On the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Magnificat

The criminal act of tampering with the calendar of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church by the scions of the counterfeit church of conciliarism is one of the great felonies of all time. The harmony and rhythm of the inherent order found in the calendar of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church is laden with deep theological meaning and full of material for spiritual reflection and meditation. Such is the case with the feast that is celebrated today in the calendar of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin, Saint Elizabeth, in the hill country of Judah.

The calendar of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church places feasts at times of the year for very specific reasons. Today’s feast, the Visitation, a mystery we meditate upon every day if we pray all fifteen decades of Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary daily, is celebrated eight days after the birth of Saint John the Baptist, that is, on the day of the circumcision of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s cousin and precursor.

This is the day that Our Lady left the hill country of Judah to return to Nazareth for the final six months of her own pregnancy. Thus, the liturgical Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary commemorates the end of her period of visiting Saint Elizabeth, a period that had begun on April 2, which was eight days after Our Lady had been told the news of Saint Elizabeth’s pregnancy by Saint Gabriel the Archangel at the Annunciation. Thus, the actual day of the Visitation was April 2. The period of Our Lady’s visit lasted three months, meaning that the first trimester of her carrying the preborn Jesus was spent away from home helping her cousin prepare to deliver her own Divine Son’s precursor. The placement of this liturgical feast in the calendar of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination on May 31, therefore, makes no sense whatsoever (other than randomly selecting a Marian feast to close the Marian month of May).

God does nothing by accident or happenstance. Our Lady was visited by Saint Gabriel the Archangel on March 25, giving her perfect fiat to the will of the Father so as to enflesh the Son by the power of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost. She set off immediately for the hill country of Judah, a journey that took her eight days to complete. Upon arriving for her three month period of assisting Saint Elizabeth and Saint Zacharias, Our Lady heard Saint Elizabeth was inspired by the Holy Ghost to complete the first part of the Ave Maria had been begun by Saint Gabriel the Archangel eight days before. Saint Gabriel said, Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum; Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus. . Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women. Saint Elizabeth said: Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. “Blessed art thou amongst women.” How can any Protestant say that the Angelic salutation given by Saint Gabriel to Our Lady and continued by Saint Elizabeth is unworthy of being on the lips of everyone who truly believes in the Sacred Divinity of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?  The exaltation of Our Lady as being the Mother of God and thus the Blessed Mother of us all is present in Saint Luke’s Gospel for all who have the honesty and the humility to see it and to recognize in Our Lady the very means by which our salvation was made possible.

Saint Elizabeth went on:

“And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me. For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.” (Lk. 1:43-44)

The Church teaches us that it was at the moment Saint John the Baptist leapt for joy in his mother’s womb that he was freed of Original Sin. The moment of Saint John’s preborn ecstasy thus teaches us about the inviolability of all innocent human life. The preborn Saint John heard the voice of Our Lady, who was carrying within her the preborn Jesus, the One Whose precursor Saint John was meant to be. This should serve as a fundamental lesson to all Catholics everywhere about the inviolability of the fruit of mother’s wombs.

The God-Man placed Himself in total solidarity with every child in every mother’s womb when He was conceived as a helpless embryo in Our Lady’s womb by the power of the God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation. Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine: Et homo factus est. That both Saint Elizabeth, who knew that the fruit of Mary’s womb was her Lord, and Saint John the Baptist, were exultant over the fact of the Incarnation should remind us once more that the Incarnation changes everything about human existence–and that there is not one aspect of daily life that is not meant to be lived in the conscious and public recognition that the Word became Flesh to dwell amongst us and to win back for us on the tree of the Holy Cross what was lost for us on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. This is a lesson that the naturalists among us, ever eager to speak and act as though the Incarnation and the entirety of the Deposit of Faith are matters of complete indifference to social order, ought to remember.

Our Lady went on to proclaim her Magnificat, which is required under pain of mortal sin in most instances to be prayed every evening by all priests around the world near the close of vespers:   

My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Because He as regarded the humility of His handmaid; for behold henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

Because He that is mighty, hath done great things for me; and holy is His name. And His mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear Him.

He hath shewed might in his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.

He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich He hath sent empty away. He hath received Israel His servant, being mindful of His mercy: as He spoke to Abraham and his seed for ever. (Lk. 1: 46-55)

Dom Prosper Gueranger provided us with a superb commentary on Epistle that is read in today’s offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: 

The Church introduces us into the depth of the mystery. What she has just been reading to us is the explanation of that word of Elizabeth’s which sums up the whole of to-day’s feast: ‘When thy voice sounded in mine ear, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.’ O voice of Mary, voice of the turtledove, putting winter to flight, and announcing springtime flowers and fragrance! At this sweet sound John’s soul, a captive in the darkness of sin, casts off the badge of slavery, and suddenly developing germs of highest virtues, appears as beautiful as a bride decked in nuptial array: and, therefore, how Jesus hastes unto this well-beloved soul! Between John and the Bridegroom, oh! what ineffable outpourings ! what sublime dialogue passes between them, from womb to womb of Mary and Elizabeth! In this happy meeting, the sight, the hearing, the voice of the mothers belong less to themselves than to the blessed fruit each bears within her; thus their senses are the lattices through which the Bridegroom and the friend of the Bridegroom see one another, understand one another, speak one to the other!

