Mary is so tender an Advocate that she does not refuse to defend the Cause even of the most miserable.
STORY
In one of our missions, after the sermon on the Blessed Virgin Mary, which it is always customary in our Congregation to preach, a very old man came to make his confession to one of the Fathers. Filled with consolation he said, “Father, our Blessed Lady has granted me a grace.” “What grace has she granted you?” the confessor asked. “You must know, Father,” he replied, “that for five-and-thirty years I have made sacrilegious confessions, for there is a sin which I was ashamed to confess; and yet I have passed through many dangers, have many times been at the point of death, and had I then died, I should certainly have been lost; but now our Blessed Lady has touched my heart with grace to tell it.” This he said weeping, and shedding so many tears, that he quite excited compassion. The Father, after hearing his confession, asked him what devotion he had practised. He replied that on Saturdays he had never failed to abstain from milk-diet in honor of Mary, and that on this account the Blessed Virgin had shown him mercy. At the same time he gave the Father leave to publish the fact.
PRAYER
O great Mother of my Lord, I see full well that my ingratitude towards God and you, and this too for so many years, has merited for me that you should justly abandon me, and no longer have a care of me, for an ungrateful soul is no longer worthy of favors. But I, O Lady, have a high idea of your great goodness; I believe it to be far greater than my ingratitude. Continue, then, O refuge of sinners, and cease not to help a miserable sinner who confides in you. O Mother of mercy, deign to extend a helping hand to a poor fallen wretch who asks you for pity. O Mary, either defend me yourself, or tell me to whom I can have recourse, and who is better able to defend me than you, and where I can find with God a more clement and powerful advocate than you, who are his Mother. You, in becoming the Mother of our Saviour, was thereby made the fitting instrument to save sinners, and was given me for my salvation. O Mary, save him who has recourse to you. I deserve not your love, but it is your own desire to save sinners, that makes me hope that you love me. And if you love me, how can I be lost? O my own beloved Mother, if by you I save my soul, as I hope to do, I shall no longer be ungrateful, I shall make up for my past ingratitude, and for the love which you have shown me, by my everlasting praises, and all the affections of my soul. Happy in heaven, where you reign, and will reign forever, I shall always sing your mercies, and kiss for eternity those loving hands which have delivered me from hell, as often as I have deserved it by my sins. O Mary, my liberator, my hope, my Queen, my advocate, my own sweet Mother, I love you; I desire your glory, and I love you forever. Amen, amen. Thus do I hope.
