During the month of May—the month of
Mary—we feel a special protection of Our Lady that extends to all the
faithful; we feel a special joy that shines and illuminates our hearts
expressing the universal certainty of Catholics that the indispensable
patronage of our heavenly mother becomes even more tender, more loving
and more full of visible mercy and exorable condescendence during her
month of May.
Even after the month of May passes, a remnant of
this remains if we have profited from those thirty-one days especially
consecrated to Our Lady. We are left with an increased devotion, a
keener confidence and, so to speak, such an increased intimacy with Our
Lady that in all the vicissitudes of life we will know how to petition
her with respectful insistence, hope in her with invincible confidence
and thank her with humble tenderness for all the good she does us.
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Our Lady is the Queen of Heaven and Earth
and, at the same time, our mother. We enter the month of May with this
conviction, and it becomes more deeply rooted in us when we leave it,
strengthening our faith and increasing our fortitude. May teaches us to
love Mary Most Holy for the glory she rightly possesses and for all that
she represents in the plans of Divine Providence. It also teaches us to
be more constant in our filial union with Mary.
Children are
never more sure of the loving vigilance of their mothers than when they
suffer. All of mankind suffers today; all peoples suffer. They suffer in
every conceivable way.
Windstorms
of impiety and skepticism sweep through minds, and crazy whirlwinds of
all types of messianism devastate them. Nebulous, confused and rash
ideas filter into every milieu and mislead not only the wretched and the
lukewarm, but sometimes even those of whom greater constancy in the
Faith is expected.
Those who are tenaciously faithful to the
fulfillment of duty suffer from all the adversity they meet by their
fidelity to the Law of Christ. Yet those who transgress the Law also
suffer, for without Christ every pleasure is nothing but bitterness, and
every joy is a lie.
Hearts suffer, torn by the revolutionary
psychological war, which is so intense in our days. Bodies suffer,
impoverished by work, undermined by malady, overwhelmed by necessities
of every kind.
The contemporary world could be likened to the
time when Our Lord was born in Bethlehem: Its tortured mouth opens with a
loud and agonizing groan, the groan of the evildoers who live far
removed from God and the groan of the just who live tormented by the
evildoers.
The more somber circumstances become and the more
excruciating sundry pains grow, the more we should ask Our Lady to put
an end to so much suffering not merely for our own relief, but for the
greater benefit of our souls. Sacred theology says that Our Lady's
prayers anticipated the moment of the world's redemption by the Messias.
At this anguished moment in history then, let us turn our eyes to Our
Lady with confidence, asking her to hasten the great moment we all
await, when a new Pentecost will kindle beacons of light and hope in
this darkness and restore the kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ on earth.
We should be like Daniel, whom Holy Scripture describes as the "desideriorum vir,"
that is, a man full of great desires. Let us desire many great things
for the glory of God. Let us always ask Our Lady for everything. And let
us, above all, ask her for that which the Sacred Liturgy beseeches of
God: "Emitte Spiritum tuum et creabuntur, et renovabis faciem terrae"
(Send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created; and Thou shalt renew
the face of the earth). We should ask, through the mediation of Our
Lady, that God once again send us the Holy Ghost with the plenitude of
His gifts so that His kingdom may be created anew and be purified by a
renewal of the face of the earth. In the Divine Comedy, Dante wrote that
praying without the patronage of Our Lady is like wanting to fly
without wings. Let us then confide to Our Lady this heartfelt yearning
and desire. The hands of Mary will be for our prayer a pair of pure
wings that will carry it with certainty to the throne of God.
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