Romana

My dear children: may Jesus watch over my daughters and sons for me!

During this month when, in the Work, we want to fill the whole world with pilgrimages, a deep thanksgiving arises to my heart, confident of the fruit that will come through our Mother’s intercession on placing so many intentions in her hands.

Certainly, God gives this fruit when he wants and how he wants. And first of all, he grants it to ourselves, since our prayer – even if it is fragile – enables us to receive so many gifts that our Lord wants to give us: "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened "(Mt 7:7-8). Let us boldly beseech heaven on our pilgrimages for so many graces for peace in the world, for personal conversion, for vocations. This attitude helps us to grow in the certainty that we need God, which is already a first fruit: it strengthens our awareness that he is the one who brings everything forward. And to help us feel welcomed, he offers us an easy and gentle path: our Lady. “We go to Jesus – and we ‘return’ to him – through Mary” (The Way, 495).

In this mission in the world that Christ wanted to share with us ("I am with you always, to the end of the age "(Mt 28:20)), by his closeness he gives his joy to us. Each time we go to visit our Blessed Mother to show her our affection, we can foster the desire to live at every moment, in every circumstance of our day, facing both difficulties and joys, with the conviction that we are not alone: the Queen of the apostles, who accompanied closely the first steps of the Church (cf. Acts 1:12-14), never abandons us. “The Master, before ascending to the right hand of the Father, told the disciples: ‘Go and preach to all nations,’ and they had been filled with peace. But they still had doubts. They didn’t know what to do, and they gathered around Mary, Queen of Apostles, so as to become zealous proclaimers of the Truth that will save the world” (Furrow, 232).

Do not fail to unite yourselves to my prayer for the twenty-five new priests of the Prelature who were ordained on the 20th in Rome.

Rome, May 25, 2023