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Gathered together in this magnificent basilica on our annual pilgrimage
to Knock, our thoughts turn to Our
Blessed Lady who gave us a silent but important message here during the
Apparition in 1879. The aspect of
this message that we focus upon on this third day of the National Novena for the
year 2003 is “The Faith and Prayer of
Mary”.
Blessed because she believed
If we look to the Gospels to see why Our Lady was praised and blessed we
would expect to find that it was because she was chosen to be the Mother of
Christ, the Son of God. And, in a
certain sense, that is true: her
divine maternity was her highest privilege, her fundamental dignity.
Yet, when the woman in the Gospel cried out to Jesus:
“Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked”
(Lk 11:27), he replied by pointing
to a higher blessedness: “Blessed
rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Lk 11:28).
Our Lord in these words indicates that his Blessed Mother had even a
higher blessedness than that of being so physically near him as his Mother.
It was the blessedness of the obedience of her faith, of her devotion to
God, of the purity of her life.
This is a blessedness that we can all aspire to.
It springs from a deep faith and a persevering obedience to the will of
God. The Saints tell us that Mary
would not have been blessed though she had been his Mother, if she had not
believed in Him and kept his word. Only
one person could be the physical Mother of the Son of God.
Every believer can aspire to come spiritually near Him by faith and
obedience. These latter qualities
make us holy. They make us friends
of God and loved by Him.
In the Gospel passage, that we have just listened to, the angel Gabriel
salutes Mary with the words: “Rejoice,
so highly favoured one”, or in the
translation we are more familiar with: “Hail,
full of grace”. But he then asks
her to believe in his word, to believe that she would become a mother without
losing her virginity, to believe that she a creature would become the Mother of
the Son of God. It took a heroic act
of faith to believe all this before it became a reality.
No wonder then, that when Elizabeth saw Mary coming to visit her, she
greeted her with the words: “Blessed
are you who believed (cf. Lk 1:45). This
faith makes her truly great and near to us as we struggle to believe and
practise our faith.
The Church tells us that Mary “advanced in her pilgrimage of faith” (Vat
II, Lumen Gentium, 58) throughout
her life. Like us, she was not
favoured with extraordinary lights and visions that explained everything to her.
Her life of faith was lived in the obscurity of an unknown village;
in the simple poverty of her times; in
fleeing with her child from the anger of a king;
in looking with anxiety for her son when he was lost.
And when Jesus on that occasion explained “why” to them, the
evangelist tells us that Mary and Joseph “did not understand the words he
spoke to them” (Lk 2:50). And when
he was presented in the Temple, we are told that “his father and mother
marvelled at what was said about him” (Lk
2:33).
Our Lady’s life was indeed a life of faith, of humility, of total
devotedness to Jesus. There were no
miracles, no ecstasies, no extraordinary events.
There was simply the normal round of work and duties every day.
Her faith and love kept her going.
As she stands beside the altar of sacrifice in the Apparition of Knock,
she seems to encourage us in our weak faith, to comfort us in our difficulties
and ailments, and to assure us that all will be well.
Like her, when she lived on earth, we do not know what tomorrow will
bring us, but we do know by faith who
holds every tomorrow in his safe hands; we
do not know all the attacks of the world against us, but we do know that our faith shall overcome; we do not know when our life
will end, but we do know by faith that
Jesus and Mary will be with us at that supreme moment.
Therefore we do not ask to understand all things, but to believe.
The Power of her Prayer
Mary’s prayer sprang from her deep faith, from her holy life and from
her nearness to God. We
spontaneously put trust in the prayer of a holy person, someone whom we regard
as near to God. Who ever lived in
such nearness to God as did Our Lady? First
of all, there was the intimacy of a mother with her beloved Child.
“Think - writes a Carmelite mystic, Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity - what
must have been in the soul of the Virgin (Mary) when, after the Incarnation, she
possessed within her the Incarnate Word, the Gift of God.
In what silence, what recollection, what adoration she must have been
wrapped in the depth of her soul in order to embrace this God whose Mother she
was” (Letter 183).
Not only was she physically near the Son of God:
she was also spiritually united to Him through the holiness of her life.
No taint of sin ever separated her from God.
No selfish desire ever withdrew her attention from Him.
Therefore, her life was a continuous prayer of the heart:
one of adoration and praise, of petition and thanksgiving .
A sure instinct of faith makes us say so often:
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of
our death”. As another holy soul
said (Mother Julia): “This
‘now’ in which we live is forever changing.
It is a life-long alternation between joy and sorrow, hope and anxiety,
happiness and dissatisfaction, safety and danger.
Every moment of this ‘now’ leaves its mark on our soul, lasting into
eternity. Hence, this ‘now’ is
so very important - decisively so. ... We depend on you, Mary, ‘now and at the
decisive hour of our death”.
The power of prayer is truly mysterious, but from experience we know that
it does obtain many blessings from God. We
trust in the prayer of those who are good and holy, those who are near to God.
Those who are his friends have a greater influence over his Heart.
A friend does not deny a friend what he asks for.
No one was ever nearer, or holier, or friendlier with Our Lord than was
his Mother Mary. We see how, at her
request, He performs his first miracle at the wedding feast of Cana.
He does not refuse her petition. And
it is true to say that Cana is repeated over and over again in our lives, in
parishes, in places of pilgrimage like Knock.
He changes the water of poverty into the wine of plenty for us.
We call Mary ‘our Advocate’ because of what Cardinal Newman calls
‘her great prevailing gift of prayer’. He
says of her: “No one has access to
the Almighty as his Mother has; none
has merit such as hers. Her Son will
deny her nothing that she asks; and
herein lies her power. While she
defends the Church, neither height nor depth, neither men nor evil spirits,
neither great monarchs, nor craft of man, nor popular violence, can avail to
harm us; for human life is short,
but Mary reigns above, a Queen for ever” (Meditations
and Devotions).
At the Shrine in Knock, a luminous statue
represents Our Lady as she was seen on the evening of the Apparition, namely,
standing with her arms slightly raised and her eyes looking upward in prayerful
contemplation. What seized her
attention and formed the object of her prayer of faith is suggested by the
central figure of the Apparition - the Lamb of God on the altar of sacrifice
with the large cross in the background.
Here we find ourselves at the decisive moment of the history of our
salvation. Christ, like an innocent
lamb led to the slaughter, was sacrificed for us on Calvary.
There he paid the price of our redemption ;
there he saved those who could not save themselves.
Moreover, the Altar brings to mind the Holy Eucharist,
which is a perpetual memorial and a making present in sacramental signs
of what took place on Calvary. At
Holy Communion, it becomes a heavenly banquet at which the Lord gives us his
Body and Blood as the food and drink of our immortal soul.
Our Lady’s prayerful gaze here at Knock invites us to pray and reminds
us that Christ, the Lamb of God, is the only Saviour of the world;
that although ‘slain’ he now ‘stands’ on the altar, not a dead
but a risen Saviour. It also reminds
us of the value of the Mass which “contains the Church’s entire spiritual
wealth” (Pres.Ord.5).
In this representation of the Apparition at Knock, not made by human
hands but given from heaven at the gable end of the parish church on 21st
August, 1879, we see Our Lady, Queen of Ireland, standing in an attitude of deep
prayer and sustained by her strong faith. She
remains here now, for all times, as a silent invitation to prayer, a maternal
encouragement to persevere with Jesus her Son to the end, and as a gesture of
thanks to the people of Ireland for having been so loyal down the ages to the
Mass, our greatest “mystery of faith” and indeed the greatest prayer of all.
Let us not forget her plea. Let
us never turn aside from the treasures of our Catholic faith, but always keep
them and ponder them prayerfully in our hearts. That will help us to put our
faith more and more into action by doing his will.
Then we will be more like Mary, and with her, true disciples of her Son,
able to help with the new evangelization that is so needed and able to bring the
joy and happiness of the Good News into the lives of our families and society.
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