“A Son of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a man on fire with love, who spreads its flames wherever he goes. He desires mightily and strives by all means possible to set the whole world on fire with God’s love. Nothing daunts him; he delights in privations, welcomes work, embraces sacrifices, smiles at slander, and rejoices in suffering. His only concern is how he can best follow Jesus Christ and imitate Him in working, suffering, and striving constantly and single-mindedly for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls.”
St. Anthony Mary Claret (Autobiography of St. Anthony Mary Claret)
At the beginning of the thirteenth century when luxury and sensuality held sway, St. Francis of Assisi made his appearance, giving to men the example of a poor and penitential life. But God wished also to give the vain and pleasure-loving women of that period an example of contempt of the world’s vanities. For this mission He chose Clare, the daughter of a prominent and noble family of Assisi, born on January 20, 1194. Her father was favarone de Offreduccio, count of Sassorosso; her mother, the servant of God Ortolana, who died in the odor of sanctity. [1] St. Francis inaugurated his work, as Dominic had done, by preparing a dwelling for his future daughters, whose sacrifice might obtain every grace for the great Order he was about to found. [2]
Before the child’s birth it was revealed to the mother that her offspring would be a brilliant light in the world. This light the mother detected in her daughter from her earliest years. Besides being favored with personal beauty, Clare possessed a charming personality and rare qualities of mind. She was a favorite in the family, and hardly had she attained to young womanhood, when several suitors sought for her hand in marriage.
But her virtues surpassed the gifts with which nature endowed her. She interested herself in the poor and frequently denied herself things so as to be able to give more to the poor members of Christ. She loved prayer, and it was her sweetest delight to surrender her heart to sentiments of ardent devotion before Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Beneath her beautiful garments she wore a sharp penitential belt in order to honor the sufferings of Christ and to preserve herself a chaste virgin for His sake.
She was eighteen years old when she heard St. Francis preach in the Cathedral of Assisi during the Lent of 1212. His words on contempt of the world and on penance, and particularly the holy example he set earnestly affected Clare, that she conferred with him and soon recognized that God was calling her to lead a life similar to his in the seclusion of the convent. She did not hesitate to carry out God’s plans. Realizing that her family, intent only on a brilliant future for her in the world, would oppose her vocation in every way, she had to leave home in secret.
On Palm Sunday she went to church, dressed in her richest garments, to attend divine services. That night, attended by an elderly relative, she went to the little chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, Where St. Francis and his brethren came to meet her with lighted candles in their hands. Before the altar she removed her beautiful headdress, then St. Francis cut off her hair and covered her head with a veil of common linen. In place of rich garments, she received a coarse penitential garb and was girded with a white cord. This was the way in which the mother and founder of the Poor Clares was invested on March 18, 1212. For the time being, St. Francis placed her in a convent of Benedictine Sisters.
When Clare had successfully overcome the great opposition of her family, who had intended to force her to return home, her sister Agnes joined her in her sacrifice. St. Francis arranged a little convent for them near the church of St. Damian. There the number of consecrated virgins soon increased. They served God in great poverty, strict penance, and complete seclusion from the world according to a rule which St. Francis gave them as his Second Order. Clare was obliged under obedience to accept the office of abbess in 1215 and to continue in it for thirty-eight years until her death. But her love for humility found compensation in the performance of the lowliest services toward her sisters. In spite of her great physical sufferings, she set her sisters a striking example of zeal in penance and prayer. [3]
Clare was to Francis the help like unto himself, who begot to the Lord that multitude of heroic virgins and illustrious penitents soon reckoned by the Order in all lands, coming from the humblest condition and from the steps of the throne. In the new chivalry of Christ, Poverty, the chosen Lady of St. Francis, was to be the queen also of her whom God had given him as a rival and a daughter. Following to the utmost limits the Man-God humbled and stripped of all things for us, she nevertheless felt that she and her sisters were already queens in the kingdom of heaven: (Regula Damianitarum, viii); In the little nest of poverty,” she used to say, “what jewel could the bride esteem so much as conformity with a God possessing nothing, become a little One whom the poorest of mothers wrapped in humble swathing bands and laid in a narrow crib?” And she bravely defended against the highest authorities the privilege of absolute poverty, which the great Pope Innocent III feared to grant. Its definitive confirmation, obtained two days before the Saint’s death, came as the long-desired reward of forty years of prayer and suffering for the Church of God… For forty-two years she ruled her monastery with wonderful care and prudence, in the fear of God and the full observance of the Rule. Her own life was a lesson and an example to others, showing all how to live aright.
She subdued her body in order to grow strong in spirit. Her bed was the bare ground, or, at times, a few twigs, and for a pillow she used a piece of hard wood. Her dress consisted of a single tunic and a mantle of poor coarse stuff; and she often wore a rough hair-shirt next to her skin. So great was her abstinence, that for a long time she took absolutely no bodily nourishment for three days of the week, and on the remaining days restricted herself to so small a quantity of food, that the other religious wondered how she was able to live. Before her health gave way, it was her custom to keep two Lents in the year, fasting on bread and water. Moreover, she devoted herself to watching and prayer, and in these exercises especially she would spend whole days and nights. She suffered from frequent and long illnesses; but when she was unable to leave her bed in order to work, she would make her sisters raise and prop her up in a sitting position, so that she could work with her hands, and thus not be idle even in sickness.
The greatness of her sanctity was manifested by many different miracles. She restored the power of speech to one of the sisters of her monastery, to another the power of hearing. She healed one of a fever, one of dropsy, one of an ulcer, and many others of various maladies. She cured of insanity a brothers of the Order of Friars Minor. Once when all the oil in the monastery was spent, Clare took a vessel and washed it, and it was found filled with oil by the loving kindness of God. She multiplied half a loaf so that it sufficed for fifty sisters. [4]
In the year 1240 an army of Saracens who were in the service of the excommunicated Emperor Frederick II drew near Assisi. They rushed upon the little convent of St. Damian that lay outside the city and had already scaled the walls of the monastery. In mortal fear the sisters had recourse to their mother, who was ill in bed.
The saint, carrying the pyx containing the Most Blessed Sacrament had herself carried to a convent window. There she pleaded fervently with the Lord of heaven in the words of the Psalmist (Ps. 73:19), “Deliver not up to beasts the souls, that confess to Thee, and shield thy servants whom thou hast redeemed with Thy precious blood.” A mysterious voice coming from the host said: “I shall always watch over you.” Immediately panic seized the besiegers. A ray of brilliant light which emanated from the Blessed Sacrament had dazzled them. They fell down from the walls and fled from the place. The convent was saved and the town of Assisi was spared. [5]
From the ancients of Israel, there came to this virgin, not yet thirty years old, such messages as this: “To his very dear Sister in Jesus Christ, to his mother the Lady Clare, handmaid of Christ, Hugolin of Ostia, unworthy bishop and sinner. Ever since the hour when I had to deprive myself of your holy conversation, to snatch myself from that heavenly joy, such bitterness of heart causes my tears to flow, that if I did not find at the feet of Jesus the consolation which his love never refuses, my mind would fail and my soul would melt away. Where is the glorious joy of that Easter spent in your company and that of the other handmaids of Christ? … I knew that I was a sinner; but at the remembrance of your supereminent virtue, my misery overpowers me, and I believe myself unworthy ever to enjoy again that conversation of the Saints, unless your tears and prayers obtain pardon for my sins. I put my soul, then, into your hands; to you I entrust my mind, that you may answer for me on the day of judgment. The Lord Pope will soon be going to Assisi; Oh! that I may accompany him, and see you once more! Salute my sister Agnes (i.e. St. Clare’s own sister and first daughter in God); salute all your sisters in Christ.”
