A layman meets Our Lady






Layman

Meets

Our Lady

By

Bill Smith

THE QUEEN’S WORK
3115 South Grand Boulevard

St. Louis 18, Missouri



Nihil obstat:

William F. Fischer, S. T. D.

Censor Librorum

Imprimatur:

F Joseph E. Ritter

Archiepiscopus Sancti Ludovici

Sancti Ludovici
, die 26 Julii 1949

First printing, October 1949

Any financial profit made by
the Central Office of the Sodality

will be used for the advancement

of the Sodality Movement and
the cause of Catholic Action.

Copyright 1949

THE QUEEN’S WORK

OeaddM



A Layman Meets
Our Lady

By

Bill Smith

OUR lady does so much for mankind thatit is impossible to find in the Litany
of Loretto or among the Blessed Mother’s
many other titles one single invocation that
fully expresses her privileges and preroga-

tives. The Lady does so much for people
like you and me. I might even go so far as

to say that she does things to people like

you and me. But we’ll see more about that
later.

I just said that it is her business to do

things for people. That’s a good sound

piece of Catholic teaching. We know that
she is called by the somewhat awesome and
technical title of Mediatrix of All Graces.

That simply means that every grace that
was merited through her divine Son, and all
the graces she merited, and all the graces
the saints ever stored up — all of these
merits are applied to us through her. In

other words, every time her Son, Jesus

Christ, wants to give anybody grace, he
sends it through her hands.

I have talked to a lot of people about
this power of the Blessed Mother, and some
of them seem to feel that because she hands
out the graces Christ wishes to bestow on
us, she is in a position to circumvent him.

— 3 —



Or to put it another way, suppose she
doesn’t want Joe Doaks to have a certain
grace that her Son wants Joe to have; then,
these people feel, she could refuse to let Joe

have the grace. Or suppose she wanted
Jenny Doaks to have a certain grace that
her Son didn’t want Jenny to have. Then
again, these people feel, she could hand that
grace to Jenny and her Son wouldn’t have
anything to say about it.

Distribution of Graces

Needless to say, these ideas about the

Lady are quite false. All that she is, is a
sort of middleman (or perhaps we should
call her the middle woman) in the distribu-
tion of graces. The main fact is that her
will is so fully in accord with the will of

her divine Son, that he and she work
together like a team. Therefore, she never

gives a grace to a person he doesn’t want
it given to, and she doesn’t prevent some-
body from getting a grace that her Son
wants that person to have.

It is easy enough to understand the Lady
as the Mediatrix of All Graces. The hard
thing for us to understand is this unity of

her will with the will of her Son, and yet it
is the source of her power. She always and
inevitably does what her Son wants. She
always did. It is hard for us to understand
a person like that because we so often do
things her divine Son doesn’t want. A less
pleasant way of putting the matter is to
say that we commit sins, for committing sin
simply mearfe following our own will instead
of God’s will.

— 4 —



Secret of Sanctity

The reason the Lady is so powerful is
because she and her divine Son are always
in accord on everything. He wants what
she wants, and she wants what he wants.
In that statement lies the secret of sanctity

for us too. We must want what God wants
and then have the courage to do it.

The person who can best help us to do
this is, of course, God’s own Mother, for
all her power to help us, direct us, and
guide us comes from her closeness to Christ
and from the unity of her will with his.
We must get to know her, and then we

must follow her way of life so that we may
make our wills more and more like God’s.

Hard to Know

Like most women, the Lady is somewhat
of an enigma at first. Anybody who has
ever met the girl of his dreams can tell you
what a hard time he had in really getting
to know her. The dream girl seems so
aloof; she seems as if she isn’t an ordinary
mortal. She seems so superior to every-

body else. The boy envisions his wondergirl
as living in a serene never-never land where
everybody from her grubby little brother
to her rather harassed mother and father
must feel that they are associating with a
lovely angel much too beautiful and good
for this world.

