Archbishop's Message

Have you ever imagined a prayer to ‘the most beautiful person,’ with ‘the most beautiful words’ and with ‘the most beautiful request’?It may be well beyond our means to do so! But God in His supreme goodness has given us such a prayer. It is ‘the Hail Mary!’

The ‘most beautiful person’ is none other than the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the one who was greeted by Archangel Gabriel with the divinely inspired words ‘Hail Mary!’

The ‘most beautiful words’: She is the one who heard the same Archangel utter the ‘most beautiful words’ to her, revealing the unspeakable and divine radiance bestowed on her by the Blessed Trinity in the singular grace of her Immaculate Conception, namely ‘full of grace’ , at the very moment of her creation as a human person in the womb of her holy mother St. Ann, to serve Him indefectibly in the eschatological fulfilment of His definitive verdict against the Devil after the fall of Adam, and in the eschatological restoration of the fallen human race to Himself in Christ Jesus His Son and in His Holy Spirit: ‘The Lord is with you!’ She is the one who heard her kinswoman St. Elizabeth recite words of truth inspired by the Holy Spirit: ‘Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb!’ For, She is the one who was definitively constituted ‘perpetual Virgin of God,’ ‘Holy Mary,’ ‘Mother of God’ and ‘Mother of the Church’ by the marvelous act of the Blessed Trinity for us and for our salvation!

‘With the most beautiful request’: What greater request can the Holy Spirit inspire a person with a sincere and contrite heart to cry out to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mother of God, except to implore Her to obtain for him or her through Her intercession, the inestimable grace of sharing the divine holiness and immortality and glory of Her divine Son in union with Herself forever: ‘Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death,’ that we too ‘may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.’

‘Hail Mary! full of grace…now and at the hour of our death.’ This is the prayer that will enable us to grow in habitual communion with the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the Holy Spirit, and make our present synodal pilgrimage of faith to the judgment seat of Christ through this ‘vale of tears’ in a stable and secure manner, and be assured of being welcomed at that awful moment by the Eternal Father, to join Him in the company and heavenly joys of all His holy Angels and Saints forever.