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Pope Francis’ address to the “Sentinels of the Holy Family”
Hall of Pope – Thursday, 11 January 2024
Ladies, dear Sentinels,!
It is with joy that I welcome you, Sentinelles de la Sainte Famille, and greet Her Royal Highness Princess Sybil of Luxembourg.
You are a Marian prayer network – it is beautiful to pray with Our Lady – founded ten years ago, whose vocation is to present the intentions of the Church and the world to our Blessed Mother.
I appreciate the simplicity and humility of your movement, which was born spontaneously in the common prayer of the first among you.
The commitment required of those who wants to become a “Guardians” is simple, it might even seem ridiculous: recite a decade of the Rosary every day. It is very simple.
It is small in the eyes of men, but it is great in the eyes of God, if it is done faithfully over time, with faith and in a spirit of communion among you. God loves what is small and makes it bear fruit.
The fact that your movement is composed only of women highlights your specific and irreplaceable vocation in the Church, in the image of the Virgin Mary.
Not only do you pray to Our Lady, asking her to intercede, but you are also ready to conform yourselves to her, to her motherhood, to unite yourselves to her prayer of intercession as a mother for all the children of the Church and for the world.
Thus, whatever your state in life, with Mary you are all mothers. Your prayer and your commitment as “guardians” are based on Mary’s model, with certain characteristics.
I am thinking, first of all, of the gaze you cast on others and on the realities of the world.
May it always be like that of the Virgin Mary, a mother’s gaze, patient, understanding, compassionate. And I invite you to imbue your whole life and all your relationships with this gaze, not only when you find yourselves together as “sentinels” and in moments of prayer, but in your daily life, in the family, in the parish, at work.
We also heard recently in the liturgy that Mary kept events in her heart and reflected on them.
You certainly bring to your prayers events that may be painful, personal or entrusted to you by others. You also bring the intentions of the world, torn apart by so many conflicts, so much violence and so much indifference; and also those of many people who are suffering, abandoned, rejected or in great difficulty. All this can lead to incomprehension and discouragement. But Mary, who saw the child Jesus suffering in poverty, was not discouraged; she did not complain. She remains silent; she keeps her heart and meditates.
” That is what mothers do: they know how to overcome obstacles and disagreements, and how to bring home peace. In this way, they transform problems into opportunities for rebirth and growth” (ibid.). I wish you all the best in helping people to discover the meaning of their lives, and always to have hope and confidence in the future.
Finally, tenderness. Our world, as well as our brothers and sisters, need tenderness more than ever: a word that some would perhaps like to remove from the dictionary! How harsh the world can be at times, implacable, deaf and indifferent to the suffering and needs of our neighbor.
Mary was tenderness for Jesus; and she is tenderness for the Church and the world.
Surely this is also the vocation of a “Guardian”: to incarnate in some way Mary’s tenderness for the Church and the world.
I thank you once again for your visit and for your devotion. I wish you courageous perseverance. May your growth, numerically and geographically, not make you lose your simplicity and smallness of heart. I bless you, and I ask you not to forget me in your prayers. Thank you.
