"Lady, do not abandon your Spain!"

My Lady, Most Holy Mary, Mother of Jesus and our Mother: How much I have missed you in these distant lands, to which your Son’s command has brought me! How many times, while traveling the roads of Hispania, have I returned in thought to that house where I met you, to your serene voice, to your clear gaze, to that extraordinary peace that always surrounded your person and made the labors, the adversities, and the fatigues of our apostolate seem more bearable! Since I left Jerusalem I have never ceased to remember you, but never as tonight, here, beside the waters of the Ebro, have I felt such a need to have you near and to open my heart to you.

You know me, Mother. You know that I have never been a man of great delicacies or overly tender feelings. I am the son of Zebedee, a fisherman of Galilee, accustomed from boyhood to hard work, to the buffeting of the wind, to nights without a catch, and to battling the waves when the lake grew rough. Jesus called my brother John and me, «Boanerges,» which means sons of thunder, because He knew our fiery temperament, our impatience, and that way we had of wanting to settle things at once and by force. We even went so far one day as to ask Him to call down fire from heaven on those who would not receive Him, and the Master had to teach us that His Kingdom is won in a very different way.

How far away that Galilee of our youth now seems to me! John, my younger brother, so like me in the fire of the heart and so unlike me in the delicacy of his spirit, remains with you, while I find myself in this land that still scarcely knows the name of Jesus. And tonight, Lady, I feel weary. I have preached with enthusiasm, I have traveled through cities and villages, I have spoken of the resurrection of the Lord and the forgiveness of sins, I have announced to these people that the Son of God has died for them and that there is no other Name under heaven by which we can be saved. But I find hardened hearts, too much pride, so much indifference…, and the fruits are so few that I wonder whether I am doing things well and whether I shall ever see the Church of your Son established here.

There are a few disciples who accompany and console me. They are still only a handful of men among a multitude that does not understand us, and I fear that my word may prove as useless as that net which my brother and I cast into the lake and drew back empty after having labored all night. You know, Mother, that I already love these people, even though they will not listen to me; that I have begun to love this land of Hispania as a second homeland, and it grieves me therefore to see it so far from the truth that would set it free. I would like to win it entirely for Jesus Christ, but I see that the ardor of a son of thunder is not enough to open a single heart when God does not touch it with His grace.

That is why tonight I have come to seek you in prayer, Mother. While my companions rest and the Ebro continues its course beneath the stars, I have recalled those days in the Upper Room, when we all persevered united with you, awaiting the Holy Spirit. We were then frightened men, shut in by fear, uncertain, but your presence was enough to restore our confidence. You had remained steadfast beside the cross when we had fled, and you taught us, without speeches, that fidelity is proved when human hopes have collapsed.

O Mary, Mother of my Master! How I would like to see you once more, even if only for an instant, to kneel at your feet and beg you not to abandon this poor apostle, who so desires to serve your Son and achieves so little!

And then, Mother, when my soul seemed most alone, what I shall never forget took place.

I began to hear a song that did not come from the earth, a music whose beauty no human voice could reproduce, and among the voices of countless angels I distinguished the words that Gabriel had addressed to you in Nazareth: Ave, Maria, gratia plena. Hail, Mary, full of grace! It was the greeting of the Incarnation, the same with which the redemption of the world had begun, now resounding over this land of Hispania as the announcement of a new springtime of grace.

I lifted my eyes and saw you!!!

It was you, Mother, truly you! Not an image formed by my longing, nor a memory of the happy years when we walked beside Jesus, but you yourself, with that beauty no loveliness of this world can explain, surrounded by the angels of heaven and supported upon a pillar that seemed to defy the fragility of all human things. You, who were still living in mortal flesh and remained under the care of my brother John, had come miraculously to these Hispanic shores to meet me. You had left for a few moments the quiet of your little house in Ephesus to draw near to this remote corner of the Empire, where a fisherman of Galilee was beginning to falter beneath the weight of his mission.