And very often the girl, who is perfectly
normal and has her little spats with pop
and mom and with little brother, and who
is just like anybody else, can’t disabuse her

— 5 —



worshiping* boyfriend of these notions. I

had almost called them “silly” notions, and
so, in a sense, they are. But they aren’t
entirely silly, for the most wonderful part
of love is to put the loved one on a pedestal

—a pedestal so high that it seems as if it
would be just enough for the lover to be
able to touch the foot of his beloved, and
then to dedicate himself to her service
forever.

The Awakening

It is unfortunate, however, that in many
cases boy not only meets girl, but boy gets
to know girl. And the better he gets to
know her, the more he finds out that she is
quite terribly human. He finds out that she
can get angry an4 that her serene brow can
become wrinkled with frowns. He finds
out that she eats and sleeps and lives just
like ordinary people—not in any wonderful
never-never land, but in the hard land of
everyday reality. And then, too often, the
boy is disillusioned, and if he doesn’t really
love the girl, he becomes cynical and says,
“Aw, all women are alike—just snares and
delusions. I’m through with them forever.”

Of course, he may not keep this attitude
very long, for perhaps some day he will
really meet a girl who, with all her faults,
is so wonderful and so mysterious to him
that he will go through the rest of his life
with that undying spark of love still burn-
ing in his heart for her.

Mothers!

No matter what we men may say about
women, no matter how cynical we may

— 6 —



become about their very human weaknesses,
we still realize that there is in them some
wondrous spring of mystery, of strength, of
goodness, of tenderness. For after all,
nature made them to be the greatest thing
on earth: mothers. And none of them ever
really lose the urge toward that great
career, no matter how they may obscure it,
or hide it, or ruin it.

I suppose, then, that the mystery of
women lies in that deep-rooted mother urge
that they all have. I suppose that is what
we men admire in them and I suppose that
is why, somehow, we never feel quite
worthy of them. They can be mothers;
we can only be fathers.

The Lady has about her at first the same
mystery, the same aloofness that all women
have. She was not only designed by God to
be a mother, the way all women are
designed, but she was designed to be the
Mother of Mothers—yes, and the Mother
of fathers—because she was designed to be
the Mother of God himself.

Introduction

The problem is to get to know her. The
first introduction to her can come about in
various ways, just as the introduction to

any woman can come about in various ways.
In my own case, I met the girl who was

to be my wife by the purest chance. In
fact, it was on a blind date at a college
prom.

Then Fve known cases of boys and girls
who were raised as nextdoor neighbors and

— 7 —



who never thought very much about each
other until one day the great light suddenly
dawned, and they were in love. The little
kid with the pigtails and the dolls suddenly
blossomed into a wonderful, mysterious,

lovable creature for that other little kid

who once carried dead rats in his pocket
and thought of nothing better than climbing
trees and avoiding taking a bath.

The whole world suddenly changed for
them. She felt a new power to attract a
man. He took to washing behind his ears
and became very solicitous about pleasing
her. They were in love, and the whole world
sang, and the sun never set.

Similar Experience

I think each of us must undergo a similar
experience in meeting the Lady. We must
fall in love with her, not only the way a
boy falls in love with a girl, but the way a
child truly loves his mother.

In her mysterious womanly way she is at
once the Lady who demands the love and
the honor and the respect that medieval
knights gave their ladies and the Mother
who sees in each of us the image of her own
Son. Maybe we have spoiled that image of
his by our selfishness or our wickedness, but
she is still Mother enough to see far into
our souls and say, “That’s my boy” or
“That’s my girl.”

The Question

But the question still remains: How do
we get to know her?

