You have to walk over to her to see her. You have to pray to her to come to know her.

Yet we in Madonna House cannot imagine our apostolic life in Christ without her. As a community we could not exist without her protection. This is a mystery wrapped in the hidden plans of God.

Isn’t it true that the deepest dimensions of life, the most important, are often hidden from view, like a source that gives drink to the one who seeks it out? Love between spouses is like that. So is the "yes" arising in the hearts of those who commit themselves to the consecrated life in the Church.

Madonna House has a prayer dedicated to Our Lady of Combermere. It contains the main teaching about what she obtains for us, and it reveals why she is essential to Madonna House and to the lives of many of our friends. It begins as follows:

It is this personal love of Jesus Christ which is at the very heart of our vocational commitment. Love of Christ arises from faith in him. Faith in him comes from having "met" him by the grace of God.

This can happen through the Scriptures or the liturgy. It can happen in one’s personal prayer or on a walk down a country road or while shaking out a rug on the front step. Faith can also spring forth when meeting someone who conveys something of the kindness and compassion of the Lord Jesus.

However it happens, there is no lasting commitment to Madonna House or to any other Christian calling without this personal love of Jesus Christ, which always involves a conversion of heart and which is my response to his having loved me first.

Our Lady of Combermere obtains this grace for all who ask it with faith and heartfelt longing. I know. I asked her for the grace to know and love Christ when I first came to Madonna House nearly 36 years ago.

What a desert life is without the love of Jesus, without the reality of his sharing our life and death, so as to bestow his gift of eternal life and joy!

If you go to her, Our Lady will bring a stillness that helps you to receive this truth: He has come! He is with us—Emmanuel! His love is without end for each one.

One day I saw this happen before my eyes most powerfully. A large group of friends from the Canadian territory of Nunavut made a pilgrimage to Madonna House while attending meetings in nearby Ottawa.

We broke them up into groups of about twenty people each and posted three MH hosts at three special locations to help explain our community to our visitors. My post was the statue of Our Lady of Combermere.

As each group would come there, the plan was to tell the story of her coming to MH, to encourage them to offer prayers, and then to give a blessing "from her" with blessed oil.

All this I did, but what happened was truly wonderful to behold: people sensed a powerful presence there. Many were crying. Several offered prayers, interceding for loved ones, pouring out their hearts.

At that moment, the Mother’s love blended with that of her Son, and the personal love of Jesus Christ for each one called forth a fervent response of faith. It was awesome and beautiful to behold this moment of grace.

The next intention is a more sobering one, but I find as the years go by, I pause here more than I used to. Maybe it’s because now I realize more than when I was twenty or so, just how possible it is for me to "lose" the saving graces offered me by God. It is a rather terrible thing to discover this about oneself, but perhaps you all know what I’m talking about.

There is something in us—in me—that could very easily toss aside the gifts of God and all the graciousness he has ever shown me, for the pathetic pittance of earthly pleasure or consolation or even direct rebellion.

Such traits are lurking and active in us all, but for the mercy of the Savior. That mercy comes to us through Our Lady of Combermere in a special way: to not turn aside from the grace of salvation.

Given the battle today between the Gospel of Life and the Culture of Death, this is a most pressing intention, and the prayer assures us: Our Lady will obtain the victory.

Here the prayer takes us to a new place: not only to love Christ, not only to avoid the tragedy of rebellion and damnation, but to give oneself fully to one’s vocation.

Our Lady prays for us that we may become completely formed, that Christ might reach full stature in us, even as he did when living his earthly life, growing in wisdom and grace.

Each one of us has a mission from God, one that no one else can carry out for us. Each person’s mission—be it in public service of the Church, in the marketplace of secular society, in the heart of a family—is part of Christ’s restoring all things to his Father. In other words, it is an integral part of the Father’s redemptive plan.

What a tragedy to forget this! What a glory to live out one’s life to the full with a noble and generous heart! Our Lady of Combermere seeks out such hearts and helps them to realize the dreams of fervent youth, making them a reality to the very end of life.

I used to pass over this part of the prayer rather quickly, "a happy death" not being of immediate concern. The issue seems a little closer at this point in my life, but beyond this, the phrase "a happy death" has become terribly immediate.

Do you know why? Because I’ve come to realize that I am destined for "a happy death" today! This is the death to self that alone allows Jesus to live in me.

It is a daily thing: "if today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts!"

Our Lady of Combermere is shown racing to earth, bringing the blessings of heaven; her face is filled with both kindness and compassion. But what if this urgency of motion is not to bring cheap comfort but rather the appeal to follow her Son now!

That requires a death to self now. How happy will be that moment I surrender to this gift!

There is a sense of heaven’s peace around the statue of Our Lady of Combermere. It is a foretaste, a prelude, of the final gift that awaits those whose personal love for Jesus Christ guides them to the very end. In a world bereft of a sense of the transcendent, it is our Mother Mary who continually opens for her children the reality of the divine presence.

She bears it in her very being. She shares her joy in it, defying every modernist argument against the intrusion of the divine.

Having prayed to her, I can continue on the day’s journey, more hopeful that the glory of God will triumph in my personal life, in this world of ours, in time and in eternity.