Sep 8 Mon
“Today we celebrate the birthday of the Blessed Virgin. It is a good day to live our Marian piety naturally, without doing anything strange. When the birthday of someone in your family comes up, you wish them a happy birthday, right? You try to show them greater affection, don't you? Well, let's begin by doing so. Wish the Mother of God, who is also our Mother, a happy birthday. And our Lady, who is in heaven body and soul, will joyfully welcome our signs of affection."
The Virgin Mary is the most perfect creature who ever came from the hands of God. She is so good, so simple, so delicate, so extraordinarily humble and pure that one cannot help loving her.
Her contemporaries hardly noticed her stay in the world. It is the same with our own lives; there is nothing extraordinary, nothing that attracts attention. But in the eyes of God, the Virgin Mary was unique, and her part in creation was indispensable.
God the Father gave her to us, she gave us the Son, and she gave herself to the Holy Spirit. She gladdens the hearts of her children because she is so loving and has such a maternal heart.
Like the Virgin, however, we also mean something to God, and we have our little part to play in the universe, and each of us in a certain sense is indispensable; each of us is unique.
And perhaps the thought of our Mother in Heaven and her life on earth may help us to emulate her and try to be what she was, the most cooperative of God's creatures that has ever existed.
We must always keep in mind that our life, if it has any purpose at all, derives this purpose from God and from the small part we have to play in creation, the purpose for which we have been created and appropriately gifted.
We know little, it is true, about the life of our Lady, but really, it is not necessary to know much more. Full of grace from the first instant of her conception, the life of the Virgin Mary is both unique and exemplary. There is indeed no other model than Jesus Christ, but it is also true that there has never been any other creature who imitated Him so faithfully and who so exactly reproduced the image of her Son. And if God did not want to give us the Word directly, but by means of the Virgin, surely the best way to imitate Christ is to imitate our Lady.
“We would like to offer our Mother a token of affection, though only the gift of a poor, colorless flower, without fragrance. But she accepts it, she receives it affectionately because she is our Mother, and what a Mother!"
“Mother, today we will feel the gentleness of your hands, the warmth of your Most Sweet Heart, and your protection. And despite the realization that we haven't been good sons, we dare to say: Show us that you are our Mother! Make us be good sons. You who are the Mother of Fair Love, Seat of Wisdom, Handmaid of the Lord: Help your children.”