We are all on a pilgrimage but not quite aware of it’s implications for us, and it is so easy for us to go astray. If we simply look even at one way in which many of us have been absent to ourselves, it is often through the loneliness of our time; and an attendant hardness of heart as we deify our own egos, which regularly causes suffering, but we grow unaware of.
Even when we surround ourselves with others, we may still feel very much by ourselves. Indeed we are frequently alone all together, in chorus, as it were. There is an emptiness inside of us, which makes us feel uneasy. So we connect with others, in the belief this ability to unite will stem the loneliness and make it vanish. We cling to technologies to stay connected. But even then, we can still feel our loneliness. We check our email, forward texts, and post updates of our lives, we wish to communicate and ‘collect others,’ most of whom are not ‘friends’, but we ‘amass these individuals’, to stem our own loneliness.
You hear people say; ‘I have 500 friends on My Space, or Facebook; but we can connect all-day-long, and for months and years, and yet still not reduce our loneliness. We are all yearning for ‘love’, but we don’t know how to engender love in order to feed ourselves with it. When we are operating on empty, there is a tendency to use technology to quell the feeling of loneliness, but it will never work.
STORY OF BUS AND RESTAURANT
We look to our tablets, computers, the internet, e-mail, texting, using apps, correspondence, and our cell or smart phones. We have everything, and yet in all of this, we have not improved our communication. Our faith should not be in our cell or smart phones; nor with all of our hundreds of imagined friends on Facebook and other social media, for we are gathering other lonely, searching individuals, and so our communication is far from authentic. We don’t and can’t ‘really know’ these individuals. If our minds are blocked, no device on earth will make up for our inability to connect with ourselves and with others. We often don’t know what is actually going on within us; for much of it is illusory. We are commonly, and recurrently disconnected from ourselves.
In this Year of Mercy, in today’s bustling world, we have been offered an amazing opportunity. We are asked to connect with ourselves, we can begin by just stopping what we are doing, sit and connect with ourselves. Have ‘mindful awareness’! We are never actually alone, we never have been. And we have always been unconditionally loved, with agape love, one that will never alter or change! It is our love, which is conditional!
There is also a connection between the Jubilee of Mercy and Mary, the Mother of Mercy. She is so, because she bore in her womb, the very Face of divine mercy: Jesus, the Son of God, made flesh for our salvation, has given us his Mother, who joins us on our pilgrimage throughout this life, so that we may never be left alone, especially in time of uncertainty and trouble. But we must be ‘connected in the right way’, to ‘feel it’. This is the prime opportunity for us in this particular year!
We are so lucky, here in Scotland to have wonderful Shrines; the National Shrine at Carfin, and the magnificent Shrine here at Schoenstatt, nestled in the Campsie Fells, where our Mother of God, of mercy, of hope, of grace and holy gladness resides. And soon she will be queen of the May (Queen as well as disciple). In these places of pilgrimage we have for decades sought her intercession and her consolation.
In the selfsame world, which we inhabit today, we have lost or misunderstood the concept of forgiveness, Pope Francis considers it critical in the Christian faith; those unable to forgive have not yet known the fullness and warmth of love. Only individuals who truly love are able to forgive and forget. For at the foot of the Cross, Mary becomes for all of us, the Mother of forgiveness, as she follows the example of her Son who forgives those out to liquidate him.
She is the icon of how the Church must offer forgiveness to those who seek it. As Mother of forgiveness, she teaches the Church that the forgiveness granted on Golgotha knows no bounds. Nothing in the world can hold it back.
The Church’s forgiveness must be every bit as broad as that offered to Jesus on the Cross and by Mary at his feet. There is no other way. Mary offers her Son; we can see that in the Shrine image, she offers hope and healing. She understands our limitations; and she knows well our amateur status at forgiveness, even to ourselves, and even in prayer. But what does amateur mean in reality, it stems from the Latin for love.
The gift she bestows is the gift of forgiveness that renews life, enabling us to undertake God’s will for us and fills us with holy gladness, in such a way that the grace received frees our hearts to look to the future with joy and love, born of hope. Pope Francis senses forgiveness bringing peace and serenity by freeing the heart from resentment. He asks us to pass through Holy Doors of mercy knowing that our companion is the Blessed Virgin Mary, the holy Mother of God, interceding for us.
So let us allow her to lead us to the rediscovery of the beauty of an encounter with her Son Jesus. For we can reciprocate in love, by becoming vulnerable and open wide the doors of our hearts to the joy of forgiveness, conscious that we have been given new confidence and hope.
According to Christoph, Cardinal Schonborn, by sending his Son into the world to suffer and die, God used an ‘excess of mercy’ to vanquish human beings ‘lack of mercy’. He views the opposite of mercy, as hardness of heart. Something that we could have witnessed in Christ’s time is still around today. But we require not the moral finger raised, but the hand extended as an alternative.
Look at the image you see in the Shrine here at Schoenstatt; what is reflected back? We see the presentation of Our Holy Mother’s Son to us. We go to her in happiness and sorrow, in all things and conditions, like any good mother she listens, she knows we are not perfect, (she is the refuge of sinners, the untier of knots) we are after all amateur in all its senses, but she helps to form and shape her children as best she can. Like all mothers, she shows us mercy; she is always there. In her, we know we are loved and forgiven, and we know we can start over again.
