Layman

Meets

Our Lady

By

Bill Smith

THE QUEEN’S WORK
3115 South Grand Boulevard

St. Louis 18, Missouri



Nihil obstat:

William F. Fischer, S. T. D.

Censor Librorum

Imprimatur:

F Joseph E. Ritter

Archiepiscopus Sancti Ludovici

Sancti Ludovici
,
die 26 Julii 1949

First printing, October 1949

Any financial profit made by

the Central Office of the Sodality

will be used for the advancement

of the Sodality Movement and

the cause of Catholic Action.

Copyright 1949

THE QUEEN’S WORK

OeaddM



A Layman Meets
Our Lady

By

Bill Smith

O
UR lady does so much for mankind that

it is impossible to find in the Litany

of Loretto or among the Blessed Mother’s

many other titles one single invocation that

fully expresses her privileges and preroga-

tives. The Lady does so much for people

like you and me. I might even go so far as

to say that she does things to people like

you and me. But we’ll see more about that

later.

I just said that it is her business to do

things for people. That’s a good sound

piece of Catholic teaching. We know that

she is called by the somewhat awesome and

technical title of Mediatrix of All Graces.

That simply means that every grace that

was merited through her divine Son, and all

the graces she merited, and all the graces

the saints ever stored up — all of these
merits are applied to us through her. In

other words, every time her Son, Jesus

Christ, wants to give anybody grace, he

sends it through her hands.

I have talked to a lot of people about

this power of the Blessed Mother, and some

of them seem to feel that because she hands

out the graces Christ wishes to bestow on

us, she is in a position to circumvent him.

— 3 —



Or to put it another way, suppose she

doesn’t want Joe Doaks to have a certain

grace that her Son wants Joe to have; then,

these people feel, she could refuse to let Joe

have the grace. Or suppose she wanted

Jenny Doaks to have a certain grace that

her Son didn’t want Jenny to have. Then

again, these people feel, she could hand that

grace to Jenny and her Son wouldn’t have

anything to say about it.

Distribution of Graces

Needless to say, these ideas about the

Lady are quite false. All that she is, is a

sort of middleman (or perhaps we should

call her the middle woman) in the distribu-

tion of graces. The main fact is that her

will is so fully in accord with the will of

her divine Son, that he and she work

together like a team. Therefore, she never

gives a grace to a person he doesn’t want

it given to, and she doesn’t prevent some-

body from getting a grace that her Son

wants that person to have.

It is easy enough to understand the Lady

as the Mediatrix of All Graces. The hard

thing for us to understand is this unity of

her will with the will of her Son, and yet it

is the source of her power. She always and

inevitably does what her Son wants. She

always did. It is hard for us to understand

a person like that because we so often do

things her divine Son doesn’t want. A less
pleasant way of putting the matter is to

say that we commit sins, for committing sin

simply mearfe following our own will instead

of God’s will.

— 4 —



Secret of Sanctity

The reason the Lady is so powerful is

because she and her divine Son are always

in accord on everything. He wants what

she wants, and she wants what he wants.

In that statement lies the secret of sanctity

for us too. We must want what God wants

and then have the courage to do it.

The person who can best help us to do

this is, of course, God’s own Mother, for

all her power to help us, direct us, and

guide us comes from her closeness to Christ

and from the unity of her will with his.

We must get to know her, and then we
must follow her way of life so that we may

make our wills more and more like God’s.

Hard to Know

Like most women, the Lady is somewhat

of an enigma at first. Anybody who has

ever met the girl of his dreams can tell you

what a hard time he had in really getting

to know her. The dream girl seems so

aloof; she seems as if she isn’t an ordinary

mortal. She seems so superior to every-

body else. The boy envisions his wondergirl

as living in a serene never-never land where

everybody from her grubby little brother

to her rather harassed mother and father

must feel that they are associating with a

lovely angel much too beautiful and good

for this world.

And very often the girl, who is perfectly

normal and has her little spats with pop

and mom and with little brother, and who
is just like anybody else, can’t disabuse her

— 5—



worshiping* boyfriend of these notions. I

had almost called them “silly” notions, and

so, in a sense, they are. But they aren’t

entirely silly, for the most wonderful part

of love is to put the loved one on a pedestal

—a pedestal so high that it seems as if it
would be just enough for the lover to be

able to touch the foot of his beloved, and

then to dedicate himself to her service

forever.

The Awakening

It is unfortunate, however, that in many

cases boy not only meets girl, but boy gets

to know girl. And the better he gets to

know her, the more he finds out that she is

quite terribly human. He finds out that she

can get angry an4 that her serene brow can

become wrinkled with frowns. He finds

out that she eats and sleeps and lives just

like ordinary people—not in any wonderful
never-never land, but in the hard land of

everyday reality. And then, too often, the

boy is disillusioned, and if he doesn’t really

love the girl, he becomes cynical and says,

“Aw, all women are alike—just snares and
delusions. I’m through with them forever.”

Of course, he may not keep this attitude
very long, for perhaps some day he will

really meet a girl who, with all her faults,

is so wonderful and so mysterious to him

that he will go through the rest of his life

with that undying spark of love still burn-

ing in his heart for her.

Mothers!

No matter what we men may say about

women, no matter how cynical we may

— 6 —



become about their very human weaknesses,

we still realize that there is in them some

wondrous spring of mystery, of strength, of

goodness, of tenderness. For after all,

nature made them to be the greatest thing

on earth: mothers. And none of them ever

really lose the urge toward that great

career, no matter how they may obscure it,

or hide it, or ruin it.

I suppose, then, that the mystery of

women lies in that deep-rooted mother urge

that they all have. I suppose that is what

we men admire in them and I suppose that

is why, somehow, we never feel quite

worthy of them. They can be mothers;

we can only be fathers.

The Lady has about her at first the same

mystery, the same aloofness that all women

have. She was not only designed by God to

be a mother, the way all women are

designed, but she was designed to be the

Mother of Mothers—yes, and the Mother
of fathers—because she was designed to be
the Mother of God himself.

Introduction

The problem is to get to know her. The

first introduction to her can come about in

various ways, just as the introduction to

any woman can come about in various ways.

In my own case, I met the girl who was

to be my wife by the purest chance. In

fact, it was on a blind date at a college

prom.

Then Fve known cases of boys and girls

who were raised as nextdoor neighbors and

— 7 —



who never thought very much about each

other until one day the great light suddenly

dawned, and they were in love. The little

kid with the pigtails and the dolls suddenly

blossomed into a wonderful, mysterious,

lovable creature for that other little kid

who once carried dead rats in his pocket

and thought of nothing better than climbing

trees and avoiding taking a bath.

The whole world suddenly changed for

them. She felt a new power to attract a

man. He took to washing behind his ears

and became very solicitous about pleasing

her. They were in love, and the whole world

sang, and the sun never set.

Similar Experience

I think each of us must undergo a similar

experience in meeting the Lady. We must
fall in love with her, not only the way a

boy falls in love with a girl, but the way a

child truly loves his mother.

In her mysterious womanly way she is at

once the Lady who demands the love and

the honor and the respect that medieval

knights gave their ladies and the Mother

who sees in each of us the image of her own

Son. Maybe we have spoiled that image of

his by our selfishness or our wickedness, but

she is still Mother enough to see far into

our souls and say, “That’s my boy” or

“That’s my girl.”

The Question

But the question still remains: How do

we get to know her?

8—



As far as Catholics are concerned, our

knowing her is similar to the case of the

boy and the girl next door. We have, so to

say, been brought up with her. From the

time we could talk we knew her name and

called her Mother. As we grew7 older we

heard more about her. We learned how

she was the Mother of the baby Jesus who

came down to earth and was born on

Christmas morning. But when Christmas

morning came, we were often too interested

in our presents to think about the Present

she gave us. Later on we were taught to

pray to her and we said her rosary. But

when we said it, we thought of it as a sort

of never-ending treadmill of prayers that

pop or mom made us say or as a task that
had to be finished as soon as possible so

we could go out to play.

Always Present

Somehow, though, she was always there

in the background of our thoughts and

prayers and hopes. And then maybe one

day when we were in a jam—maybe we
were worried about passing an examination

we hadn’t prepared for—we wore out the
step in front of her altar, asking her to

make us wise and learned when we hadn’t

done anything about it ourselves. Already,

you see, we expected miracles from her.

And more often than not Her lazy little
client did get a passing mark through very

little effort of his own.

Then we forgot about her for a while.
And maybe we have gone on forgetting
about her, the most lovable of all women,

— 9—



the most tender of all mothers. Perhaps we

still look at her statue in church or we

carry her picture in our prayer books or

we still mumble the prayers of the rosary

without really talking to her. But I promise

you that one day she will burst upon your

consciousness with a sudden ray of light,

and you will find that you are in love—in
love with the greatest woman and the

dearest Mother in the world.

