ROME (Zenit.org): The basket of roses Pope Benedict XVI brought Our Lady on the feast of the Immaculate Conception represents both the good deeds and the difficulties that the faithful want to offer their heavenly Mother, he said.
The Pope made this comparison during his address the evening of December 8 in Rome’s Piazza de Spagna during his visit to the image of the Immaculate Conception.
The feast marked the end of the year-long 150th anniversary celebrations of Our Lady’s appearances in Lourdes, where she “revealed her name, saying: ‘I am the Immaculate Conception’,” the Holy Father noted.
“Wherever there is a Catholic community, the Virgin is venerated with this wonderful and marvellous name: Immaculate Conception,” he said.
“Of course, the conviction of Mary’s immaculate conception already existed many centuries before the apparitions of Lourdes, but the latter came as a heavenly seal after my venerated predecessor, Blessed Pius IX, defined the dogma on December 8, 1854.”
Referring to the tradition of the popes bringing a basket of roses to Mary for the feast, Pope Benedict said the white roses he had brought “indicate our love and devotion: the love and devotion of the Pope, of the Church of Rome and of the inhabitants of this city”.
“Symbolically, the roses can express all the beautiful and good we have carried out during the year … convinced that we could have done nothing without her protection and without the grace that she obtains continually from God,” he said.
“However – as is usually said – there are no roses without thorns, and also on the stems of these wonderful white roses there is no lack of thorns, which represent for us the difficulties, sufferings and evils that mark the lives of persons and of our communities,” the Pontiff said.
Then addressing Our Lady directly, the Pope said: “I would like to entrust to you especially the ‘little ones’ of this, our city: the children above all, especially those who are seriously ill, children who are deprived and those who suffer the consequences of harsh family situations.”
