Bishop Schneider of Kazakhstan recalls Mary's most important message

In an interview for France Catholique magazine, Mgr Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, explains that the Blessed Virgin is, more than ever, the help of Christians: 

"We can pray to Jesus directly, of course, but it's God's will to give us a mediatrix mother! It's His will, because God could have come to us without going through Mary's mediation. But he wanted to become incarnate through the Blessed Virgin. In doing so, God has shown us the way: just as Mary was the way for God to come to us, she is the way for us to go to God. All human beings need a mother. We all have a temporal, biological mother. But God has also given us a spiritual mother, who is close to us and always by our side. Our biological mother can't always be with us. And even the most virtuous mothers have their shortcomings! Our Lady is flawless.

Just as Our Lady did not hesitate, despite the pain, to stand at the foot of the Cross, she teaches us that our lives must be centered on Jesus. Our world has pushed Christ out of public and social life. Even in the Church, where some of the clergy have chosen to place temporal matters such as the earth or the climate, rather than Christ, at the center...

Our Lady didn't say much [in the Gospel], but she did leave a very important message at the wedding feast in Cana: "Do whatever he [Christ] tells you" (Jn 2:5). This is the most important message for our time, for the Church, for the Pope, for bishops, for priests and for the lay faithful. We must strive to carry out all that Jesus taught us, that is, the doctrine of the Gospel. Christ taught us the primacy of Heaven: he came to establish the Kingdom of Heaven, not the Kingdom of earth! This is the Church's primary mission: to glorify God, to remind us of eternity and the primordial importance of eternal life and the salvation of souls."

Excerpts from a July 13, 2023 interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan

www.france-catholic.fr