OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL VISITATION

 Day 21: May 31

    The devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Visitation consists in considering the visit of the Blessed Mother to her cousin Elizabeth. This charitable act of Mary has become a permanent status or way of being or the perpetual mission of Our Lady. What happened in the Visitation continues and repeats itself in the perpetual visitation of Mary to many souls. Over the centuries we have already had innumerable apparitions of Our Lady to different classes of people at different parts of the world.

St Justin Russolillo writes, "The Visitation of Mary Most Holy signals a change in the conduct of Mary who until this time has lived a private and hidden life. This is now the beginning of her public life. Why? It is because of something that happened in between, the Incarnation! Mary was not anymore alone. Jesus was already with her. Jesus was for all because God belongs to everyone and so, with Jesus, Mary becomes the mother of all. And the same is true in the interior life of the soul. From the beginning she was waiting for herself to be filled with the life of God, to be filled with Jesus. Br because Jesus began to 'live' in her, she begins to be with Jesus, becoming everything for everyone, the servant of all for the salvation of everyone, even at the cost her life. As it written, 'The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and give his life for the salvation of all.'

    The purpose of the Visitation of Mary Most Holy was to make a saint, to make a precursor. It is not her who makes the saint, who makes the precursor but Jesus in her. She only co-operated with Jesus. But this cooperation was totally willed by God and it was enough to make her the mother of the precursor. Elizabeth and Zechariah are the natural parents of John while Jesus and Mary are, in a word, his spiritual parents. Similarly, the scope of our relationship with others is the formation of saints, of priests, cooperating to the best of our ability in the work of God and participating in the spiritual maternity of saints and priests. This is not a work for all. This is a special vocation, the most sublime of all the apostolic vocations. Blessed is he who has it!"

    The moment the Blessed Mother received the highest dignity ever to be given to a human creature, her divine maternity, she humbled herself calling herself the "handmaid of the Lord" and without wasting time, she began her journey towards the house of her cousin Elizabeth in order to be of service to her in her home. The most precious service, the most beautiful and less anticipated was that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and the Baptist was sanctified in her womb. This is because Mary was carrying Jesus in her womb, the Author of life and of grace.

    This devotion shows us Mary in a continuous journey towards souls, in a perpetual bringing of Jesus and consequently a never ending mission to save and sanctify. "The same divine mission of the incarnate Word in you through the working of the Holy Spirit is revealed in your first visitation and then happens in all other visitations."

Consecration to Humility in the Love for our Neighbor
in Our Lady of Perpetual Visitation

O Most Holy Virgin Mary, mother of God. I hear within my soul the greeting that was first directed to you by the Archangel coming in the name of the blessed Trinity "Hail O soul filled with grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among the souls." My soul too is troubled at these words. To what do I owe that the mother of my Lord comes to me? How is it that she greets me with the celestial words that in their fullness can be applied only to her?

O Mary, you are full of grace and the mercy of the Lord brings you the sinners so that you may convert them to the Trinity. Full of God, the bounty of the Lord brings you to the just ones so that you may fill them with holiness. Full of God, the love of the Lord brings you to the holy souls so that you may unite them with the divine persons! Blessed are you forever, O ever Blessed Virgin Mother of God, that in your fullness of grace, of holiness and of divine union, you bring to us every grace of conversion, of divine relationship with the Adorable Trinity, one God.

Blessed are you who have believed to the Lord, to the message of his love, so all the divine words have been fulfilled in you, and you have become the person most united to the divine persons, most transformed by the divine nature, most revealing of the di-vine perfections, most cooperative with the divine operations, most communicating the divine favors, the true mediator of all graces.

O Mary, coming to you and becoming your son, the Lord has made you co-redeemer with him the redeemer. He has made you mediator with him unique mediator between God and men; he has made you mother of grace, with him, unique author of grace. You, coming to me, to us, coming and remaining in our Congregation, make us fitting and willing, apostolic, seraphic and heroic co-operators of salvation and sanctification of souls and of correspondence and glorification of the Blessed Trinity.

Divine grace has disposed and prepared you with sublime purity, humility and charity to become Virgin Mother of God in the in-carnation and of the souls in their sanctification. Bring to us this perfection of purity, humility and charity; we really need it, we want it, we beg for it through the mercy of the Lord.

With you we plan to leave the shelter of our small comforts, abandoning ourselves to the Spirit of divine zeal, and go from town to town, from house to house, from family to family, from soul to soul in a perpetual and extraordinary visitation, in a perpetual and extraordinary mission to every person.

We cannot do anything really good for the souls if we do bring first Jesus to them. We cannot bring him if we do not have him in us, completely ours, totally ours. We cannot have him unless be gives himself to us, if the Father does not send him to us, if the Holy Spirit does not welcome him in us. We cannot have God in us unless he finds his complacence in us. O Blessed Mother communicate to us your dispositions, perfections and virtues that enabled you to enjoy his divine complacence, the virtues that attracted the Incarnate Word of God in you and enables you to communicate him to the souls.

Trusting in you, we now consecrate ourselves to the most immaculate purity, so that we may please the Lord, as you do. Trusting in you we consecrate ourselves to humility, the most gleaming of truth, so that we may attract the Lord to us. Always trusting in you, we consecrate ourselves to charity, the most fervent in holiness, in order to possess the Lord in such a way that may enable us to give him to all souls.

Holy Virgin Mary, mother of God, we now consecrate ourselves to the practice of these three virtues especially in the love for our neighbor, in honor, imitation and union with you, O our Lady of Perpetual Visitation.

We embrace our vocation and mission of the divine union and of the apostolate of divine union, so that we may reach it ourselves, and help our neighbors to reach it too. We dedicate ourselves to the ascetical, perpetual and extraordinary mission through the ascetical and perpetual visitation to our neighbors, one by one.

Obtain for us that our divine missions and the divine indwelling may always reach in us and in our neighbors the highest effect in the divine union and in the apostolate of the divine union, so that in every family may be formed the saints of God, and from every family may come out precursors and apostles, so that the whole world may be conquered to divine love. Amen.

(St Justin Russolillo, Works, Vol. XX: Consecrations, trans. Fr Louis Caputo, Florham Park, Vocationist Editions, 2021, pp. 136-138)