With Mary, On Holy PilgrimageHealing and Hope

Novena to Our Lady of the Snows

9480 North De Mazenod DriveBelleville, IL 62223-1160

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Designed in the U.S.A. by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

Dear Friend,

The Annual Healing and Hope Novena at the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows brings pilgrims from far and near. But you don’t have to travel to the Shrine to take part in this grace-filled event.

This prayer booklet will help you join with the Missionary Oblates and our Shrine pilgrims as we journey “With Mary, On Holy Pilgrimage.”

Each night of the novena focuses on a different theme on our pilgrimage. Please take a few moments each day to read these reflections and prayers. I am convinced they will give you new insights into your faith.

I also want you to know that you can view the novena at our website: oblatesusa.org. Each homily will be uploaded to the website so that you can enjoy these inspirational words of grace.

Please know that the Missionary Oblates are grateful for your support of our ministries. We are honored to keep you in our prayers. I pray that our Marian pilgrimage will bring healing and hope into your life.

In Jesus Christ and Mary Immaculate,

Fr. David P. Uribe, O.M.I. Oblate Chaplain Director

Reflections From Fr. William Clark, O.M.I.The reflections in this booklet are compiled

from articles written by Fr. William Clark, O.M.I.

Father Clark was a Missionary Oblate priest for

63 years and served as the Director of the National

Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows from 1991

to 1997.

Prior to his time at the Shrine, Fr. Clark was an

administrator, professor, preacher and parish pastor

throughout the United States. After leaving the

Shrine in 1997, he moved to South Africa where

he taught philosophy at the Oblates’ St. Joseph’s

Theological Institute.

Father Clark passed away in 2018 at the age

of 89. During the final few years of his life, he was

a prolific author. Many of his writings were used in

an online column called Fridays With Father where

he shared thoughts on a variety of faithful topics.

Portions of these articles are being provided in

this booklet to help you journey “With Mary, On

Holy Pilgrimage.”

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Accepting God’s Call in Our Lives

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Christian tradition has always held that the chosen were not limited to the first followers of Jesus, but extends to all those down through the ages who truly want to be followers of Jesus, to all those who have been incorporated into Him through baptism. Discipleship is a vocation common to all the faithful.

Discipleship is something more challenging than adherence to a system of ideas or obedience to a collection of rules. What Jesus wants is not admirers, but true followers, true disciples. Discipleship is a living, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

To put that a bit differently: it seems the most fundamental quality of a true disciple is goodwill. It is not some skill or technique. It is an authentic desire to follow Christ, whatever the cost. It seems willingness is the real test of the hardest callings. Experience is not one of the requirements. Willingness to commit oneself is the essential qualification.

Day One

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Being faithful as a disciple means simply that, despite our limitations and our weaknesses, we keep trying to communicate the message of God’s love to all with whom we come into contact. None of us has all the gifts, the talents we think we should have to carry out that mission. None of us, in the honesty of our own hearts, thinks we are worthy of God’s special invitation to be a disciple of Jesus.

We need to remind ourselves that we do not make ourselves worthy of the call. God does not call us because of our gifts, our talents. It is God’s call, God’s love that makes us worthy and gives us the strength to respond.

PrayerLord Jesus, in Your agony You uttered the prayer, “Not My will, but Yours be done.” Help me to resign myself to the Father’s will with such humility and love. Grant that I may perceive the things that I can change in my life; give me the help to accept those things I cannot change. Amen.

Day TwoGod Resting in Us

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No one goes through life unscathed. No one gets out of this world alive. Whether great or small, pain and suffering touches everyone’s life. Everyone must face mortality. How do we face these facts? We are challenged to believe that everything in our world is under God’s control.

To believe in God’s providence can prove difficult. It is not easy to accept all the acts of providence in regard to our health and sickness; our skills or lack thereof; our strengths and weaknesses; all the circumstances of our life and death. Because God does not intervene in our world in a purely human way, in ways we would prefer, we can easily be tempted to doubt God’s love.

