Our Lady saved me from despair

Our Lady saved me from despair, which was the gravest danger. People like us always have as much faith and charity as we need; it’s hope that we sometimes struggle with.

Can you imagine, for 18 months I could not say the "Our Father ... Thy will be done!" I couldn’t say it, because I could not accept His will. I was scared. We shouldn’t say empty prayers. We should really mean what we say.

So I turned to Mary. Prayers to Mary are emergency reserve prayers: there is not one Marian prayer in the whole liturgy, not one, you hear me, not a single one that the most miserable sinner cannot really say. In the mechanism of salvation, the Hail Mary is the last resort. With it, one cannot be lost. "

Charles Péguy

French poet, essayist, and editor

Excerpt from a letter to his friend Lotte, during the illness of his young son, Pierre