"I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of affliction." Let us be men of peace, men of justice, doers of good, and our Lord will not be our judge, but our friend, our brother, our love.

On our happy way through the world we enjoy the company of the angels of God. "Before the birth of our redeemer," St Gregory the Great writes, "we had lost the friendship of the angels. Original sin and our daily sins had kept us away from their bright purity… But ever since the moment we acknowledged our king, the angels have recognized us as their fellow citizens.

"And seeing that the king of heaven wished to take on our earthly flesh, the angels no longer shun our misery. They do not dare consider as inferior to their own this nature which they adore in the person of the king of heaven; there it is, raised up above them; they have now no difficulty in regarding man as a companion."

Mary, the holy Mother of our king, the queen of our heart, looks after us as only she knows how. Mother of mercy, throne of grace: we ask you to help us compose, verse by verse, the simple poem of charity in our own life and the lives of the people around us; it is "like a river of peace." For you are a sea of inexhaustible mercy: "All streams run to the sea, but the sea is never full."