8 —



As far as Catholics are concerned, our
knowing her is similar to the case of the

boy and the girl next door. We have, so to
say, been brought up with her. From the
time we could talk we knew her name and
called her Mother. As we grew7 older we
heard more about her. We learned how
she was the Mother of the baby Jesus who
came down to earth and was born on
Christmas morning. But when Christmas
morning came, we were often too interested
in our presents to think about the Present

she gave us. Later on we were taught to
pray to her and we said her rosary. But
when we said it, we thought of it as a sort
of never-ending treadmill of prayers that

pop or mom made us say or as a task that
had to be finished as soon as possible so
we could go out to play.

Always Present

Somehow, though, she was always there
in the background of our thoughts and
prayers and hopes. And then maybe one
day when we were in a jam—maybe we
were worried about passing an examination
we hadn’t prepared for—we wore out the
step in front of her altar, asking her to
make us wise and learned when we hadn’t
done anything about it ourselves. Already,
you see, we expected miracles from her.
And more often than not Her lazy little
client did get a passing mark through very
little effort of his own.

Then we forgot about her for a while.
And maybe we have gone on forgetting
about her, the most lovable of all women,

— 9 —



the most tender of all mothers. Perhaps we
still look at her statue in church or we
carry her picture in our prayer books or

we still mumble the prayers of the rosary
without really talking to her. But I promise
you that one day she will burst upon your
consciousness with a sudden ray of light,

and you will find that you are in love—in
love with the greatest woman and the
dearest Mother in the world.

Then you will begin to understand the
heretofore seeming doubletalk of the Litany.
You will share the sentiments of millions of
men and women of all times and all condi-
tions who have sung of her the way a lover
serenades his beloved. You will see why
they can’t get finished talking about her in
the language of love. And you will see
why I say there is no single title which
expresses all she means to mankind.

Meeting the Lady

I have said that the Lady has stood
behind all your prayers and mine from the
time we first began to learn to pray. In
the same way she has stood behind the
hopes and prayers of men and women from
the beginning of time. She is the one who
was foretold by God’s own words to Adam
and Eve when he said that a woman would
crush the head of the serpent.

The Jews waited almost as much for her
to be manifested as they did for Christ

himself. Jewish girls from the dawn of
history hoped that they might be the chosen
one to bear the little Messias. And yet,
when he came to earth neither he nor his

— 10 —



Mother was recognized by the great major-
ity of people. It has always been part of
her fate to be in the background—not only
of history, but of our own lives. But she is
always there.

Then in the Middle Ages men began to
build great cathedrals to honor her and
her Son. They built Chartres on the site of
a cave where the Druids worshipped a black
madonna. They decorated the church as if
it were for the residence of a Queen-
Mother—and so it was. All the jewels and
laces and trinkets that women love and
that men love to give them are in Chartres
—presents to the Lady. But these jewels
are the flaming blues and greens and
scarlets of the wondrous windows. Her
laces are the delicate traceries of the carved

stone. Her trinkets are the soaring columns
and the teeming statues of the facade.

Never Satisfied

Yet, like a typical woman, she seems
never to be satisfied. The great towers of
Chartres have been repeatedly struck by
lightning, and the church itself has been
reduced to rubble by fire. It is almost as
if she said, “I want something new now.
Build me another cathedral. But whatever
you build, I shall want another, better one.”

Of course, she is right. She has that
great sense of the fitness of things that
most women have. By her very dissatis-
faction with things as they are, she, like
many women, inspires us to even greater
deeds and even greater effort.

But unlike most women, she doesn't
— 11 —



demand these things in a moment of caprice
or for her own selfish honor. She is eter-
nally demanding that we rebuild our lives,
just as she has so often demanded that her
cathedral at Chartres be rebuilt. It isn’t so
much that she is dissatisfied, but she knows
we can do better with God’s help, and so
she leads us on.

I think that here, then, is our first point
of contact with her. She is, in a sense,
dissatisfied with the careless way we handle
our lives, and she knows that deep down
inside ourselves we too are dissatisfied.
Then, when we are most lonely and most
down on our luck, she works on that sense
of dissatisfaction. It is then that we are
apt to find her standing at our side with

that quaint, inscrutable smile that she must
have had when the Evangelist wrote of
her : “. . . his mother kept all these things
carefully in her heart.”

