Mary Our Hope

By Fr. Christopher Foeckler, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

In the Jubilee Year of Hope, we turn this month of May to Our Lady, the Mother of Jesus and, in a special way, our spiritual Mother by the Lord’s most gracious gift and her unique cooperation with her Son at the foot of the Cross. We often invoke her in a special way in the beautiful Salve Regina as “our Life, our Sweetness and our Hope”! Pope Francis invokes her in his Bull of Indiction as “a sign of certain hope and comfort”. 

In the same document, the Holy Father reminds the Church of the fact that the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City is preparing to celebrate, in 2031, the fifth centenary of Our Lady’s first apparition there. As a side note, the Diocese of Phoenix, whose patroness is Our Lady of Guadalupe, is also in a seven-year pastoral program of preparation for the same anniversary because of the very special message of Our Lady to the Americas, the world and the Church – a message of great hope! The Holy Father explains, “Through Juan Diego, the Mother of God brought a revolutionary message of hope that she continues to bring to every pilgrim and all the faithful: ‘Am I not here, who am your Mother?’”

The assurance of Our Lady to Juan Diego that she is always with her children as our Mother echoes in a truly maternal way the same assurance that St. Paul offers as the very basis of the “hope that does not disappoint” (the theme of the Jubilee Year itself) “because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit…” (Cf Rm 5:1-2, 5) 

Pope Francis explains it most eloquently, “Christian Hope does not deceive or disappoint because it is grounded in the certainty that nothing and no one may ever separate us from God’s love: ‘Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Hardship or distress, or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or the sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’” (Cf Rm 8:35, 37-39)

Mary is our Mother of Hope because nothing will be able to separate us from her presence, her love, and her protection in our lives: “Am I not here, who am your Mother?” 

Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ!