Our Mother in May

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.

“So they hurried away, and they found Mary and Joseph and the babe in the manger. When they saw the child, they repeated what had been told about him. And everyone who heard was astonished at what the shepherds said to them. As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:16-19).

We’re asked to look at the Motherhood of Our Lady in this particular meditation.

Mother of God and Our Mother.

In this month of May, we try to rediscover Our Mother in special ways, as we turn to Our Lady for all the little things that we want, like small children turn to their mother and ask them for big things. And they also listen, usually anyway, to what their mother has told them if they have some little problem, or whatever.

Sometimes Our Lady has said to people, “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). We also have to listen to those words of Our Lady as we come to discover her own motherhood in a special way in our life, and help many other people to do the same.

On an annual course once in Macau, I was swimming with another person. We were chatting a bit in English, and there was a guy not too far away, middle-aged with a beard. I think he heard us talking in English. He came over to us and greeted us.

When he spoke, I said, “You sound Irish.” And he said, “You sound Irish too.”

And then he said to me, “If you are Irish in Macau, you must be a jockey or a trainer.” I said, “No, actually I'm a priest.”

But then he wasn't too sure, because the only thing I had on was my swimming trunks and a scapular medal. He wasn't too sure if this was another Irish joke or not.

But he gave me the benefit of the doubt, and he said, “You know, I have built three shrines to Our Lady in this parish here.”

Then I was the one that was a bit skeptical. Because, Irish in Macau, the gambling capital of the world, and he built three shrines to Our Lady?

Not too many people have built shrines to Our Lady around the world, and he had built three of them in his local parish.

Then he began to tell me that he was from Brooklyn, although he had an Irish name. He had joined the US Air Force. He had been stationed in Manchester.

He married an English lady who was not a Catholic. They had two children.

Then she developed cancer when she was about 32 years of age.

He said, “I brought her to Lourdes, and she was cured.” I don't think she was fully cured, but maybe she went into remission.

“But then,” he said, “sometime later, she began to get bad again and she was in the hospital. I asked her if she would like to see a priest. I'd never talked to her before about religion. Sometimes she would accompany me to Mass. But we never talked about those things. But when I asked her, she said yes.

“So I got a priest, and he came to see her. When he was leaving, I accompanied him to the bus, and he got on the bus.

“She had also said that she wanted to be baptized, and the priest said, ‘I'll come back in a few days and baptize her.’

“He got on the bus, and I waited at the bus stop just to see the bus going out of sight a few hundred meters down the road. But then at the next bus stop, the priest got off the bus and began to walk back towards me.

“I thought, maybe he's forgotten his umbrella or his hat or something. When he got up to my level, he said, ‘I have this funny feeling that I should baptize her now.’ So we went back to the hospital, and he baptized her.’”

And the guy said, “She died that night. And none of the nurses or doctors said she was anywhere near her end. We all thought she'd last many months yet. But she died that night.”

Then he said, “I was left in my early 30s with two young children. I went through some difficult years.”

“But,” he said, “Our Lady stood by me during those years. So I keep up with her now.”

We were still standing in the South China Sea up to our knees. Here was this wonderful catechesis on the motherhood of Our Lady in a difficult time-period in a man's life. We became quite good friends.

He had another interesting professional story. He was sort of half-retired. He would walk along the beach and bring the rosary.

On subsequent occasions, we would meet at the level of the Third Mystery and we continued our conversation from there.

But it was interesting to hear the impact of Our Lady in this man's life. He married again, and things worked out very well, etc., etc.

But you could sort of see what Our Lady had meant to him, how she'd helped him through those difficult years.

I often remember that phrase, “She stood by me during those years. I keep up with her now.” Isn't that rather beautiful?

Our Lady has stood by us through thick and through thin in many situations in our life, in our vocation.

Our role now is to keep up with her, and to introduce many other people also to that maternal instinct of Our Lady, her maternal care that we've experienced in so many ways.

Also, we have read about from our Father that he has experienced in many ways also, because Our Mother is always there looking at us.

Our Lord said to His Mother, “Look at your child” (John 19:26). Look at your child and never stop looking at her. We know that Our Lady is always looking at us.

Cardinal Sin, one time when he was 63 in Manila, got chickenpox. Well, chickenpox is just a normal, simple childhood illness. But when you get it when you're a bit older, it's a bit more difficult.

He had to withdraw from the public eye for about three months. That was a major contradiction because he was somebody who liked to be very much in the public eye.

His secretary said that he asked him not to have any more than eight public appearances in any one day. So, he used to crisscross Manila and different parishes.

Of course, that made him also a very prominent political figure when the moment came. So he had to withdraw from the public eye for three months.

He made a reappearance at the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday with about 400 or 500 priests in the cathedral. He stood up to give the homily and he talked about his illness.

He said, “When I got this chickenpox, I had all these pockmarks on my face. And I looked in the mirror and my first thought was a thought of vanity. I thought to myself, how ugly you've become.”

Not that he was much to look at before that. But he said, “This reminded me of something that happened when I was a kid. I was the seventh of fourteen children. And my mother was always more attentive to me than she was to all the other children.

“She was always asking, Did I have enough to eat? Did I have enough clothes? Did I sleep well? And a whole wide range of other things. And I couldn't quite figure this out.

“One day I asked the household help, ‘Why does Mama love me more than all the others?’ The household help looked me straight in the face and said, ‘It's because you are so ugly.’”

He said, “I learned from this that mothers love their ugliest children most. I learned from this why Our Lady loves us. Because when we become ugly through sin, she doesn't stop looking at us. She keeps looking at us and she loves us back into the state of grace.”

I used to tell the Standard Four little girls in Kianda that if their Mummy loved them very much, now they knew why.

Our Lady is always there for us, looking at us.

Our Lord also told St. John, “Behold your mother” (John 19:27).

We find ourselves in this month when we have a special grace and calling to look at Our Mother a little more and a little better, with that deeper conviction, like that married man in the South China Sea: “She stood by me.”

He was very clear. All the support and help and encouragement to carry on could only have come from his Mother.

Our Lord has led us along very Marian pathways. The Vázquez de Prada book talks about the first pilgrimage, which took place on May 2, 1935.

It says, “The previous year, Ricardo Vallespin had suffered a rheumatic attack so severe that, had it lasted any longer, he could not have taken his final exams at the School of Architecture. Having a great love for Our Lady, he had made her a promise when he appealed to her for a prompt recovery; and he did, indeed, take his exams.

“However, when he told Father Josemaría about all this, he was by then a member of the Work, and the founder dispensed him from fulfilling his promise, which included going from Madrid to Ávila on foot.

“Fr. Josemaría had been looking for some special way to thank Our Lady for the favors he had received from her that year. So on May 2, accompanied by Ricardo and by Jose María Barredo, he set out for the shrine of Our Lady of Sonsoles near Ávila.

“‘Having decided to go to Sonsoles,’ he said, ‘I wanted to celebrate Holy Mass at the DYA (the Dios y Audacia Academy), before setting out toward Ávila. During this Mass, in the Memento of the Living, with a determination that was particularly strong (more than just my own), I asked Our Lord Jesus to increase in us—in the Work—our love for Mary, and I asked that this love might be expressed in deeds.

‘When we were on the train, my thoughts kept spontaneously returning to the same idea, that Our Lady is no doubt pleased with our affection, crystallized as it is in substantial Marian devotions: her image always kept before us; the tender greetings that we give her and enter and leave the room; the visits to the poor of Our Lady; the collection on Saturdays for the poor of Our Lady also; the aspiration that she inspired in my soul, “With Peter to Jesus through Mary”, and also that hierarchy of values that he placed in my soul also, Christ, Mary, the Pope.’

‘But in the month of May, something more was needed. Then I thought of the May pilgrimage as a custom that must be incorporated—has been incorporated—into the Work’” (Andrés Vásquez de Prada, The Founder of Opus Dei: The Life of Josemaría Escrivá, Volume I: The Early Years).

We could think of all the perhaps millions of pilgrimages that have taken place all over the world to shrines of Our Lady, during the past almost-100 years, and those that will take place in the coming 100 years. Great fruit has come from that custom.

