The Memorare –
A devotion to Our Lady
Welcome to this website where we invite you to join us in a special prayer of petition – the Memorare – to Our Blessed Mother Mary and where we also ask for your help to spread this devotion to others. The miraculous conversion of Alphonse Ratisbonne, recounted elsewhere on this site, bears witness to the power of this devotion to Our Lady and fills us with hope.
Do you have concerns for loved ones who have lost their faith?
Many visitors to this website will have family members or friends who, for various reasons, no longer practise their faith; some may have had little or no belief in God. Our direct attempts to encourage or persuade them to place God and the Sacraments of the Church at the centre of their lives often seem to fall on deaf ears. And we are left with a sense of helplessness and disappointment that our concerns for those we love most go unheeded and that their spiritual welfare is beyond the reach of our influence.
What should be our response?
We must not allow our apparent failures to rob us of the hope that springs from our trust in God's enduring goodness and providence. We should never underestimate the power of prayer for our loved ones – constant prayer which asks that their hardened or indifferent hearts may be opened by the Holy Spirit to enable God's grace to lead them back to where we know they can find true peace and happiness. As Jesus himself said: "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you." In this promise we should have unfailing trust and hope.
To whom can we direct our petitions?
As Our Blessed Lady stood at the foot of the cross, one of Jesus' last gifts was to give Mary to us to be our mother. Like so many other treasures of our faith, we give thanks for the richness of this great gift and for the assurance we have of Mary's love for her children as she intercedes for us to Our Lord. With confidence, we can put our hope in her and entrust all our worries and petitions to her loving care. The Memorare – which is the principal focus of this website – is a wonderful prayer that expresses perfectly our trust in Mary's love for us and our belief in her as the supreme Mediatrix of all graces.
