OUR LAD OF THE NEW ADVENT

Day 218: December 16

Our Lady of the New Advent, Denver, Colorado, USA



Advent is the time of preparation for Christmas, a time of nostalgia and expectation for the birth of the Savior, as well as for his second coming at the end of time.

For Christ's disciples, the nine-day period between his Ascension and Pentecost was an interval of similar, prayerful waiting until the coming of the Holy Spirit. From this nine-day interval Catholic novenas were born, which often start from the tenth day before the feast in question – as well as for the Christmas Novena which begins on December 16.

The archbishop Francis Stafford of the Archdiocese of Denver, following this calculation, began preparing for the Jubilee of 2000, in 1991 with nine years of novena to Mary until the new millennium. He therefore commissioned the Jesuit iconographer William Hart McNichols to create an image representing Our Lady of the New Advent.

Fr McNichols chose to use the type of icon known as the sign, which shows the child superimposed on his mother, rather than in her arms, which are raised in prayer. This then became the official icon of the Archdiocese (even if its patron saint is St Francis).

Our Lady in the icon of the new Advent, is dressed in purple, the color that symbolizes Advent, and holds her hands in prayer in a gesture of intercession. The Baby Jesus, who shines inside her, holds a columbine: the typical Colorado flower, in her left hand. Behind the expectant mother, the Rocky Mountains rise up outside the plains of Colorado.

In 1992, in response to Stafford's request for a liturgical feast day with a Mass in honor of Our Lady of the New Advent, the Vatican designated December 16, August 12, 1993, on the occasion of the opening of World Youth Day in Denver, Pope John Paul II prayed in this way "O Mary, Our Lady of the New Advent, who kept all these things, pondering them in your heart, teach these young people to be good listeners of your Son, the Word of life."

In 1999, Stafford's successor, Archbishop Charles Chaput, dedicated a second version of the image of Our Lady of the New Advent to the Theological Institute, an educational complex for the formation of priests, missionaries, deacons, lay people, ministers and catechists, located in Denver.

The prayer to Our Lady of the New Advent was composed by the Benedictine nuns of St Walburga's Abbey in Virginia Dale, Colorado, to complete this icon that holds a special place for the Denver faithful of the Archdiocese.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"As Jesus is inseparable from the Mother of God, so the soul sought by the Trinity as spouse of God must be inseparably, ineffably and efficaciously joined to Mary."

(365 Days with St Justin Russolillo, comp. Shiju Chittattukara & Anil Akkara, Blessed Justin Vocationary, Florham Park, 2021, p. 118)

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