Pope Francis met this October 7, feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, with the Confraternity of Our Lady of Montserrat on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of its foundation.
He described her role and intercession in a variety of ways:
To celebrate Mary is to celebrate the closeness and tenderness of God, who comes to meet his people, who does not leave us alone, who left us a Mother who accompanies us and takes care of us.
Looking at Mary, one understands the closeness of God, the compassion of God in a mother, and the tenderness of God.
She is the Mother. Just think, in these 800 years of her presence in Montserrat, how many people have visited her shrine, fingering the beads of the rosary, asking with humility and simplicity the intercession of the Moreneta for their loved ones!
Enrique Lopez-Tamayo Biosca-(CC BY 2.0)
When Mary hears our prayer, she makes this gesture, which is the most Marian gesture: She points to Jesus. “Do whatever he tells you.”
Mary is a lawyer (advocate), but today the word “lawyer” is too functional. Let’s rather say she is a “facilitator.” Mary is a facilitator in conflicts and problems, such as the lack of wine at a wedding.
She helps us to “undo the knots” that have been tied in ourselves and among ourselves.
She cares not only for Jesus but also for “the rest of her children” (cf. Rev 12:17). In the power of the risen Lord, she wants to give birth to a new world, where all of us are brothers and sisters, where there is room for all those whom our societies discard, where justice and peace are resplendent. (Fratelli tutti, n. 278)
For her, no one is a throwaway. She is the mother of those thrown away, of those we discard, because she goes to look for them. She doesn’t have a throwaway attitude with anyone. And since she’s the Mother, she knows how to listen to so many things, so many petitions, even when they come from a hypocritical heart, from a heart that is not coherent with itself, an unjust heart that causes harm. She listens. She listens even to the child who is a criminal.
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And today we celebrate...