Ave Maria!
IHS
U.S. Independence Day–4 July A.D. 2015
Votive Mass of the Immaculate Conception:
LATIN ENGLISHPrayer for Those in Government
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….
“…. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”[1]
I would hope that all Americans recognize these words as coming from our declaration of Independence. I mentioned last Sunday that in the opening paragraph pf the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson agreed with words written by the sixteenth century Jesuit and scholastic philosopher, Saint Robert Bellarmine. All political authority comes from God, who permanently grants rights to all of his human creations. With enlightened self-interest men and women form governments that will protect their God-given rights.
As our Lord told Pontius Pilate “thou wouldst have no power at all over me if it were not given thee from above.”[2]
It is essential that every American understand this sequence: God grants rights, and people may establish governments to protect those rights. Rights do not come from man. Rights do not come from Government. Rights come from God. Any other understanding will make man a slave of the devil or a slave of the state. Supposing that rights come from man will cause him to be governed by his own lusts. Imagining that rights come from government will cause him to be governed by power hungry people.
To be sure that Catholic Americans never lost sight of God as the unalienable source of all rights, the early bishops of our Republic designated God’s holy Mother as the patroness of our nation under her title of the Immaculate Conception.
“Archbishop Samuel Eccleston of Baltimore called the Sixth Provincial Council of the Church in America in 1846. Twenty-two bishops responded, and [on May 5th, 1846] the Council passed as its first decree the resolution to choose Mary Immaculate as the Patroness of the United States and to make December 8 the patronal feast. This was eight years before Pius IX defined the Immaculate Conception as a dogma of the Faith.”[3]
Freedom is something which can be possessed only by virtuous persons—persons who will make themselves subject to God alone, and not to their lusts, nor to power hungry despots. Our greatest hope for the virtues required in us to sustain the Republic is in the imitation of the virtues of the most Holy Mother of God.
Oh, Mary, conceived without sin,
chosen patroness of the American Republic,
pray for us who have recourse to thee.
NOTES:
[1] The Declaration of Independence: IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
[2] John xix: 11 http://www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=50&ch=19&l=11#x
[3] Richard J. Cushing, “Mary Immaculate Patroness of America” http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/questions/yq/yq203.html
