she is not thereby removed to an
inaccessible distance. She who is privileged to bear the incredible
title, MOTHER OF GOD is our Mother as well. Upon the Cross our Lord
said to us in the person of His beloved Disciple, "Behold thy Mother";
and it is a mother's love that we find flowing to us from the heart of
Mary. Have we been cold to her, and inappreciative of her love? Have we
felt that we have no need of her in the conduct of our lives? If so,
what we have been doing is to isolate ourselves from the divinely
provided fount of human sympathy which ever flows from our star-crowned
Mother. Is life so rich in sources of help and sympathy and love that we
can afford to over-pass the eagerness of God's saints to help us, the
willingness of the very Mother of God to intercede? Is not the life that
shuts out from itself the society of heaven pitifully impoverished?

Too many of us are like the man who owned the field wherein was the
buried treasure. Limitless aid is at our disposal, but on condition that
we want it and will seek it. Let us try to understand what it is to have
at our disposal the love and sympathy of the saints of God,--that they
are not remote inhabitants of a distant sphere whose present interests
have led to forgetfulness of what they once were, whose present joy is
so intense as to make them self-centred, but that their very attainment
of perfection implies the perfection of their love and the completeness
of their sympathy. The perfection of God's saints and their attainment
of the end of their course in the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision, has
but made them more sensitive of our needs and more eager to help.

The spiritual wisdom and power of the Mother of God is at our disposal
to-day. To the feebleness of our prayers may be added the spiritual
wisdom and strength of her intercession. He Whose will it is that we
should pray for one another, wills too that the prayers of His Blessed
Mother should be at the disposal of all who call upon her. Let us take
the fact of the intercession of the Queen of Saints seriously as a
source of power ever open to us.

Thou who art God's Mother and also ours, thou who lookst constantly into
the Face of the Son, thou who art the fullest manifestation of the love
of the Blessed Trinity, thou Mary, our Mother, pray for us now and in
the hour of our death.

All hail, O Virgin crowned with stars
and moon under thy feet,
Obtain us pardon of our sins