The animal man, it is true, understands not in this language. ‘Father,” the Son of God will soon exclaim: “I give thee thanks for that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones. Let him, therefore, that hath ears to hear, hear; but, Amen, I say unto you, unless ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven, nor know its mysteries.’ Wisdom shall nevertheless be justified by her children, as the Gospel says. The simple-hearted in quest of light, with all the straightforwardness of humility, let pass unheeded those mocking shadows playing over the marshes of this world; they know that the first ray of the eternal Sun will disperse these phantoms, leaving emptiness before those who run in pursuit of them. These wise little ones already feed upon that which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, having a foretaste, here below, of eternal delights.

Ineffably is John the Baptist experiencing all this. Accosted by the divine Friend who has been beforehand in seeking him, his soul at once awakens to full ecstasy. Jesus, on this side, is now making his first conquest; for it is to John that is addressed amongst all creatures (Mary of course excepted) the sacred nuptial-song uttered to the soul of the Word made Flesh, making his divine Heart throb with emotion. To-day the prophecy of the Magnificat was first uttered, and to-day also the divine union expressed by the Holy Ghost in the Canticle of Canticles is fully realized. Never more fully than on this happy day shall the sacred transports of the Spouse be justified; never shall they find a more faithful response! Let us warm ourselves at these celestial fires; let us join our enthusiasm to that of eternal Wisdom, who makes his first step, this day, in his royal progress towards mankind. Let us unite with our Lord in imploring the Precursor at last to show himself. Were it not ordered otherwise from on high, his inebriation of love would verily have made him at once break down the wall that held him from appearing, then and there, to announce the Bridegroom. For he knows that the sight of his countenance, preceding the face of the Lord himself, will excite the whole earth to transports; he knows that his own voice will be sweet when once it has become the organ of the Word calling the bride to him.

Together with Elizabeth let us extol, in the Gradual, the Blessed Virgin to whom we owe all these joys, and within whom love still encloses him whom the whole world could not contain. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)       

The prayer composed by Dom Prosper Gueranger at the conclusion of his commentary on this great feast is worth repeating in its entirety:

Who is she that cometh forth beautiful as the morning rising, terrible as an army set in array. O Mary, this is the day on which thine exquisite brightness, for the first time, gladdens the earth. Thou bearest within thee the Sun of justice; and his early beams, striking first the mountain tops whilst the vales below are yet left in darkness, at once enlighten the Precursor, who is said to be the greatest ever born of woman. The divine Son, swift in his ascending course, will soon bathe the lowly valleys in his radiant fires. But how full of race and beauty are these his first gleams peering through the veiling cloud! For thou, O Mary, art the light cloud, the hope of earth, the terror of hell. Contemplating from afar, through its heavenly transparency, the mystery of this day, Elias, the father of prophets, and Isaias, their prince, did both of them descry the Lord. They beheld thee speeding thy way across the mountains and they blessed God; ‘for,’ saith the Holy Ghost, ‘when winter hath congealed the waters into crystal, withered the valleys, and consumed as with fire the green mountains, a present remedy to all is the speedy coming of a cloud.’

Haste, O Mary! Come thou to all of us; do not let the mountains alone, enjoy thy benign influence, bend thee down to those lowly, ignoble regions wherein the greater part of mankind but vegetates, helpless to scale the mountain heights; let thy kindly visit reach down even to the deepest abyss of human perversity wellnigh bordering on the gulf of hell; let the beams of saving life reach even there. Oh! would that from the thralldom of sin, from the plain where the vulgar throng is swaying to and fro, we were drawn to follow in thy train! How beauteous are thy footsteps along our humble pathways, how aromatic the perfumes wherewith thou dost inebriate earth this day! Thou wast all unknown, nay, thou was even an enigma to thyself, O thou fairest among the daughters of Adam, until thy first going forth led thee unto our poor hovels and manifested thy power. The desert, suddenly embalmed with heavenly fragrance, hails the passage, not of the figurative Ark, but of the ‘litter of the true Solomon.’ in these days of the sublime nuptials which he has vouchsafed to contract. What wonder, then, if at rapid pace thou dost speed across the mountains, since thou art bearing the Bridegroom who, as a giant, strideth from peak to peak.

