16 November 2025

16 November 2025 - Our Lady Undoer of Knots

Transcript

Next weekend is the Feast of Christ the King. It is the last Sunday of the liturgical year in the church. Advent begins the new year and starts the following Sunday. Yep… It is that time of the year… Already.

What I want to do this weekend is to follow up on what Chad spoke about after Communion last weekend. He spoke about the Black Madonna, also called our Lady of Czestochowa. 

I want to suggest to you – no, more than just suggest: encourage – a devotion to our Lady that also began in Poland. It is to the image of Our Lady, Undoer of Knots. Prior to Pope Francis it was an almost unknown devotion. It was his favorite image of our Lady, according to his own admission. A little bit about the painting:

The painting, by Johann Georg Melchior Schmidtner (1625–1707), shows the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Woman of the Book of Revelation. She stands on the crescent moon – the usual way of depicting her under her title of the Immaculate Conception – her head crowned by a circle of stars. The Holy Spirit in the form of a dove hovers above, as angels surround her. She is focused on untying knots from a long ribbon, while her foot tramples the head of a "knotted" snake, representing the Devil. After all, in Genesis 3:15 God speaks to Satan: "I will put enmities between you and the woman, and your seed and her seed: she shall crush your head, and you shalt lie in wait for her heel."

Below that is a human figure being led by an angel, usually interpreted as Tobias and the Angel (the Archangel Raphael) traveling. 

The concept of Mary untying knots is derived from a work by Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, from the second century, he presents a parallel between Eve and Mary, describing how "the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith." 

In the painting, Mary is depicted working diligently to undo all of the knots of the ribbon. Her face and hands express tenderness and patience as she works while being attentive to all of our prayers. One can remark that her head is inclined: her right ear listens to God, while the left hears all of our supplications.

There have been many miracles associated with devotion to our Lady, Undoer of Knots. The first one recorded was the restoration of a marriage. There have been too many to try to describe.

But this is why I wanted to introduce you to this wonderful image of our Lady. I think every one of us – okay I’m speaking about myself – have some things that we would call knots in our lives. Things that keep us twisted and closed off from the true freedom that God wants us to live in.

Well, I took the initiative and ordered a couple of large copies of this image – one for each parish. It will take a few weeks before they get here, but I did not want to fail to respond after Chad’s comments last weekend with his call to Metanoia. We all need change and that is what metanoia is all about. Because we still live here on this earth, we can grow in holiness – we can take on changes that make us more Christlike.

When the images arrive, I am going to want to install them someplace in each church so that we can all see and approach our Lady Undoer of Knots with the requests for prayer that can lead us to a greater level of holiness.

So I will be speaking about this again in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime you can go online and look up the novena to our Lady Undoer of Knots and begin to ask for her intercession to untie the bonds that keep you from living fully for Christ.

Now, very briefly – very – I would like to say a little word about the reading from Malachi. And I can even draw a connection to our Lady. The book of Revelations, chapter 12, says that Mary is clothed with the sun. Look at the last line of Malachi: “But for you who fear my name, there will arise  the sun of justice with its healing rays.” The sun of justice is Jesus! And the church gives us this reading here on the penultimate weekend of the year to remind us that we are to keep our eyes fixed on him.

Lastly, if you have not yet filled out a commitment form for prayer and placed it in the basket here at the altar, please do so. We need to pray for one another and I really want to encourage this project. Our Lady, Undoer of Knots, pray for us. Amen.

Expect more soon about this great image of our Lady.

+++++