When Blessed Miguel Agustin Pro was a boy he liked to make outdoor excursions. Many times he would drag his sisters along for the fun, telling them that it would do them all some good to “get out and see more of the sky”.

While on these wilderness excursions, Miguel would often play and roll around in the dry rivulets and open fields of the Mexican heartland. The sun-baked ground, the protruding rocks, and the many thorns and thistles that envelop this terrain did not, however, intimidate him. Rather, the scratches, bumps and bruises that they gave him taught him a invaluable life lesson. For as he would later write in a letter to one of his spiritual daughters, “Life’s most beautiful excursions are the ones that leave the most scratches.”

A lesson to learn

Blessed Pro’s life lesson about the “scratches of life” is one that we should learn from. How many complaints are echoed today about the difficulties of life! How many people sorrow in self-pity over life’s troubles! How easy is it to play the victim instead of bearing the little (and sometimes big) crosses of life!

But this lesson is an especially important one for those of us who are consecrated in filial slavery of trusting love to Mary. And this for two reasons.

Trusting Mary

First, because a concrete expression our “trusting love” for her is found in entrusting to her all of our struggles and difficulties. Instead of wasting them, or worse, allowing them to become the seedbed of self-pity, we should commit all our struggles to Mary. How easy it is to entrust her with our goods, but a sure sign of trust is found in also entrusting her with our sorrows.

Let us not forget that our true devotion to Mary “consists…in giving ourselves entirely and altogether to our Lady, in order to belong entirely and altogether to Jesus by her.” (True Devotion, 121)

Imitating Mary

Second, because in belonging entirely to her, we should also strive to imitate Mary. Mary’s beauty is not only found in her immaculate, that is sinless, human nature, and the splendor of her fullness of grace, but also in her fortitude and courage before the scratches and scars of her own life. Granted, we do not read about Mary undergoing any physical suffering in the Gospels, but we do know that she shared in her Son’s Passion in a unique way. The scratches and scars of Mary’s life were primarily spiritual ones.

Nevertheless, she bore them with great fortitude and courage. And as the history of sacred art gracefully attests—e.g. Michelangelo’s Pieta, the numerous Spanish images of Our Lady of Sorrows, and Murillo’s La Dolorosa, to name a few—she was perhaps never more beautiful, than when she bore her share of sufferings with her Beloved Son.

Marianizing life’s scratches

In conclusion, as Mary’s true sons and daughters, and her slaves of love, we can marianize our life today with Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro by learning to appreciate and bear the scratches of life. Without these “scratches” the maturity, courage, and refinement which belong to a slave of Mary would be lacking. And like Blessed Pro we should always bear them through her, with her, in her and for her.

For love of Christ Our King and the scars that He bore for us, seize the day and make it all Hers!

Viva Cristo Rey! Viva la Virgen!