Far different art thou, O Mary, from her who is portrayed in the sacred Canticle as hesitating, in spite of the heavenly call, to betake herself to active work, foolishly captivated by the sweets of mystic repose in such a way as to dream of finding it elsewhere than in the absolute good pleasure of the Beloved! Thou art not one, at the voice of the Spouse, to make difficulties about clothing thyself again with the garment of toil, of exposing thy feet, were it never so much, to be soiled within the dusty roads of the earth. Scarcely has he given himself to thee immeasurably as none else can know than, ever on thy guard against the mistake of remaining all absorbed in the selfish enjoyment of his love, thou thyself dost invite him to begin at once the great work which brought him down from heaven to earth: “Come, my Beloved, let us go forth into the fields, let us rise up early to see if the vineyards flourish, to hasten the budding of the fruits of salvation in souls; there it is, that I wish to be all thine.’ And leaning upon him, no less than he upon thee, without thereby losing aught of heavenly delights, thou dost traverse our desert; and the Holy Trinity perceiveth between Mother and Son sympathies, harmonious agreements, unknown until then even to thee; and the friends of the Bridegroom, hearing thy sweet voice, on their side also comprehend his love and partake in thy joy. With him, with thee, O Mary, ae after age shall behold sols innumerable who, swift-footed even as the roe and the young hart, will flee away from the valleys and gain the mountain heights where, in the warm sunshine, heaven’s aromatic spices are ever fragrant.

Bless, O Mary, those whom the better part so sweetly attracts. Protect that Order whose glory is to honour in a special manner thy Visitation. Faithful to the spirit of their illustrious founders they still continue to justify their sweet title by perfuming the Church on earth with the fragrance of that humility, gentleness and hidden prayer which made this day’s mystery so dear to the angels eighteen hundred years ago. Finally, O Lady, forget not the crowded ranks of those whom race presses, more numerous than ever nowadays, to tread in thy footsteps, mercifully seeking out every object of misery, teach them the way in which alone is possible to devote themselves to their neighbour without in any way quitting God; for the greater glory of god and the happiness of man multiply such faithful copies of thee. May all of us, having followed, in the degree measured out to us by him who divides his gifts to each one as he wills, meet together in our home yonder, to sing in one voice together with thee, an eternal Magnificat!  (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)

This Magnificat of Our Lady can be ignored only at the great peril of one who says, albeit falsely as Protestantism is not Christianity (as Father Frederick Faber noted, there is no Christianity where there is no Mass), he follows Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ but who believes that honoring His Blessed Mother is somehow un-Scriptural. “For behold henceforth all generations shall call me blessed” either means what it says or it does not. We must pray that those outside of the true Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, will make the Magnificat their prayer and come into the true Church, found today in the catacombs where no concessions are made to conciliarism or to the ravenous wolves who dare to cast off dogmatic truths as they see fit to suit their own Modernist proclivities, to be devoted and totally consecrated sons and daughters of Our Lady, the woman who made possible our salvation and who was given to us by her Divine Son to be our Mother as He hung dying on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem us.

Those of us who are Catholics have an obligation to meditate quite carefully on the Second Joyful Mystery, which we on the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin July 2.

We must meditate upon the selflessness of Our Lady, who thought nothing of making a journey immediately after receiving the news of the miraculous conception of the Word as Flesh in her own virginal and immaculate womb by the power of the Holy Ghost. We must have that same selflessness to perform both the Corporal and the Spiritual Works of Mercy no matter how much we are taxed physically as a result. If we are totally consecrated to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, then we know that she will use our unseen efforts and prayers and penances and sacrifices in ways that will be made manifest to us only in eternity. And we must learn from the Visitation that the assaults upon innocent human life in the womb demand our prayers and our attention as we seek to plant the seeds for the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King as the ultimate fruit of the Triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart. For just as the fruit of Our Lady’s womb was recognized by Saint Elizabeth and by Saint John the Baptist, so must the world recognize the fruit of Our Lady’s womb as its King in every aspect of its life and social activity.

The great feast that we celebrate today beckons us to meditate upon the Joyful Mysteries of Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary. Indeed, we should try to pray all fifteen decades of the Rosary every day, should we not? And Saint Louis de Montfort, the great apostle of True Devotion to Mary, gave us a wonderful prayer with which to start the mystery of the Rosary that comprises today’s glorious liturgical feast:

We offer you, Lord Jesus, this second decade in honour of the Visitation of your holy Mother to her cousin Saint Elizabeth. Through this mystery and the intercession of Mary we ask for a perfect love of our neighbour. . . .  

(After the decade is completed:) May the grace of the mystery of the Visitation come into me and make me truly charitable.

