Oct. 12 Our Lady of Pilar

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We are told in the Magnificat, all generations shall call me blessed, for the Almighty has done great things for me (Luke 1:48-49).

Christians everywhere have rendered Our Lady homage under this invocation. According to a pious tradition, Our Lady appeared in Saragossa above a column or a pillar, and hence she is called Our Lady of the Pillar or Our Lady of Pilar.

At the site of the apparition, the faithful built a church and later a basilica. Pope Pius XII extended the feast of Our Lady of Pilar from Spain to all the nations of South America. The shrine of Our Lady of Pilar is one of the main pilgrimage centers in the Ibero-American world.

The celestial host brought a pillar as a symbol of Our Lady's presence. Our Lady comforted St. James, the Apostle of Spain, during the apparition, by promising her maternal assistance in the evangelization of the country entrusted to him.

Pope St. John Paul said Our Lady of the Pillar is now honored as the symbol of firm faith throughout the world.

She is the strong foundation of our fidelity. We go ad Jesum per Mariam, to Jesus through Mary, for our firm support in all our apostolic endeavors.

Countless Christians grow in faith in Christ the Son of God, through devotion to Mary, the Mother of the Son. They are sustained through the One who is our sure guide to salvation, since she conserves and strengthens our faith (John Paul II, Address, 6 Nov 1982).

People of many nations celebrate today's feast. As we contemplate such widespread devotion to Our Lady, we can appreciate her as the prophetic fulfilment of Scripture.

I took root in an honorable people, we're told in the Book of Sirach. In the portion allotted by God, I have his inheritance. My abode is in the full assembly of saints. I was exalted like a cedar tree in Libanus, a cypress on Mount Sion, a palm in Cades, a rose bush in Jericho, a fair olive tree in the plains and a plain olive tree in the street. I gave a sweet smell like cinnamon, aromatical unction, the best myrrh, storax, galbanum, onyx, aloes, and uncut frankincense. My aroma is the purest balm (Sirach 24:13-15).

Devotion to Our Lady has sprung up throughout the world, and love for her continues to spread to all people as a sweet fragrance.

Today is a good day to ask her for an increase of faith. The greater the difficulties we may have in our daily effort to improve and to do apostolate, the more graces we will receive from Our Lady, so our example will be all the stronger and effective.

With her at our side, we will always be victorious. We can ask Our Lady to make us firm pillars of faith, so that our family and friends may lean on us for support.

At the Entrance Antiphon of today's Mass, we say, Father all-powerful and ever-living God, you grant heavenly aid to those who call on her with the invocation ‘Pillar’. Through her intercession, grant us fortitude in faith, security in hope, and constancy in love.

We can ask Our Lady's help to prepare the way for our personal apostolate. In the Book of Wisdom, it says: You precede the chosen people in the desert like the cloud that guided and sustained them both day and night (Wis 18:3).

In the Book of Exodus it says: Yahweh goes before the chosen people by day in the form of a column-shaped cloud to guide them. At night he looms overhead as a pillar of fire to light up the path (cf Exod 13:21).

Also in the Book of Wisdom it says: Therefore, they received a burning pillar of fire for a guide on the unfamiliar path, a sun that did not burn them during their glorious pilgrimage (Wis 18:3).

From the time of the Church's inception, Our Lady has cast light on the way for the evangelization of the world.

She goes ahead now also to illuminate the personal apostolate we carry out as ordinary Christians at home, at work, and in all our surroundings.

With this in mind, when we propose to draw a relative or a friend closer to God, we can first entrust them to the person of Our Lady. She shows us the way to proceed and removes any obstacles.

Hopefully, perhaps each one of us has experienced the powerful help of Our Lady. John Paul II has said, Our Guide is a strong column. She accompanies the new Israel, the Church, in its pilgrimage towards the Promised Land through Christ Our Lord. In this way, Our Lady of the Pillar is a ‘flaming torch’ and the ‘throne of glory’. She affirms the faith of a people who never tire of asking her in the Salve Regina: ‘Show unto us the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus’ (John Paul II, Address, 15 Nov. 1987).

Whether evangelization began in some places many centuries ago or only a few years ago, the kingdom will not be complete until the end of time.

Sustaining that effort and pushing on with the task is now in our hands. In order to participate effectively in this divine adventure, we need to have our hearts engaged, and increasingly make an effort to understand others better.

The further from Christ a person is, the greater the charity we need to practice with them, without ever compromising our personal conduct or the teachings of the Church.

Calling on Our Lady's help is an excellent beginning for all apostolate. May we ask her guidance to set goals as we propose to carry out the apostolic mission that we receive in our Baptism.

