“Mary: Dream and Blueprint” - Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God 2024

St. Mark the Evangelist Parish (Cranberry/Butler, PA)

Mass Readings - https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/010124.cfm

References

“The Woman I Love” by Venerable Fulton Sheen - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8PRksy9mJE&list=PLopiKG8mY1ScH2cy9EF55PT9N96qyvdNJ&index=10&t=1083s

Sheen, Fulton J. The World’s First Love: Mary, Mother of God. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996.

Final Quote:

“That ideal love we see beyond all creature-love, to which we instinctively turn when flesh-love fails, is the same ideal that God had in His Heart from all eternity- the Lady whom He calls ‘Mother.’ She is the one whom every man loves when he loves a woman- whether he knows it or not. She is what every woman wants to be when she looks at herself. She is the woman whom every man marries in ideal when he takes a spouse; she is hidden as an ideal in the discontent of every woman with the carnal aggressiveness of man; she is the secret desire every woman has to be honored and fostered; she is the way every woman wants to command respect and love because of the beauty of her goodness of body and soul. And this blueprint love, whom God loved before the world was made, this Dream Woman before women were, is the one of whom every heart can say in its depth of depths: ‘She is the woman I love!’” (Sheen, The World’s First Love, p. 20)