My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, there is a flame the world cannot quench. It is the flame that first burned in Nazareth when a young Virgin said Fiat – “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”
That flame still burns in the Church, even when darkness tries to smother it. It is the light of Mary, the Mother of God, the Co-Redemptrix, and the Mediatrix of all graces. Wherever Christ is adored, she stands beside Him. Wherever the Cross is raised, she stands beneath it. And wherever grace flows, it passes through her immaculate hands.
The angel’s words echo through eternity: “ … Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1:28).
Heaven itself proclaimed her singular grace. The Church, following heaven’s lead, calls her “full of grace” because in her nothing resisted the divine will. She is the pure soil in which the Word took root. From her virginal fiat came the dawn of salvation.
St. Louis de Montfort wrote:
“Mary is the great mold of God, fashioned by the Holy Spirit to give human nature to a Man who is God by the hypostatic union … “
To draw near to Mary, then, is not to turn from Christ, but to let Christ be formed more perfectly within us. She is the mold of the saints, and the pattern of perfect discipleship.
When the shadow of the Cross fell across Calvary, the Mother stood. “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother … ” (John 19:25).
The Gospel gives no long description – only that she stood. She did not flee; she did not faint. She offered. At that hour, her heart was pierced, fulfilling Simeon’s prophecy: “And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed” (Luke 2:35).
Pope Benedict XV taught in Inter Sodalicia (22 March 1918):
“To such extent did Mary suffer and almost die with her suffering and dying Son; to such extent did she surrender her maternal rights over her Son for man’s salvation, … that we might rightly say she redeemed the human race together with Christ.”
Here is the mystery of co-redemption – not equality with the Redeemer, but total union with His redeeming love. She stood beneath the Cross as the New Eve, offering the New Adam to the Father. Her consent at the Annunciation was perfected by her consent at Calvary. And from that union flows every grace of conversion, every drop of sanctifying blood.
From the Cross, the Savior gave His final gift:
“When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother … ” (John 19:26-27).
In that moment, her motherhood expanded to the whole Church. She became the Mediatrix through whom Christ’s grace reaches every soul.
Pope Leo XIII wrote in Adiutricem Populi (5 September 1895):
“Nothing at all of that very great treasury of all grace that the Lord brought us – for ‘grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’ – nothing is imparted to us except through Mary, since God so wills.”
And Pope St. Pius X declared in Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum (2 February 1904):
“She merited to become most worthily the reparatrix of the lost world, and so the dispensatrix of all the gifts which were gained for us by the death and blood of Jesus … and she is the chief minister of the dispensation of graces.”
If the saints call her the “treasurer of God,” it is because they experienced her living intercession. Every grace of repentance, every inspiration to holiness, comes through her maternal mediation. To neglect her is to ignore the golden channel through which the Blood of Christ flows to us.
The Gospel tells us:
“And Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).
She is the teacher of interior life. She speaks little, but she keeps everything in prayer. In a world of noise and confusion, her silence is the language of heaven.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux said: “Of Mary there is never enough.”
To know her is to desire her more, because in her one tastes the purity of God’s own love. The saints found in her the shortest, surest, and safest way to union with Christ. She leads us not to sentiment, but to sanctity. She does not replace the Cross; she teaches us to embrace it.
“And whosoever doth not carry his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27).
She lived that truth more perfectly than any creature.
Our Lady placed into our hands the Rosary, a chain of light stronger than steel. Pope Pius IX declared: “Give me an army saying the Rosary and I will conquer the world.”
The Rosary is not vain repetition. It is the beating of the heart in rhythm with hers. Each Ave Maria is a spark that feeds the flame of faith. Through this humble prayer, nations have been delivered, sinners converted, and hearts restored to peace.
Pope Leo XIII wrote in Supremi Apostolatus Officio (1 September 1883):
“The Rosary is the most excellent form of prayer and the most efficacious means of attaining eternal life. It is the remedy for all our evils, the root of all our blessings. There is no more excellent way of praying.”
