A prayer to Our Lady of Sheshan
It is always a great blessing for me when the Lord makes me meet with Chinese people. Personally speaking I have a deep love and respect towards these hard working people. Most of all, and as a man of faith, I am overjoyed when I meet Chinese Catholics who are living their faith in very difficult and restrictive circumstances.
China is also a country wherein devotion to Mary is strong. For instance, what comes to my mind and heart at this moment is the veneration towards Our Mother of Sheshan or Our Lady of Sheshan (佘山聖母), also known as Our Mother (or Lady) of Zo-sè (Zo-sè being the original from the Shanghainese pronunciation of Sheshan). This is a celebrated Marian title of the Blessed Virgin Mary who is greatly venerated by Chinese Catholics. The religious devotees know the statue as Our Lady of Luck or Our Lady of Good Luck because of the Chinese symbology of “Fu” (福) together with the styling posture of the whole image. The original image is presently enshrined in the National Shrine and Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Sheshan, in Shanghai, China.
Here I want to recall the beautiful prayer Pope Benedict XVI himself wrote. Pope Benedict always sought to promote unity within a fragmented community of ‘official’ versus ‘underground’ church. He sought in many ways to foster that much needed communion between the whole Catholic Church with Chinese Catholics. Let us pray for this communion of the Church in China as well as for the strengthening of Catholics in this country to live their faith amid the restrictions always growing of the Chinese communist government for not allowing these Catholics to rightly profess their faith publicly and duly practice it or even not allowing them to proclaim the Gospel they profess.
Virgin Most Holy, Mother of the Incarnate Word and our Mother, venerated in the Shrine of Sheshan under the title “Help of Christians,” the entire Church in China looks to you with devout affection.
We come before you today to implore your protection. Look upon the People of God and, with a mother’s care, guide them along the paths of truth and love, so that they may always be a leaven of harmonious coexistence among all citizens.
When you obediently said “yes” in the house of Nazareth, you allowed God’s eternal Son to take flesh in your virginal womb and thus to begin in history the work of our redemption. You willingly and generously cooperated in that work, allowing the sword of pain to pierce your soul, until the supreme hour of the Cross, when you kept watch on Calvary, standing beside your Son, who died that we might live.
From that moment, you became, in a new way, the Mother of all those who receive your Son Jesus in faith and choose to follow in his footsteps by taking up his Cross. Mother of hope, in the darkness of Holy Saturday you journeyed with unfailing trust towards the dawn of Easter.
Grant that your children may discern at all times, even those that are darkest, the signs of God’s loving presence. Our Lady of Sheshan, sustain all those in China, who, amid their daily trials, continue to believe, to hope, to love. May they never be afraid to speak of Jesus to the world, and of the world to Jesus.
In the statue overlooking the Shrine you lift your Son on high, offering him to the world with open arms in a gesture of love. Amen.
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