Lady, how much good it did me to see you! Even before you spoke a word, the sadness that had been gaining my heart was dispelled. I understood that I was not alone, that Jesus had not forgotten His apostle, and that this Spain so difficult to evangelize had a Mother who took an interest in her. I knelt before you as I had done so many times in Jerusalem, and I gazed at you with an emotion I could not explain. I, who had seen Jesus transfigured on the mountain and had beheld Him prostrate in Gethsemane, now felt that the Lord was granting me, through His Mother, a new consolation to sustain my fidelity.

And you spoke to me.

I shall never forget the tenderness of your words nor the firmness with which you encouraged me to persevere. You showed me that pillar and asked me to raise beside it a church dedicated to your memory, promising me that there the mercy of God would be manifested in favor of those who came to implore your intercession. And those words I kept deep in my soul, “there will never be lacking in this city worshippers of Christ,” were far more than a comfort to me: they constituted a hope for future centuries, when we should have disappeared from the earth and other men would continue the work we were now beginning amid so many difficulties.

How well you know, Lady, the needs of the apostles of your Son! You did not come to promise me an evangelization without sacrifices, nor a multitude of immediate conversions, nor a life free from persecutions. You came to strengthen my faith, to teach me that the fruit of our labor belongs to God, while it is for us to sow with patience, to water with tears, and to remain faithful when the results seem to belie our hopes.

Then I understood why you had wished to leave a pillar. The world raises its greatnesses upon pride, power, and wealth, and those boasts end by collapsing; Jesus Christ, on the contrary, builds His Church upon the firmness of faith, upon obedience to His word, and upon the sacrifice of those who are ready to lose everything rather than lose Him. You did not come to replace the one cornerstone, which is your Son, but to teach me to remain united to Him with the constancy you had shown from Nazareth to Calvary. And so, beneath your gaze, I learned that the thunder of the apostle is not to threaten with fire from heaven, but to proclaim without fear the truth of Jesus Christ, anointed with the gentle strength of His Mother.

Blessed be you, Mary, for having come to Spain! Blessed that night when your most holy feet trod this land! Blessed the angels who accompanied you and blessed the Pillar you left us as a remembrance of your visit and a testimony of your protection!

I know that the day will come when, upon this little church that I am going to raise with my companions, an immense temple will rise; that generations will come to venerate you from the most distant places and that a multitude of your children, amid joys and sorrows, will call you Mother of the Pillar. I see them with the eyes of hope, though I do not know their names nor the centuries in which they will live. Mothers will come with their children, young people in need of light, weary priests, elderly people near death, sinners ashamed of their faults, families that will ask for your protection, and entire peoples that will recognize in you the safeguard of their history. And all will find here, in the pillar you have given us, a sign that the promises of God do not grow old and that His Mother never turns away from the needs of her children.

How many things I would like to say to you before you depart, Mother! I would like to speak to you of the fatigues of my journeys, of the people I have met, and of the hopes that are beginning to germinate in this land; I would like to ask your forgiveness for my impatience, for the occasions when I have trusted too much in my own character and too little in the grace of the Lord, and for the many times I have confused the slowness of men to be converted with the apparent barrenness of my ministry. I would also like to tell you that, when I speak of Jesus, I like to remember those days when you had Him beside you, and that many times, while I explain the mystery of the Incarnation, I return in thought to your humble house in Nazareth, where all that we now preach to the ends of the earth began.

But the angels are again preparing to accompany you, and I understand that the moment of farewell has come. You must return to your retreat, to the care of John, my brother, to whom the Lord entrusted you from the cross. The tradition of this night returns you to Jerusalem, while another venerable Christian memory will also recall your house in Ephesus, where John will be recognized as your loving guardian. What a blessed responsibility my brother received when Jesus told him that you were his Mother! And how admirably he knew how to fulfill it, because that young man who had shared with me the nets, the boats, and the storms of Galilee became, by the will of the Lord, your son, your daily companion, and the chaplain of your oratory.

