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St. John The Baptist Parish Mary Garden
Prayer Service for September 11th Victims
Henry & Elenore Simpatico,
North Bennington, Vermont
23 Sep 2001
Last Sunday we had a beautiful prayer service in the Mary Garden
for the victims and rescue workers at the World Trade Center Twin
Towers. There were over a hundred people including other faiths (a
very good number for our community). Our pastor gave a beautiful
reflection on the sorrowful Mother urging us to pray to Mary and to
join in her suffering.
It was a glorious Vermont September day. Such a contrast to what
we were seeing on TV and our hearts were very heavy.
A few notes about the program:
The readers included a State Trooper, a junior fireman, sodality
officers, a retired army officer, and a woman who had buried her
husband the previous week. He had been a New York City policeman
and she offered prayers for her nephews (police and firemen) who
were working at the WTC site.
In the prayers for the dead were included prayers for David and
Lynn Angell, the brother and sister-in-law of Vermont's Bishop
Angell; and Fr. Francis Grogan, a very well known Holy Cross
priest who had been stationed in Bennington for many years. They
all were on the planes that crashed.
Fr. Baffa, our pastor, gave a reflective message on Mary, the
sorrowful mother, asking us to prayer to her. It was a very
powerful talk,
Enclosed please find a copy of the service and photos.
o O o
From the Church Bulletin:
God Blessed Us last Sunday as we gathered for a prayer
service held in Mary's Garden. Those who came gained
a sense of peace as we prayed and sang both religious
and patriotic songs. The unity of men, women and
children of a number of faiths helped strengthen our
belief in the good Lord's blessings to us as a small
town in this our beloved United States of America.
Some of those in attendance
From the Bennington Banner
Memorial Prayer Service at Mary's Garden
NORTH BENNINGTON - A memorial prayer service for
victims of the terrorist attack on America was held
on Sunday, Sept. 16 in the Mary Garden at St. John
the Baptist Church in North Bennington. More than
100 persons were in attendance. Readings and prayers
were offered by a number of parishioners, with music
provided by the River Bound Gospel Group.
The Rev. Robert Baffa, Pastor, addressed the
gathering and spoke of the importance of praying to
the Blessed Virgin Mary to intercede for us. Special
prayers were offered for victims who had ties to our
area including the Rev. Francis Grogan, as well as
prayers for those working in the city.
Father Baffa addressing gathering in Mary Garden
From the program:
Prayer for Country
Lord God, grant to the President of the United States,, to the
Congress, and to all law officials at the national, state and local
levels, the gift of wisdom, justice, counsel and fortitude to
conduct Your affairs and those of men with righteousness. May they
realize that all authority comes from You. May God bless President
Bush particularly with the wisdom of Solomon as he tries to respond
to the attacks on our nation. May God's grace use these events to
draw America and the whole world closer to Him. Let us join in
asking God to show boundless mercy to the victims and to give a
double portion of comfort to their families. Let us ask Him to
show us how we can make America a better nation as we walk through
this most sad and trying time. Amen
Please join in the Prayer of St. Francis
PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
0 Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is pardoning that we are pardoned.
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen
o O o
Reply, Mary's Gardens, 21 Oct 2001
We deeply appreciate your informing us of the moving memorial
prayer service at the St. John the Baptist's Mary Garden, which
inspired us to take a walk through the virtual Mary Garden of the
heart.
Mindful of the medieval view of gardens as "Paradises", the flowers
of the Mary Garden as a whole are to be seen as representing the
heavenly souls of the faithful departed, for whom we pray.
Then, as on entering the garden we behold "Sweet Mary", "Our Lady's
Hand of Pity", "Our Lady's Mantle" and other flowers of Mary's
mercy, we are comforted as these quicken our prayers for Mary's
consolation and protection.
The prayers of those who ponder "Mary's Sword of Sorrow",
"Mary's Tears" and the flower symbols of Our Lord's Passion, will
surely be enriched through their recollection of Father Baffa's
exhortion to "reflect on Mary, to join in her suffering as the
Sorrowful Mother, to pray to her, and to ask her for her
intercession."