End of the Road

Very often you will find her at what
looks like the end of the road for you. The
reason for meeting her here is, I think,
because it is about the only time she can
really get a chance to talk to us alone.

When everything is going along fine and we
are contented and successful, we don’t have
time for her. We scarcely ever think of
her. But when the going gets rough, when
we come to what looks like a dead-end in
our lives, when it seems our friends have
deserted us—it is then that she comes into
the picture. Then we are often only too
ready to find a friend. And of course, there

— 12 —



she stands, as she has stood by us all along,

only we didn’t see her.

At those moments, then, when we are in
really desperate straits, she offers us a

chance to fall in love with her and to
remake our lives. It doesn’t matter what
the trouble is—she is always there, waiting.
Perhaps it is a broken romance and we
feel life isn’t worth living any longer.
Perhaps it is the loss of a job and we
wonder when and how we are going to eat
again. Perhaps it is sickness or death in
the family. When all seems most lost and
we are most lonely, she is always there to
turn to.

It is then that we realize why she is
called Comforter of the Afflicted and Help
of Christians. It is then that she starts
doing things for us and to us.

What the Lady Does

Very often, on our first real meeting with
the Lady, she does things to us before she
starts doing things for us.

There is only one thing she demands
before she starts going to work in our
behalf, and that is that we offer ourselves
to her. But beware how you offer yourself
to her, for she takes you at your word.

Sometimes before we come quite to the
point of offering ourselves to her, she has
watched us trying to twist God’s will our
way through prayers and novenas and even
self-sacrifice. I think she must smile at all
these goings-on when they are done by
somebody like us who has a very distorted
notion of what prayer is.

— 13 —



Real Prayer

Many of us feel that by praying we can
get God to change his divine will in our
regard. We feel that somehow God hasn’t
quite made up his mind about us, and that
by praying we can get him to do so. Rather,
there is one fundamental thing about prayer
which we must remember. Prayer will not
change God’s will, which has been made up
from all eternity. Therefore, our prayer
should be that God’s will, whatever it is,
will be accomplished and that we may have
the strength and grace to do whatever is
necessary to accomplish it. Prayer to
various saints, pious exercises like novenas
and holy hours, of course, are all to the
good. They help us to pray ever so hard
that God’s will may be done. But they
cannot change that will.

Now that in itself is often a hard thing
to realize, and it is a harder thing to accept.
If we don’t get what we pray for right
away, we often tend to be discouraged, and
to say: “Oh, what’s the use?”

The Lady Enters

It is here again that the Lady enters the
picture. We said a little earlier that she is
an expert in knowing the will of God, for
her will and his have always been in
absolute accord. Not even the greatest saints
can say that. But she can say that. That
is why she is an expert in helping us to
bring our wills into line with God’s will,
if we only give her a chance.

It seems to me, therefore, that while
prayers to the saints are valuable, they are

— 14 —



most valuable insofar as they lead us to
meet the Lady. Remember, every saint had
a deep devotion to the Blessed Mother of
God and they recognize her as their Queen.
What is more natural, then, than that they
introduce us to her through prayer?

But to return to the matter of prayer and
God’s will, what happens to us when we
have been praying for something and don’t
get it? We can do one of two things—you
or I can say : “Religion is the bunk. Prayer
is a waste of time. The Church is a fake.
I’ll forget the whole thing and go out and
live whatever kind of life I choose.” Or
we can do something else—something you
and I must do. You and I, when we find
that God does not will something we want,
can turn to the Lady for consolation.

