The Month of Mary by Dr. Plinio Correa De Olivera

The Month of Mary by Dr. Plinio Correa De Olivera

During May, the month of Mary, we feel Our Lady’s special protection along with a unique joy that lights up our hearts. This joy is the expression of the Catholic certainty that never is our heavenly mother’s patronage more tender, loving and visible than in the month of May.

Provided we were attentive to the thirty one days dedicated to Our Lady, even after
May is passed, a remnant of this joyous feeling hangs in the air. We find that our devotion grew, our trust increased and our intimacy with Our Lady deepened. We now face life’s challenges with renewed confidence, knowing better how to pray to her with respectful insistence, invincible trust and humble gratitude for all the good she works in our behalf.

Our Lady is the Queen of Heaven and Earth and, at the same time, our mother. We enter May with this conviction, strengthening our faith and increasing our fortitude, and it becomes more deeply rooted in us when we leave it. May teaches us to love Mary Most Holy for the glory she rightly possesses and for all that she represents in the plans of Divine Providence. May also teaches us to be more constant in our filial union with Mary.

Children are never surer of their mothers’ loving vigilance than when they suffer. All of mankind suffers today in every conceivableway. Windstorms of impiety, skepticism and messianism sweep through minds and devastate them. Nebulous, confused and rash ideas filter into every milieu and mislead not only the wretched and the lukewarm, but sometimes even those of whom greater constancy in the Faith is expected. Those who are tenaciously faithful to the fulfillment of duty suffer from all the adversity they meet by their fidelity to the Law of Christ. Yet those who transgress the Law also suffer, for withoutChrist every pleasure is nothing but bitterness and every joy is nothing but a lie.

Hearts suffer, torn by the psychological warfare that is so intense in our days. Bodies suffer, overtaxed by work, undermined by illness and overwhelmed by all sorts of needs. The contemporary world could be likened to the time when

Our Lord was born in Bethlehem, when both the just and the evildoers groaned; the evildoers from the fact that they were removed from God, and the just from being tormented by the evildoers.

The more dire the circumstances and the more excruciating the pains, the more we should ask Our Lady to put an end to so much suffering—not merely for our own relief, but for the greater benefit of our souls. Sacred theology says that Our Lady’s prayers anticipated the moment of the world’s redemption by the Messias. At this anguished moment in history then, let us turn our eyes to Our Lady with confidence, asking her to hasten the great moment we all await, when a new Pentecost will kindle beacons of light and hope in this darkness and restore Our Lord Jesus Christ’s kingdom on Earth.

We should be like Daniel, whom Holy Scripture describes as the “desideriorum vir,” that is, a man full of great desires. Let us desire many great things for God’s glory. Let us always ask Our Lady for everything, and let us, above all, ask her for that which the Sacred Liturgy beseeches of God, “Emitte Spiritum tuum et creabuntur, et renovabis faciem terrae” (Send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created; and Thou shalt renew the face of the Earth). We should ask, through Our Lady’s mediation, that God once again send us the Holy Ghost with the plenitude of His gifts so that His kingdom may be created anew and be purified by a renewal of the face of the Earth. In the Divine Comedy, Dante wrote that praying without Our Lady’s patronage is like wanting to fly without wings. Let us then confide to Our Lady this heartfelt yearning and desire. Mary’s hands will be for our prayer a pair of pure wings that will carry it with certainty to God’s throne.