In communing with Mary in our grieving over the loss of loved ones,
we pray to her, our Sorrowful Mother, for the graces to unite our
sufferings, as she did hers, with the sufferings of Christ, who
- in the continuation of his sacrifice of Calvary in the daily
masses throughout the world - takes on all our sufferings as his
own, for the continuing Redemption of the world from all evil.
On beholding roses and "Mary's Heart", our hearts heavy with world
violence and warfare, we are moved to pray the Rosary for peace,
in accordance with Mary's exhortation at Fatima:
"Ask (everyone) to plead for peace through the Immaculate
Heart of Mary, for the Lord has confided the peace of the
world to Her."
As our reflection on the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary is
extended on encountering their flower symbols in the garden, we are
moved to pray to heavenly Mary for her intercession and mediation
with her Divine Son and Lord for the inspiration and graces through
which we may become the active instruments of his peace - as we
pray with St. Francis.
Our hope for peace lies in our faith that the earthly Peaceable
Kingdom will indeed come - as the culmination of God's showing forth
and sharing with us of his goodness; the purpose of Creation -
and that to this end, God's will WILL be done, as we pray in the
"Our Father". As Pope John Paul II has said, "God did not create
the world to be a graveyard." The spiritual challenge is whether,
after the 2,000 years since Christ's Redemption of the world, his
Peaceable Kingdom will thus be built and come in our generation, or
whether the mighty will continue periodically to be "cast down from
their seat", until the humble are justly exalted.
In this we have the counsel of Pope John XXIII, in Pacem in
Terris, that the foundations of peace are truth, justice, love
and freedom. We thus plead to Mary that she assist us, world
leaders, and all in the creative opening of hearts to the
promptings, inspiration and electional discernments of the Holy
Spirit, that with his spiritual guidance we all - as the
instruments of his "renewal of the face of the earth" - may work
our way to these fundamentals through all the deceptions,
injustices, hate, oppression and violence of the world.
In praying for the world Peaceable Kingdom, and for our
instrumentation of it, we are to be mindful of the Gospel counsel
that "The Kingdom of God is within you" - that we are ever to seek
the graces of our own sanctification, that we may first of all live
according to truth, justice, love, freedom and peace in our
personal lives and immediate relationships, in "the peace that
surpasses understanding", that this may then pour out into society.
That we may be open and responsive to the promptings of the Holy
Spirit for peace, we pray to Mary, the "Spotless Lily"; and "Violet
of Humility", that she assist us - in fidelity to the graces of
our baptism - in emulating the immaculate purity and utter
humility of her responsiveness to God.
The hope of the present day lies in the heightened appreciation by
the Church - as evidenced by the dogmatic definition of Mary's
Immaculate Conception and Heavenly Assumption, and by the approval
of veneration of her major apparitional messages - of the seminal
and fullest personal accomplishment in Mary of God's desire, for
Creation, of sharing the divine goodness, truth, beauty, glory and
action with humans - created to this end in the divine image and
likeness.
Through her summoned, graced and accepted procreational union with
God the Father - for her Divine Motherhood of God the Son
Incarnate, True God and True Man - Mary was brought as well into
union with all the divine action in Creation. Hence her union, as
Mother, with God the Son - who gave her to us as our spiritual
mother also; and her further union with him as Co-redemptrix and as
our Advocate and Intercessor with God the Father. And, further,
her union with Jesus as Universal Mediatrix of the divine grace,
light, wisdom and power of his sent Holy Spirit; and her union
with Christ the King as Queen of Heaven and Earth.
Through our fuller understanding of Mary's sharing in the divine
action for the world, and of our call to emulate her as we meditate
on her mysteries - "that meditating on these mysteries, we may
imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise" - our
prayers become a participation in her intercession and mediation,
and thus, through and with her, a sharing in the divine action, as
willed by God for Creation.
Extensive reflections, meditations and prayers as summarized here
- from a "walk" through the virtual Mary Garden of the heart
inspired by the report of your prayer service - are of course not
undertaken in a single visit to the Mary Garden. They are, rather,
quickened from day to day, and week by week, through the growing
season, as we ponder the symbolism of the Flowers of Our Lady
while planting and caring for them, and as they come into bloom.