Praise be Jesus and Mary.
I know those whom I have chosen, our Lord says in the Gospel today.
Our Lord very well knows, by name, each and every one of those who will correspond to His grace and who will receive the gift of eternal life.
We can't know for certain who all those people are.
Our Lord knows them and knows them by name and knows them from all eternity.
We can't know that for certain.
The mystery of predestination in the Catholic sense is hidden to us.
It's a difficult theological mystery to understand with our limited intellect.
We know that our Lord wants to save everyone.
He gives that invitation to eternal life to all people, yet not everybody accepts it.
So again, we don't know who in the end will correspond to that grace and accept eternal life.
But we do also know that in a certain sense, those who are the elect, to use that word in the Catholic sense, those who will enter into eternal life, can be in a certain sense recognized by certain attitudes, by their virtues, by the way they live their life, and prominent on that list of the so-called signs of predestination that indicate that a person hasn't yet possessed eternal life, but is moving in the right direction, prominent on those lists of signs of predestination is devotion to our Blessed Lady.
God calls everyone to eternal life.
God wants to give this grace of true devotion to our Lady to all those who are called as a sure means of arriving at that destination.
And all those who embrace true devotion to our Lady, although they don't yet possess eternal life, they don't yet have it, nevertheless can be comforted by knowing that they are on the right path, they are moving in the right direction.
And even more, true devotion to our Blessed Lady, precisely because God has made Mary a mother, true devotion to our Lady has a power over our hearts to desire eternal life, which is in the end the essential condition for possessing it.
The only thing that can separate us from God is a decision of the heart, a decision of the will, a wavering of our determination to love God and to receive what He has promised.
So because our Lady is a mother, has power over our heart, she is the queen of all hearts, true devotion to her strengthens our heart and that holy desire of God and of the things of God, of the heaven that He has promised for us.
In fact, we see that in Fatima, we'll close with that example, when our Lady appears in Fatima and the children are in her presence, they're immediately given that grace to desire to know where she is from, where is this beautiful lady from?
And they ask her, where are you from?
They desire to know and when they find out, I am from heaven, their hearts burn with a desire to go to heaven and they ask her, will we also go to heaven?
Because that's what they desire.
They're in the presence of our Lady, who they know comes from heaven, they desire to be with her.
Will we go to heaven?
And our Lady, seeing their desire, corresponding to all those graces, tells them, yes, you will.
It gives them that consolation, that comfort.
And devotion to her is a great consolation to all of us.
If we embrace this true devotion, again, we remain on earth, we remain in this valley of tears, we remain in the midst of the anxieties and trials and tribulations of this world, but nevertheless, we have the certainty of knowing that this devotion is a sign of predestination, an assurance that we are on the right path.
All of us can ask for this grace of true devotion to our Blessed Lady.
God wants us to ask for it.
God wants to give it to us.
In this month of May, we can ask for it every single day and grow in it every day of the month.
I suggest that we all do that.
Ask for this grace of true devotion and seek to grow in it every single day and then rejoice in the fact that it is a very strong sign of predestination, a very strong sign that we are amongst the number of those whom our Lord has chosen, amongst the number of those who will receive that gift of eternal life that God wants to give to each and every one of us.
Praised be Jesus and Mary.
Amen.