In our efforts to join together in a life that is truly Christian we adopt as our model Mary, who remains for the Church through the centuries an incomparable sign of love and service (Const. 2.4).
Down through the centuries of Order life, there has been a filial devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus. From the time of the foundation, the confreres prayed the “Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” From the 16th century onwards, the Crosiers chanted the “Haec est praeclarum vas,” (“Behold the excellent vase”), their traditional hymn to Mary as an intercession against the Bubonic plague. Throughout the centuries, they also offered a much sought after, privileged indulgence attached to the Rosary. In the Scriptures, it is possible to see in her expressions of the Crosier charism: woman of the Glorious Cross, suffering and full of hope at Calvary; witness to poverty superabundantly filled by God in her Magnificat; fruitful, chaste virgin at the Annunciation; obedient searcher of the Spirit in the Cenacle; community woman in the family in Nazareth, in solidarity with the hearers of her itinerant son, in the filial embrace of the Beloved Disciple, in prayer with the disciples; contemplative at the birth of her son, at his ministry and death and resurrection, at Pentecost; pastoral in the Visitation and at the wedding feast of Cana. Holy Mary, pray for us.
The mother hen never sleeps on a roost, she always stays with her chicks. (Akye)
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