Then you will begin to understand the

heretofore seeming doubletalk of the Litany.

You will share the sentiments of millions of

men and women of all times and all condi-

tions who have sung of her the way a lover

serenades his beloved. You will see why

they can’t get finished talking about her in

the language of love. And you will see

why I say there is no single title which

expresses all she means to mankind.

Meeting the Lady

I have said that the Lady has stood

behind all your prayers and mine from the

time we first began to learn to pray. In

the same way she has stood behind the

hopes and prayers of men and women from

the beginning of time. She is the one who

was foretold by God’s own words to Adam

and Eve when he said that a woman would

crush the head of the serpent.

The Jews waited almost as much for her

to be manifested as they did for Christ

himself. Jewish girls from the dawn of

history hoped that they might be the chosen

one to bear the little Messias. And yet,

when he came to earth neither he nor his

— 10 —



Mother was recognized by the great major-

ity of people. It has always been part of

her fate to be in the background—not only
of history, but of our own lives. But she is

always there.

Then in the Middle Ages men began to

build great cathedrals to honor her and

her Son. They built Chartres on the site of

a cave where the Druids worshipped a black

madonna. They decorated the church as if

it were for the residence of a Queen-

Mother—and so it was. All the jewels and
laces and trinkets that women love and

that men love to give them are in Chartres

—presents to the Lady. But these jewels
are the flaming blues and greens and

scarlets of the wondrous windows. Her

laces are the delicate traceries of the carved

stone. Her trinkets are the soaring columns

and the teeming statues of the facade.

Never Satisfied

Yet, like a typical woman, she seems

never to be satisfied. The great towers of

Chartres have been repeatedly struck by

lightning, and the church itself has been

reduced to rubble by fire. It is almost as

if she said, “I want something new now.

Build me another cathedral. But whatever
you build, I shall want another, better one.”

Of course, she is right. She has that

great sense of the fitness of things that

most women have. By her very dissatis-
faction with things as they are, she, like

many women, inspires us to even greater
deeds and even greater effort.

But unlike most women, she doesn't

— 11 —



demand these things in a moment of caprice

or for her own selfish honor. She is eter-

nally demanding that we rebuild our lives,

just as she has so often demanded that her

cathedral at Chartres be rebuilt. It isn’t so

much that she is dissatisfied, but she knows

we can do better with God’s help, and so

she leads us on.

I think that here, then, is our first point

of contact with her. She is, in a sense,

dissatisfied with the careless way we handle

our lives, and she knows that deep down

inside ourselves we too are dissatisfied.

Then, when we are most lonely and most

down on our luck, she works on that sense

of dissatisfaction. It is then that we are

apt to find her standing at our side with

that quaint, inscrutable smile that she must

have had when the Evangelist wrote of

her : “. . . his mother kept all these things

carefully in her heart.”

End of the Road

Very often you will find her at what

looks like the end of the road for you. The

reason for meeting her here is, I think,

because it is about the only time she can

really get a chance to talk to us alone.

When everything is going along fine and we

are contented and successful, we don’t have

time for her. We scarcely ever think of
her. But when the going gets rough, when

we come to what looks like a dead-end in

our lives, when it seems our friends have

deserted us—it is then that she comes into
the picture. Then we are often only too

ready to find a friend. And of course, there

— 12 —



she stands, as she has stood by us all along,

only we didn’t see her.

At those moments, then, when we are in

really desperate straits, she offers us a

chance to fall in love with her and to

remake our lives. It doesn’t matter what

the trouble is—she is always there, waiting.
Perhaps it is a broken romance and we

feel life isn’t worth living any longer.

Perhaps it is the loss of a job and we

wonder when and how we are going to eat

again. Perhaps it is sickness or death in

the family. When all seems most lost and
we are most lonely, she is always there to

turn to.

It is then that we realize why she is

called Comforter of the Afflicted and Help

of Christians. It is then that she starts

doing things for us and to us.

What the Lady Does

Very often, on our first real meeting with

the Lady, she does things to us before she

starts doing things for us.

There is only one thing she demands

before she starts going to work in our

behalf, and that is that we offer ourselves

to her. But beware how you offer yourself

to her, for she takes you at your word.

