In the midst of the present confusion of values it is for us of vast significance that we have in this matter the mind of Christ.  There need be no confusion in our minds.  What Christ commended has proved to be practical of accomplishment, the evidence of which is the great multitude which no man can number who to-day sing about the throne of God and of the Lamb.  What God approves is evidenced by the Coronation of the Blessed Mother over all the multitudes of the saints of God.  Blessed Mary is the embodied thought of God for humanity, the realised ideal of a human life.  He that is mighty hath magnified her, till she shines resplendent in spiritual qualities over all the hosts of the elect.

But though so highly exalted she is not thereby removed to an inaccessible distance.  She who is privileged to bear the incredible title, MOTHER OF GOD is our Mother as well.  Upon the Cross our Lord said to us in the person of His beloved Disciple, “Behold thy Mother”; and it is a mother’s love that we find flowing to us from the heart of Mary.  Have we been cold to her, and inappreciative of her love?  Have we felt that we have no need of her in the conduct of our lives?  If so, what we have been doing is to isolate ourselves from the divinely provided fount of human sympathy which ever flows from our star-crowned Mother.  Is life so rich in sources of help and sympathy and love that we can afford to over-pass the eagerness of God’s saints to help us, the willingness of the very Mother of God to intercede?  Is not the life that shuts out from itself the society of heaven pitifully impoverished?

Too many of us are like the man who owned the field wherein was the buried treasure.  Limitless aid is at our disposal, but on condition that we want it and will seek it.  Let us try to understand what it is to have at our disposal the love and sympathy of the saints of God,—­that they are not remote inhabitants of a distant sphere whose present interests have led to forgetfulness of what they once were, whose present joy is so intense as to make them self-centred, but that their very attainment of perfection implies the perfection of their love and the completeness of their sympathy.  The perfection of God’s saints and their attainment of the end of their course in the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision, has but made them more sensitive of our needs and more eager to help.

The spiritual wisdom and power of the Mother of God is at our disposal to-day.  To the feebleness of our prayers may be added the spiritual wisdom and strength of her intercession.  He Whose will it is that we should pray for one another, wills too that the prayers of His Blessed Mother should be at the disposal of all who call upon her.  Let us take the fact of the intercession of the Queen of Saints seriously as a source of power ever open to us.

Thou who art God’s Mother and also ours, thou who lookst constantly into the Face of the Son, thou who art the fullest manifestation of the love of the Blessed Trinity, thou Mary, our Mother, pray for us now and in the hour of our death.