May, the month we celebrate Mother’s Day and all the fresh hope and beauty of spring, is an ideal time to stop and remember that Mary is our mother. She is not a being remote in time or alien in her perfection. She is not a disciplinarian. She is not even “just” the mother of Jesus. She is our own mother, too. A person who is always interested in the minutiae of our daily lives, always ready to look for the good in us, always ready to open her arms to us and warm us in her heart.

Pope Benedict XVI stated in a homily January 1, 2010 at St. Peter’s, “Mary did not receive God’s gift for herself alone, but in order to bring him into the world: in her fruitful virginity, God gave men and women the gifts of eternal salvation. And Mary continually offers her mediation to the People of God, on pilgrimage through history towards eternity, just as she once offered it to the shepherds of Bethlehem. She, who gave earthly life to the Son of God, continues to give human beings divine life, which is Jesus himself and his Holy Spirit. For this reason she is considered the Mother of every human being who is born to grace and at the same time is invoked as Mother of the Church.”

The house Karol Wojtyla was born and raised in is a building next door to the town’s parish church, separated from it only by the narrowest of alleyways. Visitors to the pope’s first home are told the story of the May afternoon on which Karol was born. All over Poland late afternoon Marian devotions are held every day of May, in every church and at wayside shrines, with the faithful gathering to pray the rosary and the Litany of Loreto. As the future pope’s mother lay in labor she directed that all the windows of the house be opened so that the sounds that would welcome her child into his earthly sojourn would be the singing and organ music in praise of Mary, wafting in from the nearby church.

Whatever Karol Wojtyla’s first memories ended up being, he certainly was raised with a warm devotion to Mary. As pope he continually reminded the Church of her presence, and of the incomparable advantages we have in turning to her in all our joys and sorrows. (See Pope Benedict’s homily on page three for more on this theme.) His many pilgrimages to Marian shrines all over the world, his rosary encyclical, the unprecedented addition of the “luminous mysteries” to the rosary, his motto of “Totus Tuus,” are only a few examples of the value he placed in prayer to Mary and the emphasis she had in his teaching. This year the first devotions of May fell on the day of his beatification. As we celebrate his memory let us strive to increase our own devotion to Mary. Some spiritual practices are arduous. But to learn to turn in thought and prayer more and more to Mary will can only make our lives sweeter and easier.

As the Church’s newest Blessed once said, “The Gospel reminds us that she ‘kept all these things, pondering them in her heart’ (Lk 2:19). So she did in Bethlehem, on Golgotha at the foot of the cross, and on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended in the Upper Room. And so she does today too. The Mother of God and of human beings keeps in her heart all of humanity’s problems, great and difficult, and meditates upon them. The Alma Redemptoris Mater walks with us and guides us with motherly tenderness towards the future. Thus she helps humanity cross all the ‘thresholds’ of the years, the centuries, the millennia, by sustaining their hope in the One who is the Lord of history.” (Bl. John Paul II, January 1, 1999)

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