The great Cardinal Hugolin, though more than eighty years of age, became soon after Gregory IX. During his fourteen years’ pontificate, which was one of the most brilliant as well as most laborious of the thirteenth century, he was always soliciting Clare’s interest in the perils of the Church, and the immense cares which threatened to crush his weakness. For, says the contemporaneous historian of our Saint, Luke Wadding: “He knew very well what love can do, and that virgins have free access to the sacred court: for what could the King of heaven refuse to those, to whom he has given himself?” [6]
After suffering from a serious illness for thirty years, Clare felt that her end was drawing nigh [7]. Her daughters beheld wings of fire over her head and covering her shoulders, indicating that she to had reached seraphic perfection. On hearing that a loss which so concerned the whole Church was imminent, the Pope, Innocent IV, came from Perugia with the Cardinals of his suite. He imposed a last trial on the Saint’s humility, by commanding her to bless, in his presence, the bread which had been presented for the blessing of the sovereign Pontiff; heaven approved the invitation of the Pontiff and the obedience of the Saint, for no sooner had the virgin blessed the loaves than each was found to be marked with a cross [8]. After she had received the last sacraments, she and one of her sisters beheld the Queen of Virgins coming with a large escort to meet her, the spouse of Jesus Christ. On August 11, 1253, she entered into the joys of eternity, and on the following day her body was buried. Pope Alexander IV canonized her already in the year 1255. [9]
Sources
[1], [3], [5], [7], and [9] – Habig, Marion A. The Seraphic Order: A Traditional Franciscan Book of Saints. Mediatrix Press, 2020
The title “Our Lady of Prompt Succor” was given to the Blessed Virgin Mary by Mother St. Michel Gensoul, an Ursuline Sister, in the late 18th century. When the reign of terror in France forced her into exile from her convent in Pont-Saint-Espirt to Montpellier, France, she founded a boarding school for girls. A letter from her cousin, an Ursline Sister in New Orleans, arrived, pleading for Mother St. Michel’s presence there. However, Bishop Fournier worried for the new and flourishing boarding school in troubled France and refused to grant her leave, telling her that only the Pope could give that permission.
In addition to the Bishop’s refusal, Pope Pius VII at this time (1809) was the prisoner of Napoleon Bonaparte in Savona, Italy, 295 miles away. The typical means of delivering a letter in peaceful times was by post riders on horseback, horsedrawn post coaches, or packet boats, and should the letter reach its destination at all, the Pope was under strict isolation and not permitted unmonitored communication. It seemed only a miracle could help Mother St. Michel.
Undaunted, Mother St. Michel wrote a letter at once, but for three months she had no means to send it. She sought assistance from the Mediatrix of all graces, the Mother of God. Praying before her statue she said:
“O most holy Virgin Mary, if you obtain a prompt and favorable answer to my letter, I promise to have you honored in New Orleans under the title of Our Lady of Prompt Secours.”
In a few days, on March 18, 1809, she obtained a means to send the letter. Within a month, against all odds, the Pope’s reply came, granting his permission and praising and blessing her endeavor.
Mother St. Michel Gensoul set to work to fulfill her promise, having a wooden statue of Our Lady carved and painted gold, holding the infant Jesus. The Bishop blessed the statue and Mother St. Michel and several postulants left France for New Orleans. They arrived at the Ursuline Convent and enshrined the Statue on December 31, 1810.
In 1894, Pope Leo XIII ordered a solemn coronization be given. In order for two crowns to be made for Our Lady and the Infant Jesus, the men and women of New Orleans gave, of their own free will, jeweled earings, bracelets, brooches, necklaces, bracelets, cuff links, and even tie pins. When the crowns were finished, every church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans made a solemn novena to prepare for the ceremony.
Archbishop Francis Janssens formally crowned the statue November 10, 1895, with a large assembly of clergy and faithful attending. In the end, every church bell in the Archdiocese rang with joy. Today, Our Lord and Our Lady have two crowns: the gold one is worn all year round, but the crowns made by the donated jewels are placed on the statue once a year, January 8th, the feast day of Our Lady of Prompt Succor.
