“HER FOOT SHALL CRUSH YOUR HEAD”
This past Monday, I attended the meeting of the Knights of Columbus, and was very impressed by the talk given by the Council Lecturer, Ray Gora, on our Blessed Virgin Mary. Since we are in the Month of May, which is the month of our Lady, I thought it would be nice to share some of those thoughts, that I heard, with our parishioners, especially as they pertain to the power of our Blessed Mother over evil.
As you may have noticed, wherever you see the statue of our Blessed Mother, her foot is always actively crushing the head of a serpent; depicting what God foretold about her, “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and… she shall crush thy head…” (Gen 3:15). St. Alphonsus Liguori puts it this way, “Mary, then, was the great and valiant woman, who conquered the devil and crushed his head by bringing down his pride, as it was foretold by God Himself”.
Over the centuries, Popes and Exorcists have testified that our Blessed Mother is the “Terror of Demons” and that demons flee at the mention of her name. Fr. Sante Babolin, an Italian exorcist, had this to say: “While I was insistently invoking the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the devil answered me: ‘I can’t stand That One [Mary] anymore and neither can I stand you anymore.” Furthermore, he noticed that the strongest reactions of the devil, during exorcism, was when he referenced the apparitions of our Blessed Mother—Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Guadalupe, etc. In one of his exorcism activities, another priest, Fr. Amorth, was told by the devil, “She makes me angry because she is the humblest of all creatures, and I am the proudest; because she is the purest of all creatures, and I am not; because of all creatures, she is the most obedient to God, and I am a rebel!” No wonder, in the rite of exorcism, the priest prays, “The glorious Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, commands you; she who by her humility and from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception crushed your proud head.”
My dear friends, I truly believe that to defeat the work of evil in our lives and in the world, we need and should fly to the patronage of our Blessed Mother. As Padre Pio would say, “Love the Madonna and pray the Rosary, for her Rosary is the weapon against the evils of the world today. All graces given by God pass through the Blessed Mother.”
As your pastor, I invite you to join us, during this month of May, in our nightly rosary, at 7:00 pm, and every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, of the year, held on our online platform—gotomeeting.com, ID: 574150285, except Wednesdays, when we have it, in person, in the Church, with Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Let us encourage our family members to fly to the patronage of our Blessed Mother, Mary, and teach our children to pray the rosary. Giving a child the rosary and teaching that child how to pray it is to give that child one of the strongest weapons against evil and tribulations. We recall the words of Pope Francis in his homily at St. Mary Major, “Where the Madonna is at home the devil does not enter; where there is the Mother, disturbance does not prevail, and fear does not win.” Our Blessed Mother, Herself, indicated, “The Rosary is the prayer of my predilection”. So I say, “Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us”!
