Opening Mass of our Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes.
The Blessed Virgin Mary, Cause of our Joy.
Some time ago I read a letter from a mother on the theme of joy. It went: A few nights ago, my son and I sat on the floor in his bedroom reading a book written by Pope Francis called, Dear Pope Francis. In this book one of the children asked, “What more do you want to do in your life to make the world more beautiful and fair?” Pope Francis answered: “I would like to smile always-smile at God . . . to thank him for all the good he does for people.” And the mother went on to say: “My son is more bubbly than champagne. His 6-year-old smile is marked by gaps of missing teeth and contagious joy. If I told him that what I wanted for him was to smile always, he wouldn’t understand. He’d say, “Of course I am going to smile always, Mom,” because at age 6, he doesn’t know what’s coming yet. He doesn’t know that life is going to make happiness difficult”.
He doesn’t know that life is going to make happiness difficult”. How true these words are and how well they express the feelings of so many people who come here to Lourdes on pilgrimage. Many of us gathered here this morning could easily make them our own. We come on pilgrimage with our worries and our troubles, with our illnesses and our fears, with our aches and pains, with our cares for the future but also with our thanksgiving and our gratitude.
If you were to ask me to sum up in two word the teaching of Pope Francis, I think I would choose the words joy and mercy. In his book, A Church of Mercy, Pope Francis says, “And here the first word that I wish to say to you: joy! Do not be men and women of sadness: a Christian can never be sad! Never give way to discouragement! Ours is not a joy born of having many possessions, but of having encountered a Person: Jesus, in our midst.”
I think it is true to say that the majority of people, not everyone but a majority, come to Lourdes on pilgrimage because of a particular worry, illness or sadness that has touched their lives. We come here to place our distress at the feet of Our Lady and to pray for her help and support. And the words of advice that we most need to hear are those of the Pope; ‘Do not give way to discouragement.’ But the Pope doesn’t just give us advice. He tells us why we should not allow discouragement to rule our lives. He says; “Ours is not a joy born of having many possessions, but of having encountered a Person: Jesus, in our midst.” And it is this encounter that makes Lourdes so special and transforms our lives. Here we encounter Mary and through this encounter we get to know and grow in love with her Son, Jesus Christ.
Our days in Lourdes can be full of activity. Just take today as an example; Mass, photographs, the Stations, the Baths, the Holy Hour and the ‘get-together’. But all this going and coming must never distract us from the real opportunity that we have to meet those two people in moments of quiet and in moments of celebration; Our Lady and her Son, Jesus Christ. And it is this meeting that give us the strength and the courage to resist the temptation to discouragement and to change our discouragement into joy.
In the Gospel of our Mass today, great joy was communicated by Mary to Elizabeth at the Visitation. At that joyful encounter, even the unborn infant John the Baptist rejoiced. As Saint Luke tells us, the infant John leapt for joy in his mother’s womb. And Mary, on that occasion, sang the beautiful canticle of joy, the Magnificat, which we heard in today’s Gospel. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Our Lord came into the world to bring peace and joy to the human family. At His birth, He filled the humble shepherds outside Bethlehem with joy. At His resurrection, He brought joy to the disciples, and, at His Ascension, He left the apostles in great joy. And now, from His place at the right hand of the Father, He sends joy upon the Church through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love and joy.
Mary is a model and inspiration for us on this pilgrimage. Despite the pain and sadness which surrounded the agony and death of Jesus, Mary experienced great joy throughout her life with Christ. Just remember all the occasions of joy which I have just referred to. Mary knew joy and she is, therefore, as the theme of this year’s pilgrimage says, the cause of our joy. She reminds us that despite the pain and sufferings we endure, there are and were moments of great joy in our lives and, like Mary, we should always keep those before our eyes when we are tempted to be discouraged by the pain or fear of the present time.
Let me finish with the rest of the mother and her six year old son. She wrote; As my son and I continued to flip through Dear Pope Francis, me sitting cross-legged, him shifting about with that joyful energy of his, I started wondering if his joy would see him through his teenage years, through the trials of figuring out who he is in his twenties, through settling into his adult life. Certainly, he won’t always be happy, at least not in the modern sense. But I hope his exquisite joy, that gift from God, never fades. That is my wish for him: that the joy and happiness that come so easily to him as a little boy will stay with him forever. And in those moments when he can’t find his smile, hopefully between me and Pope Francis he’ll find a model of how to get back to himself and a reminder that joy is the promise of heaven”. She hit the nail on the head; the ultimate reason for joy in our lives is the promise of Heaven.
My prayer for all of us on this pilgrimage this year is that the joy of the Gospel, the joy of having been chosen by Jesus, saved by Jesus and loved by Mary, the cause of our joy, will seep through the experience of us being together in Lourdes during these days and carry us through the future when we return home.