We might find that there are many people in our life who possibly would not come to a retreat or to a recollection or to some other activity, but they might be willing to come to a pilgrimage.

I remember asking a classmate of mine one time, probably the best person in the class, if he would come to meditation or recollection in the center, and his reply to me was, “Don't try to evangelize me.” I had to back off.

But a few months later when May came around, I thought I'd give it another go, and I sort of bounced at him the possibility of doing a pilgrimage to a shrine of Our Lady. He immediately accepted, much to my amazement.

So sometimes there are people who don't want to do anything else. But just the mention of the words “Our Lady” moves their heart, and some sort of a conscience deep inside them of what they have received in and through Our Lady's motherhood. It's a motherhood that started in the Incarnation and at the Cross.

John Paul II liked to say that the supreme dignity of the Mother of God puts her in a world apart. She is the great wonder work of God.

She stands above all beings in the universe. Through her vocation, she enjoys an unprecedented intimacy with the three divine Persons.

In another place, Pope John Paul says, “The mediation of Our Lady has…a particular maternal character” about it (John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, March 25, 1987).

We are called to try and respond to that special maternal affection in a particular way.

I heard one time that St. Josemaría was going into a big get-together in Pamplona in the late 1960s maybe, big at the time, all fitted in one big living room.

But there was a sort of a wooden division that separated one part of the living room from the other, and the place from where he was going to speak and stand and give the get-together was in the second part.

In the early part when many people were greeting him (it was his first visit back to Spain in many years), they were kissing his hand, they were asking how he was, etc.

When he eventually got to the place from which he was going to speak, the first thing he started to talk about was the image of Our Lady in that room. This person said that he couldn't see the image of Our Lady from where he was.

It meant that as he passed through the first part of the living room, with all those people greeting him, he found the time to look around for the image of Our Lady. In spite of all the chaos and inverted commas and all the greetings, his mind was on one thing.

Like St. Josemaría, we are called to hold Our Lady in a very high place above everything else, to seek her above everything else; like people in love, to look for her image.

When we find her image, we find our joy, our peace, our serenity, our comfort.

Don Javier arrived in Singapore at seven in the morning, having flown through the night from Delhi. He probably hadn't slept too much and was going into a busy day without any rest.

As soon as he arrived in the center, of course, he went to the oratory and greeted Our Lord. There's a very maternal image of Our Lady there, sort of an imitation of Botticelli.

As soon as he came out of the auditory, he remarked to me, “You cannot but rest when you see a picture of Our Lady like that.”

A rather beautiful and spontaneous reaction. We find our rest in looking at Our Mother.

Her divine maternity is an unparalleled privilege (Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854).

There's no greater union possible between humanity and the deity.

From the moment that Our Lady gave her word of approval to the Angel, an extraordinary reality began to happen to her. And yet it appeared so ordinary: a child was conceived and began to develop. But this child was God.

Mary, a young girl, began to give life to God. For the next nine months, everything she did was contributing to this great project of bringing God into the world.

God, the life-giver, was dependent on a young girl for His life. For these nine months, she cherished the life within her, giving herself completely in order to bring Him to life.

We’re called to follow the example of Our Lady, to give ourselves completely in all the little things of each day that we're called to do, or things that come our way, in order to bring God to life within us, so that we can bring fruit that will last, a fruit that sometimes is expressed in numbers, but sometimes it's not expressed in numbers, it's expressed in the life of Christ within us.

That was the fruit of Our Lady's fiat, “Be it done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). The life of Christ began to grow in her and to radiate out from her for all time.

Pope John Paul says that in an equally extraordinary way, God grows in our lives too.

Like the seed in winter, God grows silently and patiently, often unnoticed in the darkness.

Our Mother can help us to put a maternal touch to everything.

We're coming next week to the feast of Our Lady of Fátima, which reminds us of the assassination attempt of John Paul II.

Don Álvaro told us how he went to see the Holy Father shortly after this assassination attempt. The Pope wasn't receiving any visitors, but he received Blessed Álvaro.