Faith in God - both as ultimately in control of all that happens and as a loving person – can indeed prove challenging on two levels. First, faith is challenged when one experiences great personal misfortune. Many people have experiences similar to a man I knew who lost his job, his wife and his health within a short time. Surely, in such situations an individual’s faith in a loving, provident God is severely challenged.

It is relatively easy to believe in the loving providence of God when things are going well, when we experience blessings. But what about those times when difficulties, disappointments and suffering come into our lives? And it doesn’t have to be some enormous suffering. Pain, regardless of its size, tends to fill our consciousness. Untested, our faith

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may seem like a structure both solid and secure. Faced with a personal tragedy, our faith may seem like a house of cards.

Philosophers and theologians down through the ages have offered arguments to justify God’s providence in the face of evil in the world. Is there any basis, then, for belief in such a God?

An analogy with a story from Greek mythology might help to identify that basis. It is the story of Pandora. It was through Pandora that the gods decided to punish Prometheus for stealing fire from Mount Olympus. When Pandora opened the box given her by the gods, out flew all the evils the box contained. Looking into the nearly empty box Pandora found one thing remained which had not been needed before …. hope.

In a similar way, when one opens the box containing the rational arguments for the existence of a loving, provident God, they all fly out and prove inadequate to the task. Then, looking into the nearly empty box, one finds one thing left, the only thing adequate to the task …. faith. That faith is not an act made once and for all. It is a path that one must keep open by continually walking it until it turns into vision.

PrayerLord God, You watch over all our ways. Guide us and guard us on our life journey. Keep us mindful of the precious gifts of life which we have received from You. Mary, our mother, watch over us on our way, for all your ways are calm and all your paths are peace. Stay with us now and always. Amen.

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Echoing Mary’s Magnificat in Our Lives

Hearing the Word of God is not easy. It requires listening, and truly listening is not easy. We know that from everyday experience. Often we do not hear what someone is saying because we are not really listening. Often in the course of an argument, we hear the reproach: “You are not listening to me.”

We often hear only what we want to hear instead of what the other person is saying. There is a name for that. It is called selective hearing, and we can all be selective at times. If we are honest it is not difficult to recall instances in our lives when we thought we were listening but really heard only what we wanted to hear. We can learn from the prophet Isaiah how to listen. He wrote: “The Lord God has opened my ears. For my part I make no resistance, neither do I turn away.” (Isaiah 50:5)

They say that to translate the Chinese character for “listening” you need to express five ideas: you/ears/eyes/heart/undivided attention. Listening in that way is not something that comes easily. That is perhaps one of the main reasons real prayer is not easy. Prayer requires preparation, serious sustained effort and the ability to listen.

Day Three

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Many people experience a problem with prayer, with communicating with God. The problem is that they are asking: How do I get through to God? That’s the wrong question. The question is: How does God get through to me? Look at what the Bible tells us on virtually every page. God speaks first. He speaks His Word of invitation, His Word of love for us. We need to listen. God’s gifts are super-abundant. God wants to give us those gifts. Our challenge is to listen, to open our minds and hearts to receive those gifts.

If all our praying really boils down to saying “Dear God, please make things different,” we haven’t got it just right. We are not listening to what God is saying through the events of our everyday lives.

There is a phrase which sums up much of what is important in prayer. Certainly that phrase, “a listening heart,” can serve as the basis of a good prayer. We would do well simply to say, “Lord, give me a listening heart.”

PrayerLord, I want to continue to walk with You and be strengthened by You. I’m sure there will be some doubt and uncertainty, some trying times. With Your love and guidance, Lord, let me do Your will always. Amen.

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Shining Light into Our Darkness

One of our most basic, intimate experiences is of ourselves as incomplete, as unfinished. As someone once put it: “In this life there are no finished symphonies.” We are somehow drawn beyond anything we manage to achieve. Whatever is attained remains somehow insufficient. In a certain sense we leave every achievement behind in the very moment of accomplishment.