Give him many greetings from me, Mother. Tell John that I have not forgotten our childhood beside the lake, nor the day we left our father Zebedee to follow Jesus, nor those times when the Master corrected us about true greatness. Tell him that here, in Spain, his brother James continues to fight for the Gospel, that he has known discouragement, but that you yourself have come to restore his joy. Tell him to care for you with all the delicacy of his heart, to listen to you, to pray with you, and never to grow accustomed to the immense grace of having beneath his roof the Mother of God. And when he celebrates the holy mysteries, when John pronounces over the bread and wine the words we learned from Jesus at the Last Supper, let him remember this poor apostle, who now continues his work so far away, in this Hispanic land that I have begun to love so deeply.

What a beautiful family Jesus has left us, O Mother! John and I were brothers by blood, sons of the same parents, but the Lord willed that that brotherhood should widen to embrace all the redeemed. In giving you to John, He was giving you also to us, because that beloved disciple represented the whole family of the children of God. And now you have come to Spain to show us that your motherhood knows no borders and that the love born at the foot of the cross can reach the farthest corner of the earth.

It moves me to think that, of the two sons of thunder, one has remained with you in the intimacy of the home and the other has been sent to the westernmost ends of the known world. How different our paths and how united our mission! John will learn to penetrate ever more deeply into the mystery of God’s love, while I shall continue to proclaim it along these difficult roads; but both of us know that the heart of all apostolate consists in remaining united to Jesus, and that no one helps us to understand it better than you, His Mother and ours.

From this night onward, when I again encounter closed hearts, when my words stumble upon indifference, and when weariness tries to quench my enthusiasm, I shall return spiritually to this Pillar. I shall remember your visit, the song of the angels, your Mother’s gaze, and the promise that there will not be lacking here worshippers of Christ. And I shall continue to preach, even if few listen; I shall continue to sow, even if others must reap the harvest, and I shall continue to love Spain, even if her children are slow to discover the treasure that Jesus Christ offers them.

For I would wish, Mother, that this land might be entirely your Son’s. That His name might be pronounced with respect in its homes, that His Gospel might illumine its laws and customs, that His cross might preside over the hopes and sufferings of its inhabitants, that its priests might be holy men, and that its families might learn from yours fidelity, purity, and sacrifice. I would wish that Spain might never be content merely to bear the Christian name outwardly, but that it might truly live by the grace of Christ, because nothing would grieve me so much as to see her preserve the signs of the faith after having lost its spirit.

You know, Mary, that the hour will also come for me to return to Jerusalem. I do not yet know the paths by which God will lead me, but I know that the Master announced persecutions to us and that one day He asked me if I was willing to drink His cup. Then my brother and I answered yes, without fully understanding the reach of that question. Now I am beginning to understand it, because I have learned that true love cannot stop before sacrifice.

And when that hour comes for me, dear Mother, do not abandon me. If the persecutor’s sword must put an end to my apostolic labors, may it find my soul prepared; if I must give my blood for Him who shed His for us, may I not shrink from death. I, who once wished to occupy a place of honor beside the Master’s throne, now desire only to be worthy of sharing His cross. I do not mind if my life ends soon, if God wishes to use it to open a way of salvation to many men. What I do ask of you is that this Spain which I leave under your protection may remain faithful to the Lord and that the first seed of the Gospel may never be erased from her memory.

Perhaps I shall not live to see on earth the blessed day when your Son calls you definitively to His glory. I do not know when God will wish your mortal pilgrimage to end, nor what the circumstances of your passing will be. But I know that that most pure flesh from which the eternal Word took His own cannot remain subject to the corruption of the tomb, and that your Son, conqueror of death, will grant you to share in His victory in an entirely singular way.

