As I write this, I have just watched the incredible images from Rome as the Cardinals of the Church pray that the Holy Spirit guide their Conclave deliberations as they elect a new pope. By the time you read this, we may know the fruit of the Conclave as we begin to pray for a new pope in each Eucharistic Prayer.
The nine days of mourning for Pope Francis found all the world praying in thanksgiving for his service as pope and that he may now be enjoying everlasting peace. Many of you came to the place where his picture was displayed and some of you wrote comments. I have not read all of them, but many simply said ‘thank you,” and others wrote a prayer for his eternal repose.
In every age of our lives the presence of a pope reminds us of God’s love who always provides a Good Shepherd to lead us on the pilgrimage of life. May we treasure that love. May we have felt the command of Jesus to each pope to love all of us as God loves us. May the new pope whether we know who he is today or during the week continue to provide that unbroken witness from Peter to love us, to lead us and to guide us to the fullness of God’s love in paradise one day!
A mother’s love is another facet the all-God’s love in our lives. Today we celebrate all our moms, our grandmothers, our Godmothers, those who have loved us in any way with a mother’s love. We traditionally remember Holy Mary throughout the month of May, and I offer the following reflection on her as we pray God will bless all our mothers!
“As Christ hung dying on the cross, he placed his Blessed Mother under the care of his apostle, St. John the Evangelist. “Behold your mother,” Christ said to John, and by extension, Jesus said the same to us. Mary is our spiritual mother — the most loving mother the world has ever known because she counts as her children all of humankind.
The Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, “Every person carries in his heart a blueprint of the one he loves.” And among Catholics and Orthodox Christians, no saint is more beloved than Mary.
I suppose all mothers both know and yet do not completely know everything about their children — this was especially the case for Mary. That God chose her from among all women to be the mother of the savior was a mystery that, during her earthly life, she never entirely understood. In his Gospel, St. Luke tells us that Mary pondered, or meditated upon, this mystery in her heart. To look at him, her son Jesus was in every respect fully human, except that unlike us he never committed any sin. Yet he was also fully God, which he first revealed at a wedding at Cana when, at his mother’s request, he spared the bride and groom embarrassment by changing water into fine vintage wine.
We can imagine Mary’s pride when Jesus began his public ministry and by his teaching showed the world the way to salvation, and by his miracles showed God’s compassion and mercy to a sick, suffering world. We can also imagine her intense emotional agony as she followed her son as he was humiliated, tortured, and crucified. There is no more poignant image of Mary than the Pietà — the heartbroken mother holding in her arms the body of her lifeless child. Any parent who has lost a child knows exactly how Mary felt at that moment.
Today in the great shrines of Lourdes, Fatima, and Guadalupe, in parish churches, chapels and oratories, in some silent corner of the heart, millions call on Mary for help. She is, as Blessed Pope Pius IX said in 1851, “the best of mothers, our safest confidante … the very motive of our hope.”
May Mother Mary intercede for each of us with her mother’s love and may she guide the one who will be our new pope to also grow in that love! Happy Mothers’ Day to all!