Recovering ourselves through Mary

FRESH and beautiful images of the popular Marian devotion, “Flores de Mayo,” still linger in the mind.

One time, after concelebrating a funeral Mass in a town parish at 1 p.m. the other day, I was amused and charmed to see little kids, mostly dressed in white and with angel wings, waiting for their turn to enter the church.

I later learned that their activity was to start 2 hours later yet. But a good number of them were already there eager to pay homage to our Lady with flowers they got from gardens not necessarily of their own homes.

One could see they came from all levels of the local families, judging by the way they dressed and moved. But they blended quite well. No divisive tension at all was noted. Everyone was happy.

The parish priest, my friend, told me it’s something completely supernatural to have this kind of phenomenon, because there were many reasons for these children not to come.

It was hot, if not wet in the afternoons. Inconvenience for them was all over. They had to go through some period of catechetical instruction, which must be a bore to them. And yet they came, and they enjoyed the whole thing tremendously.

How I wish we, the adults, can return to this pure, child-like state of devotion to our Lady! We need it. In fact, we urgently need it.

Our Lady is our mother entrusted to us by Christ himself on the cross. Those words he said to St. John , “Behold your mother,” have always been understood as words meant for all of us, and not just for him.

Our Lady takes good care of us. She makes sure we will always be close to her son. And she does this in her ever-sweet ways. Regardless of our abuses and infidelities, she will always stand by us.

I remember the apparition of our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Diego. When the Mexican Indian peasant tried to avoid her because he was worried about the pending death of his uncle, she just appeared to him and said:

“I, who am your Mother, stand before you. You remain always under the shelter of my protection. Be aware of how fortunate you are to have access to my motherly care at all times.”

We need her especially these days, because we seem to be mercilessly bombarded with intoxicating elements that undermine our focus and attachment to God.

Again, the other day while on a one-day trip to an island province, it came to my mind that things seem to be done or arranged to prevent people from praying.

First of all, there’s already that weak set of attitudes and dispositions to pray. We really have to improve in this area. Our consistency as Christians gets shredded when prayer is not our default page. I

I cannot make judgments on actuations of specific people. But I make observations of the general environment, and what I saw was that the mind to pray or at least to be in God’s presence was simply not there.

Amid the vacation mode that seems to be how most of my co-passengers were, what was obvious was boredom. The Chinese movie, full of fighting scenes fantastically executed in the air, failed to remove them from their ennui.

And for those who might have wanted to pray, they were continuously distracted by all sorts of things, not the least of all was the constant flow of movies.

It would seem people are not allowed to have peace for their mind to think and their heart to pray. Their senses have to be kept engaged and aroused, while the spiritual faculties have to be sedated.

Devotion to our Lady can be a corrective to this anomaly. She reminds us to be always pondering in our hearts everything that Jesus said and did. She shows us how to be simple and full of faith and hope.

She is the strong proof that Jesus can always be found even in the littlest things of our day. She tells us where our peace and joy lie. She shows us the way to keep a supernatural outlook in the middle of our earthly affairs.

Our Lady teaches us what are the proper priorities in our life, snatching us from jaws of the ever-present threat of confusion and of developing all sorts of obsessions and compulsions.