Rogate: Living Mary’s Completeness. This September, we celebrate Mary’s birth. Reflecting on Mary, Pope Emeritus emphasizes Mary’s completeness, that is, as body and soul in her Assumption, Mary joined her Creator. Benedict’s idea teaches us to be sharply aware that the body is important, that temporal concerns are essential. In other words, salvation ought not to be focused on matters of the soul only. In this case, Christians are exhorted to give much emphasis on working for integral (human/social/ecological) development. For what is salvation if not for the total person (body and soul). Particularly, this means salvation from miseries like hunger, sickness, injustice. Salvation appears this way because the body is essential. If it were not, Mary would have just been taken into God’s bosom as solely soul.

Mary’s completeness is dubbed by SHEC as total salvation. Being Marian in the light of St. Hannibal’s spirituality, SHEC continues to work for total salvation among the poor.