Cardinal Newman observed in a Sermon delivered at Oxford on March 25, 1832 (more than a decade before he entered the Catholic Church) that Mary’s role as the Mother of Jesus reminds us in a powerful way of the strikingly miraculous nature of the Incarnation: “Nothing is so calculated to impress on our minds that Christ is really a partaker of our nature, and in all respects man, save sin only, as to associate Him with the thought of her, by who whose ministration He became our Brother.” Jesus enters into time and place through the humble bearing of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This mystery is something Cardinal Newman meditated on in various ways throughout his writings, particularly after the promulgation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception by Bl. Pope Pius IX.

What a profound reality is the Immaculate Conception. One never can tire of meditating on this mystery, for we consider in such a beautiful and pre-eminent way how grace operates in the human soul. Mary is our model. I have been reflecting on this, and also on Cardinal Newman’s devotion to the Blessed Mother, as we work on the production of various film projects leading up to Newman’s Beatification. The vocation of a Catholic documentary film maker is particularly Marian if one considers the process on a spiritual level. A camera crew goes to a location in time and place, and attempts to receive and transmit something of the workings of grace in the people and places one films. Mary is our model here as we seek to discover how grace is ‘incarnated’ in our world again and again when each Christian soul says ‘yes’ in the offering of a humble fiat to the Lord. This is what Cardinal Newman himself did, which is why the Church proposes him to us as a model of holiness.

It is a great mystery to mediate on how grace can be articulated in the individual human soul. Such mysteries surround us on a daily basis if we are careful enough to observe them. Just ten days ago I was ordained a deacon with twenty fellow deacons and thirteen newly ordained priests. There is a profound mystery to how the Lord calls us in various ways to serve Him. I have been meditating on this with a sense of great joy during these past days, and asking the Blessed Mother to help all of us follow her model of responding purely and faithfully to the promptings of grace in our hearts. She truly is a model for all Christian artists who wish to do something beautiful for the Lord.

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee.