Our Lady Help of Christians. Feast 24.5.09 (Patroness of Australia)
In 1844, Mary, under the title of Our Lady Help of Christians was chosen as the patroness of Australia at the First Provincial Synod of Sydney. Our Lady has been invoked under the title Auxilium Christianorum or Help of Christians since at least the sixteenth century. After the battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571, at which a Turkish fleet was defeated by a Christian fleet, Pope Pius V, who had previously called upon Catholics to invoke Mary's assistance so that the Turkish threat may be averted, inserted the title "Help of Christians" into the Litany of Our Lady as he believed that the threat of invasion had been averted through Mary's intercession. Our Lady was again to be invoked under the title Help of Christians early in the nineteenth century. Pius VII was elected to the Papacy in 1800, soon after Napoleon had seized power in France. Although Pius VII and Napoleon had signed a concordat in 1801, Pius later refused to accede to many of Napoleon's demands to whittle away the Church's prerogatives. In a fruitless attempt to coerce Pius VII, Napoleon kept him under close arrest in Savona in Italy and other locations from 1809 to 1814, forbidding cardinals and other Church officials to meet him. A prayer campaign was organised amongst Catholics throughout the world to obtain the Pope's freedom, particularly the freedom for him to exercise the Petrine office. Pius VII attributed his eventual freedom in 1814 to Our Lady Help of Christians and decreed that the feast be celebrated on the anniversary of the day upon which he re-entered Rome, 24 May.
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Our Lady helps us. Well, we certainly need help! Actually no small part of our struggle in the spiritual life is caused precisely because we are not inclined to admit our own helplessness. So we can be defiant towards heaven and pretend to ourselves that we can get by on our own strength.
We need help both personally and communally, as the Church. And the tempest-tossed Church all her eyes are on thee. They look to thy shining, sweet star of the sea!
We are tossed by tempests as never before in the present Church. Scandals, loss of faith, lack of vocations, loss of members (especially young), false teaching, sacrilegious liturgies, to name a few...
In our personal lives every one of us has sinful habits that need changing. We cannot do it on our own. We need help.
Where does help come from? Heaven. When we pray we are bringing to bear the power of heaven onto the current situation.
It is usually very difficult to measure the difference that prayer makes because there are so many factors involved in what happens.
Sometimes it is obvious - as in a complete miracle, such as a major healing. Most times the prayer will just go into the mix of all the factors and although we may not be able to say exactly what the prayer did, we can be confident that it helped things to turn out for the better.
There are certain things we can do to make the prayer even more effective. One of those things is to invoke the aid of Mary, Help of Christians. She can help us by praying for the same things as we pray for.
Not all prayer is equally effective. People pray with different degrees of faith, of fervour, of perseverance. Our Lady prays the best possible way in all areas.
Her prayer is worth far more than ours. She is more likely to reach the heart of God because she is so much closer to Him to begin with.
It is said that God cannot refuse a request she makes. This would not mean that God lacks resolution; it means that Mary is so close to Him in her own thinking that He will always agree with whatever she suggests.
She also does not suffer from lack of faith as we usually do. She sees God face to face. She does not doubt His existence, or His love. She can cut through all the things that make us tentative and inconsistent in our own prayer.
She goes straight to His throne, still humble, but knowing already what He will say.
So she is a powerful Advocate for us, a very fruitful source of help.
Generally we underrate the power of prayer. We tend to leave it to the last thing. We try all the practical solutions, and then if they do not work, we pray. Prayer should be the first thing, permeating all our actions, before, during and after.
We can be in a state of prayer, whereby we may not have time to make formal prayer, but nevertheless can still be close to God in mind and heart, so that whatever request we make, however hurriedly, will be sincere and will be accepted by Him. If you ever find yourself on a sinking ship, you will be glad if you have maintained a close relationship with God.
In any case, wherever we are with Him, we can ask Mary to pray on our behalf because she is always close. It helps to have a mediator. So we call the mediator ‘Help’. It is her name so much is it part of her nature.
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