Miracle Against the Fire of 1812
It was not long after the Sisters’ arrival that the Blessed Virgin Mary would continue to show how quick and powerful her aid is.
In 1812, a raging fire broke out in the city, quickly burning away a great part of what would eventually be called “The French Quarter,” and threatening to destroy the Ursuline Convent. Mother St. Michel urged the Sisters to flee the convent. One of the Sisters would write her eyewitness account:
“Hastily the Superior, Reverend Mother Saint Michel, commanded the nuns and school children to leave the building. As she herself turned to go, she was horrified to see Sister Saint Anthony, one of the old nuns, climbing the stairs. Following her, Rev. Mother discovered she was carrying a small statue of Our Lady. As the Superior watched, Sister Saint Anthony hurried to the window on the second floor. She set the statue on the sill facing the fire, then knelt and prayed with great confidence: ‘Oh Lady of Prompt Succor, save us or we are lost!’ At that very instant, the wind veered and the flames were blown back over their path of destruction and soon died out.”
800 buildings were destroyed in the fire, but the convent remained untouched.
Miracle of the Battle of New Orleans
On the night of January 7-8, 1815, the Ursuline Convent was filled with the Sisters and the women of New Orleans. All were fervently praying as the Battle of New Orleans, between the United States and England, was about to fully commence. The American forces were severely outnumbered, with the majority of the troops being untrained and inexperienced, having been drafted by Gen. Andrew Jackson only a month prior. The Sisters and citizens vowed to Our Lady that if the United States won, they would always offer an annual Mass of thanksgiving.
Despite overwhelming odds, in less than two hours the Americans shot the British general and wounded 2,000 troops while losing only 65 of their own. Gen. Andrew Jackson publicly acknowledged afterward that victory was won by heavenly intervention and even personally came to the Ursuline Convent with his staff to thank the Sisters for their prayers.
Our Connection to Our Lady of Prompt Succor
The Ursulines and Franciscans have always been closely linked because the founder of the Ursulines, St. Angela Merici, was a member of the Third Order of St. Francis and was even buried wearing the Franciscan habit. Besides this, our convent in particular has a special connection with Our Lady of Prompt Succor. She is one of our special patronesses, and her image hangs within our walls. It was she herself who came to our aid when we urgently needed to find a new home. Minutes after praying to her at her shrine in June, 2025, we received a call from a benefactor who offered a home for the Sisters. In thankskgiving, we made a pilgrimage to her this past month and, within days, we received an answer to another very urgent prayer. We owe her a deep debt of gratitude and encourage all who read this to have recourse to her.
One of the Sister’s prays in the choir stall of the Superior of the Ursuline Convent
St. Angela Merici was born in Desenzano, Lombardy in Italy. She was orphaned with her sister at the age of 10 and they then lived with her uncle in Salo, Italy. Upon the death of her sister, Angela dedicated her life to the service of God in His Church, becoming a Franciscan Tertiary at the age of 13, practicing many severe penances. She loved poverty so much that she lived on alms, slept on the bare earth, and fasted to such an extent that sometimes Holy Communion was her only nourishment for several days.
She was very concerned when her sister died without the last rites, but God permitted her a vision where she saw her late sister in the company of the saints. When she was 20 she moved back to Desenzano upon the death of her uncle and was horrified to see the lack of religious education given to young girls there. She herself taught them their catechism, how to pray, and how to prepare for and fittingly receive the Sacraments.
In 1506, as she prayed in the fields of Brudazzo, Our Lord Jesus Christ granted her a vision in which he instructed her to found an institute where she and other consecrated women would devote their lives to the religious instruction of young girls, helping the poor, and caring for the sick.
She gathered together a group of young women with little to no resources, living in their family homes at first. They would meet together, with St. Angela often reminding them: “Reflect that in reality you have a greater need to serve [the poor] than they have of your service.”
