Features

Advent Resources

• God Still Comes – An Advent Meditation

  God Still Comes, A Meditative Journey Through Advent, offers reflections on the following themes:

  A Cycle of Love

  The Tent

  The Land

  The Temple

  The Womb

  The Heart

See additional resources:

Our Lady of Guadalupe

See our feature at: Resources for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

We Receive E-mails

Young people are a big problem for the Church. Many find the Mass boring as do I and nothing is done to give them any encouragement. A lot of priests are lazy, many are unapproachable, they are too strict. The priest should get out and meet the young people of his parish. Too often they rely on the older, more staunch parishioners instead of concentrating on bringing young people back into the Church. I think that the Church is doomed unless something is done to help and encourage the young.

Very often the comments of the elderly spark off resentment in young people - they have different images of what their Faith is. So many people call the youth of Merseyside for everything - but if they could see the strong numbers of youth in Lourdes working hard for the sick they would know how wrong they are. Very often the youth do good things but don't publicise their actions whilst the older Catholics/Christians wave banners if they do anything good. The elderly think young people enjoy their religion too much. Why shouldn't we? Loving God shouldn't be a penance. That's how many young people feel but are told that they lack respect.

A Student Social Worker, Merseyside

Mary Page editors wonder what its readers think in response to the e-mail received above.

Mirror of Hope

The University of Dayton has honored Kevin Hanna's masterpiece with a website feature all its own. See the site at Mirror of Hope

Be sure to scroll down to view the images.

Mary in the Secular Press

Commentary on Mary in various news articles from November 21 - December 6, 2000.

The director and editors of Mary Page under the auspices of the International Marian Research Institute do not necessarily endorse or agree with the events and ideas expressed in this feature. Our sole purpose is to report on items about Mary gleaned from a myriad of papers representing the secular press.

• Bethlehem, the Palestinian-run town where the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago, has cancelled Christmas this year, Agence France Press said on December 1. A sign in lights wishing "Merry Christmas"hangs from a building in Bethlehem but the windows below it are bricked up to protect them from the fighting. Festivities held last year which were intended to become annual events have been shelved because of the violence and Israel's military closure of the town. Foreign tours have cancelled and people can't get through the checkpoints.

• Vendors still sell Christmas cards and holy pictures outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Ho Chi Minh City, but the front grates to the 117-year-old twin-towered are now locked, the Irish Times reported on November 21. The locked-up church is the response of Vietnam's leading general to President Clinton's visit, in which he repeated several times that the communist government should allow more political, economic and religious freedoms. Secret documents leaked from the Vietnam Communist Party show that officials are alarmed by the possibility of subversion by the Catholic Church and the growing number of ethnic minority people converting to Christianity in Vietnam. President Clinton paid a brief visit to Roman Catholic Archbishop Pham Minh Man during his four-day visit.

• Maria Emilia Santos, whose sudden recovery from a crippling spinal injury was recognized by the Vatican as a miracle and led to the beatification of two Portuguese shepherd children this year, has died of leukemia, the Associated Press said on November 29. Her death on November 27 was also reported by the Belfast News Letter on November 30.

• A PR Newswire Association release December 1 about a docu-drama, "Report to Cardinal X," to be released by Praeceptum Films next year, contains the information that since June 24 hundreds of pilgrims have come daily to see apparitions of the Virgin Mary at the Greensides farm at Marmora, near Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, and that prophecies uttered by a young Filipina visionary in August assert that the "Virgin wept" and spoke about a second great depression that would soon overwhelm the world. Actor Yaphet Kotto, head of Internet 3rd World News, is documenting the phenomena at the Greensides farm.

• Photos of a stained-glass image of the Virgin Mary found in a mausoleum in New York's Queens borough Calvary Cemetery form the basis of Laminas No. 5 by Cuban-born photographer Luis Mallo, The Toronto Star wrote on December 2. Mallo, whose photos hang in the Stephen Bulger Gallery, said "this pose of the Virgin Mary shows her in despair, in agony."

• The Virgin May is being remembered and celebrated in a variety of musical programs this season, among them:

  Florida Voices, a chamber choral ensemble, gave a program in which each item was a setting of "Magnificat." Works by Claudio Monteverdi, Stephen Cleobury, Arvo Part and Stephen Paulus were included, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune wrote on November 21.

  The David York Ensemble presented "Mystique of Mary," a selection of choral pieces devoted to the Virgin Mary, the weekend before Thanksgiving. The choir sang admirably from a selection of Marian art music that displayed a wide variety of styles, from baroque to contemporary, but kept a reflective, contemplative quality throughout, The Oregonian said on November 21.

  "Arise My Love, a Reflection on the Virgin Mary," a new one-act opera by local composer David White was to be performed in December at the Oriental Theatre, the Denver Rocky Mountain News wrote on December 3. Key roles were those of the Virgin Mary, the Angel Gabriel and Elisabeth.