What joy, Mother, when the Church contemplates your glorious Assumption! You, who carried Him in your arms when He was a helpless Child, will be carried by Him to the glory of heaven; you, who stood beside His cross, will share forever in His triumph, and she who came in mortal flesh to the banks of the Ebro will be constituted, in body and soul, Queen of angels and saints. And if by then my blood has already been shed for Jesus Christ and my soul has been received among His friends, what happiness to meet you again, Mother, now free from every separation, to give you thanks eternally for that night when you came to console me!

From heaven, your love will be able to embrace even more closely this Spain you have come to visit. You will no longer need the angels to transport you miraculously from one land to another, because your maternal solicitude will reach all your children and accompany the pilgrim Church until the consummation of the ages. The Pillar will remain standing and generations will succeed one another, but what is essential will remain: Jesus Christ will continue to be the only Savior, and you will continue to lead to Him those who come trustingly to your intercession.

Therefore I dare to ask you for a grace that comprises all the others: that Spain may always be the land of Mary so that it may truly be the land of Jesus Christ. May she never confuse your protection with a security that would dispense her from conversion, nor your predilection with a privilege that would make her better than other peoples. On the contrary, the more favored she knows herself to be by your love, the greater her responsibility to keep the faith, live in grace, defend the truth, practice charity, and carry the Gospel to those who do not yet know it.

And if ever Spain goes astray, if her children come to be ashamed of Christ, if charity grows cold, faith weakens, or hope darkens, draw near to her again, Immaculate Mother, as you have come this night to console your apostle. Do not let future generations be content to admire the stones of their churches after having forgotten the God for whom they were raised. Raise up saints in her families, apostles among her young people, priests in love with Jesus Christ, contemplatives who sustain the Church in hidden ways, and men and women capable of living with integrity the demands of the Gospel.

Mother of the Pillar, keep Spain for the Heart of your Son! Make that Heart, opened by the lance on Calvary and become an inexhaustible fountain of mercy, reign in her people, in her homes, and in all this homeland. May her history, with its greatnesses and its miseries, be purified by His most precious Blood, and may her children learn to love Jesus with the same simplicity and strength with which you loved Him. O Immaculate Virgin, chosen from all eternity to be the Mother of the Redeemer, obtain for this land the grace of always recognizing Him as her Lord.

And when the day comes when the children of Spain cross the seas to carry the Gospel to other peoples, accompany them also, Mother. May they never forget that the true greatness of a Christian nation consists in sharing the treasure received and that no human conquest can compare with that of a soul won for Jesus Christ. Extend your mantle over those peoples who one day will form a great family of faith on the other side of the ocean, and may your Name, Mary, pronounced for the first time here beside the Ebro amid angelic canticles, resound in thousands of churches, homes, and hearts united by one same faith.

You are already departing, Mother. The angels surround you once more and I remain on my knees, unable to take my eyes from you. I would like to prolong this visit, to retain your presence a little longer, and to continue hearing your voice, but I understand that much work still awaits me and that I must rise to continue the mission Jesus has entrusted to me. You have left me your Pillar, and with it a certainty that no one will ever be able to take from me: the Mother of the Lord has come to Spain, has listened to the discouragement of her apostle, and has wished to leave here a permanent sign of her love.

Return to John, dear Mother. Tell him that I embrace him with all my soul and that I hope to meet him again, when God wills, in that homeland where there will no longer be roads to separate us. I remain here, beneath your Pillar, to continue proclaiming Jesus Christ and to teach this people to pronounce your name with the same love with which the angels pronounce it.

And if ever, from heaven, you see that Spain is again drifting away from your Son, remember that poor fisherman of Galilee who one night wept with weariness beside the Ebro, and for love of him and of all who have given their lives to preserve the faith here, and above all for love of Jesus Christ, do not allow the light of His Gospel to be extinguished among us.

My Mother, Mother of the Pillar, Queen of Spain and of all the Hispanic world, make this land always belong to Christ, and may the Heart of Jesus always reign in the heart of your Spain!

Amen.