Because of her saintly conduct and profound knowledge of God and the things of heaven, she was regarded by all as a saint, causing her to leave her hometown in 1516 to move to Brescia until 1524.
Even the Pope had heard of her sanctity and attempted to detain her in Rome when she made came back from making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and the tombs of the Apostles. When he understood that it was by Divine inspiration St. Angela was to found in Brescia, he allowed her to return. However, it was not until 1531 when Angela could perform her intended work, due to disturbances caused by war. Then, on November 25, 1535, Angela and 28 companions consecrated themselves to God, officially founding the Congregation of St. Ursula, or the Ursulines. St. Ursula was chosen as the special patron of St. Angela’s work because she viewed Ursula as the ultimate model of consecrated virginity, intelligence, and spiritual leadership.
At age 70, the date and hour of Angela’s death were revealed to her. Upon receiving the last Sacraments she was wrapt in ecstacy. She died on January 27, 1540 with the holy Name of Jesus on her lips. She lies buried, dressed in the habit of the Third Order and with her pilgrim’s staff in a side chapel of the church of St. Afra in Brescia. She was beatified by Pope Clement XIII in 1807 and canonized in 1807 by Pope Pius VII. Her feast is celebrated by the Capuchins on June 1st.
On Ash Wednesday, the narrow path officially begins with the imposition of the blessed ashes. By imprinting them on our foreheads, the Church repeats over each of us, as a reminder, the sentence that God once pronounced over Adam: “Remember, man, that thou art dust and into dust thou shalt return.”
Remember. Don’t be forgetful; don’t try to forget. Remember, and don’t let the pleasures and attractions of this world distract your mind from your innermost reality. Remember that you were not born of yourself and that you were taken from the dust of the earth. Remember that nothing you have is truly yours and that you will have to answer for what you have done with it. Remember that day when you will give an account of your entire life. Remember that you have an immortal soul, but your body will dissolve into decay. Remember that the only thing that makes you acceptable to God is your good works. Remember the statement of your divine Redeemer:”…they that have done good things shall come forth unto the resurrection of life; but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.” Remember it, and don’t think you can change it. Remember that one day you will die, and if you haven’t worked hard for your salvation, you will have lost everything. Remember the strict relationship between your behavior and your eternity. Remember that there are two paths: one wide and fun that leads to perdition and one narrow and arduous that leads to eternal life. Remember that God placed His very Life in your hands so that you may make It the center of your life. Remember that God is waiting for you to be saved, not to follow the path of those who do not know Him. Remember the Laws of God and follow them, and you will secure your eternal destiny. Remember the examples that God set for you, some to teach others a lesson and others to imitate. This is also part of the teaching of the Catholic Church. Remember your catechism, and adjust your life to it; nothing will be more beneficial to you in this life. Remember that you were not born for yourself, but for others. Remember that your neighbor is the image of God. Remember that you have the image of God within yourself, to cultivate and develop it through charity. Remember that you can deceive yourself, and do not listen to yourself, but seek advice in every situation. Remember that the most pleasing offering you can make to God is to acknowledge your inherent insufficiency and your need for Him. Remember that there are things to love and things to use; things from heaven to love and things from earth to use. Heavenly things are the end; earthly things are the means to achieve them.
We could endlessly continue the list of “remembers” going through all the points of Catholic doctrine, and each one of us could do the same for our own personal use, which would be very good because, when our mind and heart are occupied with heavenly things, they are in their own element. The Catholic Church, faithful to the task entrusted to it by its divine Founder, desires to structure our minds during Lent into two main points. Our task, on the other hand, is to understand this structure, accept it, and assimilate it. These are three necessary steps for progress in our Catholic life: to know, to accept, and to assimilate.
