MERCY AND HOPE OF THE SEED

Because his goodness is infinite, the king of heaven is most eager to enrich us with his graces. On our part, we must have confidence. To increase this confidence, God has given us his own Mother as our Mother and advocate, and has supplied her with the power to help us. Therefore he wants us to place our hope of salvation and of every blessing in her.

To hope in Mary, the Mother of God, who can really obtain grace and eternal life for people, is to do something very pleasing to the heart of God. For God desires to see Mary honored in this way, that same Mary whom in this world he loved and who loved and honored him more than all angels and all people together.

That is why we justly and reasonably call Mary our hope, trusting, as Saint Robert Bellarmine says, to obtain through her intercession what we cannot obtain b our prayers alone. Saint Anselm says that we pray to her so that her dignity as intercessory may supply for our unworthiness. And he adds that when we invoke the Blessed Virgin with this kind of hope, it does not mean that we lack hope in God’s mercy, but rather that we fear our own lack of the proper dispositions.

She is the Mother who gives birth to holy hope in our hearts. Not the hope of the transitory goods of this life, but the hope of boundless joys and the eternal goods of heaven. Saint Ephrem greets Mary by saying: “Hail, hope of my soul! Hail, sure salvation of Christians! Hail, helper of sinners! Hail, defense of the faithful and salvation of the world.” Saint Basil, too, is right in reminding us that after God we have no other hope than Mary.

Reflecting on the present arrangement of Providence by which, as Saint Bernard says, God has disposed that all who are to be saved must be saved through Mary, Saint Ephrem says to her: “Lady, never stop guarding and protecting us, because, next to God, we have no other hope but you.” Saint Thomas of Villanova says the same thing: “You are our only refuge, our only hope.” Saint Bernard gives the reason for this when he says: “Behold, O man, God’s merciful plan. About to redeem the human race, he places the price in Mary’s hands.” He places the price in Mary’s hands so that she can dispense it at will.

(Saint Alphonsus Liguori)