Today we celebrate Our Lady of the Mercy, a great solemnity in Barcelona. In the Gospel we see that Mary attends the wedding at Cana, where «Jesus and his disciples had also been invited» (Jn 2:1-2). Jesus, Mary and the disciples, that is, us!

Never had a mother been able to choose her son. Much less has a son been able to choose his mother. Only Christ was able to. This is why He made her totally perfect, and then He also gave her to us as our mother: "Here is your mother" (Jn 19:27). And this is why Christians love her so wholeheartedly.

The best way for us to achieve our aim is Mary. Who is the illusion of a God who has made good His creation, who promises a good future to man all through the entire Old Testament, who promises a true fulfillment, as a sign of His love and who appears supremely perfect in Mary. In Mary, the perfection of a human being has become history.

In the dialogue of love between God and man the shadow of sin overlaps it. But it does so next to a great light: the figure of a wonderful woman, thanks to whom the verb, made man, embraced, again and definitely the creation, to return it to the Father.

But our Lady of the Mercy, being the patron saint of Barcelona, she is also the patron saint of the capital of Catalonia, and from here, from the House of the Mother of the Barcelonians, we must widen our gaze and think of our land and love it with a glance of faith. Because it is another year in the history of our city and our country. History because, unlike other living beings, man has history, i.e., he does not endlessly repeat a certain way of doing all through the life of his own species.

What ennobles man is more his moral sense than his material instruments and his intelligence. You may have great technique and intelligence but not be able to achieve happiness or be useful to others. It is for this reason, that we welcome St. Mary’s protection, Comforter of the afflicted.