Ave Maria!
B.F. SHOWRAYYA
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Devotees throng Our Lady of Health church at Khairatabad with immense faith today.
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The Church of Our Lady of Health at Khairatabad and the surrounding township are brimming with crowds of people today to celebrate her birthday. At the centre of a panorama of faith and festivity, Mother Mary stands in a niche on a high alter at the far end of the first ever octagonal church in the world. She looks luminous and smiling at the divine child in her arms - her son Jesus.
On the feast day, the 102-year-old statue of Mother Mary brought from Italy is kept on a gorgeously decorated chariot. At her feet are a galaxy of candle flames and heaps of garlands of flowers. Over four lakh people of different faiths come to Mother Mary as children go to their Mother.
Great Marian shrines especially Lourdes, Fatima, and Guadalupe - all venues of Mother Mary's apparitions and numerous miracles - bring the feast to centre stage and the global scene. In India, Marian devotion at Velankani in the South, Bandra in Bombay, and Khairatabad in Andhra Pradesh dominate the day's spiritual skyline.
Mother's uniqueness
The extraordinary honour given to the blessed virgin mother has a sound Biblical base and theological wisdom behind it. Mary is the most unique mother in all history. Mary was chosen by God to be the mother of his son. Through God's Holy Spirit, she conceives and brings forth Jesus.
Because of this divine favour given to her to be the Mother of the God, Mary "far surpasses all creatures both in heaven and on earth."
At the risk being shunned to death in Jewish society for bringing forth a child without a husband, Mary agreed to bear the Son of God even as a virgin, and she gave the birth to Jesus.
From the fact that Mary is the Mother of God, sprang a number of doctrines - that she was conceived without original sin and that she was assumed into heaven, body and soul.
The dogma of the `Assumption of our Lady', body and soul into heaven also has its natural logic. Jesus derived his flesh and blood, his body his human nature from Mary. Why will Jesus who was triumphant not only over death but also over corruption, allow his mother's sinless body to be touched by corruption? It is thus that at her death or `falling asleep', as saint Germanus put it, "the Blessed Virgin Mother was carried up into heaven through the merits and power of her son and Redeemer, Jesus".
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