Mary is the Peace-maker between Sinners and God.
STORY
In Braganza there was a young man, who, after giving up the confraternity, abandoned himself to so many crimes that one day, in despair, he went to drown himself in a river; but before doing so, he addressed our Blessed Lady, saying: “O Mary, I once served you in the confraternity; help me.” The most Blessed Virgin appeared to him and said: “Yes, and now what are you going to do? Do you wish to lose yourself both in soul and body? Go, confess your sins, and rejoin the confraternity.” The young man, encouraged hereby, thanked the Blessed Virgin, and changed his life.
PRAYER
O my most sweet Lady, since your office is, as William of Paris says, that of a mediatress between God and sinners, I will address you in the words of St Thomas of Villanova; “Fulfil your office in my behalf, O tender advocate; do your work. Say not that my cause is too difficult to gain; for I know, and all tell me so, that every cause, no matter how desperate, if undertaken by you, is never, and never will be, lost. And will mine be lost? Ah no, this I cannot fear. The only thing that I might fear is, that, on seeing the multitude of my sins, you might not undertake my defence. But, on seeing your immense mercy, and the very great desire of your most sweet heart to help the most abandoned sinners, even this I cannot fear. And who was ever lost that had recourse to you? Therefore I invoke your aid, O my great advocate, my refuge, my hope, my mother Mary. To your hands do I entrust the cause of my eternal salvation. To you do I commit my soul; it was lost, but you have to save it. I will always thank our Lord for having given me this great confidence in you; and which, notwithstanding my unworthiness, I feel is an assurance of salvation. I have but one fear to afflict me, O beloved Queen, and that is, that I may one day, by my own negligence, lose this confidence in you. And therefore I implore you, O Mary, by the love you bear to Jesus, yourself to preserve and increase in me more and more this sweet confidence in your intercession, by which I hope most certainly to recover the divine friendship, that I have up to now so madly despised and lost; and having recovered it, I hope, through you, to preserve it; and preserving it by the same means, I hope at length to thank you for it in heaven, and there to sing God’s mercies and yours for all eternity. Amen. This is my hope; thus may it be, thus will it be.
