GATE OF HEAVEN

(1) MARY, we greet you as the Gate of Heaven because you are the Mother of the Gate of Heaven, Jesus Christ, our Redeemer. He said, "I am the Door. If anyone enter by me he shall be safe, and shall go in and out, and shall find pastures... I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly" (John 10,10). St. Paul says that "there is but one God," and one "Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a redemption for all."

When the Church calls you the "Gate of Heaven," she is not attributing to you what belongs to the God-Man. But she teaches that all the honor paid to you tends to the glory of Jesus. If you have so much power, it is from Jesus that you derive it, and with Him that you exercise it.

(2) MARY, you are the Gate of Heaven because through your hands God imparts to us all the graces by means of which we obtain heaven. God left it to your own free choice to accept or to refuse the honor of becoming the Mother of His Son. But having become the Mother of God, you share in the work of our Redemption. From the very moment that you conceived the Divine Word in your womb, you obtained, so to speak, power over the gifts which are imparted to us by the Holy Spirit, so that no creature obtains any grace from God without your mediation.

Gate of Heaven, you are the sweetest, the tenderest, the kindest of mothers, constantly watching me with eyes of love as I wend my weary way through this same valley of tears that was once marked by your own blessed footsteps. How surely does devotion to you open the heavenly portals to numberless souls! Be the Gate of Heaven to me by obtaining through your prayers all the graces I need to live a holy life and to enter the gates of heaven.

(3) MARY, you are all-powerful with God by your intercession. Your divine Son is ever ready to listen to your prayers, because He desires so ardently to gladden your heart, so that you seem to command rather than to ask. Therefore, you are all-powerful in heaven and on earth through your prayers, and you are able to raise the hopes even of those who are on the point of despair.

Your loving Son said, "Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able" (Luke 13,24). Banish from my heart all sinful desires, all attachment to the world and its goods and pleasures. Help me to live a mortified life so that I may be able to enter heaven through the narrow gate. Teach me to be humble, and in all things to seek the honor of God and to bear with patience the crosses of life.

Through your prayers, be the Gate of Heaven to me, for you speak in the words of the Scripture: "Blessed is the man that hears me and that watches daily at my gates, and waits at the posts of my doors. He that shall find me shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord" (Prov. 8,34)

May the prayer of the Mother of God help Your people, O Lord, and though we know that she passed from this life as every mortal must, may we feel her intercession for us before You in heavenly glory. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. (Feast of the Assumption, Aug. 15)