Sometimes before we come quite to the

point of offering ourselves to her, she has

watched us trying to twist God’s will our

way through prayers and novenas and even

self-sacrifice. I think she must smile at all

these goings-on when they are done by

somebody like us who has a very distorted

notion of what prayer is.

— 13 —



Real Prayer

Many of us feel that by praying we can

get God to change his divine will in our

regard. We feel that somehow God hasn’t
quite made up his mind about us, and that

by praying we can get him to do so. Rather,

there is one fundamental thing about prayer

which we must remember. Prayer will not

change God’s will, which has been made up

from all eternity. Therefore, our prayer

should be that God’s will, whatever it is,

will be accomplished and that we may have

the strength and grace to do whatever is

necessary to accomplish it. Prayer to

various saints, pious exercises like novenas

and holy hours, of course, are all to the

good. They help us to pray ever so hard

that God’s will may be done. But they

cannot change that will.

Now that in itself is often a hard thing

to realize, and it is a harder thing to accept.

If we don’t get what we pray for right

away, we often tend to be discouraged, and

to say: “Oh, what’s the use?”

The Lady Enters

It is here again that the Lady enters the

picture. We said a little earlier that she is
an expert in knowing the will of God, for

her will and his have always been in

absolute accord. Not even the greatest saints

can say that. But she can say that. That

is why she is an expert in helping us to

bring our wills into line with God’s will,

if we only give her a chance.

It seems to me, therefore, that while

prayers to the saints are valuable, they are

— 14—



most valuable insofar as they lead us to

meet the Lady. Remember, every saint had

a deep devotion to the Blessed Mother of

God and they recognize her as their Queen.

What is more natural, then, than that they

introduce us to her through prayer?

But to return to the matter of prayer and

God’s will, what happens to us when we

have been praying for something and don’t

get it? We can do one of two things—you
or I can say : “Religion is the bunk. Prayer

is a waste of time. The Church is a fake.

I’ll forget the whole thing and go out and

live whatever kind of life I choose.” Or

we can do something else—something you
and I must do. You and I, when we find

that God does not will something we want,

can turn to the Lady for consolation.

Peace of Mind

There have been so many books written

lately on peace of mind and how to relieve

nervous tension that it would seem that

everybody ought to be peaceful, happy, and

quiet. But as we all know, people are not.

Even you and I aren’t at peace with our-

selves and with others. All sorts of things

worry us and bother us and upset us. Maybe

they aren’t big things. Maybe they are only

stupid, small things, like the annoying habit

somebody has of sucking an empty tooth

when we’re sitting quietly in a theater

trying to concentrate on a movie. Or maybe

it’s a baby crying at two o’clock in the

morning.

Maybe something else bothers us: love

troubles, family troubles, lack of money to

— 15 —



do the things we’d like. Whatever it is, it

can be a very troublesome trouble. Then our

nerves get jangled and we fly off the handle

at pop or mom or little brother, or if we’re
married, at our husband or wife.

And somehow all the books in the world

don’t seem to help us to get that peace of

mind they’re always talking about. So what

shall we do? To whom shall we turn?

To the Lady

It is time, then, to turn to the Lady.

Maybe this is just the moment she has been

waiting for: when we are down on our luck

and everything is going dead wrong.

Now I don’t mean that she will instantly

cure a broken leg, or heal a person suffering

from cancer, or even hand us a million

dollars, however badly we might want those

things for ourselves or for somebody else.

But one thing she will give us is peace of

mind and the strength to do God’s will in

any given situation.

Consecration

But first of all, we have to turn ourselves

over to her. And I mean turn ourselves over

to her with no strings attached. We have
to tell her that we belong to her totally and

entirely, and that we want nothing other

than what she wants, and we want it only

in the way she wants it.

This is not easy to do, for at first we may

say that we want what she wants, but not

really mean it. We will still have hidden
away in the back of our minds the things

we want.

— 16 —



But never mind them for the moment.

Let’s just concentrate on her.

What to Do

The first way to concentrate on her, of

course, is to get right with her Son. If we

haven’t been going to Holy Communion

and confession very regularly, now is the

time to start—even if we don’t feel like it.
But we have to make one effort, cost what

it will, to go to confession and Holy Com-

munion. And then we have to keep it up

—

not whenever we feel like it, but regularly:

every week, and if possible, every day.

Along with all this, we must start doing

exactly what she told the children of

Fatima: say the rosary every day .

