My prayer to the Bonne Mère by Cardinal Etchegaray

N.D de la Garde, protect the people of Marseilles:

we hear clearly, as did Saint John, and have well understood the word of Jesus: « Here is your Mother »

 

N.D de la Garde, protect the people of Marseilles: we have received you as the most precious gift of your Son and, for you to dwell among us, we have allocated the finest site in Marseilles

 

N.D de la Garde, protect the people of Marseilles: We dare to call you Bonne Mère, despite the caution of your Son who taught us that God alone is good

 

N.D de la Garde, protect the people of Marseilles: you allow only us to call you Bonne Mère, for you know that our heart ressembles the heart of God in that it overflows.

 

Good Mother, behold your people here: you see around you, like the Planier lighthouse shining from the Estaque to the Calanques, from the isles of Frioul to the Etoile Range. You forget nobody in your loving visit.

 

Good Mother, behold your people here: You do not fear their colours nor their aromas, You who were visited in Bethlehem by the Orient and the Occident. As Marseilles opens the treasures of its heart to you, it opens itself unto the kind heart of your Son.

 

Good Mother, behold your people here: Everyone in Marseilles shares in your love as in a family fold, as between a mother and her children, But each one receives it all and always afresh. Each in one’s own tongue sings the same Magnificat.

 

Good Mother, behold your people here: Teach us to restore ourselves,us living stones, even better than the fine stones of the Vieille-Charité. And let the New Man to whom you gave birth be present over the wide breadth of our city.

 

For ever and ever.