Annual Diocesan Marian Pilgrimage to Carfin 2017
 
Dear brothers and  sisters,  it is always the sweetest pleasure to join with you here in Carfin as our Paisley diocese makes its annual Pilgrimage in homage to Mary, our Mother, the Immaculately Conceived of God.  Our pilgrimage to Our Blessed Mother is annual, by turn going to meet Her at Lourdes in the Pyrenees and then meeting Her here at home in Carfin.  We come to thank Her, the Mother of our diocese, for all the graces She has obtained for us from Her Son, to ask Her to obtain Her Son’s blessing and protection in the year to come, and just to honour Her as the love of our hearts and our hope of salvation.
 
It is good for us to come in a multitude, like those who stood before the Throne of God in their thousands, which we read of in Daniel’s dream, as the Almighty Lord held court before them.  Like that crowd we come to witness the majesty and sovereignty of our God over every nation, people and language.
 
We will leave Her today feeling, like Peter, James and John, that we have been touched by the Son of God and Son of Mary, Who makes our weary bodies to stand again and Who sends us out into the world with eyes that see only Jesus and His Kingdom. 
 
Yet if the Apostles left the Holy Mountain seeing only Jesus, it was because they were able to listen a while to His companions, Moses and Elijah, whom they found by His side and who talked to them about the Mystery of the Lord and His Easter Mystery, and the salvation to the  world that He would bring.  The Apostles saw Jesus and His Gospel message clearly because they heard it from those two prophets and saints, and saw it reflected in the brilliance of their witness to the glorious Lord.
 
As we look around the Grotto of Carfin  we see a whole Heavenly host of saints and prophets who lived their lives close to Jesus and whose lives tell  the story of the Messiah to whom their witness points. 
 
Above all the angels and saints who wait by His side, of course, is Our Blessed Mother, Mary.  To her is reserved the centre stage with Her Son.  Listening to Her, like our Mother telling us the story of Her Son, we see most clearly Who Jesus is and what is the Salvation He brings to us and our world.  Like Moses and Elijah Mary reminds us of the blessed life and the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Her Son that saved our world from sin and eternal death and opened to us the way to divine mercy, grace and salvation.  But even more than the message of the saints we can depend on Mary’s prophecy and take it as a lamp for lighting a way through the dark until the dawn comes and the morning star rises in our minds.
 
Though our annual pilgrimage is in honour of Our Lady of Lourdes, this year we cannot forget the centenary of the apparitions of Our Lady to Saints Jacinta and Francisco, and to Venerable Lucia.  There, above all, Our Lady appeared as a prophet with a message accompanying Her Son’s Gospel so faithfully that truly it allowed our world in these times to see His majesty for ourselves. 
 
Fatima is undoubtedly the most prophetic of modern apparitions. Its message reveals the frightening vision of Hell, the Second World War, the immense damage that Russia would do to humanity by abandoning the Christian faith and embracing Communist totalitarianism, and it urgently called our Church to devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  There, Our Lady asked the Church to commit ourselves to prayer and penance for the conversion of sinners and of the world.  Through Sister Lucia She called us to the Devotion of the Five Saturdays, on the first Saturday of each month to go to Confession, receive Holy Communion, recite the Rosary and keep Our Lady company for fifteen minutes, meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary. 

Our Lady also asked for the Consecration of the world, of all peoples and nations to Her Immaculate Heart, so that the Devil, so alive in our times, would be defeated and Her Immaculate Heart would triumph.  Without this consecration She advised us that evil and darkness would continue to spread and the horrors that the little children of Fatima witnessed would take on an ever greater reality.  Sister Lucia explained that it would not be that God was punishing us, so much as that we ourselves were preparing our own punishment.  In his kindness God was warning and calling us to the right path, while respecting the freedom He had given us who were responsible for our own choices.
We know that Saint John Paul made this consecration of the world in the Holy Year of Redemption 1981.  In this centenary year of the apparitions of Fatima the Bishops of Scotland will take the historic step of consecrating Scotland as well to the Immaculate Heart of Mary at our national pilgrimage on 3 September. 

Our Blessed Mother Mary, Mother of all men and women and peoples, knows our sufferings and our hopes. She has a mother's awareness of all our struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, which afflict us and our modern world.  She will accept the cry we, moved by the Holy Spirit, address to Her Heart and will embrace with the love of a Mother and Handmaid of the Lord, our nation of Scotland, which we entrust and consecrate to Her, full of concern, as we are, for the earthly and eternal destiny of our nation and citizens. 

The power of the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary lasts for all time and embraces all individuals, peoples and nations. It overcomes every evil that the spirit of darkness has awakened in our times, in the heart of humanity and in its history.  Please God it can bring to an end a period of our history marked by human lust for power and evil, yet pervaded by the merciful love of God and the watchful care of the Mother of Jesus.  Please God it will ensure that the future of our nation is in God and our Church is, once again, His active partner in creating a more blessed future for our beloved land of Scotland
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