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Sep 12 – Holy Name of Mary
Description
Sources Used Today:
- "The Resurrection of the Body" — From the Assumption to Advent
- "Freemasonry in France: Thirty days of influence in the open" (FSSPX.news)
- The Spiritual Life — Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (Angelus Press)
Please support our new project, the Archbishop Lefebvre Biography Audiobook:
- Learn more:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Wp4MQdK2o
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The Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary celebrates something wonderfully simple: the name by which Christians have called upon the Mother of God for nearly two thousand years.
The name Mary comes to us through the Hebrew Miriam, and scholars have proposed several meanings over the centuries. Christian writers have especially loved titles such as "Star of the Sea." Saint Bernard famously developed that image, telling Christians caught in the storms of temptation and suffering to look toward the star and call upon Mary.
But the feast itself has a surprisingly dramatic history.
Devotion to Mary's name existed long before there was a universal feast. By the Middle Ages, Catholics regularly invoked her name in hymns, prayers, and preaching. A formal feast developed in Spain during the sixteenth century and gradually spread elsewhere.
Then came Vienna in 1683.
The Ottoman Empire had advanced deep into Europe, and a massive army surrounded Vienna. If the city fell, the road into central Europe would be dangerously exposed. For weeks the defenders held out while relief forces gathered under the Polish king John III Sobieski.
Before the battle, Sobieski and his soldiers attended Mass and entrusted themselves to the Blessed Virgin.
On September 12, the Christian relief army attacked.
Sobieski's famous Polish Winged Hussars joined what is often described as one of the largest cavalry charges in history, sweeping down upon the Ottoman positio