The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1911-10-14
AsSloT!oM41e<@
JDocTRfNAE. IfTURGicAL.l


Is true, the name or Jesus most highly,
with the most lavish terms of
praise, but, nevertheless, with all his
transports of love for Christ he does
not fail to pour forth from his honey
| flowing lips similar encomiums on the
name most dear to Jesus, the name of
Mary; and perhaps in the whole his
tory of our Church, no writer among
the holy Fathers was filled with such
an ardent zeal for Mary's glory and
gave vent, some may say, to such ex-
cessive or exaggerated expressions of
her power. beauty and glory. He
knew, as loving children of Mary
know, that she stands next to Jesus,
and that to praise her is to praise
Him, to love her to love Him and to
serve this Queen is to serve the Son
/ of God who vouchsafed to become
her Son.
Filled with the Holy Ghost our
heavenly Lady had once uttered the
following words: For behold from
henceforth all generations shall call
me bessed" duke 1, 47). And
blessed she is; for there is no part of
the world, no country on our globe, no
tongue among the nations, that does
not in some way give glory to the
name of Mary. Everywhere can be
heard: Hail Mary full of grace! and
most rightly so. For the name of
Mary is a great name. Great, because
she who bore it was the wonderful
! Virgin chosen from all eternity to be-
come the true Mother of Christ, of
| God. It is great, because it is a name
given to her by Providence From all
eternity God had predestined her for
the greatest dignity ever obtained by
a creature; consequently, from all
eternity the supernatural loneliness,
the manifold and extraordinary gifts,
the surprising purity of her virtues,
which He conferred upon her to make
her worthy mother of His only be-
gotten Son, lay waiting for Mary If
so, if God had thus planned and
adorned this privileged creature with
every proper and necessary adorn-
ment, can we doubt that suitable
name was also an object of His will?
With the rest of her prerogatives this
name was given or at least willed by
God, as He had already done for other
men, namely: Abraham, Jacob and
John the Baptist. But what ever it
may, so much is certain, sweeter
name, a name more beautifully appro.
pirate, name giving more occasions
for holy thought, could hardly have
been given her. A brief consideration
of it's numerous meanings suggests
this thought:
Mary is very old name; accord
ing to some it is of Egyptian origin !;
according to others of Hebrew. The
first traces of it give us no certainty
of its beginning, since Hebrew
maiden, the sister of Moses, born and
reared in Egypt is the first known
person to bear it. This matters little
to us; the different interpretations
interest us more. In the AramaiC
tongue Mary means Mistress; in the
Hebrew it denotes Illuminatrix, the
Strong, the Full-grown, the Slender
and Bitter Sea or Drop of the Sea
To this others add, the Sad, and St
Jerome with many holy Fathers, the
Star of the Sea.
! What an edifying meditation il
would make to enter upon all these
different meanings and see with what
right we apply them to Mary; or in
what manner they are true express
sion of her greatness; but the space
will not allow us. Our good will
must be taken for the deed, neyerthe
less we can say little more.