Mom For All, All For Mom: Weekly Message for 5-2-17

Dear Digital Pilgrim, Pax Christi:

Sometimes Our Lord saves the best for last.

At his last supper Jesus instituted the Eucharist, the gift of his very self – body, blood, soul and divinity – under the guise of simple bread and wine. It wasn’t to be his last gift. On Good Friday, the day of his death, he gave us from the cross the gift of another person, the Blessed Virgin Mary. “Behold, your mother” (John 19:27).

Mary’s role as the mother of us all should ideally remind us that we are brothers and sisters whose mission includes helping one another reach heaven.

Nothing comforts a mom like seeing her children at peace with one another. The same could be said of Mary. For she in a singular way understands the yearning of her Son for his followers, “that they may all be one” (John 17:21).

Fittingly, the first fruits of Easter and Pentecost included unity among the apostles. They no longer argued “about which of them should be regarded as the greatest” (Luke 22:24), but instead actually got down to the mission of preaching Christ and encouraging people to repentance. Surely they were aided by the presence of Our Lady, who was there to unite them in prayer as they awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14).

This month of May is a good moment to lift our eyes to the Blessed Virgin and ask for that same kind of grace of unity within the Church and within families that united the early disciples.

To help you focus your mind and heart in order to take advantage of the Marian month of May, one of our past Retreat Guides: God is Faithful, The River of Wisdom, A Mother’s Tears might help.

Who better to watch over and guide us toward unity, than the woman who united both humanity and divinity in her very womb?

In Christ,
Father Edward McIlmail, L.C.
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