We can ask her help each day, especially during October, the month of the Rosary. We could think of visiting one of her shrines and perhaps offer up some small sacrifice in doing so.

She would accept this sign of affection with a smile and would return it tenfold in keeping with her greatness.

Mary is the model in the evangelization we Christians are called to carry out with naturalness and simplicity.

We can contemplate her very normal life on earth for us to learn from her. We could imagine her friendly charity, the spirit of service she shows in Cana, and her haste to help her cousin Elizabeth.

We might especially focus on her habitual smile, which made her ordinary social relations so attractive. This has to be our way too.

In today's Mass, we ask Our Lord, through the intercession of Our Lady, to grant us to be strong in faith and generous in love.

Faith is one of the greatest gifts that we have received. We need to protect it as a treasure from all that can be harmful, including unsuitable reading, television programs detrimental to a Christian outlook, or inappropriate public spectacles.

Our Lady can help us to be vigilant over ourselves and for the sake of others, so we may never give in to a way of life contrary to the faith we have received.

We need ever more firmly to practice fortitude in preserving the teachings of the Church. We shouldn't let a permissive environment be intolerant of Christian principles that are not open to compromise.

St. Peter exhorts the first Christians in the relativistic society of his own day: Be resistant and steadfast in the faith (1 Pet 5:9). Each of us is called to give upright example in matters of faith and morals even if it means being conspicuous and having a conspicuous difference from the majority. Our integrity can help others who later may come to appreciate faith in Jesus Christ as a result of our behavior.

When the moral tone of society is low, our faith needs to be strong and accompanied by loving generosity with others. We should continue to learn how to have a good rapport with everyone, including those who don't understand us.

Our heart should continue to expand to include others who hold different social or political views from our own. Whether we are dealing with highly educated individuals or with people who are barely literate, we need to have a friendly disposition which comes from dealing with God intimately in daily prayer.

Such an attitude of affection is perfectly compatible with great fortitude in speaking out in support of the teachings of the Church.

Given that the spread of Christianity throughout the world has come under the patronage of the Virgin Mary, the new evangelization of the nations is taking place under her watchful vigilance as well.

As the column that guided and sustained the Chosen People on their way to the desert, the Blessed Mother leads us along the sure path to Jesus, who is our Promised Land.

St. John Paul said, She always does so, as so many of her images depict. There she appears with her Son, like Our Lady of the Pillar. She never ceases to point out Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John Paul II, Address, 6 Nov 1982).

St. Josemaría liked to describe his own love for Our Lady of Pilar. He said, God wants us to draw close to Our Lady of Pilar so that we may be comforted by her understanding, her affection, and her power. She will increase our faith, assure our hope, and help us to be more fervent in our loving concern to serve all souls. May we dedicate ourselves to others with renewed energy as we sanctify our work and our everyday activities. In a word, may we convert every aspect of our life into an occasion for dealing with God (J. Escrivá, Memories of Our Lady of the Pillar, p. 47).

Today's feast commemorates one of Our Lady's many interventions on behalf of her children.

St. James the Greater was the first of Our Lord's Apostles to preach the Gospel in the Iberian Peninsula, which was then known as the end of the earth, the western edge of the world.

But his Apostolic ministry at first bore very little fruit. A discouragement led him to consider abandoning his efforts. Our Lord wanted His Mother, who was still living on earth at the time, to appear to him [St. James the Greater] on the banks of the Ebro River.

Our Lady encouraged James, assuring him that his efforts would not be in vain. And there in Aragon, she left as a reminder the pillar on which she had appeared, which can be found today in the Basilica of Pilar in Saragossa.

This reality can encourage us in our apostolic endeavors when, like St. James, it might appear that our efforts will bear little fruit, and maybe we see the smallness of our efforts compared to the greatness of what needs to be done.

We can be reminded of the mustard seed, and how, in the history of the Church, the Apostles who planted those seeds with faith, with the help of Our Lady, saw those seeds eventually coming to great fruition.

This wonderful Marian devotion to Pilar is very closely tied to the beginnings of the spread of the Gospel in Spain. You can see a reflection of the Church's universal belief that Our Lady gave effective help to her Son’s Apostles.

As the Queen of the Apostles, she is interested in every single apostolic endeavor. An early document of the Church from St. Maximus the Confessor summarizes Our Lady's life after Christ's ascension.

He says: She was the hope of Christians then and always. Mary will be the mediatrix and strength of believers until the end of the world. But at that time her concern and effort to correct and consolidate the new law of Christianity was more intense, so that the name of Christ would be glorified.