Progress means going from good to better. The Italians have a saying that goes, “the same as before, worse than before.” If we reach a certain age where we consider ourselves adults and continue with the same old vices, we have that case: we are worse than before because we are spiritually stagnant, our spiritual life has not developed, it does not exist. Oh, miserable human condition! All this can happen to us even if we attend Mass, pray the Rosary, and wear the Brown Scapular. However, the eternity of our soul is our hope, since every moment of our life is unique, eternal, and therefore redeemable. It is enough that we adapt ourselves, not only in our behavior, but also in our understanding and our desires, to what the Catholic Church teaches us. One of our greatest obstacles is truly coming to recognize ourselves as our own worst enemies. The more we listen to ourselves, the less we are able to listen. The two points that the Church desires to emphasize during Lent are the need to take take the narrow path and the hope of achieving the eternal reward through our cooperation in our own redemption.
Hence, Lent can be seen as the ideal of Catholic life and as a reminder of eternal life. From the first point of view, the Church teaches us that if we want to reach heaven or understand and love God more, we must put aside some things. In this case, She simply reminds us of the essential doctrine of life: “I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man: But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and captivating me in the law of sin, that is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Or, “They who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Or, “If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ”.
The other point on which the Church wants us to stand firm is the certainty of eternal life and our aspiring to it. Thus, Lent is presented to us as a reminder of our temporary life, which passes and will never return, and Easter is presented to us as a reminder of eternal life. From this point of view, our attention is focused on what we must do, and from the second point of view it is focused on what we expect. Let us not fail to do what is our responsibility as children of God and of the Catholic Church, and let us always aspire to the best.
May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mediatrix of all grace, teach us this path of strength and wisdom.
In the outside world, in the darkness of midnight, silence is broken by horns, noisemakers, and drunken cheering. A small group of hidden adorers will spend these same moments in silent adoration of the Lord of all creation, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifference by which He is everywhere offended.
Our Lord has so few friends… won’t you offer these precious moments to Him in whatever capacity your duties of state will allow?
Prayers of profound gratitude for the past year’s blessings will be offered, and each of you, our dear families, friends, and benefactors, will be remembered. May He draw you each closer to His Sacred Heart!
We wish a most blessed and merry Christmas to each and every one of you. It is our great joy to present our gift of Masses and prayers offered for you, our family, friends, and benefactors, for your intentions and for your needs.
During the weeks of Advent, the Church has prayed and prepared for the coming of the Redeemer. Over and over again, the liturgical prayers have repeated the urgent plea: Come, come to save us! At Vespers, on December 23, we chanted the last of the “O Antiphons”:
“O Emmanuel, our King and our Law-giver, Longing of the Gentiles, yea, and salvation, thereof, come to save us, O Lord our God!” We must, each and every one of us, make this plea our very own. As we watch the world fall deeper and deeper into sin and apostasy, we are reminded of our need of and utter dependence upon Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
The holy Liturgy is not simply a happy remembrance or commemoration. The precious and pivotal moments of salvation in history are actually renewed upon the altar. At holy Mass, the moments of Christmas night in the cave of Bethlehem are made present to us. These moments are filled with profound hope to the world. We are also offered a foretaste and participation in the final and infallible victory, the completion of Christ’s coming, which has yet to take place. The great mystery of redemption, both its beginning long ago, and its consummation yet to come, are united in the present moment, realized in each individual soul during the holy Mass. What joy should be ours! A true sharing in the victory already won!
The true joy of Christmas will always be irrepressible, keeping our faith alive even through the darkest of times. It is like a great flaming torch that we can hold high above our heads, the flame of God’s love, which turns despair to hope, sorrow to joy, and death to life. This torch cannot be extinguished, and it is a living flame in the hearts of those who cling to the true meaning of Christmas. May God bless each and every one of you abundantly this Christmas and throughout the new year.
In our Infant King,
Your Capuchin Sisters
When we arrived in July, we learned that the “G” on the house was for “Guthrie”, the original builders/owners. Though town members call it the “G House”, the Sisters call it God’s house, for that is truly what it has become…On December 22, we had everything ready for our very modest Franciscan convent chapel…On Christmas Eve, as the world awaits the birth of our Savior, in our convent…at long last… we truly have Emmanuel, “God with us”, in our tabernacle. All of your intentions are in our hearts and are being offered incessantly to our Divine Spouse.
The feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is very fitting for us to grow in two loves; not those loves that Saint Augustine spoke of which are opposed to each other, but two correlative loves. The holy doctor of Hippo said:
“Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; and the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of our conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, ‘Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of my head’.”
He said this in his book, The City of God, which is a kind of theology of history of that time. Today, we are not treating of that, but of two holy loves, loves that call to each other and affirm each other. These are love for the Blessed Virgin Mary in her exalted prerogative of the Immaculate Conception and love for the teaching of the Holy Mother Church, the source of light, hope, and salvation. The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is one of the most appropriate feasts to witness with what caution, seriousness and scientific rigor the Catholic Church guides itself in fulfilling the mission that Christ himself entrusted to it. Alongside the Sacred Scripture and the Papacy arose the Holy Fathers and the primitive churches which, through their holy customs and their writings, formed the body of the Catholic Church.
After this, very briefly speaking, came the great medieval Doctors with their famous syntheses, which were called Summas. They baptized, so to speak, all of the natural wisdom of humankind and assimilated it to divine revelation. The guiding point is this: God, Who is the Author of the divine revelation, is also the Author of human nature. Therefore, there can be no contradiction between revealed truths and natural ones. That is why they are known as synthesis, that is, unification or assimilation. Everything that could be explained by divine revelation was retained, and everything that opposed it was discarded. Four Doctors of the Church stood out for their writings and their synthetic efforts, although they were not the only ones. Doctor of the Church, the title Holy Mother Church gave to some saints, means that their writings can be read without fear because their doctrine is completely safe.
In our case, it involves two teachers and two disciples, two Dominicans and two Franciscans. We’re talking about the 13th century. The dates are very important. The most well-known of all is Saint Thomas Aquinas of the Dominicans, along with his Franciscan companion and friend, Saint Bonaventure. Saint Thomas’s teacher was Saint Albert the Great, and Saint Bonaventure’s teacher was Alexander of Hales. Let us see what they said about the Immaculate Conception:
Alexander of Hales: It should not be stated according to Catholic doctrine.
Saint Bonaventure: The Blessed Virgin should in no way be excluded from this general rule (the need to be redeemed).
Saint Albert the Great: The Virgin was not sanctified before her Conception; to affirm the contrary is heresy, according to Saint Bernard.
Saint Thomas Aquinas: According to Catholic doctrine, it must be firmly held that every son of Adam, except Christ alone, contracted original sin.
They taught that the Virgin Mary had been sanctified in her mother’s womb, after she had been conceived. The key point of these doctors’ entire argument is that Christ is the universal Redeemer. If someone were born without original sin, they would not have needed such redemption; therefore, Christ would not be the Redeemer of the entire mankind. As we can see, nothing could be further from the mind of the Catholic Church than the supposed idea that it does not consider or respect the divinity or the redemptive character of Christ our Lord.
Finally, the Franciscan, Duns Scotus, received from tradition and developed the idea of preventive redemption, thus reconciling the Immaculate Conception with the redemptive work of Christ. In this way, the Blessed Virgin Mary, because of the honor due to her Divine Motherhood and because of the merits of Christ, was preserved, by anticipation, from original sin. It is important to stress that this prevention does not in any way contradict divine omnipotence or wisdom. Actually, it can be said that it is in accordance with them. The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary depends on the redemption wrought by Christ, and it is called preventive redemption. What cannot be clearly understood from the perspective of time, is perfectly understood from the perspective of eternity. So, was the Blessed Virgin Mary redeemed by Christ? Yes. How was her redemption? It was preventive. What does this mean? It means that she was preserved, set apart, because she was the Mother of God, from the common inheritance of original sin. Scotus said: She shouldn’t be excluded from Christ’s redemption, rather, she should be highlighted. On December 8, 1854, the Catholic Church finally highlighted her when Pope Pius IX said:
“We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.”