The Mother of Mercy is the perfect spiritual intercessor for all of us in today’s complex world. As far back as 1993, Pope. St. John Paul II knew well the help our Mother of Mercy could and would offer to those who asked her for it. In his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) in the section titled ‘Mother of Mercy,’ he wrote: ‘Mary is the Mother of Mercy because her Son, Jesus Christ, was sent by the Father as the revelation of God’s mercy (John 3:16 -18). Christ came not to condemn, but to forgive, to show mercy (Matthew 9:13). And the greatest mercy of all is found in his being in our midst….’ He also emphasized that Mary’s mercy is rooted in love. ‘Not having known sin, Mary is able to have compassion on every kind of weakness. She understands sinfulness and loves us with a mother’s love.
Turning to Mary’s mercy was a mainstay for Pope. St. John XXIII, also. He frequently prayed the following prayer: ‘When I was a child, I learned to love you as a mother, turn to you in danger and trust your intercession. You see in my heart the desire to know the truth, to practice virtue, to be prudent and just, strong and patient, a brother to all.’ His current successor, Francis, is continuously aware of Mary’s aid. ‘Our Lady is always close to us, especially when we feel the weight of life with all its problems. Pope. St. John Paul II, said, ‘let us entrust ourselves, the sufferings and the joys of our life, the moral life of believers and people of goodwill… to Mary, Mother of God and Mother of Mercy.’
Our Lady’s words to St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, ‘I am not only the Queen of Heaven, but also the Mother of Mercy, and your Mother. She also said to St. Brigid of Sweden, ‘ I am the joy of the just, and the door through which sinners are brought to God.’ These words are analogous to what she said to St. Juan Diego, ‘Am I not here, I who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the folds of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else that you need’? Mary is truly our Mother of tender compassion, our Mother of Mercy and of every soul searching for God.
It is through her Immaculate Conception, God has fashioned her to be the created masterpiece of his mercy in the world. Divine mercy is God’s undeserved, unmerited, often, even, unsought-for divine grace. The grace our compassionate God pours out upon us to help us overcome our miseries and meet our true needs. Theologians call this kind of mercy, God’s ‘prevenient’ grace, from the Latin ‘prae-venire,’ meaning ‘to come before.’ I.e., even before we ask for it, or have earned it in the least.
The Immaculate Conception is truly the supreme manifestation of God’s prevenient, unmerited mercy. For Mary, neither, merited her Immaculate Conception, nor could she ask for it. It was something done in her and for her by the Father of Mercy, and solely on the basis of the foreseen merits of his Immaculate Son, Jesus Christ. Mary is the one who experienced mercy in an exceptional way as no one else.
The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was the great divine act of grace that lay at the foundation of God’s whole work of salvation through Christ. The Father of Mercy took the initiative with sinful mankind, fashioning Mary’s soul from the moment of conception, preserving it from the effects of original sin, making her soul the very masterpiece of His mercy.
It was this unique and extraordinary foundation of grace in Mary’s soul that enabled her, years later, to respond to the angel Gabriel’s message with total, trustful surrender: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to Thy word.’
By God’s prevenient grace, she was made the masterpiece of the Fathers mercy, and in the fullness of time, this special grace within her enabled her to receive our Saviour into the world. In short, the whole world’s salvation began with a foundational act of unmerited, unprompted, freely given Divine Mercy; that act of mercy was Mary’s Immaculate Conception.
In summation: This pilgrimage comprises the revelation of God to a soul and of the soul to itself. Every pilgrimage in our lives will give us some new insight into God’s dealings with us. For he is eternally new, but we do need engagement of ‘mindful awareness.’ This is what heaven will be: Happiness; each moment an unfolding of God’s mercy and love and a new realization of truths we already know.
There is utterly no need for our loneliness, or lack of worth; just as there is no need for collecting others meaninglessly. Our span of time, which is brief, requires us to be engaged in growing our spirituality, and grounding ourselves in the depth of our faith.
Through mindful awareness in this special year, we come to the realization ‘You are loved, as none we can conceive of in this life! We are amateur after all, so live it to the best of your ability. This ‘Year of Mercy,’ is based on an amazingly true story a distillation of great love; for that is what God’s mercy is about. It’s a love story between you and your Creator. With all the great love stories; you learn little from reading the book; for example we never learn to swim from a book! We learn from each other and genuine collaboration with those whom we hold close. Love, love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning. For God, you are the meaning. Can you find it in your heart to reciprocate!
If you have not entered through the Holy Door today, to say your prayers; at the close of those prayers, ask your Mother the following, which the amazing, Richard, Cardinal Cushing taught us. For the Cardinal recognized that mothers are always mending things: ‘Dear Blessed Mother, mend my prayer, and make them perfect before they reach the ear of your Son, Jesus’.
Our Presider at this Pilgrimage today, knows full well the importance of the right communication at the right time: He once told a true story to a chap about him saying mass in the Vatican as a newly ordained priest. He had gained hard sought permission to say mass below the High Alter, and during mass became distracted by the sound from above which was eventually discerned as the then Pope John XXIII saying mass above his head. Now St. John XXIII. Our Archbishop Emeritus, Mario Conti, knew the depth of devotion the chap had to this wonderful man, and that he would never, ever, forget that story. We tend to think of saints as beyond and above us. Out of reach and out of our time. You see; this is not the case, they are all around us, and living with us – and all saints were sinners with a past! Let our story from this year, be a truly ‘mindful one’, for ourselves, and those around us.