It's interesting, forty years later, to look back on that meeting. Blessed Álvaro del Portillo was received by St. John Paul II.

Don Álvaro told us that when he went there, he told the Holy Father that Our Lady had “sent him these bullets.” Another unusual thing to say, as though Our Lady went around with an AK-47.

He said, “Our Lady has sent you these bullets because she wants to make you suffer, because in making you suffer, she draws you closer to herself. And in drawing you closer to herself, she draws you closer to her Son.”

The Holy Father sat up in bed and said, “That’s the way I see things also.”

He must have taken to heart the words of Don Álvaro, because a year later, on the feast of Our Lady of Fátima, 1982—the Bishop of Fátima at the time was an associate priest of the Priestly Society, who passed through Pamplona on his way back to Fátima after hearing about this journey.

When the Holy Father went there, he brought a bullet that pierced his abdomen. He said to Our Lady, “I think this is yours.”

Now that bullet has been embedded into the crown of Our Lady of Fátima as a testimony for all time of how Our Lady of Fátima saved the life of the Pope.

I remember hearing from a surgeon who was in the operating room that evening that it was the considered opinion of all the surgeons in the room that the Pope should have died in the ambulance, because those bullets pass very close to the main abdominal arteries.

Just that impact should have been enough to pull them apart. He said Our Lady had deviated those bullets.

We need to tune into that growth of God and develop that patient waiting that Our Lady practiced in those nine months.

Sometimes we need to leave things in her hands, as Don Álvaro did on so many occasions, knowing that when we leave things in the hands of Our Lady, that's when they work out. And they work out in the best possible way.

Elizabeth said to Our Lady when she went to visit her, “Blessed are you for your believing” (Luke 1:45). She was the first to compliment the faith of Mary.

That led to Our Lady's faith in prayer pouring forth in the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46-55).

A lady in Singapore told me once how when she says those words, she could spend hours and hours just contemplating them.

We see Our Lady completely at home with the Word of God. She moves with ease in and out of that Word of God because “she kept all these things carefully in her heart” (Luke 2:19, 51).

That Magnificat is entirely woven from the threads of Holy Scripture. She speaks and she thinks the Word of God.

The Word of God became her word. We see how her thoughts are attuned to the thoughts of God, and how her will is one with the will of God.

Because she's completely imbued with that Word, she's able to become the mother of the Word Incarnate.

John Paul likes to say that Mary is a woman who loves. How could it be otherwise?

As a believer who in faith thinks with God's thoughts and wills with God's will, she cannot fail to be a woman who loves.

And we know that Our Lady loves each one of us. She's looking out for us. She responds to our Rosaries, to our Memorares: “Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary.”

We might forget the millions of times that Our Lady has interceded in our life. But we know on a daily basis that she’s there.

Probably, we can also point to specific moments when we could feel her maternal presence. We can sense her quiet gestures. We know that certain things can only work out because Our Lady made them happen that way.

Adeamus cum fiducia ad thronum gloriae ut misericordiam consequamur! “We go to the throne of grace and of glory in order that we might obtain mercy.”

In the Man of Villa Tevere, we're told that St. Josemaría years ago “was having a few days' break with Don Alvaro and Don Javier in Caglio, a small mountain in the north of Italy.

“On August 23, 1971, while having breakfast after Mass, he was reading the newspaper and he was deeply struck by an inner locution from God in those exact words: Adeamus cum fiducia ad thronum gloriae ut misericordiam consequamur!—'Let us go therefore with confidence to the throne of glory, that we may obtain mercy.’

“Immediately he told Don Alvaro and Father Javier what had happened. He pointed out that the phrase he had ‘heard’ was not identical to the one in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Scriptural text says, ad thronum gratiae, to the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16), but what Monsignor Escrivá had heard was ad thronum gloriae.

“His eyes shining with joy, he explained that thronum gloriae should be taken as referring to Our Lady, the Throne of God, in the same sense in which she is called the Seat of Wisdom” (Pilar Urbano, The Man of Villa Tevere, Chapter 9).

