by Julián Carrón
“What fills our lives with hope is the fact that Our Lady exists, the flower of Our Lady. In Being’s relationship with Our Lady, God’s method is revealed: to make man take part in that vortex of charity, which is mercy. We live inside this vortex.” Notes from Julián Carrón’s testimony
Introduction
Maiden yet a Mother, daughter of thy Son High beyond all other–lowlier is none… You are the living fountain of hope. [Dante]Why? Because you are the clearest vindication conceivable against the apparent uselessness of life. In you, Mary, negativity, destruction, and evil did not win. You are truly the vindication against everything that looms as a menace over our lives. Therefore, we come to you, as beggars, as poor ones, to ask you for the only thing we really need: Jesus, the only positive sign in an otherwise absurd movement of time and space.
My friends, we travel the road conscious of our nothingness, because otherwise we would be formal, with our eyes fixed on her, “the living fountain of hope.” It is by looking at her, censoring nothing, that our lives are filled with hope. Whether the moment we are going through is a bad or a good one, dark or filled with light, with difficulty or joy, we travel this road, crying out, “Veni Sancte Spiritus, Veni per Mariam;” make Yourself present through the womb, the flesh of Our Lady.
1. You are the living fountain of hope
To us, who are, like everybody, frail to the point of arousing compassion, conniving with the evil that is all around us and within us, hope has appeared in the figure of Our Lady. Fr Giussani’s charity toward each of us has led him to place Our Lady before our eyes and point our gaze toward her. It is an invitation to look at her so that our lives will be filled with hope.What fills our lives with hope is the fact that Our Lady exists, the flower of Our Lady. Our Lady is a fact. She exists. This flower exists. And no evil, no negativity can erase from reality the flower of Our Lady.
She, one of us, a human creature just like we are, achieved her destiny. In her was fulfilled the promise that is life, the desire for happiness, despite all the disasters present now or yet to come. This is why she is the clearest and most profound vindication against the apparent uselessness of life. No one, not even we, can remove this flower from reality. She is a fact that defies our skepticism, our lack of expectation.
This is why, if we look at her with simplicity, without offering any opposition, our lives are filled with hope. “Among all the nations of the universe you are the living fountain of hope, an endless source of hope; again and again you offer hope as the meaning of everything: the light of lights, the color of colors, the other of others.”
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