"Month of sun and flowers (...), month of Mary, crowning the Easter season. Since Advent our thoughts have followed Jesus; now that the great peace that follows the Resurrection has been made in our souls, how can we not turn to her who gave him to us?
"She has appeared on earth to prepare for his coming; she has lived in his shadow, to the point that we do not see her intervene in the Gospel except as the Mother of Jesus, following him, watching over him, and when Jesus leaves us, she gently disappears.
"She disappears, but she remains in the memory of the people, because we owe her to Jesus...".
As on other occasions, Jesus is speaking about the mysteries of the kingdom of God. The people surround him, look at him and keep a profound silence. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a woman cries out with all her soul: "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you...".
The prophecy contained in the Magnificat begins to be fulfilled: ...all generations will call me blessed, the Virgin, moved by the Holy Spirit, had said. And on this occasion, a woman, with the freshness of the people, has begun what will not end until the end of the world. Those words of St. Mary at the beginning of her vocation would have their most complete fulfillment down through the centuries: poets, intellectuals, kings and warriors, artisans, mothers of families, men and women, men and women of mature age and children who have barely learned to speak; in the countryside, in the city, on mountaintops, in factories and on the roads; in situations of pain and joy, in transcendental moments (how many millions of Christians have given their souls to God looking at an image of the Virgin, or reciting with their lips or only in their thoughts the sweet name of Mary! ), or simply turning a corner where one can barely make out an image of Our Lady; in so many and in so many different situations, thousands of voices, in so many different languages, have sung the praises of the Mother of God. It is an uninterrupted clamor throughout the earth, which daily attracts the mercy of God upon the world, and which can only be explained by an express divine will. "From the earliest times," recalls the Second Vatican Council, "the Blessed Virgin Mary has been honored with the title of Mother of God, to whose protection the faithful have recourse with their prayers in all their dangers and needs.
All Christian people have always known how to reach God through their Mother. With a constant experience of her graces and favors, they have called her the supplicant Omnipotence, and have found in her the shortcut - "the path by which the way is shortened" - to reach God. Love has invented numerous ways to treat and honor her. The Church has constantly encouraged and blessed this devotion to Mary as a sure way to reach the Lord, "because Mary is always the way that leads to Christ. Every encounter with Her cannot but end in an encounter with Christ Himself. And what else does continual recourse to Mary mean but to seek in Her arms, in Her, through Her and with Her Christ, Our Savior, to whom men - in the discouragements and dangers here below - have the duty and experience the need to turn as to the harbor of salvation and the transcendent source of life?"