“Madonna of Mercy”.
“Maria de Mercede”.
Date: Circa 1472.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Text is from
“The Liturgical Year”.
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 14.
Time After Pentecost.
Book V.
The Office of the time gives us, at the close of September, the Books of Judith and Esther. These heroic women were figures of Mary, whose birthday is the honour of this month, and who comes at once to bring assistance to the World.
“Adonai, Lord God, great and admirable, Who has wrought salvation by the hand of a woman:” [Editor: Magnificat Antiphon. First Vespers. Fourth Sunday of September] The Church thus introduces the history of the heroine, who delivered Bethulia by the sword, whereas Mardochai’s niece rescued her people from death by her winsomeness and her intercession.
The Queen of Heaven, in her peerless perfection, outshines them both, in gentleness, in valour, and in beauty. Today’s Feast is a memorial of the strength she puts forth for the deliverance of her people.
Finding their power crushed in Spain, and in The East checked by the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Saracens, in the 12th-Century, became wholesale pirates, and scoured the seas to obtain slaves for the African markets.
We shudder to think of the numberless victims, of every age, sex, and condition, suddenly carried off from the coasts of Christian lands, or captured on the High Seas, and condemned to the disgrace of the Harem, or the miseries of the Bagnio [Editor: Brothel].
Here, nevertheless, in many an obscure prison, were enacted scenes of heroism worthy to compare with those witnessed in the early persecutions; here was a new field for Christian Charity; new horizons opened out for heroic self-devotion. Is not the spiritual good thence arising a sufficient reason for the permission of temporal ills ? Without this permission, Heaven would have for ever lacked a portion of its beauty.
When, in 1696, Pope Innocent XII extended this Feast to the whole Church, he afforded the World an opportunity of expressing its gratitude by a testimony as universal as the benefit received.
Differing from the Order of Holy Trinity, which had been already twenty years in existence, the Order of Mercy was Founded as it were in the very face of the Moors; and, hence, it originally numbered more Knights than Clerks among its Members.
It was called the Royal, Military, and Religious Order of Our Lady of Mercy for the ransom of captives.
The Clerics were charged with the Celebration of the Divine Office in the Commanderies; the Knights guarded the coasts, and undertook the perilous enterprise of ransoming Christian captives.
Saint Peter Nolasco was the first Commander, or Grand Master, of the Order; when his Relics were discovered, he was found armed with Sword and Cuirass.
The following Text is from Wikipedia - the free encyclopædia, unless stated otherwise.
A Feast Day was instituted and observed on 24 September, first in the Religious Order,[1] then in Spain and France.
The Calendar of the Spanish Mercedarians of 1644 has it on 1 August, as a Double.
Proper Lessons were approved on 30 April 1616. The Feast was granted to Spain (on the Sunday nearest to 1 August) on 15 February 1680, and to France, on 4 December 1690.
On 22 February 1696, it was extended to the entire Latin Church, and the date changed to 24 September.[5]
The Mercedarians keep this Feast as a Double of The First Class, with a Vigil, Privileged Octave, and Proper Office, under the Title: “Solemnitas Descensionis B. Mariæ V. de Mercede”.[5]
In August 1805, Sicily, which had suffered so much from the Saracens, was given permission by the Congregation of Rites to observe the Commemoration of the “Apparition of Our Lady to Saint Peter Nolasco in the Choir of Barcelona” on the old date of the Feast (the Sunday nearest to 1 August).
In England, the Devotion to Our Lady of Ransom was revived in modern times in recognition of England’s historic title as “Our Lady’s Dowry”.[6]
