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 endeavours. 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 (…)”
While some of you are already in Easter time, ourselves in Ethiopia, we are in the third week of Lent. That’s our reality. In spite of being in Lenten time, all the parishioners of Wonji St Mary Parish were thrilled on March, 29th to attend the blessing ceremony of ‘Shrine’ to the Virgin Mary’ by His Excellency Bishop of Meki Vicariate, Abraham Desta.
Let us pray with the Pope, Benedict XVI:
“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. Amen.
(Rome, at Saint Peter’s, on 25 December, the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord, in the year 2005, “Deus Caritas Est”, n.42.)
