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This week we approach Gaudete Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent, named after the first word of the Entrance Antiphon (“Gaudete”, or “Rejoice”).
During the Responsorial Psalm this weekend we will pray Mary’s paramount proclamation known as her Magnificat - “My Soul Proclaims the Greatness of the Lord.”
In the spirit of Mary’s proclamation, and the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception which we celebrate this week, enjoy this reflection by Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
"God, too, has within Himself blueprints of everything in the universe. As the architect has in his mind a plan of the house before the house is built, so God has in His Mind an archetypal idea of every flower, bird, tree, springtime, and melody.
A tree is truly a tree because it corresponds to God's idea of a tree. A rose is a rose because it is God's idea of a rose wrapped up in chemicals and tints and life. But it is not so with persons. God has to have two pictures of us: one is what we are, and the other is what we ought to be.
There is, actually, only one person in all humanity of whom God has one picture and in whom there is a perfect conformity between what He wanted her to be and what she is, and that is His Own Mother.
The model and the copy are perfect; she is all that was foreseen, planned, and dreamed. The melody of her life is played just as it was written. Mary was thought, conceived, and planned as the equal sign between ideal and history, thought and reality, hope and realization."