The Holy Apostles had taken her for their teacher and guide. They spoke to her about the problems and she gave them her advice and suggestions. Whenever they found themselves near Jerusalem, they would make sure to visit her.

This is how Our Lady treats those who dedicate their entire lives to the extension of the kingdom of heaven. Mary consoles them in their difficulties, encourages them in their apostolate, and fills their hearts with joy, at the apostolic fruit her powerful intercession wins for them.

On our part, we have to bring Our Lady into each of our apostolic endeavors.

St. Josemaría said in Christ is Passing By: Many conversions, many decisions to give oneself to the service of God have been preceded by an encounter with Mary. Our Lady has encouraged us to look for God, to desire to change, to lead a new life (Christ is Passing By, 149).

The Mass of Our Lady of the Pillar says, All-powerful and Eternal God, grant that through the intercession of the glorious Mother of your Son, we may obtain a strong faith, a firm hope, and a constant charity.

For the children of God in Opus Dei, this feast day has a special importance, because St. Josemaría prayed so many times before that image as a seminarian and later, as a priest. Several aspects of this feast are closely related to the history of the Work.

When St. Josemaría was a student in Saragossa, he went daily to the Basilica of Pilar to ask Our Lady to help him to know God's will.

We also want to know what God is expecting from each one of us, so that we can carry it out as soon as possible. If ever we seem to find ourselves in the dark, lacking the light needed to discern God's specific plans for us, the surest course of action is to turn to Our Lady and pray those aspirations that St. Josemaría prayed with such confidence until the very end of his life:

Domine, ut videam! Domina, ut sit! Lord, that I may see! Lady, may it be!

We go to Jesus, said St. Josemaría, and we return to him through Mary.

We can apply this to individuals and also to whole groups of people. To re-evangelize society today in the way that St. James evangelized Spain, we need to pray for Mary's motherly assistance, just as it was needed centuries ago.

One of our most urgent apostolic tasks can be to instill devotion to Our Lady in the people around us.

We could also pray today for all those thousands of people who have done the Camino de Santiago. That whole pilgrimage has touched the lives and hearts of many people, some of whom are very far from the faith.

We could ask Our Lady to work the minds and souls and hearts of all those people who are touched by that journey that they may have made. That journey may have planted seeds of hope, of conversion, of a new evangelization, so that all of those people may become closer to Our Lord and to Our Lady.

The deep meaning of Our Lady of the Pillar is that it establishes a firm base for the norm of true and solid Christian conduct. Like in all the shrines of Our Lady at Fatima and Lourdes, Loreto, Guadalupe, so many others, Knock, sites of Christian piety, the Christian piety is built. We are all educated there in the faith.

The story of the Pillar takes us back to the times of the apostles, to the beginnings of evangelization, the proclamation of the Good News. And we're still in those times.

Two thousand years count for nothing, said St. Josemaría, in comparison with Our Lord's eternal greatness.

James, Paul, John, and Andrew and the other apostles are walking alongside us. Peter has a seat in Rome with the watchful duty to confirm us in obedience to the faith.

If we close our eyes, said St. Josemaría, we can relive, as it were, the scene that St. Luke relates: All these, with one accord, devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and his brethren (Acts 1:14).

If the many Marian devotions and proofs of our love for Our Lady are allowed to languish, how are we to show our love with specific words and gestures?

How are we going to express our affection, our gratitude, our veneration for her, whom by her fiat, her be it done unto me according to your word (Luke 1:38), made us brothers of God and heirs of His glory?

If devotion to Our Lady weakens in the Christian soul, it begins a deviation from the right path, which can easily end up in the loss of the love of God.

The Holy Trinity disposed that the Word should come down to earth in order to redeem us from sin and restore in us the supernatural condition of the sons of God, so that we should see God in flesh like ours and thus admire the palpable, tangible demonstration that we have all been called to become partakers of the divine nature.

And this divinization which grace confers on us is now a consequence of the Word having taken up human nature in the most pure womb of Our Lady. Our Lady, therefore, can never disappear from the specific daily horizon of the Christian.

It's not a trifling matter to cease visiting the shrines her children have built for her out of love. If there's a national shrine to Our Lady in your country, no matter how far away it is, it's a very good point to make a point of bringing your children there at some stage in their life, so that they grow up knowing that place, what people have done to express their devotion to Our Lady.

It's not a trifling matter, said St. Josemaría, to pass by an image of hers without giving her an affectionate greeting. It's not a trifling matter to let time go by without singing that loving serenade to her—the Holy Rosary: a song of faith, the nuptial song of a soul that has found Jesus through Mary.

We could draw near to Our Lady of Pilar today on her feast, and ask her to guide us always and be our strength and security throughout our whole life.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

CPG