Corona of the Immaculate Conception

                                                                 

Holy Mother Church honors Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception with a holy day of obligation on December 8, and in 1846 our Lady of the Immaculate Conception was proclaimed the Patroness of the United States of America.  A beautiful prayer we can recite to honor our Lady on her feast day is the Corona of the Immaculate Conception, written by Father Marquette.

Father Marquette probably is best known for being a Jesuit missionary to America who helped explore the Mississippi River.  However, as this FSSP article states, his superior Father Claude Dablon  knew him as a very devout and kind priest.

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"We might say much of the rare virtues of this noble missionary: of his zeal, which prompted him to carry the faith so far, and proclaim the gospel to so many peoples who were unknown to us; of his gentleness, which rendered him beloved by all, and made him all things to all men...; of the childlike candor with which he disclosed his heart to his superiors, and even to all kinds of persons, with an ingenuousness which won all hearts; of his angelic chastity; and of his uninterrupted union with God. But that which apparently predominated was a devotion, altogether rare and singular, to the Blessed Virgin, and particularly toward the mystery of her Immaculate Conception...  All his conversations and letters contained something about the Blessed Virgin Immaculate — for so he always called her. From the age of 9 years, he fasted every Saturday; and from his tenderest youth began to say the Little Office of the Conception, inspiring every one with the same devotion."

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Corona of the Immaculate Conception

To pray this prayer to Our Lady:

+ Recite the Creed.  

+ After the Creed, there is said once the Our Father and Hail Mary.

+ Then recite 4 times the following prayer: 

Hail Daughter of God the Father, Hail Mother of God the Son, Hail Spouse of the Holy Ghost, Hail Temple of the entire Trinity. Through thy holy virginity and Immaculate Conception, O Virgin most pure, cleanse my heart and my flesh. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

+Conclude with the Glory Be.

***Repeat the whole sequence of prayers three times.***

God bless!

+JMJ+

For the Feast of the Immaculate Conception

 On December 8 Holy Mother Church celebrates the feast of Mary as the Immaculate Conception. This feast, a holy day of obligation, honors the immaculate conception of Mary in the womb of St. Anne. Mary's conception was unique since it was at this moment that God preserved her from the stain of original sin. The Blessed Virgin, like all people, needed redemption, but she received it at conception, which preserved her soul completely from sin, making her “full of grace,” sinless.

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In 1854 Pope Pius IX, defining the Immaculate Conception, wrote, “He [God] so wonderfully filled her, more than all angelic spirits and all the Saints, with an abundance of all heavenly gifts taken from the treasury of the divinity, that she, always free from absolutely every stain of sin, and completely beautiful and perfect, presented such a fullness of innocence and holiness that none greater under God can be thought of, and no one but God can comprehend it."

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As we honor our holy, pure, Immaculate Mother, let us pause to thank God for preserving her from original sin and sing Mary's praises in love and devotion. The following prayer was penned by St. Ephrem the Syrian, a Doctor of the Church who died in 373. He is one of the Fathers of the Church most often invoked in support of the dogma of Mary's Immaculate Conception.

Prayer of Praise to Immaculate Mary

O pure and immaculate and likewise blessed Virgin, who art the sinless Mother of thy Son, the mighty Lord of the universe, thou who art inviolate and altogether holy, the hope of the hopeless and sinful, we sing thy praises. We bless thee, as full of every grace, thou who didst bear the God-Man: we all bow low before thee; we invoke thee and implore thine aid. Rescue us, O holy and inviolate Virgin, from every necessity that presses upon us and from all the temptations of the devil. Be our intercessor and advocate at the hour of death and judgment; deliver us from the fire that is not extinguished and from the outer darkness; make us worthy of the glory of thy Son, O dearest and most clement Virgin Mother. Thou indeed art our only hope, most sure and sacred in God's sight, to whom be honor and glory, majesty and dominion for ever and ever world without end. Amen.

--Saint Ephrem the Syrian

+JMJ+

God bless!