We are not alone.  In the selection below, Pope Benedict encourages us to recognize that the Lord has given us Mary as our travel companion in life.  What a gift.  When we are needed to go to places that we are uncomfortable going to, when we are called to do things beyond our confidence, or even beyond our competence, remember she is with us, and where she is, so is her Son.

“Mary’s is an authentic missionary journey.  It is a journey that takes her far from home, drives her to the world, to places that are foreign to her daily customs, makes her reach, in a certain sense, the limits of what she could reach.  Herein lies, also for us, the secret of our life as men and women and as Christians.  As had already happened to Abraham, we are asked to come out of ourselves, of the places of our security, to go to others, to different places and realms.  It is the lord who asks this of us: ‘But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses . . . to the end of the earth’ (Acts 1.8).

“And it is always the Lord, who on this journey, places us next to Mary as travel companion and solicitous mother.  She gives us security, because she reminds us that her Son Jesus is always with us, according to what he promised: ‘I am with you always, to the close of the age’ (Mt 28.20).”