It is surely a grace of Divine Providence that the feast of our holy father St Philip falls within the month that is so sweetly fragranced by its dedication to Our Blessed Lady. Saint Philip’s whole life and apostolate was lived under Her mantle. His disciples recounted him conversing with Her from his bed during periods of sickness with such affection and familiarity that it seemed as if She were actually present in his room. Indeed, he was blessed with visits from the Blessed Virgin, as when She appeared one night to show him that She was holding up a dislodged beam in the roof of the church which was likely to crash down on to the congregation below. On another occasion She appeared to him when he was ill with a severe fever and seemed to be nearing the point of death. Immediately cured, he sat up and was amazed that no-one else in the room seemed to have seen Her whom he was wont to call ‘Mamma Mia’.
For St Philip, it was a special blessing that the church given to the Congregation in Rome had been dedicated since the 12th century to Santa Maria in Vallicella (St Mary in the Little Valley), and it was at his insistence during the rebuilding that every chapel should contain an image of Our Lady over the altar. His personal favourite was Federico Barocci’s rendering of the embrace between the Blessed Virgin and Elizabeth, for the altar of the Visitation, before which he was seen to be in ecstasy. And so, when the Roman Oratory fathers constructed a shrine after his death to contain his mortal remains, they made sure that the beautiful painting of our saint by Guido Reni over the altar depicted him on his knees, in Mass vestments, in front of a vision of the Madonna and Child.
It is a nineteenth century copy of this Guido Reni that was placed above St Philip’s altar in the first church of the London Oratory off the Strand, and which came with us to Brompton, where it was eventually placed in a magnificent carved and gilded surround sponsored by Father Ralph Kerr. One of the attractions of St Philip for the first English Oratorians was his profound devotion to the Blessed Virgin. After his reception into the One True Fold of the Redeemer in 1845, St John Henry Newman was given a house at Old Oscott by Cardinal Wiseman. He renamed it “Maryvale”. Father Faber would point out the similarity of this name to “Santa Maria in Vallicella” when, in 1848, the first Oratorian community in England was canonically erected there.
Our own church in London contains many images of Our Blessed Lady, from the poignant Pietà in the war memorial near the Baptistry, to the Nazarene School painting of Our Lady of Sorrows in the Dolours Chapel, the altar to Our Lady of Good Counsel and the nearby painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe in St Wilfrid’s Chapel, to our magnificent Lady Altar with its statue of Our Lady of Victories. This last chapel, flanked by statues of Dominican saints, is a monument to the Church’s victories throughout history over the cancer of heresy from within, and at times of menace from the infidel without. Above the High Altar, meanwhile, we see a large red heart pierced with thorns. This represents the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to which our church is dedicated and which Our Lady has promised will have the final triumph over all evil.
Our May devotions include daily recitation of the Holy Rosary followed by the Litany of Loreto at Our Lady’s altar twenty minutes before the evening Mass, throughout the month (to be on the safe side, arrive twenty-five minutes before the Mass, as some of the fathers tend to be a bit quick off the mark). A plenary indulgence may be gained by this public participation of the Rosary, under the usual conditions. In these days of heightened international tensions, which coincide with an unprecedented crisis of credibility in the leadership of our governments, it is only normal that there should be great anxiety among decent people who feel helpless as they witness policies being pursued which seem to guarantee escalation. As children of the Mother of God, however, we are not helpless. The Rosary is our secret weapon, both against the forces of evil at work in the secular realm, and against the heretics who work to wreak so much havoc within the Church. Let us pray it with great trust and faith, remembering the countless occasions on which Our Lady has intervened to rescue Christian civilisation in response to this devotion which She has so often commended to Her children.
As the nation prepares to celebrate the Coronation, we must pray for our new King, Charles III, asking God to guide him, bless him, and give him the gumption to resist the zeitgeist of these days of all-pervading “wokery”. Ultimately the criteria by which the success of this new reign will be judged will be the extent to which it conforms to and extends the reign of our divine Sovereign, Christ the King. With that in mind, let us entrust our earthly King to the care and the constant intercession of our heavenly Mother Who has been crowned Queen of the Angels and Saints.
Father Julian Large