When the world mocks her titles, let us answer with a thousand Rosaries. Let the beads be our protest, our hymn, our act of reparation. For every tongue that denies her, let ten voices proclaim: Ave Maria!
Our Lady said at Fatima: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”
Those are her own words, recorded by St. Lucia. That triumph begins whenever a soul chooses purity over compromise, prayer over pride, faith over fear.
Pope Pius XII, in his radio message to Fatima (13 May 1946), declared:
“She it was who, as the New Eve, free from every stain of original or personal sin, always most closely joined with her Son, offered Him to the Eternal Father together with the holocaust of her motherly rights and motherly love, for all the sons of Adam, defiled by his miserable fall.”
Here we see that Mary’s heart is sacrificial fire. To consecrate ourselves to that heart is to enter the furnace of divine charity. It is to let her purity consume our sin, and her faith strengthen our weakness.
The First Saturdays devotion – Confession, Communion, Rosary, and fifteen minutes of meditation – is a school of reparation. It is how we comfort the Heart that still bleeds for blasphemies against her and against her Son.
Mary’s relation to the Eucharist is intimate and inseparable. She gave Christ His Body; that Body becomes our Eternal Food. The Word made Flesh in her womb is the same Flesh given for the life of the world.
Pope St. John Paul II wrote in Ecclesia de Eucharistia (17 April 2003): “Mary can guide us toward this most holy sacrament, because she herself has a profound relationship with it.”
And he continued: “At the Annunciation Mary conceived the Son of God in the physical reality of his body and blood, thus anticipating within herself what to some degree happens sacramentally in every believer who receives, under the signs of bread and wine, the Lord’s body and blood.”
Her silence at Bethlehem and her sorrow at Calvary both lead to the same altar. If we wish to renew belief in the Real Presence, we must restore devotion to the Mother who first adored that Presence.
St. Louis de Montfort wrote: “The greatest saints, those richest in grace and virtue, will be the most assiduous in praying to the most Blessed Virgin, looking up to her as the perfect model to imitate and as a powerful helper to assist them.”
He taught that total consecration to Mary is the most perfect way of belonging entirely to Jesus Christ. To give ourselves to her is not to divide our love, but to purify it. She receives nothing to keep; she receives only to give. Her hands are open conduits of grace. When a soul belongs to her, Satan’s power is broken, because she crushes his head with maternal authority.
Pope St. Pius X approved this very consecration and said in Ad Diem Illum: “Nothing is more salutary, nothing more efficacious, than the recourse of the faithful to the Blessed Virgin.”
Let us, then, renew our consecration daily – by a simple act of love, by the Sign of the Cross, by a whispered Totus Tuus (totally yours). Let every heartbeat echo hers: Fiat, Fiat, Fiat.
We live in a generation that would rather desecrate than venerate. It mocks purity and mistrusts obedience. It tears down the motherly images of love and calls it progress. But Mary still stands – silent, radiant, victorious. Her heel will crush the serpent.
“I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Genesis 3:15).
This prophecy is not mythology – it is unfolding. Every Rosary, every confession, every act of purity, drives the serpent back. The triumph of her Heart is not distant; it is already igniting in souls consecrated to her.
My brothers and sisters, do not let this flame die. In your homes, enthrone her image. Pray the Rosary daily. Offer every Mass and every sorrow through her immaculate hands. Speak her titles without fear: Mother of God, Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix of All Graces. For these titles glorify Christ through His Mother, not apart from Him.
Pope St. Pius X said: “Through Mary we go to Jesus, and through Jesus we go to the Father.”
That is the entire Gospel of love. Let this truth burn in your hearts and your families. When darkness grows, lift high the lamp of Mary. Her light is not her own; it is the reflection of the Sun of Justice, Christ the Lord. And that flame cannot be quenched.
O Mary, Immaculate Virgin, Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of all graces, teach us to stand beside you at the Cross, to offer our lives in union with yours, and to draw every soul to the Heart of Jesus. Be our Mother in life, our advocate in death, and our joy in eternity. Amen.
And may Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Bishop Joseph E. Strickland
Bishop Emeritus
