Mary, Mother of the
New Evangelization
Day 7
Theme:
Mary,
Teacher of True Love
Scripture
Passage John 15: 12 - 13
This is my commandment: love one another as I
love you.
No one has greater love than this, to
lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
Marian
Reading
The lives of the
saints are not limited to their earthly biographies but also include their
being and working in God after death. In the saints one thing becomes clear:
those who draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly
close to them. In no one do we see this more clearly than in Mary.
The words addressed
by the crucified Lord to his disciple—to John and through him to all disciples
of Jesus: “Behold, your mother!” (John 19:27)—are fulfilled anew in
every generation. Mary has truly become the Mother of all believers. Men and
women of every time and place have recourse to her motherly kindness and her
virginal purity and grace, in all their needs and aspirations, their joys and
sorrows, their moments of loneliness and their common endeavors. They
constantly experience the gift of her goodness and the unfailing love which she
pours out from the depths of her heart. The testimonials of gratitude, offered
to her from every continent and culture, are recognition of that pure love
which is not self- seeking but simply benevolent. At the same time, the
devotion of the faithful shows an infallible intuition of how such love is
possible: it becomes so as a result of the most intimate union with God,
through which the soul is totally pervaded by him—a condition which enables
those who have drunk from the fountain of God's love to become in their turn a
fountain from which “flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). Mary,
Virgin and Mother, shows us what love is and whence it draws its origin and its
constantly renewed power. To her we entrust the Church and her mission in the
service of love:
Holy Mary, Mother of God, you have given the world
its true light,
Jesus, your Son – the Son of God.
You abandoned yourself
completely
to God's call
and thus became a wellspring
of the goodness which
flows forth from him.
Show us Jesus.
Lead us to him.
Teach us to know and love him,
so that we too can
become
capable of true love
and be fountains of living water
in the midst of a
thirsting world.
(Pope
Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, #42)
Prayers
§ - an
Our Father
§ - a
Hail Mary
§ - a
Glory Be
§ - the
invocation “Mary, Immaculate, Help of Christians, pray for us.”
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