Peace of Mind

There have been so many books written
lately on peace of mind and how to relieve
nervous tension that it would seem that
everybody ought to be peaceful, happy, and
quiet. But as we all know, people are not.
Even you and I aren’t at peace with our-
selves and with others. All sorts of things
worry us and bother us and upset us. Maybe
they aren’t big things. Maybe they are only
stupid, small things, like the annoying habit
somebody has of sucking an empty tooth
when we’re sitting quietly in a theater
trying to concentrate on a movie. Or maybe
it’s a baby crying at two o’clock in the
morning.

Maybe something else bothers us: love
troubles, family troubles, lack of money to

— 15 —



do the things we’d like. Whatever it is, it
can be a very troublesome trouble. Then our
nerves get jangled and we fly off the handle
at pop or mom or little brother, or if we’re
married, at our husband or wife.

And somehow all the books in the world
don’t seem to help us to get that peace of
mind they’re always talking about. So what
shall we do? To whom shall we turn?

To the Lady

It is time, then, to turn to the Lady.

Maybe this is just the moment she has been
waiting for: when we are down on our luck
and everything is going dead wrong.

Now I don’t mean that she will instantly
cure a broken leg, or heal a person suffering

from cancer, or even hand us a million
dollars, however badly we might want those
things for ourselves or for somebody else.
But one thing she will give us is peace of
mind and the strength to do God’s will in
any given situation.

Consecration

But first of all, we have to turn ourselves
over to her. And I mean turn ourselves over
to her with no strings attached. We have
to tell her that we belong to her totally and
entirely, and that we want nothing other
than what she wants, and we want it only
in the way she wants it.

This is not easy to do, for at first we may
say that we want what she wants, but not
really mean it. We will still have hidden
away in the back of our minds the things
we want.

— 16 —



But never mind them for the moment.
Let’s just concentrate on her.

What to Do

The first way to concentrate on her, of
course, is to get right with her Son. If we
haven’t been going to Holy Communion
and confession very regularly, now is the
time to start—even if we don’t feel like it.
But we have to make one effort, cost what
it will, to go to confession and Holy Com-
munion. And then we have to keep it up

—

not whenever we feel like it, but regularly:
every week, and if possible, every day.

Along with all this, we must start doing
exactly what she told the children of
Fatima: say the rosary every day.

At first the rosary and Holy Communion
are going to seem like colossal tasks. It is
too hard to get up in the morning. It is
too hard to take time out to say the rosary.
But let me tell you, it is not so hard as
having your heart torn and bleeding every
hour of the day.

Voices

It is through the rosary and Holy Com-
munion that we shall be able to talk to
the Lady and that she will be able to talk
to us and guide us. Very few of us, maybe
none of us, will ever have direct inspiration
from the Blessed Mother or the saints, the
way Joan of Arc had her Voices. But each
of us can have from the Lady some sort of
guiding voices that are all our own. Let’s
see what these voices are.

First of all, there is that voice which

— 17 —



normally works within each one of us: the
voice of conscience. We know right from
wrong; and we know whether we are falling
over the ragged edge of sin or whether
what we are doing is right. If we are not
sure about some things, that is where the
sacrament of confession comes in. The con-
fessor is there to set us right about the

doubtful things. Once he has spoken, we
must follow him. Sometimes his advice is
going to hurt but we must follow it, for his
is the second voice the Lady sends us.

The next voice is that of the people to
whom we owe honor or respect or who are
our superiors, put over us by God. For
boys and girls, this means parents and
teachers

;
for employees, that ogre, the boss

;

for married people, the legitimate wishes
and desires of husband or wife. For
example, if a husband is continually
running counter to the legitimate wishes of
his wife, he can be almost sure he is
running counter to the wishes of God and
the Blessed Mother.

Strident and Annoying

Then there are other voices the Lady
lets us hear. Some of these are pretty
strident at times — and pretty annoying.
Older children certainly have some obliga-
tion to help their younger brothers and
sisters, even when the youngsters get cross
and crabby.