At first the rosary and Holy Communion

are going to seem like colossal tasks. It is

too hard to get up in the morning. It is

too hard to take time out to say the rosary.

But let me tell you, it is not so hard as

having your heart torn and bleeding every

hour of the day.

Voices

It is through the rosary and Holy Com-

munion that we shall be able to talk to

the Lady and that she will be able to talk

to us and guide us. Very few of us, maybe

none of us, will ever have direct inspiration

from the Blessed Mother or the saints, the

way Joan of Arc had her Voices. But each

of us can have from the Lady some sort of

guiding voices that are all our own. Let’s

see what these voices are.

First of all, there is that voice which

— 17—



normally works within each one of us: the

voice of conscience. We know right from
wrong; and we know whether we are falling

over the ragged edge of sin or whether

what we are doing is right. If we are not

sure about some things, that is where the

sacrament of confession comes in. The con-

fessor is there to set us right about the

doubtful things. Once he has spoken, we

must follow him. Sometimes his advice is

going to hurt but we must follow it, for his

is the second voice the Lady sends us.

The next voice is that of the people to

whom we owe honor or respect or who are

our superiors, put over us by God. For

boys and girls, this means parents and

teachers
;
for employees, that ogre, the boss

;

for married people, the legitimate wishes

and desires of husband or wife. For

example, if a husband is continually

running counter to the legitimate wishes of

his wife, he can be almost sure he is

running counter to the wishes of God and

the Blessed Mother.

Strident and Annoying

Then there are other voices the Lady

lets us hear. Some of these are pretty

strident at times — and pretty annoying.
Older children certainly have some obliga-

tion to help their younger brothers and

sisters, even when the youngsters get cross

and crabby.

Finally, there is the obligation of charity

toward those around us, be they friends or

enemies. It is easy to help friends. The

hard part comes when we have to help those

— 18 —



who dislike us or lie about us or make fun

of us. And yet they too sometimes almost

shout at us for help and understanding and

love.

These, then, are voices which should be

for us just as compelling as the Voices of

Joan. Actually, they are the voices of God

and his Blessed Mother who call to us

through a whole variety of sometimes very

unpleasant people. But the Lady is still

there, waiting for us to hear her gentle

call in the midst of these often strident

and cross cacklings.

Typical Woman

I have told you that the Lady is a typical

woman—she is never satisfied. She always
expects more from those who love her and

want to follow her.

After we have started listening to the

voices I have told you about, she will speak

to you with her own voice. She will demand

more and more things from you. First, she

will ask little extra sacrifices. Maybe one

of them will be putting off eating a bit of

candy after a meal. Maybe it will be an

extra prayer or two. Maybe it will be doing

without a cigarette when you want it very

badly. Somehow, quite silently and deep in

your own heart, she will tell you what she

wants and when she wants it.

Then you will say to yourself, “Now at

last she will give me what I want. She will

give me the boy or the girl I want to marry.

She will give me the raise I want or the

automobile I have had my eye on for a

— 19 —



couple of years or whatever else I am

praying for.”

But I say to you that probably at that

moment the Lady will say one great big

“No.” So what do you do then?

The Lady Says "No"

When the Lady says “No” to our prayers,

then is really the time for us to trust her

and to have even greater confidence in her.

It is also high time for us to re-examine

the motives we had in wanting the thing

for which we are praying. God will always

answer our prayers and he will give us

what we ask, provided it is in accord with

his will. The Blessed Mother cannot change

that will, but she can assist us in accept-

ing it.

If we ask the Lady for something, and we

don’t get it, perhaps it is an indication that

the thing we want would not be good for us,

or that God just doesn’t want us to have it

Next, we ought to try to find out if per-

haps we didn’t ask for the thing with a

wrong motive. Perhaps we prayed so

ardently for something only because of our

own selfishness. Maybe we didn’t want it

because it would help us to come closer to

God, but we only wanted it for our own

selfish use—to make us look bigger in the
eyes of our neighbors or to satisfy some

selfish pleasure or vanity. In that case, it

is probable that the Blessed Mother will

turn a deaf ear to our prayers.

But there is still another consideration:

the sense of timing that the Lady displays

when she does answer our prayers.

— 20—



is it Good Now?

When we pray, we seldom think that

what we want may not be good for us here

and now. Maybe we are not ready for the

favor yet. The Lady may know full well

that if she gave us what we wanted at this

particular time, we would be so cocksure

of ourselves that we would not appreciate

it, and we might stop praying and abuse it.

