“Everyone would like the whole year to be a perpetual Month of Mary. And I hope that when that luminous and Marian epoch of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin, promised by Her in Fatima, comes to the world, we will have this immense ‘Month of Mary’, in which every day we pay homage to Our Lady and sing Her glory as Queen of the Universe”.
Newsdesk (13/05/2023 14:10, Gaudium Press) During the month of May, the month of Mary, a special protection of Our Lady is extended to all the faithful, and a joy shines forth and enlightens our hearts, expressing the universal certainty of Catholics that the indispensable patronage of our Heavenly Mother becomes even more solicitous, more loving, more full of visible mercy and exorbitant condescension during this period.
If we know how to live these thirty-one days specially consecrated to Our Lady in the proper way, what will remain with us will be a greater devotion, a more special trust, and, so to speak, a more marked intimacy with Our Lady, so that in all the difficulties of life we will know how to ask with more respectful insistence, to hope with more invincible confidence, and to give thanks with more humble affection for all the good that She does us.
Our Lady is Queen of Heaven and Earth, and at the same time our Mother. This is the conviction with which we always enter the month of May, and this conviction deepens within us more and more, and casts ever greater light and strength as the month of May draws to a close.
May teaches us to love Mary Most Holy for Her glory, for all that She represents in the plans of Providence. And it also teaches us to live more constantly our life of filial union with Mary.
Suffering of the contemporary world
Children are never more in need of the loving vigilance of their mothers than when they are suffering. The whole of humanity suffers today. And not only do all peoples suffer, but one could almost say that they suffer in every way they can suffer. Intellects are swept away by the storm of impiety and scepticism. Mad typhoons of messianisms of all kinds devastate the spirits. Nebulous, confused, insolent ideas creep into all environments, and drag with them not only the wicked and the lukewarm, but sometimes even those from whom one would expect greater constancy in the Faith.
The wills which are resolutely committed to the fulfilment of duty suffer, with all the opposition that comes from their fidelity to the Law of Christ. Those who transgress this Law suffer, because far from Christ all pleasure is basically nothing but bitterness, and all joy is a lie. […].
The body suffers, exhausted by work, undermined by disease, overwhelmed by all kinds of needs. It can be said that the contemporary world, similar to that which existed at the time when Our Lord was born in Bethlehem, fills the air with a great and clamorous groaning, which is the groaning of the wicked who live far from God, and of the just who are tormented by the wicked.
Ask, through Mary, that the Holy Spirit renew the face of the Earth
The darker the circumstances, the more heart-rending the pain of every kind, the more we should ask Our Lady to put an end to so much suffering, not only to make our sorrow cease, but for the greater benefit of our soul. Sacred theology says that Our Lady’s prayer anticipated the moment when the world was to be redeemed by the Messiah. At this moment full of anguish, let us confidently turn our eyes to Our Lady, asking Her to shorten the great moment we are all waiting for, when a new Pentecost will bring forth great flashes of light and hope in this darkness, and restore everywhere the Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ. […]
We must ask, through Our Lady, that God may send us in abundance the Holy Spirit, so that things may be created anew, and purified by a renewal the face of the Earth. In the “Divine Comedy” Dante says that to pray without Our Lady’s patronage is like flying without wings.
Let us entrust to Our Lady this yearning in which our whole heart is set. Mary’s hands will be for our prayer a pair of the purest wings through which we will certainly reach the throne of God.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Text extracted, with adaptations, from Revista Dr Plinio n.50, May 2002.
Compiled by Roberta MacEwan