  Themes of sin and grace color the songs of songwriter and singer Richard Shindell, interviewed from Austin, Texas, for Weekend All Things Considered on National Public Radio on November 25, anchor Lisa Simeone said. During the interview, Shindell sang three verses from "On a Sea of Fleur-de-Lis," all beginning with the words, "I adore thee, Mother Mary, but would you change me back to a witch?" A one-time student at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, Shindell said it's the first song he wrote, and he didn't know at the time that in Christian iconography, the fleur-de-lis is a symbol of the Virgin Mary.

Items Revisited

Call for Papers: Marian Spirituality

The Mariological Society of American issues a "Call-for-Papers." The conferences will be delivered at the Society's annual meeting, May, 2001, and printed in Marian Studies, 2001 (vol. 52). The Society is undertaking a three-year program on Marian Spirituality – the witness and experience of the Marian influence in the life of the Church, of religious movements, and of individuals.

The first year's program (2001) will deal with Marian Spirituality, especially the concept of mediation, during the patristic and early medieval periods. Papers are requested on the Scriptural and doctrinal foundations of Marian spirituality, and on witness of early Eastern and Western writers (e.g., Augustine, Ildephonse of Toledo, Severus of Antioch, John Damascene, Germanus of Constantinople, the monastic writers) and the hymns and prayers of the period.

A precis should be submitted by December 31, 2000. For more information, contact Fr. Thomas A. Thompson, S.M., The Marian Library/IMRI, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH 45469-1390. (FAX 937- 229-4258; Tel: 937-229-4214.

Crèches International: Dayton Art Institute

During the past four years The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute has been instrumental in fostering the true meaning of the Advent/Christmas season. Each year, nativity sets collected from around the world have been on display at the University of Dayton and at Gallery St. John (1998 & 1999) at the Marianist provincial center in Dayton.

For the first time this year, thirty of the crèches will be on display at The Dayton Art Institute. The collaboration for this project involved over a year of planning and preparation for the special exhibit, The Christmas Story. The nativity sets in their unique cultural settings will be on view between November 21, 2000, and January 7, 2001.

The selection of the crèches comprises entirely new displays as well as some beloved selections of previously exhibited at the University of Dayton. Simultaneously, sets new and old will be at The Marian Library's museum. Previous years' exhibits can be viewed on Mary Page in our gallery section:

New Society: Friends of the Crèche

In December, 1999, a small group of lovers of Christmas Nativities met in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for the purpose of starting an organization with the following goals:

• To promote the tradition of the creche cultures
• To associate ourselves with the international federation of creche societies
• To set up a series of national conventions, the first one to be in 2001.

New Exhibit: Georgia Armstrong Askew

This exhibit has been on display at The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute since mid-November. Enjoy its rich symbolism at:

For news article: First Christmas – A collection of Nativity paintings from award-winning Milford artist Georgia Armstrong Askew is on display in the University of Dayton's Marian Library. See http://www.udayton.edu/news/nr/120400b.html

The Life of Mary: Nativity, Epiphany, Flight to Eygpt

The Mary Page theme for this news brief about the Blessed Mother is culled from magisterial documents since Vatican II. The theme will covers various aspects of Mary's personhood. Mary is a real, historical person who lived in Nazareth 2000.

The example from magisterial writings below is derived from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. 525 Jesus was born in a humble stable, into a poor family. (Cf.. Lk 2:6-7) Simple shepherds were the first witnesses to this event. In this poverty heaven's glory was made manifest. (Cf.. Lk 2:8-20) The Church never tires of singing the glory of this night:

The Virgin today brings into the world the Eternal and the earth offers a cave to the Inaccessible. The angels and shepherds praise him and the magi advance with the star, for you are born for us, Little Child, God eternal! (Kontakion of Romanos the Melodist) [See also 725]

526 To become a child in relation to God is the condition for entering the kingdom. (Cf.. Mt 18:3-4) For this, we must humble ourselves and become little. Even more: to become "children of God" we must be "born from above" or "born of God." (Jn 3:7 et al) Only when Christ is formed in us will the mystery of Christmas be fulfilled in us. (Cf.. Gal 4:19) Christmas is the mystery of this "marvelous exchange": ...

O marvelous exchange! Man's Creator has become man, born of the Virgin. We have been made sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity.

Prayer Corner Requests

You are invited to help us pray for our prayer corner intentions.

{Note: We were unable to locate the Holy Father's December intentions.]

For more information on these intentions, see: Apostleship of Prayer

Return to November 24, 2000

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Return to The Mary Page This page, maintained by The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute, Dayton, Ohio 45469-1390, and created by Michael P. Duricy , was last modified Monday, 10/06/2003 14:45:31 EDT by Michael P. Duricy . Please send any comments to jroten1@udayton.edu. URL for this page is http://campus.udayton.edu