Homily delivered during the month of Mary, 1950

Something truly encouraging is happening in the world, especially in Chile: like a second springtime, a spiritual springtime, during the Month of Mary. Everything seems to change the way it looks, this month the churches are filled with people who come from, no one knows where, working men, soldiers, busy housewives, not only those with little else to do. And this happens four or five times a day in all the churches.

Why does the Holy Virgin have such an influence on our souls? What attraction does she wield over us? First, it is an intuitive influence, sentimental, emotional because, as has been said, if she had not been created by God, man would have had to invent her; she is a psychological necessity of the human heart. At bottom, Mary represents the greatest aspirations of the soul. The mother is the primary and most absolute necessity of the soul, and when we have lost her or know that we will lose her, we need something from heaven to wrap us round with tenderness.

She is not divine, she is entirely of our earth, like us, fully human: she does the work of any mother but feeling that she is so totally ours, we recognize her as the throne of divinity.

How difficult it is to pass in rapid review the dogmatic privileges of Mary! But the soul intuits that just as the heart of the young boy of 20 needs a girl to complete his life, humanity needs Mary, this tender Mother, pure Virgin, human being full of divinity received from God. Even those who know no theology are amazed when they see what she is.

In our times filled with tremendous problems, we must once again Christianize the world: there are millions of men under the dominion of atheism, at the point of entering an atomic war, and in this difficult moment it seems to me that Mary comes once again to multiply her appeals. She appears to Bernadette in Lourdes: I am the Immaculate Conception, causing a spring to gush forth where hundreds of sick have recuperated their health and the grotto has been duplicated in every city, even in marginal areas. In Mexico it has been said: she did something unlike anything in any part of the world. Here Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to an Indian Juan Diego and when he told her “My little girl, they will not believe me” she let fall from the Indian’s poncho a rain of red roses in the middle of winter that he might take them to the archbishop. She appeared with the features of an Indian girl, because she came in defense of the Indians.

When I see so many people gathered so often for the Month of Mary and for the procession of our Lady of Mount Carmel, I have often thought that these people are hungry for the truth, and I ask myself, What is our obligation towards them? First to give an example of the integrity of Christian life, never to reconcile or adapt ourselves to the world but rather to reconcile the world to Mary. In our conversations, charity: may our words be kind, tender and loving. The world likes a gala meal, nothing but diversion and we will not be an obstacle but we will add a note of austerity and work. We cannot have devotion to her and fail in charity, nor can we avoid doing something to help solve human misery.

These days I have had the occasion to live drenched in misery, besieged by the miserably poor who have absolutely nothing. Where can a man go who is hungry and has nothing to eat? Yesterday a young woman, decently dressed said to me: Father, I haven’t eaten this morning, they are taking away my room and I have five children. ¿Where can I go?… A poor man, jailed for vagrancy, society that has given him neither work nor a roof, then jails him for wandering. We are soaked in misery that has reached the extreme. I know people who haven’t eaten for three or four days.

Shouldn’t devotion to Our Lady bring us to question ourselves about what we can do to solve this problem? Is our devotion empty and our piety sterile? Our mother appears to the poor in vain if we do not give in charity. May our first manifestation of love be charity in word, in our judgments, in detaching ourselves, in works of justice. The eyes of the world are on us. Let us remind ourselves that we are Christians and that the world is watching us. I fear that our piety is in great part only sentimental, worthless and not the mercy of Christ. Charity in honor of the most holy Virgin. You office workers, have you reached the pinnacle of your charity? We Catholics are such dumb oxen, still half asleep and untroubled by the need for social solidarity. All the difficulties, stumbling, scandals… Hopefully, our devotion to the Virgin may give us the tenderness to look to heaven and work on earth so there will be charity and love. God wishes to bring us to heaven through her, the Messenger of the Father, the Mother of all, especially of those who suffer.