Chartres

Chartres
British Pilgrims entering the Cathedral at Chartres

Saturday 4 May 2019

Vigilate, Orate, Amate -- Prepare for the Consecration to Our Lady!

These are the three key words that are the perfect summary of the life of Our Lady and the formal instructions of our daily life .
 John Paul II reminds us: "We can gather (in the Rosary) all the events of our individual or family life, of the life of our country, of the Church, of humanity" (RVM 2). He says it and repeats it without tiring: "Mary, be with us, watch over all our human being, over every woman and every man, every child conceived in the maternal womb" .
Is not this what the Queen of France has always done, considering the adoration of the Magi, finding Jesus in Jerusalem, following Him in all His public life, being the first at the tomb on Easter morning. "The whole life of Mary was only a succession of moments, very humble sometimes, but lived with the maximum of love ... In Mary, the sun does not make shade" . (Father Victor). "All of them, with one heart, persevered in prayer, with women and Mary, the Mother of Jesus" (Acts I.14).
Our Lady has always prayed like her Divine Son, knowing instinctively that "to pray is to act invisibly on God and by Him on men and on the whole universe" (Cardinal Saliège). At the foot of the Cross, Mary loved to the end: she accepted the Sacrifice of her Son and even more the maternity of all the men whom He proposed to her. Thus, "as Mother of the Savior, she was co-redeemer of the human race, as a Bride of the Holy Spirit, she participates in the distribution of all graces." (Saint Maximilian Kolbe).
 Our faith in God remains incomplete, if we do not recognize in the Blessed Virgin the Mother of God, the Queen of Saints and Angels, and the Hope of the world ... All the poverty and all the wisdom of all the Saints are in the real, living human person, who is the Virgin, Mother of Christ. Holiness came to them through Her, because in the order desired by God, all graces reach men through Mary. That's why loving and knowing it means discovering the true meaning of things and accessing wisdom.
Without it, the knowledge of Christ is only intellectual, but in Mary, it becomes experience by what it has received the humility and the poverty without which one can not know the Christ. His holiness is the silence in which only Christ can be heard, and we can perceive the voice of God through his contemplation.
"The emptiness, inner solitude and peace without which we can not be filled with God have been given to Mary, that she may receive God in this world, and offer her the hospitality of a perfectly pure, silent being. , resting, at peace, and totally humble "(Thomas Merton).
So, what to do: it is the little Saint Teresa who gives us the answer: "The Blessed Virgin ... never fails to protect me as soon as I invoke her.If I get a worry, an embarrassment, very quickly, I turn to her and always as the tenderest of mothers, she takes care of my interests.
Our Lady - herself - in the many appearances that favored France, always asked us to pray, to do penance and to convert, and at Fatima she asked more insistently for our personal consecration to her Immaculate Heart, which is proposed for each pilgrimage to Chartres.
She knows how much daily life is full of dangers, "filled with obstacles that are found everywhere: the materialism surrounding, the lie established, the force of inertia". That is why Our Lady offers herself to us, offers us this extraordinary way: every morning, to repeat to her our filial love, to ask her humbly - as to our Mother - to hold our hand in all our difficulties, our hesitations, our doubts, our temptations, accepting that we call it "as soon as we begin to falter", and thanking her in the evening.
Father Berto sums up perfectly the necessity of this consecration to Mary: "It is possible that there are many ways from the earth that go to God, but the paths, after a while, come together. all of them to make one, if at some distance from the starting point, we have not met the Blessed Virgin, it is certain that we are lost. "
Reminder: the preparation for the consecration to the Blessed Virgin begins on May 6th, so you only have ONE DAY TO REGISTER on our siteYou will receive by mail the daily texts during the 33 days preceding the pilgrimage.  This email will be in French, so you may need to obtain a translation (Google translate?).  Alternately, you can use information from the website fish eaters to support the consecration.  

This preparation for the Consecration is an excellent means to make our pilgrimage fertile.  It is also a beautiful way to thank Our Lady for all the glaces she never ceases to obtain for us with her Son.