When we achieve what we want, our pleasure in it often fades. It can also happen that we are most acutely aware of our failures precisely when, after some achievement, someone recognizes and proclaims our accomplishment. In other words, even in our achievements we experience the need to go beyond where we are. We still hunger in some way for what is not yet.

One way to describe hope is as the indispensable dynamic force of faith and love. Because we are pilgrims, because we do not see God and do not yet share His love definitively, our faith and our love need to be permeated with hope. We know we cannot attain final fulfillment on earth. We know equally

Day Four

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well how decisive our life on earth is in regard to final fulfillment. It is through hope that we press on to that fulfillment. We press on because hope offers a vision beyond the inevitable difficulties of the human condition, beyond human suffering, even beyond death.

We need to look at what we are doing when we are hoping. Hoping implies looking ahead – but it is much more than just envisioning something we do not yet possess. The experience of human hope includes three things: desire – we want what we hope for; belief – we believe what we hope for is possible; doubt – we fear what we hope for may not happen.

But hope as a Christian virtue is something more. The difference lies in the third element. Christian hope does not include doubt. Christian hope does not arise from any consciousness of progress, nor from any feeling of fervor, nor from any increased confidence in ourselves, but wholly and purely from faith and trust in God, in His promises and His love.

PrayerLord, help me remember that there is no loss or problem I must face alone. You are always near, with Your love and compassion to comfort me. Amen.

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Healing in a Place of Pain and Suffering

Of the many challenges Jesus posed to His followers, one of the greatest was expressed in just seven words: “Take up your cross and follow Me.” The cross represents the supreme sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf. It represents extreme suffering. Jesus invites us to share in His suffering and His sacrifice.

Suffering is a problem for everyone, believer and unbeliever alike, since everyone has to deal with suffering in one way or another. We all know from personal experience both the physical suffering of bodily pain and the mental suffering resulting from disappointments and failures. We also experience what might be described as corporate or collective suffering when faced with natural disasters, epidemics and wars. For the believer the problem is additionally painful because the believer must somehow reconcile belief in an all-powerful and loving God with the existence of evil and suffering in the world.

In the face of suffering the question that most naturally arises is “why.” The bewildering question of why there is so much suffering has been raised by people in every age. It is a question that seems to be insoluble. For many it seems God doesn’t really care or is powerless to prevent disasters and the suffering they cause.

Certainly there are those who, worn down by suffering,

Day Five

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become bitter, cynical, disillusioned and turned in on themselves. On the other hand, setbacks and difficulties can, and often do, lead to a strengthening of one’s ties with God,to a deeper realization of one’s dependences on God and a more profound appreciation of His ultimate protection. It is the way suffering is faced that makes the difference.

Being unable to understand why God allows suffering to enter our lives does not mean suffering is without reason. In his encyclical Salvifici doloris Pope John Paul II offers this insight: “Suffering is present in the world in order to give birth to works of love towards neighbors, in order to transform the whole of civilization into a civilization of love.”

Suffering in and of itself does not save us. It is how suffering is accepted that makes a difference. Suffering makes it abundantly clear that we are not ultimately in control. Suffering forcefully reveals that we are not self-sufficient. Suffering invites us to surrender our lives to God in faith.

It is only through faith that we can accept that truth. It is only through a deep faith that we are able to see that faith is more real than distrust, hope is more real than despair, that love is more real than fear, that God’s love is stronger than death.

PrayerLord, Your presence brings healing, comfort and hope to those in pain. When I reach out to someone who is suffering, may I be consoling and helpful. May I hurry to their side, in the same way Mary hurried to the side of Elizabeth when she was in need. Amen.

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Receiving Gladness in Place of Mourning

There is a prayer for the feast of the Triumph of the Cross that reads, “To destroy the power of hell, Christ died upon the cross; clothed in strength and glory, He triumphed over death.” That is the great consolation Christians enjoy. We believe in a Savior who has saved us from sin and death.

Sometimes it is said our fear of death is fear of the unknown. That is not really accurate. Just as you cannot love something or someone you do not know, you cannot fear something you do not know. What we really fear is loss of the known, of our earthly life.