We turn to the Throne of Glory during this month of May, with greater filial faith and piety, thanking Our Lady for the fact that we have such Marian piety.

We know who she is. We know many things about her. We have this deeply Marian spirit ingrained in the way that we think and that we live.

A young fellow came in contact with the center in Singapore and he told me his first impression was that Opus Dei was not very Marian.

“But then as I came more and more to the center, and was more and more exposed to the formation, I came to realize that Opus Dei had a very deep Marian spirit.”

We can say to Our Lady, “Show yourself to be a mother” (Josemaría Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 140) in the things that I place before you, my apostolic intentions in this particular month of May. Praying the Rosary leads me to think of apostolic intentions as I go through the beads, as I try to be a little more generous with my Rosaries, or move other people to say more Rosaries more frequently, so as to atone for all the things that need to be atoned for.

We approach this feast of Our Lady of Fátima, which has had such an important influence in the past century, and possibly in the coming one.

Pope Benedict XVI says, “Outstanding among the saints is Mary, Mother of the Lord and mirror of all holiness” (Benedict XVI, Encyclical, Deus caritas est).

The Catechism says, “Mary is the model of faith and charity” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 967).

There is no virtue in which we may want to grow and improve that we don't find in the Mother of God.

We find that Our Lady practiced a special friendliness, friendship, with her cousin. She went to Elizabeth immediately, forgot about herself, left Joseph behind, got over the difficulties, the challenges, “went into the hill country.”

And she didn't just spend a short period of time with Elizabeth. She wasn't there three minutes or three hours or three days, but three whole months.

It was a serious contribution, a serious remaining with her (Luke 1:39, 56), a model for our friendship, of how we have to be with our friends: remain with them, be close to them.

As somebody mentioned last year, perhaps over many years: keeping the contact warm. People we knew decades ago, years ago, remaining in contact, having a serious impact on the lives of those people.

It's possible they may realize after many years that we haven't forgotten about them; that we make the effort to make the contact, following that example of Our Lady and her serious contribution to the life of Elizabeth.

She remained there for three months, but she didn't remain there for nine months. There came a moment when she said, ‘OK, enough, I have to go back to where I came from. I have other duties to attend to. I have to develop my vocation in a different way.’

There was a moment when she had to blow the whistle and say, ‘I've got to go. I've been called to do other things.’

In that decision, she was also saying, “My soul magnifies the Lord” along all the pathways that he leads me.

“Our Lady's greatness,” says Pope Benedict XVI, “consists in the fact that she wants to magnify God, and not herself.” The vocation of Our Lady is not a school of pride for her. It's more of a school of humility. “She's lowly: her only desire is to be the handmaid of the Lord” (Benedict XVI, Encyclical, Deus caritas est).

“He has looked upon the lowliness of his handmaid. Henceforth, all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48).

We look during this month to the heart of Our Mother. For her, we will always be little children who can come and rest on her lap, like St. Josemaría, in all his writings and in his actions, has always taught us.

She's “a woman who gives hope, because she believes in God's promises and awaits the salvation of Israel.”

We can try to respond to her with a love of children. Mary, Mother of the Church, Queen of Opus Dei, you've always smiled upon us, and continue to shed your smile upon us when we need you so much.

Also, when we see placed in front of us such wonderful apostolic horizons, inviting us to open and think in a greater and deeper way. So we can look to our norms of piety, of Marian piety.

We're told in the Furrow, “The Blessed Virgin Mary, Teacher of unlimited self-giving. Do you remember? It was in praise of her that Jesus Christ said: ‘Whoever fulfills the will of my Father, he—she—is my mother!’ (Matt. 12:50). Ask of this good Mother that her answer, with the generosity it shows, may grow stronger in your soul—with the strength of love and liberation. Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 33).

In another place in the Furrow, he says, “What must the cheerful way that Jesus looked upon people have been like? It must have been the same which shone from the eyes of His Mother who could not contain her joy—Magnificat anima mea Dominum!—and her soul glorified the Lord as she carried Him within her and by her side.

“O Mother! May we, like you, rejoice to be with Him and to hold Him” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 95).

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.

EW