Mary, Our Mother

Last week we received a new set of pictures of Ana Luisa. It amazes me that after everything that she has endured, the long months of loneliness, hunger, pain and grief beyond what any child should ever have to experience, she still looks like this:


I am so excited to get to know this crazy little girl. Her joyfulness, despite everything that she has been through, is a powerful reminder that as a mother, the best thing that I can do for my children, whether they are with me or not, is to continually place them in the care of our Blessed Mother, who loves and cares for my children with the same, perfect mother's love that she has for her son Jesus. And I can spend the rest of my life trying to love Our Lord as she does, and love my children as she does. Lately, in the quieter moments that I get with Juan Pablo, as I'm rocking him to sleep or when he's just woken up from a nap, I think about holding the child Jesus in my arms and how Mary must have felt in those moments. And when he's awake, I try to make sure that every interaction that I have with him, every word and every touch, are filled with love, gentleness and peace, as he would experience if he were interacting with Mary. Not at all easy, and I fail all the time, but I keep trying, because this is how I am called to love.

And since we are in the month of May, a month traditionally dedicated to Mary, we set up a little altar in our house to honor our Blessed Mother. We picked some flowers (Juan Pablo thought Mary would especially love the white fluffy flowers that he likes so much)...
...got the altar set up...

...and said some prayers. Juan Pablo kept wanting us to pray the "Hail Mary" over and over, because it meant that we would light the candle and he would get to blow it out when we finished the prayer. We'll need a few more matches before we can attempt to pray the whole rosary with him. I pray that he will always be able to approach Mary with this same pure, childlike openness.


"The lives of the saints are not limited to their earthly biographies but also include their being and working in God after death. In the saints one thing becomes clear: those who draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly close to them. In no one do we see this more than in Mary. The words addressed by the crucified Lord to his disciple--to John and through him to all disciples of Jesus, "Behold your mother!" (Jn. 19:27)-- are fulfilled anew in every generation. Mary has truly become the Mother of all believers. 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 endeavors. They constantly experience the gift of her goodness and 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 a 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" (Jn. 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:

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."

-Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est