Book Review: A joyful beginning

This new year is just beginning, and in Mother Mary Francis’s book we have a beautiful standard, a guide to carry with us as we journey into these next 12 months. “Cause of Our Joy” is a series of reflections and a compilation of poetry meant to herald the way to Christ, guided by His most holy mother.
 
A prolific writer and poet, Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C., was a member of the Poor Clares, a cloistered, contemplative order of nuns founded by Saint Clare of Assisi. Mary Francis’s first volume of poetry was published while she was still a novice. She eventually became an abbess and the head of a federation of Poor Clare monasteries. She lived nearly 85 years and died on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.
 
Subtitled “Walking Day by Day with Our Lady,” the book is not a series of day-by-day devotions. Instead it was, as the forward explains, “composed of the conferences Mother Mary Frances gave about Our Lady during her 42 years as abbess.” The first part of “Cause of Our Joy,” “Titles of Our Lady,” focuses on the beautiful appellations given to Mary in the Litany of Loreto, and the second part, “Solemnities and Feasts of Our Lady,” reflects on the days named to honor her throughout the calendar year.
 
This book is clearly the work of a contemplative. Mother Mary Francis brings to these pages the fruits of a life of deep, focused prayer. She goes far beyond a simple description of the titles or a bit of prayerful devotion. Like an art critic studying a painting, she notices details most others would miss. She writes that when we “contemplate the Mother of God through the constellation of titles given to her in the ancient Litany of Loreto, we see one facet of light after another.”
 
She first looks at a group of titles: Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother most inviolate, Mother undefiled. She maintains that “Holy Mother Church … is not thinking up synonyms for the first title. There are wondrous shades of different meanings in these titles, and we do well to look into them.”
 
She uses easy-to-understand examples, pointing out, about the title mother inviolate, that “a violation is a breaking in. We speak of violating a person’s privacy, violating a person’s civil rights.” Mary was inviolate because “she allowed nothing to break her down, to make fissures in her utter dedication to her Divine Son.”
 
Mother Mary Francis looks at “another triad of invocations” from Our Lady’s litany. She uses the Latin: “Virgo potens, Virgo clemens, Virgo fidelis. She points out that the “Latin word is not a superlative,” not Virgin most powerful, but simply powerful Virgin. She feels that the English rendering of these titles is to be preferred. She writes that “I do not know how this came to be, but I do know with the deep intuition of a daughter that it is right. If anything is wrong, it has to be the Latin. It ought to be Virgo potentissima.”
 
In a number of places, Mother Mary Francis hints, and sometimes more than hints, that these thoughts of hers are divinely inspired. She writes that “Our Lady put this triad (of titles) before me.” She later says that “By God’s grace, it seemed to become very clear to me.” She tells us about “considerable consultation with Our Lady.”
 
Mother Mary Francis’s writing shows us the depths of her prayer life. She presents us with thoughts and ideas that are clearly the fruits of contemplation, and she invites us into contemplation, reading phrases like “the compelling power of beauty” and “reverence in tandem with closeness.” She says that, “Nothing good will ever be accomplished in our lives unless we are merciful,” and she asks, “Are we aware of our own power?” “We have to accept the responsibility of this,” she answers.
 
Meditating on the Feast of the Visitation, Mother Mary Francis offers an insightful, close reading of The Magnificat and says that in it, Mary “is giving us a whole theology.” Looking at Our Lady of the Rosary in October, she presents a brief reflection on each of the 20 mysteries of the rosary followed by a companion arrangement of 20 poems also tied to the mysteries. It is here that she says that she was “considering all the titles that Holy Church scatters over Our
Lady in the Litany like petals of roses,” and as she looked, “One leapt out: Cause of Our Joy.”
 
“Cause of Our Joy” is a book to be read and read again. As the sisters in the forward explain, “Mother’s heart was truly like a locket closed around Our Lady’s face,” and this is a locket to be opened and marveled at again and again as we move through yet another year on our journey to Christ.
 
J.E. Helm is a freelance writer for the Sooner Catholic.