From the 13th century to the 19th century, five centuries passed. It took Holy Mother Church over 500 years to define the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What was the attitude of the Catholic Church during those 500 years? It was to observe the arguments presented by both sides, giving complete freedom to theologians, since praising the Mother of God does not contradict the decrees of the Most High. Nothing could be further from the spirit of the Church than the alleged intellectual suppression. Therefore, this feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary makes us love the teaching of the Catholic Church, which is infallible, and the infallibility of papal doctrine makes us love the Immaculate Conception of Mary as a truth revealed by God. That is why we say they are two correlative loves; one is related to the other.
So, let us love the Blessed Virgin Mary on this day and congratulate her for the very special place she holds in God’s work. Let us love the doctrine of the Church as it has always been taught, because it is the only way to reach Heaven. Let us love Christ our Lord who gave us such a Mother and let us love the Blessed Virgin Mary who gave us such a Son.
“For a Child is born to us, and a Son is given to us, and the government is upon His shoulder: and His Name shall be called, Wonderful, Counselor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace. His empire shall be multiplied, and there shall be no end of peace: He shall sit upon the throne of David, and upon His kingdom; to establish it and strengthen it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth and forever: the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this”. (Isaias 9, 6-7)
Ave Maria! We pray you are all in the midst of a very holy and grace-filled season of Advent. Work continues on our little convent chapel. We hope to have it ready within the next two weeks so that we may welcome the Infant Jesus, our God and Spouse, into our hearts, our souls, and our tabernacle at Christmas. What a joyful Christmas it will be to dwell with the King of Heaven!
We now have a “Sister Carpenter”, who frequently calls upon St. Joseph to help her with work she never imagined herself doing in the convent: stripping and refinishing old wood, constructing chairs and kneelers, and learning the names of various tools and how they work. The early Franciscans, embracing Lady Poverty with great jealousy, worked in this same fashion, and we are learning just how spoiled we are in the modern world. While we are unable, due to small numbers in our beginning stages, to do everything by the labor of our own hands, we are attempting to do what we can.
We are now also experiencing our first true Winter in Colorado. Coming from Texas, this has been very…well…cold! We laugh at our frailty and remind ourselves that the elements provide plenty of opportunity to save souls if we remain in the presence of God and keep always in front of us the reason we consecrated our lives to God. We give others plenty of opportunity to save souls too when they are forced to drive in the snow behind the nuns with the Texas license plate!
Our appeal for your help continues, as we are now beginning to receive correspondence from young ladies around the country, and we have no room to receive them. We are praying a perpetual novena to St. Joseph to provide a permanent home where our foundation may grow and where we may truly live according to the spirit of St. Francis and our Capuchin customs. We live in a world that no longer understands religious life and the necessity of consecrated souls to pray and sacrifice for the conversion and salvation of sinners, for our country, for our world, and for the triumph of the Holy Catholic Church against her enemies within and without. We rely solely upon Divine Providence and the generosity of the faithful in order to live. We thank all of you for your generous support, and we assure you that we carry each and every one of you, with all of your intentions, in all of our prayers and sacrifices. In every Mass and at every holy Communion and, since we have a special claim on the Heart of Our Lord, we trust in Him with great confidence to repay you all the promised hundred-fold in this life and in eternity.
May God bless you, and may Our Lady keep you close to her Immaculate Heart!
The Capuchin Sisters of St. Joseph
Before the snowfall, the Sisters work to clear an area for Our Lady’s spring grotto.
Our first attempt at refurbishing an old table
We quickly discovered it was an outdoor job….
When power tools failed, we discovered it was a two person job!
One of our Capuchin customs is to kneel for collations during Advent.
The Sisters are learning many trades, including electrical work.
Capuchin Sisters of St Joseph 