CMSS Publication Winter 2012 Issue 40 for Website.Pmd
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Behold Thy Mother A Publication of the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Ghost Winter 2012 Volume 14 Issue 40 Veni Sancte Spiritus per Mariam! Missionary Sisters of the Holy Ghost La Conquistadora P.O. Box 589 • Veradale, WA 99037 the Dear Readers, It took 14 years and 40 issues before Our Lady introduced herself to us in Lovely Lady the sweetest little depiction that I have ever seen. dressed in Blue The Lady Conqueror, La Conquistadora, what an awesome, powerful title, Lovely Lady dressed in blue which should inspire in us such great confidence when we pray to her. Teach me how to pray! God was just your little Boy, Small in stature, yet mighty as a conqueror, La Conquistadora is a Madonna tell me what to say! you will fall in love with, for she represents to us everything we have ever known and loved about the Mother of God. Did you lift Him up, sometimes Gently, on your knee? Why, you may ask, was it not widely known that this little replica of our did you sing to Him, the way Mother, was the first in our native land of the United States of America? Mother does to me? Why? Well, I believe that she has saved herself for a time in our country that we would need Mary more than ever before. ...Do you really think He cares If I tell Him things-- 2012 is a year that God is giving us the chance, as Catholics, to begin Can He hear me if I speak low? again, and La Conquistadora, the “Lady Conqueror”, is just the strength Does He understand me now? we need to lean on, in our quest to bring this country back to God. Known Tell me, for you know! by three titles, this great lady will be the instrument needed for victory over sin in America. Lovely Lady dressed in blue, Teach me how to pray! As the Lady of the Assumption, she will help us to think of our heavenly God was just your little boy, home and realize that the way we live on this earth, helps or hinders us in And, you know the way. eternity. As the Immaculate Conception, she will crush the serpent’s head and help us to lead this nation to purity of heart, mind and body. As the Lady of the Rosary, she will gain for us the graces we need, as a country, Morning Offering Intentions for: to turn our lives around and begin leading God-fearing, God-loving lives, (In the spirit of Holy Slavery) January: Sancification of home free from every kind of sin. She will lead voters away from approving O Jesus, through the Immaculate laws that cry out to heaven for vengeance, such as those of abortion and and family, truly Catholic Heart of Mary, in reparation for my marriages. homosexual marriages. sins, I offer Thee all my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this February: The spread of the true La Conquistadora will give you the strength and courage that you never day and of my entire life, for all the thought you had, to vote with a convicted conscience. She, along with intentions of Thy Most Sacred Catholic Faith through the spread prayerful, dedicated voters, will once again turn this great Nation, to Heart, in union with the Holy of devotion to Mary. “One Nation Under God”, in the true meaning of that phrase. Sacrifice of the Mass validly and licitly offered this day throughout March: An increase in pious and My prayers and the prayers of our Sisters are with you. We thank you for the world, the infinite graces and holy religious vocations. your prayers and for your support. merits thereof to be dispensed in In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, accord with Thy Divine Will for the April: For all of the missionary salvation of souls, the conversion endeavors throughout the world of sinners, and the special intention and unity among the members of recommended for this month: Behold Thy Mother is published three times a year. Subscription rates are the Church Militant. $16.00 per year within the United States. Foreign rates, $22.00 per year. 2 3 connected with every impor- tant phase and crisis of our history. The people would La feel drawn to it by the very Conquistadora thought that their grandpar- Queen ents and great-grandparents, all the way back to 1620, had of seen and handled and hon- the ored this very same portrait of Our Lord’s Mother. Southwest People from all over the country would go to view it By in its shrine at Concord or Fray Angelico Chavez, O.F.M. Lexington or in a special Lady Chapel built for it in St. Anthony Messenger Boston’s Cathedral or St. Our Lady, known as May, 1948 Patrick’s in New York. The La Conquistadora, Catholic papers would “The Lady-Conqueror”, was brought to the New World always be referring to it, and by Spanish Colonists. Suppose the Pilgrim Fa- Bunker Hill, and again later all kinds of “shots” of the thers had been Catholics and on when the Declaration of beloved image would appear background of more than had brought a statue of Our Independence was drafted from time to time in the three centuries, that one Lady with them to enthrone and the Liberty Bell was illustrated Catholic maga- cannot for long refer to the in the first church they built. being rung. Suppose still zines. charming figure as “it.” Suppose that they had taken further that George Wash- There is such a statue in the Every year, on the Feast of it out in procession as the ington had carried it across American Southwest. It did Corpus Christi, Vespers are Patroness of their Sodality the Delaware and had not come with any settlers of sung in her honor and then during those cold months referred his victory at the Atlantic seaboard, of she is carried in a mile-long when there was so much Yorktown to Mary’s interces- course, but with the earlier procession from the Cathe- suffering from the weather sion. And generations later, Spanish colonists of New dral to a chapel outside of and from fear of Indian imagine Abraham Lincoln Mexico. It may be seen in the town. There an early morn- attacks, and that it had stood proclaiming days of prayer north Lady Chapel of the ing Mass is sung every day on the main table of that first for her intercession during Cathedral in Santa Fe, a for a whole week, at which Thanksgiving Day in New the most crucial period of the lovely little image, about the faithful attend in large England. Then suppose Civil War. thirty inches tall, very throngs. On the following that, some generations later That statue would be the queenly in her real-gold dress Sunday Vespers are chanted the descendants of those most prized relic of our and her mantle of old blue at the chapel, and again she people had borne it in pro- Nations’s birth and develop- brocade. So precious is she is borne back in procession to cession during the Battle of ment for being so intimately in her historical and religious her ancient place at the 4 5 Cathedral. Her name is “Our the first “conquistadors” or Lady of the Rosary,” but for conquerors of the land long three hundred years the before the Pilgrims landed in faithful have also called her New England. familiarly “La Conquistadora,” The first Spanish colony which means “The Lady- arrived in New Mexico in the Conqueror.” Some translate year 1600. The Spanish this long word as “Our Lady families formed the little of Victory,” but this is not town of San Gabriel on a correct, for Our Lady of pretty spot where the head- Victory is a distinct title and waters of the Rio Grande and devotion of Our Lady with the Chama River meet, while head quarters and a shrine in the Franciscan missionaries Paris, France, while repro- spread out among the Indian ductions of that statue are to Pueblos, from the neighbor- be found all over the world. ing ones of San Juan, Santa But there is only one La Clara, and San Ildefonso, to Sierra de la Sangre de Cristo Conquistadora, and she got others hundreds of miles “The Mountains of the Blood of Christ” this name from early Catholic away. Those were naturally settlers of the Southwest hard times, far more severe because she had come with than the English Pilgrims ever experienced when they ment. Unlike San Gabriel, it landed at Plymouth many was also situated well away years later. By 1610 the from any Indian village. The Spanish Governor had snow-capped range directly founded the Villa or Royal behind the new City of the Town of Santa Fe (the Holy Holy Faith came to be known Faith) as the permanent as the Sierra de la Sangre de Capital of “the Kingdom of Cristo -- “The Mountains of the New Mexico,” as the the Blood of Christ.” colony was called for centu- In this first and oldest ries. Santa Fe stood on a Capital in the United States plateau seven thousand feet was founded perhaps the above sea-level, some thirty first and oldest Parish in the miles south of San Gabriel, country, not merely a chapel overlooking the vast expanses or a “Mission” as in earlier or of mountains and plains and later Spanish settlements, but deserts, and more centrally a real canonical parish, to La Conquistadora, being borne in procession.