A Week for Our Lady

Rorate, caeli, desuper, et nubes pluant justum, aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem.

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just:
let the earth be opened and bud forth a Saviour.

Any day in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a day that lifts the heart and soul with words of love and hymns to the Mother of Fair Love. But when an entire week is spent celebrating the Heavenly Queen, she is sure to radiantly smile down upon her children. 

Thus has been the past week - a favorite week of a Marian Sister. The week of Our Lady began on Sunday celebrating our Mother's Immaculate Conception, then again on Monday (the external solemnity), followed by Our Lady of Guadalupe on Thursday, and finally ending with today - a Rorate Mass in her honor. 

Advent is a time particularly to spend with Our Lady, and so having the second week of Advent being dedicated to her is the perfect lead-in to Gaudate Sunday, when we rejoice that the coming of the long-awaited Messiah is near.

​Our beloved Mother shows us how to wait: with her we wait in expectation for the arrival of the King; with her we wait to see the face of our God; with her we meditate on Christ growing in our hearts; with her we bring the hidden Jesus to others; with her we give God flesh as He lives in us. ​

We pray that you may spend the reminder of this Advent season with the Blessed Mother. May she show you Christ living in you. 

Hymn: Rorate Caeli
traditionally sung at the Rorate Mass

Refrain: Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down the Just One.

​Be not angry, O Lord, and remember no longer our iniquity:
     behold the city of the Holy One is become a desert: Sion is
     become a desert: Jerusalem is desolate: the house of thy
     sanctification and of thy glory, where our fathers praised thee

We have sinned and are become as one that is unclean: and we
     have all fallen as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have
     carried us away: thou hast hidden thy face from us, and hast
     crushed us in the hold of our iniquity.

​ Behold, O Lord, the affliction of thy people, and send forth Him
     Who is to come: send forth the Lamb, the ruler of the earth, from
     the Rock of the desert, to the mount of daughter Sion: that he
     may take away the yoke of our captivity.

Be comforted, be comforted, my people: thy salvation cometh
     quickly: why art thou consumed with grief: for sorrow hath
     estranged thee: I will save thee: fear not, for I am the Lord thy
     God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Redeemer.

Click here  to listen to the hymn

Marian Week Photo Album