Finally, there is the obligation of charity

toward those around us, be they friends or
enemies. It is easy to help friends. The
hard part comes when we have to help those

— 18 —



who dislike us or lie about us or make fun
of us. And yet they too sometimes almost
shout at us for help and understanding and
love.

These, then, are voices which should be
for us just as compelling as the Voices of

Joan. Actually, they are the voices of God
and his Blessed Mother who call to us
through a whole variety of sometimes very

unpleasant people. But the Lady is still
there, waiting for us to hear her gentle

call in the midst of these often strident
and cross cacklings.

Typical Woman

I have told you that the Lady is a typical
woman—she is never satisfied. She always
expects more from those who love her and
want to follow her.

After we have started listening to the
voices I have told you about, she will speak
to you with her own voice. She will demand
more and more things from you. First, she
will ask little extra sacrifices. Maybe one
of them will be putting off eating a bit of
candy after a meal. Maybe it will be an
extra prayer or two. Maybe it will be doing
without a cigarette when you want it very
badly. Somehow, quite silently and deep in
your own heart, she will tell you what she
wants and when she wants it.

Then you will say to yourself, “Now at
last she will give me what I want. She will
give me the boy or the girl I want to marry.
She will give me the raise I want or the
automobile I have had my eye on for a

— 19 —



couple of years or whatever else I am
praying for.”

But I say to you that probably at that
moment the Lady will say one great big
“No.” So what do you do then?

The Lady Says "No"

When the Lady says “No” to our prayers,
then is really the time for us to trust her

and to have even greater confidence in her.
It is also high time for us to re-examine

the motives we had in wanting the thing
for which we are praying. God will always
answer our prayers and he will give us
what we ask, provided it is in accord with
his will. The Blessed Mother cannot change
that will, but she can assist us in accept-
ing it.

If we ask the Lady for something, and we
don’t get it, perhaps it is an indication that
the thing we want would not be good for us,
or that God just doesn’t want us to have it

Next, we ought to try to find out if per-
haps we didn’t ask for the thing with a
wrong motive. Perhaps we prayed so
ardently for something only because of our

own selfishness. Maybe we didn’t want it
because it would help us to come closer to
God, but we only wanted it for our own
selfish use—to make us look bigger in the
eyes of our neighbors or to satisfy some
selfish pleasure or vanity. In that case, it

is probable that the Blessed Mother will
turn a deaf ear to our prayers.

But there is still another consideration:
the sense of timing that the Lady displays
when she does answer our prayers.

— 20 —



is it Good Now?

When we pray, we seldom think that
what we want may not be good for us here
and now. Maybe we are not ready for the
favor yet. The Lady may know full well
that if she gave us what we wanted at this
particular time, we would be so cocksure
of ourselves that we would not appreciate
it, and we might stop praying and abuse it.

So, if the Lady says “No” to a certain
prayer at a certain time, it does not mean
that she has not heard the prayer or wilt

never answer it. It could be that she is
just waiting until the proper time—until
we are able to accept the favor without its
bowling us over.

That is why we ought to pray with con-
fidence, try to purify our motives, and put
our trust blindly in the Lady.

Most Important

This last requirement is one of the most
important of all. It is certainly the hardest,

for it requires us to accept the Lady’s “No,”

and still go on trusting her. It is at this
point that we must really put the whole of
our request into her hands, for she has

shown us that we are powerless.

I imagine that if we would closely ex-
amine the purpose of our requests to the
Lady we would find that most of them
involve some other person, and for the
request to be granted, we are really asking
that she change the heart or the mind or
the will of somebody else.

The boy who wants to marry the girl is
— 21—



really praying that somehow the Lady will
make the girl receptive to the boy's pro-
posal. The man who wants a raise is really
praying that the Lady will soften the boss'
heart and make him hand over the extra
money on payday. The man who is praying
desperately for a house for his family is
really asking that some landlord will favor
him or that somebody else will vacate a
house.

