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“When we appeal to the throne of grace we do so through Mary, honoring God by honoring His Mother, imitating Him by exalting her, touching the most responsive chord in the Sacred Heart of Christ with the sweet name of Mary.”— St. Robert Bellarmine
//Catholic Company//
Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi’s Story
Mystical ecstasy is the elevation of the spirit to God in such a way that the person is aware of this union with God while both internal and external senses are detached from the sensible world. Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi was so generously given this special gift of God that she is called the “ecstatic saint.”
Catherine de’ Pazzi was born into a noble family in Florence in 1566. The normal course would have been for her to have married into wealth and enjoyed comfort, but Catherine chose to follow her own path. At 9, she learned to meditate from the family confessor. She made her first Communion at the then-early age of 10, and made a vow of virginity one month later. At 16, Catherine entered the Carmelite convent in Florence because she could receive Communion daily there.
Catherine had taken the name Mary Magdalene and had been a novice for a year when she became critically ill. Death seemed near, so her superiors let her make her profession of vows in a private ceremony from a cot in the chapel. Immediately after, Mary Magdalene fell into an ecstasy that lasted about two hours. This was repeated after Communion on the following 40 mornings. These ecstasies were rich experiences of union with God and contained marvelous insights into divine truths.
As a safeguard against deception and to preserve the revelations, her confessor asked Mary Magdalene to dictate her experiences to sister secretaries. Over the next six years, five large volumes were filled. The first three books record ecstasies from May of 1584 through Pentecost week the following year. This week was a preparation for a severe five-year trial. The fourth book records that trial and the fifth is a collection of letters concerning reform and renewal. Another book, Admonitions, is a collection of her sayings arising from her experiences in the formation of women religious.
The extraordinary was ordinary for this saint. She read the thoughts of others and predicted future events. During her lifetime, Mary Magdalene appeared to several persons in distant places and cured a number of sick people.
It would be easy to dwell on the ecstasies and pretend that Mary Magdalene only had spiritual highs. This is far from true. It seems that God permitted her this special closeness to prepare her for the five years of desolation that followed when she experienced spiritual dryness. She was plunged into a state of darkness in which she saw nothing but what was horrible in herself and all around her. She had violent temptations and endured great physical suffering. Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi died in 1607 at age 41, and was canonized in 1669. Her liturgical feast is celebrated on May 25.
Reflection
Intimate union, God’s gift to mystics, is a reminder to all of us of the eternal happiness of union he wishes to give us. The cause of mystical ecstasy in this life is the Holy Spirit, working through spiritual gifts. The ecstasy occurs because of the weakness of the body and its powers to withstand the divine illumination, but as the body is purified and strengthened, ecstasy no longer occurs. See Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, and John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul, for more about various aspects of ecstasies.
//Franciscan Media//
Here in Ephesus, she was now as she was then: a girl, a woman, waiting and watching for the angel who would announce the word of her passing into the heaven where her Son ruled at the right hand of the Father. She was not afraid. She needed no Gabriel to reassure her. She’d lived too long in the immensity of the mystery to doubt. Nor did she wonder who she would be in eternity. She would be who she always was: Mary, the mother of God’s Son. She suspected that would be her role for all eternity: mother, woman, the completion of the love of the mysterious faces of God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit—the mystery moving through the three of them into her, visible in eternity as it is invisible on earth.
— from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
“Love Mary! She is loveable, faithful, constant. She will never let herself be outdone in love, but will ever remain supreme. If you are in danger, she will hasten to free you. If you are troubled, she will console you. If you are sick, she will bring you relief. If you are in need, she will help you. She does not look to see what kind of person you have been. She simply comes to a heart that wants to love her.”
— St. Gabriel Possenti of Our Lady of Sorrows
//The Catholic Company//
Mary would have to remind herself whenever she would remember and start to dwell on Jesus’s suffering, that love redeemed it all, and with the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, she again saw in a flash of light that love was the reason from all eternity. Jesus came to love us and show us the love of the Father and how we are to love the Father. And with that vision, there seemed no past anymore, or even future. Everything was now, everything was new and exciting in the present. And how marvelous to live in that reality that was a preview of what was to come but more importantly, was already here, happening in her. She was living in the kingdom and all that needed to happen was that moment when she entered and saw the kingdom of love that was already there inside and all around her.
— from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Jesus was not born and raised in a bubble. He had a mother who showed him manners and proper eating habits and how to act and interact with others… He was obedient to her, as he was disobedient by not telling Mary and Joseph that he was staying behind in the Temple when they went up to Jerusalem together. And when, on that occasion, he was questioned and indirectly reprimanded by Mary, Scripture says that Jesus then “went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor” (Luke 2:51–52). What depths of meditation are here when we open our minds and imaginations to the mystery of the hidden lives of Mary and her son, Jesus, of how they related to one another, and of how they lived together in Nazareth. What spiritual energy is contained and released for us in the images and scenes we create or receive in the silence of prayerful meditation.
— from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Story. That is the great gift the Scriptures give us in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. And it is those stories and a few other short vignettes in the Gospels of Mark and John that form the basis of what we call mariology, the study of the theology that derives from the story of Mary and her son Jesus. And her son Jesus was and is the reason, the root, and the complementarity that makes her story complete… That is why we lift up our hearts and pray, as Christians have prayed for centuries, “Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
— from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
“When needed, Mary provides for the defense and salvation of her children extraordinary graces and wonderful miracles. What wonders have caused, sustained, spread everywhere, a confidence among Christian people! What striking proofs of her protection the Church recalls to our memory in solemn feasts and devout practices, enriched by precious indulgences! What titles Christians give her to testify to their gratitude, ‘Help of Christians, health of the sick, comfort of the afflicted, refuge of sinners, gate of heaven, our life, our sweetness, our hope!’ What a multitude of people gather to the places where she is most honored, where she obtains the most assistance to those who call on her! What prayers and acts of thanksgiving are offered at the foot of her altars! In our days, what conquests have been made by Our Lady of Victories! What favors have been bestowed on all hearts devoted to the heart of Mary!”— St. Ignatius of Loyola, p.156
//The Catholic Company//
“For it was while Eve was yet a virgin that the ensnaring word had crept into her ear which was to build the edifice of death. Into a virgin’s soul, in like manner, must be introduced that Word of God which was to raise the fabric of life; so that what had been reduced to ruin by this sex might by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other effaced by believing.”— Tertullian, p.44
//The Catholic Company//