7 December 1980 Armagh, Northern Ireland

Your Eminence, Fathers, and my dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Over in the cemetery of the Sacred Heart Convent there lie the remains of one of His Eminence's predecessors, Primate Dixon, whose name will always be associated with the recommencement after the famine years of the work of building this Cathedral, in which we are gathered this evening to honor Our Blessed Lady. Primate Dixon had the privilege of being in Rome on the occasion when Pope Pius IX defined the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Our Blessed Lady. During his days there, he kept a personal diary of the event. It is a small thing for a Primate to be concerned about the weather, but we do know that the Archbishop was concerned about the weather on the evening of the 7 December 1854. It had rained incessantly in Rome all day on the 7th and when His Grace was retiring to rest, it was still raining. In his simple style, he noted in his diary: "Hence on retiring to bed on the night of the 7 December, it was rather an ardent desire which I felt for the coming of a fine day on the morrow. On account of this desire, I got up repeatedly during the night to look at the appearance of the sky, and when about four o'clock in the morning, I saw that my hopeful anticipations for the great day were about to be fully realized, it delights me now to remember with what joy and thankfulness, I repeated the `Ave Maris Stella.'"

The sun did shine resplendently in Rome on the 8 December, 1854, as Pope Pius IX declared that by a special privilege of grace, Our Lady, Mary, the Mother of God, was preserved from the stain of original sin by the power of her Son's redeeming death.

While we have a detailed account from the Primate of the event and of the joyous mood of a fully-packed St. Peter's on the 8 December 1854, we know nothing of the reactions of a Sister of Charity in Paris, who was working in a geriatric hospital for poor men. Presumably she had assisted at Mass that morning, received the Body and Blood of Our Lord, and sang hymns to honor the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady. Then after breakfast she would have set about doing the work

 

that has to be done in the morning in every hospital or geriatric home, whatever the feast day or occasion may be. One wonders did she say to herself, "I have seen it already," for in a very real sense, Catherine Labouré had seen it already. She was now coming close to the Silver Jubilee of her entrance into the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Twenty-four years earlier, in July 1830, during her novitiate year in the rue du Bac, Paris, this young, simple, practical, country girl had been awakened about midnight and led to the chapel by a young child where, after a short wait, Our Lady entered and, seating herself on a chair in the sanctuary, spoke with Catherine Labouré for two hours. Later that same year on a November evening during her evening prayer in the chapel, Catherine was shown by Our Lady the image of what we now know as the Miraculous Medal, but which was not given that title either by Our Lady or St. Catherine or the Church, but by plain, ordinary people who began to wear it, and to honor Our Lady by reciting the one-sentence prayer inscribed on the medal, "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee." Apart from this prayer, all else on the medal was expressed in symbolic signs, which today are recognized to be a condensed catechism of the Church's teaching on Our Lady and her place in our lives.

It has been remarked that the Miraculous Medal is the catechism of the humble and the poor, put into their hands in order to safeguard imperishable riches that are ever threatened: grace, the Mystery of the Cross, the Incarnation and the Redemption. It is a catechism or compendium of the Church's teaching on Our Lady, for through sign and symbol is expressed her Motherhood of God, her loving association with her Son in His work, her concern for the suffering world, and the power of her intercession. The stars on the reverse side of the medal have taken on a new meaning for us during these last few years. With clearer insight since the Second Vatican Council, the Church has seen more deeply into the relation between Mary and the Church. Her insight has been that what Mary is now, "without spot and without wrinkle," the Church is one day destined to become. Of that truth you will be reminded as you listen to the prayer of the Preface tomorrow at Mass: "Father...You allowed no stain of Adam's sin to touch the Virgin Mary. Full of grace, she was to be a worthy Mother of Your Son, Your sign of favor to the Church at its beginning, and the promise of its perfection as the Bride of Christ, radiant in beauty." (8 Dec., Feast of the Immaculate Conception).