Most of us are not very good at accepting losses. But what is lost in death? Among the higher values we seek are inner peace, happiness, security, love. Why then should we fear death? Death cannot touch those values. In fact, for the true believer death assures them. It would be otherwise only if we thought of death as the absolute end of everything.

For the Christian, death is not an absurd departure into nothingness. Rather it is coming home to God. Death has been transformed by Jesus Christ. The death and Resurrection of Jesus have deprived death of its power to destroy us. When we profess our belief in the forgiveness of sin, the Resurrection of the body, and the life of the world to come, we are saying we really continue beyond death and that our highest values are enhanced and made permanent.

Day Six

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From the perspective of our faith, death acquires a different place on our scale of values. It is not a dark enemy with the power to annihilate. It is a stage, a moment of transition, less a diminishing and perishing and more a consummation and fulfillment. For those whom Christ loves and saves it is the moment of faith turning to vision, of hope turning to possession, of love remaining and being fulfilled.

Strange as it may sound, there are no dead people. We think of our cemeteries as being full of dead people. That is not fully consistent with our faith. Our faith tells us there are only the living: those living on earth and those living beyond. We also have the Words of Jesus Himself: “I am the Resurrection and the Life. The one who believes in Me will live forever, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)

Eternal life is not some great surprise that comes unannounced at the end of our existence in time. It is, rather, the full revelation of what we have been and lived all along. Saint John put it this way: “My dear people, what we are to be in the future has not yet been recorded; all we know is that, when it is recorded we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is.”

PrayerLord, give me that same strength of consolation and understanding which Your mother, Mary, must have received from Your friend, John, when he held and consoled her at the time of Your death. I ask You to grant eternal rest to my departed loved ones, and the strength of Your grace to all of us who remain. Amen.

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Reconciling Our Impatience and Critical Nature

There is the phenomenon of great saints speaking disparagingly of themselves. Sometimes in reading about the saints we can be amazed at how they talk about themselves. They refer to themselves as nothing, as great sinners. They even call themselves the lowest and most wretched of all people. We have to ask: Are they serious? These people are the best of Christians. Why do they talk like that? It’s a bit like hearing Albert Pujols say he is a very poor hitter or Tiger Woods say he is a lousy golfer. On the surface, it is incredible.

I think the key to understanding this puzzle is that they were profoundly aware of two things: their own limitations and faults, and the goodness of God. They not only knew their weaknesses but also accepted them and rejoiced. They rejoiced not in the weakness itself but in the mercy and love of God reaching out to them, healing them and raising them up. In other words, they were not comparing themselves to others but thinking of themselves in relation to the holiness of God. To be humble is not to make comparisons with others but to recognize one’s utter dependence on God and on His grace.

Humility does not, however, exclude confidence. The difference between the proud person and the humble

Day Seven

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person is not that the former is confident and the latter is not. The difference is that the confidence of the proud is in himself and that of the humble is in God.

Pride can make us blind. Pride can lead us to think we are better than we are. Pride can lead us to despise others. Pride can lead us to believe it is our own strength or courage or iron will that produces whatever good is in us. Pride leads to the illusion of independence. There is nothing so completely useless as the illusion that we are self-sufficient and there is nothing so completely false. Clearly, those are all tendencies that sorely need an antidote.

As infants we were totally self-centered and self-absorbed. At that stage we were incapable of being anything else. As we grew we had to learn not everything revolved around us. We learned to recognize our limitations and our dependence on others. At each stage of life we are challenged to become less and less self-centered, less and less self-absorbed. On the spiritual level we are challenged to recognize and accept our complete dependence on God. To do that is to grow in humility.

PrayerLord, teach me to be patient – with life, with people, with myself. I try to speed things along too much, and I push for results before the time is right. Teach me to trust Your sense of timing rather than my own, and to surrender my will to Your greater and wiser plan. Amen.

