Today we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, and thus we commemorate an apparition
of Our Lady that occurred in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous.
So, it is close to the beginning of what we might term the Marian Age of the Church.
In a certain sense, every age of the Church is a Marian Age, but particularly since just
before the middle of the 19th century up to the present day, this period of Church history
really has been marked in a particular way.
It has been marked in a particular way.
A remarkable way by the presence of Our Lady, by a pondering upon the mystery of Our Lady,
and by fervent devotion to Our Lady.
And this age, we may say, began with the appearance of Our Lady to St. Catherine Labouret,
the apparitions of the miraculous medal.
And Lourdes forms a very important part.
Of the beginning of this Marian Age, of course, the appearance of Our Lady to St. Bernadette
happened just a few years after the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
She chose to confirm the magisterial pronouncement of this dogma when she spoke the words to
St. Bernadette, I am the Immaculate Conception.
And Our Lady, in appearing in this way, and the Church in pondering the mystery of Our Lady
in a more intense way, over the last nearly two centuries, and the more fervent devotion
that's been practiced to Our Lady, notwithstanding the difficulties encountered around and just
after the time of the Second Vatican Council,
is, we might say, a very important part of the history of Our Lady.
We might say heaven's way of representing the roadmap to us, namely the roadmap to heaven.
This roadmap, of course, is not something that's new.
But it's kind of like various maps that might need to be presented in various ways to catch our attention.
So maps can be redrawn in order that we might catch certain details.
That we might before have missed.
Or that we need to be reminded of.
For as we know,
the completeness of divine revelation
came with the coming of Jesus, with the revelation of Jesus Christ,
and with the teaching of the apostles.
And so, on this score, there is nothing new, so to speak, to be revealed.
So whatever Our Lady does,
she does.
And whatever we do to ponder the mystery of Our Lady,
and whatever devotion we practice toward her,
simply is to reinforce what already has been revealed by Our Lord.
Nonetheless,
Our Lord has wished that Our Lady play a pivotal, a vital role in our salvation,
which is brought out in the Gospel reading,
that we heard narrating the wedding feast of Cana.
Our Lady had an important role to play.
Jesus would not begin his public ministry without her permission.
It is she who came to him to, so to speak, remind him.
Not that he forgot, of course.
But in a manner of speaking, he waited for her
before he began the work of drawing.
All my life.
All men to himself.
He wanted her permission, although he didn't need it.
But in the divine design,
she was, in a certain sense, the authority
whereby Jesus
freely chose to begin the work of drawing us to himself.
And in the history of salvation,
this is the way that it is.
It has always been.
It has been the mother through whom the Son has come.
And it is by the mother that we go to the Son
and therefore return to the Father, as we are called to do.
And in an age increasingly forgetful of the necessity to go to the Son,
to return to the Father,
in an age which pretends that,
God has no relevance,
all the more must God capture the attention
to present the road map anew, as it were.
And so,
the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary
becomes ever more prominent as a result.
Because God always acts
at her behest.
Indeed, if it were not for her,
we would wonder
whether God would pay any attention to us at all.
And really, why should he?
When we think about it,
what have we offered God
that he ought to pay attention to us?
What good have we given God
that he ought to pay attention
to listen to our entreaties?
We haven't offered anything good to God.
He's given us every good thing,
and what have we given in return?
If we have given anything good in return,
it is because God has given it to us first.
It is that forgetfulness,
indeed, that God has given us these good things
that we give back to him.
This is the problem.
This massive lack of gratitude
and the giving of offense to God
on an increasingly grand scale.
The latest pope has reminded us,
as so many recent popes have,
that the great sin of our present age
is the loss of the sense of sin.
The fact that we don't perceive it
doesn't diminish the gravity.
Actually, it increases it.
That's what the popes keep reminding us.
The fact that we make no account of it
makes the gravity even worse
because we should know better.
We can't claim invincible ignorance on this account.
And that's why God
looks ever more to draw our attention
to himself
by allowing our Blessed Mother,
sending her in a manner of speaking,
as the ambassador par excellence of his mercy,
to awaken us
to the reality
of our need to ask forgiveness
and to return to him.
And we can thank the good Lord
that he's made it so far.
He's made it so far.
He's made it so far.
He's made it so far.
He's made it so far.
He's made it so easy.
For who would not want, really,
to approach this august lady?
What a shame it has been throughout history
that so many have made it so difficult.
What responsibility must be on their shoulders
that they have placed an obstacle
in the path of so many
by imagining that Mary
somehow gets in the way of Jesus?
What is the gravity of that crime?
What is the gravity of that crime?
What is the gravity of that crime?
Instead, here she is,
not at arm's length,
but very close to our hearts.
And let us be resolved
to let be determined
that no one
will take our lady away from us
because she will not flee from us.
Our lady will not flee from us.
It is we who place her at arm's length
or who allow others
to take her away from us.
But she will never desert us.
This we know by the testimony of Jesus himself
when he said,
Woman, behold your son.
And when Mary hears the words of Jesus,
not only does she take them to the heart
as we might take to heart certain words,
but she lives them out forevermore.
That's what Mary does.
So once hearing the command of Jesus,
she takes us into her heart
and she never banishes us from her heart.
In a certain sense,
we might say
that she almost has to do violence to herself
so that she doesn't appear more often.
But it's for our good
that she comes very discreetly
in the way that she does.
That she has inspired
the magisterium of the church
to gradually, gradually, gradually
allow us to do violence to ourselves.
that she does.
That she has inspired the magisterium of the church
to gradually, gradually, gradually
allow us to do violence to ourselves.
allow the real truth about her to unfold,
that she has enkindled in the hearts of so many faithful
this devotion to her which redounds solely to the glory of God.
This is the quiet work that Our Lady has accomplished
in the history of the Church
and what this feast day reminds us of, this quiet work.
And Jesus wishes for us to pay attention to her,
to place herself at her disposal
in order that he, listening to her,
can carry out that work of sanctification in our hearts.
We ask then of Our Blessed Mother
that we who are privileged to live in this Marian age of the Church
may allow this invitation,
this age to bear much fruit in our hearts,
that if this is a Marian age,
that we will have the privilege of being called Marian Apostles,
that we will cherish the privilege of being called Marian devotees,
that we will cherish the privilege of being among those
who recognize that all blessings come to us because of this woman.
And we will have the privilege of spreading that good news to others.
And if we do these things,
then we will have nothing to fear
when we come before the judgment seat,
as we all will have to one day.
Because no matter what we might have done up to now,
how seriously we have offended our Lord,
we will at least be able to say to our Lord,
I found the road map and I followed it.
And I have no regrets.
Praise be Jesus.
Amen.
Thank you, Mary.