So, if the Lady says “No” to a certain

prayer at a certain time, it does not mean

that she has not heard the prayer or wilt

never answer it. It could be that she is

just waiting until the proper time—until
we are able to accept the favor without its

bowling us over.

That is why we ought to pray with con-

fidence, try to purify our motives, and put

our trust blindly in the Lady.

Most Important

This last requirement is one of the most

important of all. It is certainly the hardest,

for it requires us to accept the Lady’s “No,”

and still go on trusting her. It is at this

point that we must really put the whole of

our request into her hands, for she has

shown us that we are powerless.

I imagine that if we would closely ex-

amine the purpose of our requests to the

Lady we would find that most of them

involve some other person, and for the

request to be granted, we are really asking

that she change the heart or the mind or

the will of somebody else.

The boy who wants to marry the girl is

— 21—



really praying that somehow the Lady will

make the girl receptive to the boy's pro-

posal. The man who wants a raise is really
praying that the Lady will soften the boss'

heart and make him hand over the extra

money on payday. The man who is praying

desperately for a house for his family is

really asking that some landlord will favor

him or that somebody else will vacate a

house.

You see, many of our prayers do not

involve us alone, but they really involve

other people and a change of heart that

has to be wrought in these other people.

A Great Power

When the Lady says “No," then, she is

really telling us that she can sway the

hearts and minds of others where we can

only argue or plead with them—and often
to no purpose.

This great power of hers was implied, I

think, when she talked to the children of

Fatima. She said that people had to say

her rosary every day or the world would be

plunged into a blood-bath of war and per-

secution. She was really saying that if we

prayed, she would soften hearts, change

minds, and so arrange things that peace

would come about in the world. As she

knows and as we know, all the diplomatic

maneuvering and conferences haven't

brought peace; all the compromises and

treaties haven't brought peace. That is

because peace depends upon men's hearts'

being changed. But she said that if people

would say her rosary, she herself would so

— 22 —



touch men's hearts and she would so

arrange things that peace would come.

Since she has this tremendous power over

the hearts and minds of men, why should

we not trust her blindly? Why should we

not pray to her every day?

But We DoiTt

And yet we don't. We still try to run

things ourselves. Very often when we do,

we only mess things up worse than ever.

By our anxiety we disturb other people. By

our impatience we try to force others to do

what we want. If we would only let the

Lady alone to work in her own way, we

could be absolutely certain that our prayers

will be answered the way she and her

divine Son w§.nt them to be answered. And

we may be sure that she will give us the

answer at the very time it is good for us to

have it, and not before.

She tells us, in effect: “If you pray to me,

if you trust me absolutely, and if you dedi-

cate yourself to me, I will give you the

means to do whatever my divine Son wants
you to do. If you need a million dollars

for some work he wants you to do, then

you will get the million dollars. If you need

an automobile to do my Son's work, then
you will get the automobile. If you really

need a raise in salary to do what my Son
wants you to do with that extra money,

then you will get it.

“But don't come to me and ask for a

million dollars or an automobile or a raise

or anything else if you just want it for

— 23 —



yourself and for your own vanity. Then I

will probably say ‘No’.”

Four Essentials

To sum up, then, we must have a good

motive, we must pray with confidence, we

must continue to pray, and we must trust

the Lady absolutely. Once we have done

these things, most of our anxiety will dis-

appear and we will start to achieve peace

of soul. Most of our worry comes about

because we want things we can’t have. Then

we start to figure out ways of getting these

things, and if we don’t get them through

our own efforts, we fall into despair and

say, “What’s the use of praying and being

good? I might as well be bad and do as

I please.”

In any event, we continue to be anxious

and bothered, and we become unhappy at

our lack of success because at last we have

seen how powerless we really are.

Hands Outstretched

But all the time the Lady is standing

there with her hands outstretched to us and

telling us that if we would only trust her

as a Mother, and do . the will of her divine

Son, we could be at peace with ourselves,

with our neighbors, and with God. She

tries so hard to show us that there is only

one thing worthwhile in the world: saving

our souls.

From what we have just said, it may

seem as if the Blessed Mother of God

doesn’t do much for us, or that she won’t

do much for us. Perhaps we feel that way

because we want too ardently some physical,

— 24—



tangible favor—the automobile, the husband
or wife, the extra money in the pay

envelope. Now all these things are good in

themselves and it is not wrong to want

them. But the thing to think of is this:

Are they good for us to have? Does God

want us to have them? Would we use them

for God if we got them? Should we have

them right now?