You see, many of our prayers do not
involve us alone, but they really involve

other people and a change of heart that
has to be wrought in these other people.

A Great Power

When the Lady says “No," then, she is
really telling us that she can sway the
hearts and minds of others where we can
only argue or plead with them—and often
to no purpose.

This great power of hers was implied, I
think, when she talked to the children of
Fatima. She said that people had to say
her rosary every day or the world would be
plunged into a blood-bath of war and per-
secution. She was really saying that if we
prayed, she would soften hearts, change
minds, and so arrange things that peace
would come about in the world. As she
knows and as we know, all the diplomatic
maneuvering and conferences haven't
brought peace; all the compromises and
treaties haven't brought peace. That is
because peace depends upon men's hearts'
being changed. But she said that if people
would say her rosary, she herself would so

— 22 —



touch men's hearts and she would so

arrange things that peace would come.

Since she has this tremendous power over

the hearts and minds of men, why should
we not trust her blindly? Why should we
not pray to her every day?

But We DoiTt

And yet we don't. We still try to run
things ourselves. Very often when we do,
we only mess things up worse than ever.
By our anxiety we disturb other people. By
our impatience we try to force others to do
what we want. If we would only let the
Lady alone to work in her own way, we
could be absolutely certain that our prayers

will be answered the way she and her
divine Son w§.nt them to be answered. And
we may be sure that she will give us the
answer at the very time it is good for us to
have it, and not before.

She tells us, in effect: “If you pray to me,
if you trust me absolutely, and if you dedi-
cate yourself to me, I will give you the
means to do whatever my divine Son wants
you to do. If you need a million dollars
for some work he wants you to do, then
you will get the million dollars. If you need
an automobile to do my Son's work, then
you will get the automobile. If you really
need a raise in salary to do what my Son
wants you to do with that extra money,
then you will get it.

“But don't come to me and ask for a
million dollars or an automobile or a raise
or anything else if you just want it for

— 23 —



yourself and for your own vanity. Then I
will probably say ‘No’.”

Four Essentials

To sum up, then, we must have a good
motive, we must pray with confidence, we
must continue to pray, and we must trust
the Lady absolutely. Once we have done
these things, most of our anxiety will dis-
appear and we will start to achieve peace
of soul. Most of our worry comes about
because we want things we can’t have. Then
we start to figure out ways of getting these
things, and if we don’t get them through
our own efforts, we fall into despair and
say, “What’s the use of praying and being
good? I might as well be bad and do as
I please.”

In any event, we continue to be anxious
and bothered, and we become unhappy at
our lack of success because at last we have
seen how powerless we really are.

Hands Outstretched

But all the time the Lady is standing
there with her hands outstretched to us and
telling us that if we would only trust her
as a Mother, and do . the will of her divine
Son, we could be at peace with ourselves,
with our neighbors, and with God. She
tries so hard to show us that there is only
one thing worthwhile in the world: saving

our souls.

From what we have just said, it may
seem as if the Blessed Mother of God
doesn’t do much for us, or that she won’t
do much for us. Perhaps we feel that way
because we want too ardently some physical,

— 24 —



tangible favor—the automobile, the husband
or wife, the extra money in the pay
envelope. Now all these things are good in
themselves and it is not wrong to want
them. But the thing to think of is this:
Are they good for us to have? Does God
want us to have them? Would we use them
for God if we got them? Should we have
them right now?

Reorientation

Before the Lady does anything else for
us, she sets our minds and wills in order,
so that we may truly appreciate her favors.
In other words, she turns us toward God.
This reorienting of our minds and wills
toward God is sometimes a very rough
process. We want what we want when we
want it. But the Lady often holds off giving
us what we want until we make up our
minds to turn to God. We can show her
that we really mean to turn to him by doing
what she demanded of the children of
Fatima: saying the rosary every day.
Also, we can go to Holy Communion more
frequently.

