2017 Mother’s Day, Padre Pio and Our Lady

The week leading up to Mother’s Day, I got a sweet reminder that God is watching out for me and Mary’s Advocates.

Back in college at the University of Notre Dame, my later-to-be-husband and I were founding members of a Knights of Immaculata club. During that time, I started praying daily Rosaries and have never stopped. After marriage, we would pray our rosary together and dedicate one decade for the intention of those who want to find spouses or have difficult marriages. Thinking now of the warning, “you better be careful what you pray for,” I laugh.  Today, with Mary’s Advocates, I work for those who have terribly difficult marriages: in which one spouse abandoned the marriage.

The Knights’ club we started in college is also called Militia of the Immaculata (M.I.) and members regularly wear the miraculous medal. For Catholics, wearing this medal reminds us to ask Mary to pray for us. Not only do we ask the friends we know here to pray for us, we also ask our friends already in heaven to pray for us.

The founder of Militia of the Immaculata, St. Maximilian Kolbe, wrote that the Miraculous Medal “is the external sign of consecration to the Immaculata.”  My first expensive medal was a college graduation present from my parents, but I lost it swimming at a small lake a couple years after college. When my husband and I started courting, he gave me a miraculous medal (the one pictured in this blog).

I almost lost in on Tuesday, May 9, 2017, but I believe that through a little miracle, it was saved for me.

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The weekend before Mother’s Day (May 6), I went to my first meeting of the Saint Padre Pio Prayer Group in Cleveland, Ohio. The local leader shares Padre Pio’s chalice for priests to use during the meeting’s Mass.  Fr. Joseph Tuscan, OFM Capuchin, said Mass for the group and gave a fascinating talk afterwards.  He reminded us how Padre Pio taught that, “The Rosary is the ‘weapon’ for these times.”

After the talk, a wonderful retired local priest prayed with people. We prayed both for my marriage and Mary’s Advocates’ marriage work.   When praying, the priest had Padre Pio’s chalice. I placed all the jewelry I wear in the chalice: wedding ring, engagement ring, University of Notre Dame class ring (gift from husband), and another ring my husband gave me, and my silver miraculous medal necklace.

Two days later, on Tuesday May 9, when leaving daily Mass, I paused in my church’s parking lot while I was thinking about whether to turn around to grab some flyers. While I  paused, for no obvious reason, my eyes were drawn to the ground, and there, I saw my silver miraculous medal on the blacktop parking lot, right at my feet.  A silver/gray medal on a gray/black parking lot could have gone unnoticed for months or years.

That was my little miracle reminding me that God is watching out for me.  Days or weeks could have passed before I might even have noticed the medal was missing from the chain on my neck, however my eyes were draw to the exact spot where it was on the ground. My husband gave me that medal when we started courting and I’ve worn in for 27 years. I wear it all the time, day and night.

To top off my Mother’s Day weekend, I joined a local Rosary Rally in the Twinsburg town square to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first visit of our Lady in Fatima.  Our youngest son joined me, and thereafter, we drove to pick up our 19-year-old from college.

Happy Mother’s Day

May Mary, the Mother of God, watch over Mary’s Advocates with her friends: St. Padre Pio and St. Maximilian Kolbe.

Bai Macfarlane, Director Mary’s Advocates