Reorientation

Before the Lady does anything else for

us, she sets our minds and wills in order,

so that we may truly appreciate her favors.

In other words, she turns us toward God.

This reorienting of our minds and wills

toward God is sometimes a very rough

process. We want what we want when we
want it. But the Lady often holds off giving

us what we want until we make up our

minds to turn to God. We can show her
that we really mean to turn to him by doing

what she demanded of the children of

Fatima: saying the rosary every day.

Also, we can go to Holy Communion more

frequently.

And all the while we are doing these

things, we can be praying for what we want

or think we need. But we must pray with

confidence, and we must be prepared to

have the Lady sometimes say “No.”

Just when we think we have the favor

in our hands, we will find that it escapes

us. She permits this, not because she is

capricious and wants to see us squirm, but

to strengthen our wills and hearts and to

encourage us in the practice of confidence.

— 25—



When we get these setbacks in life, we
often feel that the Lady has done something

to us, instead of for us. And so, indeed, she
has. She has permitted us to be disappointed

so that we may be still stronger in our
confidence in her power.

Not Spoiled

She knows, as does any mother, that if

a child is handed everything on a silver

platter, soon he will become ever more and

more demanding. Soon he will want every-

thing for himself and he will forget about

his brothers and sisters and the others in

the family. He will become a spoiled brat.

Believe me, the Lady takes good care

that her children do not become spoiled.

And yet, for this very reason, she often

appears to us to have no heart.

Then again, like the good housewife that

she is, she permits nothing to be wasted.

She provides generously for her children,

for is she not the Mediatrix of All Graces?

But she does not want us to waste the

graces she gives us. If she gave us right

away whatever we wanted, we might be like

a child with a shiny new knife. We might
cut ourselves with it rather than use it to

cut something else. Like children we may

want the knife but we may still be too inept

to use it properly.

Nothing Harmful

She refuses, too, to let us have a gift

that she knows would only cause us harm.

She knows all the trouble we can get into

— 26—



and she knows exactly where our weak-

nesses lie. So, like a good mother again, she

never gives us anything that she knows we

can’t handle properly. Theologians call these

things which are dangerous to us, occasions

of sin. So, rest assured, she will never give

us anything that, in our weakness, will be

an occasion of sin for us.

But for every disappointment, for every

time she doesn’t give us what we think we

want, she gives us a greater consolation to

make up for it. She shows us a little more

of the smiling face of herself and of her

divine Son. Little by little she lets us see

how wonderful God is, and how worthwhile

it is to love him and him alone. Little by

little, she leads us from a desire for the

things of this world, to a desire for the

things of God and of heaven.

Slow Process

It’s a slow process with most of us because

we fight it so hard. But she is always ready

to lead our halting steps forward. There

are times when we are afraid and lonely,

and then we want to be tied to her apron-

strings. But after a while we get impatient

and we try to run on ahead of her down

the road of life. Then she has to take us by

the hand and lead us back to the safety of

her company.

So, here is one prayer I think we ought

always to say: “Dear Lady, I am weak
and stubborn. But I love you, even in the

midst of my weakness. If the time ever
comes when I shall try to escape from

your guiding hand, please pull me back to

— 27—



you, that I may always walk down the

road of life and into eternity with my hand
clasped trustingly in yours.”

— 28—



*7a Complete tyoun. JlibsiGSuf,

of Pamphlets -About

OUR LADY

Madonna in Art

(Famous Madonna Paintings

in Colors)

Mary After Her Son's Ascension

Mary of the United States,

Mother of the United Nations

The Mother of God

Our Lady's Assumption

When Mary Walked the Earth

How Our Lady May Have

Looked

Are You Heeding Fatima

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"The Second

Greatest Prayer”

by Charles Corcoran, S. J.

For Meditation

This booklet not only makes

mental prayer less difficult, but

the meaning of the prayer,

"Hail, Mary," becomes rich

with new significance.

o

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PAMPHLETS that . . .

. . . correct misconceptions

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. . . instill proper attitudes

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Are the Gospels True?

Death Isn't Terrible

Has Life Any Meaning?

Man Says: "If I Were God .

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My Faith and I

Prayers Are Always Answered

When We Go to Confession

The Man the Savior Praised

The Story of Adam and Eve

Why Not Be a Saint?

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St. Louis 18, Missouri