The chapel in the rue du Bac where Our Lady spoke to St. Catherine and showed her the model of the Medal of the Immaculate Conception could almost be described as undistinguished, except for the fact that more people visit it in a year than visit the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre in Paris. Last Thursday, 27 November, more than ten thousand people filed in and out of that relatively small chapel. The chapel is undistinguished, in that you could pass it by easily, standing as it does in the recess of a side street in the city of Paris. You will find no eye-catching sign outside it, not even a signpost at the top of the street to direct you to it. It is as undistinguished as the earthly life of St. Catherine herself. It was only after her death that her deep holiness was recognized and that her life was declared by the Church to have been one of heroic virtue. When, in the mid-1830s and later, people began to discover, through wearing Our Lady's medal and praying with confidence the little prayer on it, that their lives were changing for the better; when they began to find God's goodness and kindness breaking through like sunshine in all sorts of new and unexpected ways into their lives, speculation became rife about the identity of the Sister of Charity to whom Our Lady had appeared. Catherine, however, kept her secret for forty-six years, disclosing it only to her confessor, who for quite a time was very skeptical. She lived an outwardly undistinguished life in her Community, caring for the needs of those sometimes cantankerous old men in the wards of a geriatric hospital in the suburbs of Paris.

But it is not of Catherine Labouré that we are thinking so much this evening, as of Her to whom St. Catherine points, Mary, conceived without sin. Cardinal Newman, two months before he was received into the Catholic Church, decided in a simple gesture of faith to wear the medal of Our Lady. The Cardinal took Our Lady at her word when she said that all who would wear the Medal of the Immaculate Conception would receive abundant graces. Years later in a letter he was to pinpoint the exact day when he did so, implying that Our Lady had more than something to do with his reception of the fullness of the faith and his entry into the Catholic Church in October 1845. (Letter to Pusey, 22 August 1867). Years later, too, the Cardinal was to write a magnificent reflection on original sin which he described as "some terrible aboriginal calamity," in which the human race is implicated. (Apologia, p. 242). From implication in that "terrible aboriginal calamity," Our Lady alone was by a unique privilege of grace preserved. Tremors of that aboriginal calamity are still to be felt in the lives of mankind. The tremors of evil can be shattering in their power, laying waste in lives what has been painfully and patiently built up. Amidst the ruins Jesus Christ has given us a home and a hearth in His Church, and He has promised us a "lasting city that is to come." (Heb 13:14). He also points to Her who alone has not been touched, even momentarily, by evil, not been begrimed by sin. He presents Her to us as one who, in our greatest moments of disillusionment with ourselves and with others, can sustain our belief in the goodness of humankind. He presents Her to us as one who, if we are only humble enough to ask, can bring us more than first-aid for the wounds of body, mind and spirit that cause so much pain and suffering. "Son," He has said in the last hour of His life, "there is your Mother." (Jn 19: 27). It may very well be a measure of our spiritual poverty, of the narrowness of our vision, perhaps of our egoism, if we cannot rejoice and be glad that God has graced one human being in such an unique way, a human being who is at once so fully His and so much ours.

Let me finish where I began, and where we all are this evening, in the Mother Church of this Archdiocese of Armagh. It can only be a source of joy and of hope that we are witnessing in this country, and particularly in this Archdiocese, a new stirring of devotion to Our Lady, a fresh recognition of her uniqueness and of her power, a new realization that Our Lady one hundred fifty years ago did not put a time limit to her promise. A number of parishes have lately begun almost spontaneously to honor Our Lady through what we know as the Perpetual Novena. In our consciousness we would seem to be recognizing anew and looking to Mary as a sign of hope for our own troubled land, the hope that because her own heart was never divided by sin, She will help us, her squabbling children, to put aside what is so sadly and tragically dividing the Family of God.

When Primate Dixon stood at his window in Rome in the dark hours of the early morning before the dawn of the 8 December 1854, and saluted Our Lady in the words of the hymn, "Ave Maris Stella," he would have prayed these stanzas:

Gentlest of all Virgins,
Let our love be faithful,
Keep us from all evil,
Gentle, strong and faithful.
Show yourself our Mother,
He will hear your pleading,
Whom your womb has sheltered
And Whose hand brings healing.
Guard us through life's dangers,
Never turn and leave us.
May our hope find harbor
In the calm of Jesus.

In these dark hours for our country, when we are looking at the appearance of the sky and hoping that the heavy clouds of hate and vengeance will break up, may the gentlest of all Virgins, Mary, tame "the cruelty of man to man which is making thousands mourn." May the hope that she is presently holding out to us "soon find harbor in the calm of Jesus" Who is and always will remain the Fruit of her Womb, she who is the most clement, the most loving, the most sweet Virgin Mary.