POWER OF MARY`S INTERCESSION

Mary is a great woman of faith and she communicates something of her faith to those who have devotion to her. People who go on pilgrimages to the great shrines of Mary testify that they experience there a great strengthening of their faith. Something of Mary’s faith seems to radiate from these holy places. And this deepening of faith in the hearts of the pilgrims tends to manifest itself in a more generous practice of Christian life. Mary continues to say to each of her devotees what she said to the servants of Cana: “Do whatever Jesus tells you”. And these words of hers are words of power that transform lives.
She also listens to the other petitions that pilgrims make – petitions for spiritual and temporal favours of all sorts. With a mother’s heart she is attentive to every request no matter how “worldly” it may appear. “They have no wine” – these words of Mary at Cana have always inspired Christians with the conviction that no human need, even the most humble, is beneath Mary’s attention. Infact one of the special reasons why God has willed that we should acknowledge Mary as our Mother and have confidence in the power of her intercession is precisely to keep alive in our hearts that confidence,
that God whose providence embraces even the sparrows and the lilies of the field, does not despise any of our human needs. God has given us Mary as a permanent sign and reminder of his own motherly heart, and devotion to Mary is meant to be an easy and very gentle school, where we learn that most fundamental of all New Testament lessons, childlike trust in God: “Unless you become like little children you will not enter the kingdom of God.”
And if it should happen that the request that we make through Mary’s intercession should not be granted – for God in his wisdom, foresees that not all that we ask for may be for our true good – pilgrims to Mary’s shrines experience her presence and her power in another precious way. Through her hands comes the grace of simple and humble submission to the will of God. She shares with them her own attitude of loving acceptance of the mysterious but always merciful ways of God’s providence: “Be it done to me according to your Word”. How often for example, one meets seriously ill people who have gone to Lourdes with the hope of being cured and who have returned still seriously ill, but now marked by a joyful and serene acceptance of the will of God.
Mary is still a transfiguring presence in our world and it is above all at her Shrines that she delights to show herself as a channel, a sort of Sacrament, of precious graces of God.

By: Rev. Fr. Noel Molloy, OP