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Healing Our Lack of Faith

It is true that faith is the foundation of Christian life. It is faith that enables us to go beyond what Bl. John Henry Newman called “the illusions of sense and the artifices of reason.” It is faith that assures “the victory that overcomes the world.” (1 John 5:4)

The dynamic nature of faith is reflected in expressions such as “living faith” or “life of faith.” These expressions convey the idea that faith, like all things living, is subject to change. It can grow. It can decline. It can be alternately stronger or weaker. It is never finished in the sense of being complete or perfect, beyond the need or possibility of further development.

It is good to remind ourselves of a paradox about faith. It consists in this: while it is true that faith is the strongest, most certain light we can live by, that does not mean it is the clearest, most visible light we can see. There is no guarantee our lives will always be free of difficulties and doubts. We may experience times of great difficulty in seeing things with the eyes of faith and in living our faith. Even persons of great faith, if that faith is a living faith, have come to that position through a sea of difficulties, a sea that still surrounds them, so that their faith is not so much an event as a process. An old monk is credited with saying,

Day Eight

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“Doubt is merely the seed of faith, a sign that faith is alive and ready to grow.”

Faith implies/includes three main elements: conviction, confidence and commitment. Faith includes a firm conviction regarding what is supremely important. Faith provides access to something upon which one can totally rely and thus a basic confidence or trust. Faith invites commitment to one who is completely trustworthy.

When God bestows the gift of faith on someone, it is not so much a question of God revealing statements about Himself as God revealing Himself to that person. It is acceptance and total commitment to God’s self-revelation, particularly in the person of Jesus Christ. Clearly then faith is more than intellectual assent to certain propositions. It is mysteriously God’s gift to a person open to receiving it.

We are challenged to make our faith effective in our lives. It is easy enough to make a verbal profession of faith. But we have to go further. We have to “put our money where our mouth is.”

PrayerLord, I ask for Your help and guidance. Help me to overcome any doubts in faith I might have, and to emerge a stronger and better Christian because of it. May my mind and heart be open to Your power, and may I find encouragement in Your Word. Amen.

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Fulfilling Our Baptismal Promises

The basic truth about Mary can be stated very simply. It is this: Mary is the virgin mother of Jesus Christ. That statement really says everything about Mary. It describes her role in the history of salvation. It is the basis of everything else that can be said about her, the basis of her special privileges, and the basis of devotion to her. The fact that Mary is the mother of Jesus is the basis of her uniqueness, even from a purely natural point of view. Motherhood always establishes a unique and unrepeatable relationship between two people, between mother and child.

Mary is one of the most powerful symbols Christians possess, and symbols are what gives life to our beliefs. A symbol is a sign, but not just any sign. A symbol does something more than just signify. A symbol works on our consciousness by suggesting more than can be clearly described or defined. A symbol evokes a depth of meaning rather than explicitly stating it.

God has revealed Himself especially through symbols: Abraham as the father of God’s people; the burning bush as seen by Moses; the brazen serpent in the desert; the Kingdom of God in the preaching of Jesus; the Cross; the empty tomb; the descent of the Holy Spirit.

Day Nine

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And Mary! Mary is a remarkable symbol. Not just a symbol, of course. She is real as a person, which is precisely why she is so significant as a symbol. What does Mary, as a symbol, reveal about God that is so important? Pope Paul VI said Mary is the first and most perfect of Christ’s disciples, the first and most perfect Christian. That is what she symbolizes so perfectly: perfect discipleship and perfect Christianity.

Christianity is the human being’s response in faith by which God’s gift is freely accepted. Perfect Christianity is the purest and most complete acceptance of the salvation which appeared in Jesus Christ. If that is what perfect Christianity is, we have to say Mary is the perfect Christian. The reason is clear. In her blessed womb Mary received that gift as purely and as fully as possible. She expresses what redemption actually means. That is why we venerate her, why we need to imitate her openness to God’s Word.

The amazing thing is she is one of us. She belongs entirely with us. She is only human but she shows the glory to which God invites us.

PrayerO Lord, we pray that through the intercession of Mary, we may be led to everlasting joyful life with You. We ask that You grant us the grace to become more like her in our daily life. Amen.

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