In invoking Our Lady's patronage we are actuated by a triple sense of the majesty of God, our own unworthiness and of Mary's incomparable influence with her Heavenly Father. Conscious of our natural lowliness and sins, we have frequent recourse to her intercession in the assured hope of being more favorably heard.
"And even as children who have much offended A too indulgent father, in great shame, Penitent, and yet not daring unattended To go into his presence, at the gate Speak to their sister and confiding wait Till she goes in before and intercedes; So men, repenting of their evil deeds, And yet not venturing rashly to draw near With their requests, an angry Father's ear, Offer to her their prayers and their confession, And she in heaven for them makes intercession."(264)
Do you ask me, is Mary willing to assist you? Does she really take an interest in your welfare? Or is she so much absorbed by the fruition of God as to be indifferent to our miseries? "Can a woman forget her infant so as not to have pity on the fruit of her womb?"(265) Even so Mary will not forget us.
The love she bears us, her children by adoption, can be estimated only by her love for her Son by nature. It was Mary that nursed the Infant Savior. It was her hands that clothed Him. It was her breast that sheltered Him from the rude storm and from the persecution of Herod. She it was that wiped the stains from His brow when taken down from the cross. Now we are the brothers of Jesus. He is not ashamed, says the Apostle, to call us His brethren.(266) Neither is Mary ashamed to call us her children by adoption. At the foot of the cross she adopted us in the person of St. John. She is anxious to minister to our souls as she ministered to the corporal wants of her Son. She would be the instrument of God in feeding us with Divine grace, in clothing us with the garments of innocence, in sheltering us from the storms of temptations, in wiping away the stains of sin from our soul.
If the angels, though of a different nature from ours, have so much sympathy for us as to rejoice in our conversion,(267) how great must be the interest manifested toward us by Mary, who is of a common nature with us, descended from the same primitive parents, being bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and who once trod the thorny path of life that we now tread!