Our Lady of Good Counsel, pray for us on your glorious (Easter) Feast!

Can you ever get enough of these two faces? I can't! And Marcel (in his delightful Conversations with Jesus, Mary, and St. Therese) explains - or has explained to him - just why this is so. Of course, as little Miss Marcel, I can't find the passage for you now, try as I may, but give me a couple of decades more of immersing myself in the consoling, true, and illuminating words of this favorite book, and I will have the words not only at my fingertips (which they are in the book which is forever near me, thanks to God's kindness), but in a post for you to read too! If you can't wait that long, feel free to click on this magic word Conversations and impulse buy! I'm confident it will be the best purchase you've made in plague time, and just to let you know I'm not the only one highly recommending the second St. Therese and his masterpiece, let's give a shout out to the master of helping us find what we are missing:

Good and dear St. Anthony, pray for all of us who are so often at a loss!

Meanwhile, the idea is this:

Just gazing upon our dear Mother and darling Jesus is enough to call their compassion down upon us!
Isn't that marvelous?
And here is an example:
My favorite image of Mary - I know, I'm fickle and I've often mentioned Our Lady of Guadalupe in this regard, but forgive me if I now know myself better today and have more candour, relegating Our Lady of my Mexican heart to second place, because my favorite image of Mary has just got to be the image above of Our Lady of Good Counsel. And to prove it, I'll offer it again as the image below in a more moderately sized version that turns Our Lady's veil into a gorgeous blue, and even better, shows us Little Jesus' adorable divine hand resting sweetly on His mommy. He's our exemplar and showing us the Little Way!

Well the delightful news is that today, April 26 (and this year the joyful 3rd Sunday of Easter), day after the wondrous Feast of St. Mark on April 25, is - hold on to your Easter bonnet or fedora - The Feast of Our Lady of Good Counsel!!!

Despite my calling on her just about every day and often multiple times a day, I manage to forget this recently acquired (in the last decade or so) info about her own lovely feast - and so I thank my dearest Padre V for alerting me very first thing with a much needed simple email that said: Happy Feast of Our Lady of Good Counsel! And I extend these felicitous greetings to you as well, dear reader! And I can even offer - what an embarrassment of riches! - a Litany to Our Lady of Good Counsel which I discovered about 5 moments ago when I found the picture of Our Lady of Good Counsel in a blue veil. So . . . in the interests of Sunday joy (and my other little duties), I will leave you with a link to the magnificent and very miraculous story of Our Lady of Good Counsel of Genazzano.

(If, like Miss Marcel East, you find you don't love that image in Genazzano, well no worries, we have the images above in your choice of veils, but the true history is to die for - I mean I would! - and so cool that I must give you that link).

Exactly like Our Lady and Little Jesus tell Marcel, the message of Our Lady of Good Counsel is that gazing upon them is a prayer in itself which delights their hearts, and this image in Italy (to my understanding, the reason for the fame of Our Lady of Good Counsel) illustrates the power of this simple prayer of gazing in multiple ways. Not only was the image in Genazzano transported by angels from a far away place (and witnesses at the time attested to having seen it both places), not only does it have a science defying eggshell thin thickness, not only does it hang miraculously an inch or two away from the wall it fronts, not only has it been the cause (secondary) of tons of miracles (I was going to say countless, but many have been counted in the careful records kept at her church in Genazzano) - but also and perhaps most wonderfully of all, when pilgrims pray before this special image, Our Lady's and Little Jesus' so lovely faces often become fuller and suffused with an exquisite rose color when they are about to grant a request! Which shows us how happy they are to answer all our prayers! WOW!!!

Without further fuss, then, here is the link to the article about Our dear Mother of Good Counsel:

OUR LADY OF GOOD COUNSEL (OF GENAZZANO)

And here is our Litany! In case you find it too long, let's say our little happy prayer first, and then we'll be sure to have prayed together on this so sweet feast. I love you, dear reader, and my love is only the faintest glimmer of Our Lady's and our all-loving Lord's infinitely tender love! So bask in their faces today, and may St. Therese and her little brother shower you with their trademark roses!

Draw me, we will run!
Our Lady of Good Counsel, pray for us!!!

LITANY OF  OUR LADY OF GOOD COUNSEL

Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God the Father of Heaven,
Have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
Have mercy on us.
God the Holy Ghost,
Have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, One God,
Have mercy on us.
Beloved Daughter of the Eternal Father,
pray for us.
August Mother of God the Son,
pray for us .
Blessed Spouse of God the Holy Ghost, etc.
Living temple of the Holy Trinity,
Queen of Heaven and earth,
Seat of Divine Wisdom ,
Depository of the secrets of the Most High,
Virgin most prudent,
In our doubts and difficulties,
In our tribulations and anguish,
In our discouragements,
In perils and temptations,
In all our undertakings,
In all our needs,
At the hour of death,
By thine Immaculate Conception,
By thy happy nativity,
By thine admirable presentation,
By thy glorious Annunciation,
By thy charitable Visitation,
By thy Divine Maternity,
By thy holy Purification,
By the sorrows and anguish of thy maternal heart,
By thy precious death ,
By thy triumphant Assumption,
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
Spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
Graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
Have mercy on us.
V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
R. And obtain for us the gift of good counsel.
Let Us Pray.
Lord Jesus, Author and Dispenser of all good, Who in becoming incarnate in the womb of the Blessed Virgin hast communicated to her lights above those of all the Heavenly intelligences, grant that in honoring her under the title of Our Lady of Good Counsel, we may merit always to receive from her goodness counsels of wisdom and salvation, which will conduct us to the port of a blessed eternity. R. Amen.