And what is true Charity?

It is to seek with urgency the unconditional conversion of all those outside of the true Church into her maternal bosom, something that the counterfeit church of conciliarism eschews, meaning that true Charity, the Charity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus that beat within the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of Our Lady as It was formed out of her own Immaculate Heart, so full of that true Charity, is not be found therein.

The readings for the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary refers  to the “golden tongued” defender of the Holy Faith, a doctor of Holy Mother Church who was not very “ecumenical” in his denunciations of Judaism as a dead religion. Saint John Chrysostom reflected on today’s feast in honor of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary as follows:

As soon as our Redeemer was come among us, He went with haste, while as yet He was in His mother's womb, to visit His friend John. And John, in the one womb, becoming conscious of the Presence of Jesus in the other womb, dashed himself impatiently against the narrow walls of his natural prison, as though crying out: I see the very Lord who hath given nature her bounds, and I wait not for the due season of my birth. There is no need for me to linger here till nine months are ended, for He That is Eternal is with me! I will break out of my dark cell; I will proclaim my full knowledge of many wonders. I am the sign. I will show that the Christ is here. I am the trumpet; let me peal forth the news that the Son of God is come in the flesh. Let me give my trumpet-note, let me bless my father's tongue, and make it to speak again. Let me give my trumpet-note, let me quicken my mother's womb.

Thou seest, O beloved, how new and how strange a mystery is here! John is not born, but by leaping he speaketh; he is yet unseen, and he giveth warning; he is not yet able to cry, but by his acts he is heard. He draweth not yet the breath of life, but he preacheth God. he seeth not yet the light, but he maketh known the Sun! He is not come out of the womb, but he hasteth to play the Fore-runner in the Presence of the Lord. He cannot restrain himself; he rebelleth against the bounds set by nature, and struggleth to break out of the prison of the belly. His longing is to herald the coming Saviour. He saith, as it were: Behold, the Deliverer cometh and am I to remain still bound to abide here? The Word cometh, that He may set right all things and am I still to tarry in prison? I will go forth. I will run before Him, and cry aloud to all men: “Behold the Lamb of God Which taketh away the sin of the world.”

But do thou tell us, O John, how it came to pass that while thou wast still in the darkness of thy mother's womb, thou didst see and hear? How didst thou behold the things of God? How didst thou leap and bound for joy? Great, saith John, is the mystery of that which taketh place here, far from the understanding of men are these doings. It is meet that I should do a new thing in nature for the sake of Him Who is making new things which are beyond nature. I see in the womb, because I see the Sun of righteousness in a womb. I hear, because I am coming as the herald of the Great Word. I cry out, because I espy the Only-begotten Son of the Father clad in Flesh. I bound for joy, because I see that He by Whom all things were made, hath taken upon Him the form of a servant. I leap, because I think of the Redeemer of the world being made Flesh. I run before His coming, and herald His approach unto you with this, as it were, my confession. (The Divine Office, Matins, Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.)

Today’s Divine Office also includes a brief but nevertheless poignant account of the martyrdom of Saints Processus and Martinian, who are commemorated on this most joyful Marian feast day:

At what time Peter and Paul were kept in the Mamertine Prison, at the foot of the Tarpeian Rock, two of the gaolers, named Processus and Martinian, along with other forty, were moved by the preaching and miracles of the Apostles to believe in Christ, and were baptized in a spring which suddenly brake forth out of the rock. These men let the Apostles depart if they willed it. But Paulinus, Prefect of the soldiers, when he heard what was come to pass, strove to turn away Processus and Martinian from their purpose. And when he found that he but wasted time, he ordered their faces to be bruised and their teeth to be broken, with stones. Moreover, when he had had them led to the image of Jupiter, and they still boldly answered that they would not worship the gods, he caused them to be tormented on the rack, and white-hot plates of metal to be put to their flesh, and that they should be beaten with sticks. While they were suffering all these things they were heard to say only this one word Blessed be the Name of the Lord. They were afterwards cast into prison, and in a little while they were taken outside the city, and slain with the axe, upon the Aurelian Way. The Lady Lucina buried their bodies upon her own farm, upon the 2nd day of July, but they were afterwards brought into the City, and are buried in the Church of the Prince of the Apostles. (The Divine Office, Matins, July 2.)

Saints Processus and Martinian were as “ecumenical” as Saint John Chrysostom. They were Catholics, something that the “popes” and “bishops” of the counterfeit church of conciliarism are not.  Indeed, they mock the true Faith, making them the most uncharitable men on the face of this earth.

A blessed Feast of the Vistiation of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary to you all!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Elizabeth, pray for us.

Saint Zachary, pray for us.

Saints Processus and Martinian, pray for us.