Vatican City, Mar 14, 2012 / 09:39 am
Profound and constant prayer enabled the Virgin Mary to embrace God's will in her life, Pope Benedict XVI taught in his March 14 general audience.
Jesus' mother “was placed by the Lord at the decisive moments of salvation history and has always been able to respond with full availability, the result of a deep relationship with God developed in assiduous and intense prayer,” the Pope told the more than 10,000 pilgrims in St. Peter's Square.
In recent months, the Pope has traced the history of prayer through the Old Testament and the four Gospels, focusing on the Psalms and the prayer life of Christ himself. This Wednesday, he began a new chapter in his series of talks on prayer by focusing on the role of prayer in the early Church, with Mary as its first and greatest disciple.
Mary, he explained, “teaches us the necessity of prayer,” through which God gives believers the courage “to reach the ends of the world and proclaim everywhere the Lord Jesus, savior of the world.”