And all the while we are doing these
things, we can be praying for what we want
or think we need. But we must pray with
confidence, and we must be prepared to
have the Lady sometimes say “No.”

Just when we think we have the favor
in our hands, we will find that it escapes
us. She permits this, not because she is
capricious and wants to see us squirm, but
to strengthen our wills and hearts and to
encourage us in the practice of confidence.

— 25 —



When we get these setbacks in life, we
often feel that the Lady has done something
to us, instead of for us. And so, indeed, she
has. She has permitted us to be disappointed
so that we may be still stronger in our
confidence in her power.

Not Spoiled

She knows, as does any mother, that if
a child is handed everything on a silver
platter, soon he will become ever more and
more demanding. Soon he will want every-
thing for himself and he will forget about
his brothers and sisters and the others in
the family. He will become a spoiled brat.

Believe me, the Lady takes good care
that her children do not become spoiled.
And yet, for this very reason, she often
appears to us to have no heart.

Then again, like the good housewife that
she is, she permits nothing to be wasted.
She provides generously for her children,
for is she not the Mediatrix of All Graces?
But she does not want us to waste the
graces she gives us. If she gave us right
away whatever we wanted, we might be like
a child with a shiny new knife. We might
cut ourselves with it rather than use it to
cut something else. Like children we may
want the knife but we may still be too inept
to use it properly.

Nothing Harmful

She refuses, too, to let us have a gift
that she knows would only cause us harm.
She knows all the trouble we can get into

— 26 —



and she knows exactly where our weak-
nesses lie. So, like a good mother again, she
never gives us anything that she knows we
can’t handle properly. Theologians call these

things which are dangerous to us, occasions
of sin. So, rest assured, she will never give

us anything that, in our weakness, will be
an occasion of sin for us.

But for every disappointment, for every
time she doesn’t give us what we think we
want, she gives us a greater consolation to

make up for it. She shows us a little more
of the smiling face of herself and of her
divine Son. Little by little she lets us see
how wonderful God is, and how worthwhile
it is to love him and him alone. Little by
little, she leads us from a desire for the
things of this world, to a desire for the

things of God and of heaven.

Slow Process

It’s a slow process with most of us because
we fight it so hard. But she is always ready
to lead our halting steps forward. There
are times when we are afraid and lonely,
and then we want to be tied to her apron-
strings. But after a while we get impatient
and we try to run on ahead of her down
the road of life. Then she has to take us by
the hand and lead us back to the safety of
her company.

So, here is one prayer I think we ought
always to say: “Dear Lady, I am weak
and stubborn. But I love you, even in the
midst of my weakness. If the time ever
comes when I shall try to escape from
your guiding hand, please pull me back to

— 27 —



you, that I may always walk down the
road of life and into eternity with my hand
clasped trustingly in yours.”

— 28 —



*7a Complete tyoun. JlibsiGSuf,

of Pamphlets -About

OUR LADY

Madonna in Art
(Famous Madonna Paintings
in Colors)

Mary After Her Son's Ascension

Mary of the United States,
Mother of the United Nations

The Mother of God

Our Lady's Assumption

When Mary Walked the Earth

How Our Lady May Have
Looked

Are You Heeding Fatima

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"The Second
Greatest Prayer”

by Charles Corcoran, S. J.

For Meditation

This booklet not only makes

mental prayer less difficult, but

the meaning of the prayer,

"Hail, Mary," becomes rich

with new significance.

o

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PAMPHLETS that . . .

. . . correct misconceptions

. . . answer objections

. . . instill proper attitudes

. . . inspire

Are the Gospels True?

Death Isn't Terrible

Has Life Any Meaning?

Man Says: "If I Were God .

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My Faith and I
Prayers Are Always Answered

When We Go to Confession
The Man the Savior Praised

The Story of Adam and Eve
Why Not Be a Saint?

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THE QUEEN'S WORK
3115 South Grand Boulevard

St. Louis 18, Missouri