Remembering Our Lady of Ransom
If you find articles like this valuable, sign up for our daily email newsletter and support us with a donation.
Late one night in the spring of 1998, I was engulfed by a sudden crisis – one of my own making. Though I had fallen away from the Faith years earlier, in that desperate moment, I recalled the religious training of my youth and cried out to God for help – specifically asking the Blessed Mother to come to my aid.
At that moment, something strange happened; in my mind, a series of moving images, almost like a film, suddenly appeared. As they unfolded, I "watched" Our Lady draw near to me. Though my soul was in a wretched state, she did not reproach me; instead, in an act of love and compassion, she draped her mantle over me. Immediately, calm enveloped me, as intuitively I sensed that it – that She – would serve as a protective shield of sorts against what was happening. Within minutes, the crisis passed, and I emerged unscathed – immensely grateful to Her, and powerfully aware that I needed to return to Her Son.
Years later, I was amazed to discover an image portraying what I had experienced – a painting of the Blessed Mother covering her flock with her protective mantle. Studying the origin of the image, I learned that it depicted Our Lady of Ransom, a title and devotion that first arose in the 13th century, and Whose feast day was historically celebrated today, Sept. 24.
SETTING CAPTIVES FREE
The story of Our Lady of Ransom is traced to the early 1200s, when St. Peter Nolasco of France journeyed to Barcelona to begin devoting his life to works of charity there. While in Spain, he was inspired to establish an Order dedicated to freeing the many Christians who were being imprisoned, tortured and enslaved by the Saracens – the Moorish (Muslim) invaders who, for centuries, had held sway over much of the Iberian Peninsula.
Saint Peter Nolasco sought an audience with James I, King of Aragon, who was well-acquainted with the pious Frenchman, and "respected him as a saint." King James, in fact, had "already asked for his prayers when he sent out his armies to combat the Moors," and "attributed his victories to those prayers." The monarch embraced St. Peter Nolasco's vision, recognizing the need for such an Order to rescue Catholics ensnared by Muslim conquerors.
"In effect all the Christians of Europe, and above all of Spain, were praying intensely to obtain from God the remedy for the great evil that had befallen them," writes Fr. Paul. Haffner.
"The divine Will was soon manifested. On one night – August 1, 1218 – the Blessed Virgin appeared to St. Peter, to his confessor, Raymund of Penafort, and to the king, and through these three servants of God established a work of the most perfect charity, the redemption of captives.
On that night, while the Church was celebrating the feast of St. Peter in Chains, the Virgin Mary appeared first to St. Peter, saying that she indeed desired the establishment of a religious Order ... bearing the name of her mercy. Its members would undertake to deliver Christian captives and offer themselves, if necessary, as a ransom pledge."
The Order, author Michael P. Foley explains, would include "an office of Ransomer, a member designated to negotiate with slaveowners, and a fourth vow required by all members of the order to give oneself up as a hostage in Saracen territory if necessary to emancipate a Christian slave."
After its founding in Spain, the Order was approved by Pope Gregory IX, becoming formally known as the Order of Our Lady of Ransom or the Order of Our Lady of Mercy, and its members, the Mercedarians. A feast day, Sept. 24, was also established; it was observed first by the Order itself, then in Spain and France, and later, under the directive of Pope Innocent XII, by the entire Church.
"By the grace of God and under the protection of His Virgin Mother, the Order spread rapidly," Fr. Haffner explains. "Its growth was increased as the charity and piety of its members was observed; they very often followed Our Lady's directive to give themselves up to voluntary slavery when necessary, to aid the good work."
The heroism of these men, it is noted, "saved countless souls from apostasy and despair."
AN ADAPTIVE DEVOTION
Over time, the Muslim threat to Christian Europe began to abate. In response, the Order shifted the focus of its work to meet the challenges of a changing world.
The Mercedarians, for example, became active in carrying the Faith to the New World. "Christopher Columbus himself brought the first Mercedarian friars to the Western hemisphere," Foley observes, "and before long Latin America had eight Mercedarian provinces to Spain's three and France's one."
In the 19th century, Pope Leo XIII turned to Our Lady of Ransom to aid in the re-evangelization of Britain, making Her Sept. 24 feast "proper to all the dioceses of England, with a focus on how Our Lady ransoms us from the slavery of our sins, and brings us the grace of conversion." As part of this endeavor, in 1887, the Guild of Our Lady of Ransom was launched, targeting the "conversion of England and Wales, the restoration of the lapsed, and prayer for the forgotten dead." Its founders, Foley writes, "saw a parallel between the Mercedarians' original mission and their own, which is to make England once again Our Lady's Dowry by 'ransoming individuals from the darkness of unbelief and heresy into the light of the Catholic Faith.'"
The shift toward liberating spiritual captives continued over the past century-and-a-half. Today, it is reflected in the Order's amended fourth vow, which now declares its aim "to free from the new forms of slavery the Christians who are in danger of losing their Faith."
"The changing missions and clients of the Mercedarians and Our Lady of Ransom remind us that it is sometimes possible and even necessary to put old wine into new wineskins, or at least to apply old devotions to new problems," Foley observes. "On the other hand, the Collect for the feast reminds us of one kind of enslavement that never changes."
"O God, who through the most glorious Mother of Thy Son hast deigned to increase Thy Church through a new offspring for delivering Christ's faithful from the power of the heathen: grant, we beseech, that we who piously venerate the founding of so great a work may, through its merits and intercession, be equally delivered from all sins and from the captivity of the Devil. Through the same Christ our Lord."
Indeed, the Collect serves as a reminder that in our fallen world, enslavement to sin remains an unchanging, ever-present threat. Though the feast of Our Lady of Ransom is no longer included in the General Roman calendar, the object of its devotion is every bit as relevant today as it was in the 13th century.
Across the West today, hundreds of millions of Christians languish inside spiritual prisons, often of their own making. If any of us, or any of those we love, are suffering such agonizing incarceration, we would do well to remember Our Lady of Ransom – to seek the balm of her protective mantle and plead for her intercession in securing freedom for the afflicted.
"It is a nightmare to imagine being enslaved, to be deprived of basic rights that we take for granted and to be exploited like livestock," Foley notes. "And yet in every day and age, there is a horror even worse than the chains and lashes of the slaver. Sin and Satan's reign constitute an even greater tyranny than the dehumanizing institution of chattel slavery, and so we pray, always and everywhere, to be delivered from the Fiend and his chains of vice as if our very lives depended on it."
"Our Lady of Ransom," he adds, "continue to pray for us."
Editor's note: The Manual for Marian Devotion will deepen your relationship with Mary and, in doing so, draw you closer to Her Son.
Writer, editor and producer Stephen Wynne has spent the past seven years covering, from a Catholic perspective, the latest developments in the Church, the nation and the world. Prior to his work in journalism, he spent eight years co-authoring “Repairing the Breach,” a book examining the war of worldviews between Christianity and Darwinism. A Show-Me State native, he holds a BA in Creative Writing from Pepperdine University and an Executive MBA from the Bloch School of Business at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Comments