This file photo taken on May 13, 2015 shows Pope Francis touching a statue of Our Lady of Fatima as he arrives for his general audience at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. Pope Francis heads to Fatima on May 12, on a pilgrimage that will attract up to a million people and see the pontiff canonise two child shepherds who reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago. (Photo by Vincenzo Pinto/AFP)
Mary, like many mothers throughout the world, is an example of strength and courage in accepting new life and in sharing the suffering of their children, Pope Francis said.
Although she had no idea of what awaited her when she accepted to bear God's son, "Mary in that instant appears to us like one of the many mothers in our world, courageous to the extreme," Catholic News Service reported the pope as saying at his weekly general audience.
Her motherly love and courage is seen again at the foot of the cross, he said, where "she teaches us the virtue of waiting even when everything appears meaningless."
Just a few days before he was to visit Fatima, Portugal, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Marian apparitions there and as people in many countries were preparing to celebrate Mother's Day, Pope Francis used his audience talk to focus on Mary and hope.
"We are not orphans, we have a mother in heaven," he said. "In difficult moments, may Mary, the mother that Jesus has given to us all, always guide our steps."
Pope Francis reflected on Mary as "the mother of hope."
"Don't forget: There is always a great relationship between hope and listening. And Mary is a woman who listens, who welcomes existence as it comes to us with its happy days as well as its tragedies, which we never want to encounter," he said.
"Mothers do not betray, and in that instance, at the foot of the cross, none of us can say which one was the crueler passion: that of the innocent man who dies on the scaffold of the cross or the agony of a mother who accompanies her son in his final moments of life," he said.
Full Story: Mary teaches people to hope in life’s darkest moments, pope says
Source: Catholic News Service