I was reading an article a few days ago written by a doctor who had been researching ICU records, there was one word that was recorded as the “Last word” of so many patients that it couldn’t be a coincidence. He continued his research as to why this one word was so common in patients that had a few hours left to live.
In our final hours, there is some evidence that the hippocampus, a part of the brain, becomes more active than normal. This is the part of our brain associated with memory, and it’s thought that in those last moments, it burns through years of stored memories searching for the strongest emotional anchor, the place in the memory of the deepest safety.
The word he found most said in his ICU was “Mum”.
Well, this is at best anecdotal, but from our earliest moments of formation in the womb, we hear our mother’s voice, through the amniotic fluid, and the imprint becomes the most powerful pathway in the brain, the deepest of neural pathways. The place we know as the safest and most familiar.
Ahh isn’t this one more way, that we see God our creators design, first creating our human needs and then responding to them, fulfilling them. No wonder then, that to compensate for the imperfect motherhood we as creatures are only able to provide, there is a perfect model. Chosen before her own birth to fulfil that role for Jesus and then for us.
I think this is why The Blessed Virgin Mary can speak to the deepest parts of us. Every human being is shaped by that first maternal relationship. Before we form ideas, beliefs or choices, we experience being held and comforted or not. It shapes how we trust, feel safe, regulate our emotions, and experience peace. And if not done so well, brings lasting physical and emotional damage.
In our earliest formation our mothers become our first sense of security and our first experience of peace. In many ways we spend our lives either living out of that peace or searching for it.
Jesus gives us His mother, Our Lady, as a source of calm, safety and trust. She comes as a gift not to replace our human experience of motherhood but to heal and fulfil it.
For centuries Mary appears in moments of conflict or crisis, the title Mary queen of peace is not merely a nice title, it tells us of how she connects to something already hard wired into us, how she is given as an answer to something we inherently need and seek.
She carries the title “Queen of Peace” initially because she bears and brings us the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), so she has a fundamental role in this mission. For ancient Israelites, the king’s mother held a special role as queen; her job was to serve as an intercessor between the people and the King. Again, the Old Testament giving us a perfect lens in which to see the New.
For Our Lady, the name became more widely known and used as her intercession was prayed for, especially in times of conflict and social unrest, that Motherly reassurance and comfort were no doubt experienced by those who waited for the prayers to be answered. Often these have been accompanied by an apparition, and there have been many, all over the world, all culturally appropriate and relevant to place and time, but the message is always consistent.
Repent, Pray, turn back to God and this will bring peace. Often these apparitions serve as a warning, for example in Fatima amid World War 1 she appears to some, poor shepherd children. Pray the rosary she says or worse will come….
There are some lesser-known apparitions
Our Lady of Kibeho through Alphonsine Mumureke: People were warned about hatred and violence, Called to change before it was too late. This was foretelling of the Rwandan Genocide
And here one of my favourite devotions, Our lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego in Mexico, in 1531, there are so many astonishing stories around this image, this one here is actually from the Guadalupe shrine. The constellation, the fact that the image hovers above the fibres of the tilma, that a bomb set off underneath it melted the candlesticks and took out the back windows but left the tilma untouched. From this apparition the conversion of 9 million indigenous people came about, the human sacrifices stopped especially the ones of children. She came as one of them, bridging the divide between the Spanish conquerors and the native people.
Our Lady of Akita, Japan in 1973, where a deaf nun Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa hears our Lady through a wooden statue, it was witnessed miraculously crying 101 times by hundreds of Christians and non christians. She foretold of an internal crisis in the church where “Cardinals would oppose cardinals, and Bishops against Bishops” and against mainstream sin, I fear we are indeed living in those times.
In Medgurore, an extraordinary place, not yet sanctioned by the church, yet a place where she reportedly still appears. There are over 50 confessionals around the outside of the church there, and every time I have been there is a queue outside each one. Her messages here are tender and motherly. “Peace, peace, peace” Mary’s messages there teach us the five stones of faith, Prayer, Fasting, Scripture, Confession and the Eucharist. I took a youth group there some years ago, and we had the most extraordinary time,
There is a statue of the Risen Christ I’ve seen this where water drops or at times pours from the knee of Christ, unexplained but seen by many and its claimed this has the same composition as human tears, maybe its thought, Marys tears falling from the only place she could reach her Son, whilst he was on the cross.
A decade after Mary started appearing, the Bosnian war broke out, it involved severe violence and atrocities.
She stands defiant in the face of hostility and war and aggression but gently says “come home” Each apparition the message remains the same, that peace comes from conversion and the conversion must be a change of heart, a heart transformed through prayer.
Why does she appear so frequently? It’s in response to the special mission given her by God, her apparitions aren’t to bring something new or a big revelation —but to remind humanity of something we keep forgetting that peace, truth, and God still matter—and our individual choices still shape the world. ….and also we are suckers for a false prophet, Mary coming in such a visible way rather than Jesus, saves us the confusion of thinking this is the second coming. Jesus as we know comes physically every day on our altars in the Eucharist, Mary comes in her own way by apparitions.
Each time she doesn’t nag, but invites, over and over if needed, her maternal desire to see her children safe, whole and Holy underlies the story of many a testimony or conversion story.
So the beads, a sure-fire way to Our Lady’s heart.
Our Lady, it is said, gave the rosary to St Dominic at a time when France was in the grip of heresy, she said told him to preach this as a spiritual weapon. I don’t know about you, but I struggle with it, I have to use a podcast to keep me on track, or wait till I’m driving, the internal fight to pray it alone tells us of its efficacy.
I have some miracle stories of the rosary of my own, a family member came to stay, she had alcohol dependency and was hoping to follow a medicated withdrawal programme, but as she lived over 40 miles away she wasn’t allowed to have the meds. We sat down and made Rosaries together, she didn’t know so much about Mary, but by day two she could pray it, made one for each of her children and by the third day had given up alcohol with no shaking or withdrawal sickness or pains. I knew why,
There have been many other personal encounters, not least a marriage proposal on the final day of a 33 day consecration and she gave me her yes on the steps of the Sacre Coeur, when all the what ifs flooded my mind. I’ve witnessed incredible events at Medjugorje, I’ve seen her convert the hardest and closed of hearts. And yet to my shame I will still forget to ask her help, seek her counsel… but she’s a mother, that’s an unconditional level of love for us to be blessed with, a safe space to always return to, the place we will seek in those last moments of consciousness.
For me she is the glove on Gods hand, there are some bitter pills of adjustment I need in order to become who I was meant to be, Our Lady, she comes as a mother, she crushes them up on a spoon and mixes in the Jam, never altering Gods will but softening its delivery with her maternal care. She is drawn to the naughty ones; I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
Mary the Queen of Peace doesn’t rule by power, she keeps pointing us—patiently, persistently—toward the only kind of peace that lasts: the kind that begins with her son, and flows outward through us to the world. The world needs that peace right now, and that starts here, right now in this room with us people, with our flaws and wounds. If we ask for her intercession to be the change, how could she ever turn away.
Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death. Amen
St Joseph pray for us.
