe Mary’s feast days with some kind of special devotions or penances? If not, how might I celebrate the next Marian day on the Church calendar?

CLOSING PRAYER
Blessed Lady, all days belong to you and your Son. But help us to recall the mysteries of your life and the titles by which we honor you by consecrating your feasts, so that through them, we may consecrate ourselves to your service.

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