On the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin, the octave day of the Assumption, as we contemplate the Queen crowned in the Glory of the Divinity, the words of Pope Benedict XV in 1918 seem quite appropriate:
The fact that the Sorrowful Virgin is elected and invoked as the Patron of a good death wonderfully corresponds to Catholic doctrine and to the pious Tradition of the Church. (...)
Because the Doctors of the Church by common consent profess that, if the Most Blessed Virgin did not apparently have any participation in the public life of Jesus Christ, and then suddenly reappeared on the path to Calvary and under the Cross, she could not have been present without Divine design. For, as she suffered and almost died together with her suffering and dying Son, she gave up her rights as mother over this Son for the salvation of men and, to appease Divine justice, she, as much as it pertained to her [quantum ad se pertinebat], immolated Him, so that it can be said appropriately that she has, together with Christ, redeemed the human race [Ipsam cum Christo humanum genus redemisse].
But if for this reason, every kind of grace we receive from the treasury of the redemption is ministered as it were through the hands of the same Sorrowful Virgin, everyone can see that a holy death should be expected from her, since it is precisely by this gift that the work of the Redemption is effectively and permanently completed in each one. (...)
... further, there is a most constant belief among the faithful, proved by long experience, that as many as employ the same Virgin as Patron will not at all perish forever.
Benedict XV
Inter Sodalicia
March 22, 1918
