A traditional manifestation of love for our Mother is the pilgrimage to a shrine or hermitage of the Virgin, with a penitential character - perhaps expressed in a small sacrifice: walking from a suitable place, living some details of sobriety that cost sacrifice... - and with an apostolic sense, trying to bring those who accompany us closer to God, and praying with particular piety the Holy Rosary.
The pilgrimage can be a very opportune moment to carry out a fruitful apostolate with our friends. In these shrines and wayside shrines, thousands of people have found ordinary and extraordinary graces from the Mother of God: some have begun a new life, after making a good Confession of their sins, perhaps after many years; others have glimpsed the Lord's call to a fuller dedication to the service of God and souls; others have found help to overcome serious difficulties of the soul or body.... No one ever left these places empty-handed. Paul VI pointed out how Providence, "by ways often admirable, has distinguished Marian shrines with a particular stamp.
To these places, small or large, where there is a special presence of the Virgin Mary, people come to give thanks, to praise Mary, to pray (how many times Holy Mary must have heard urgent and hopeful petitions there!) and also to begin anew after perhaps having lived far from God.
Because, as John Paul II says, the legacy of Marian faith of so many generations is not in these Marian places a mere memory of a past, but a point of departure towards God. "The prayers and sacrifices offered, the vital beat of a people that expresses before Mary its age-old joys, sorrows and hopes, are new stones that raise the sacred dimension of a Marian faith. For in this religious continuity, virtue begets new virtue. Grace attracts grace".
These pilgrimage goals, which date back to the first centuries, are today countless and are scattered throughout the earth. They have been the fruit of the piety and love of Christians for their Mother throughout the centuries. Let us prepare our pilgrimage in prayer, with an apostolic sense, with a penitential character (which facilitates prayer and raises it more quickly to God) and with a great Marian devotion, expressed in the prayer full of piety of the Holy Rosary. Let us not forget that we are now fulfilling that prophecy that Our Lady once made: All generations will call me blessed.... Let us not forget in this month to have, every day, singular signs of love with Our Lady.
Hablar con Dios