Just as in each of our lives, we always need to begin again, to get up again, to rediscover the meaning of the goal of our lives, so also for the great human family it is always necessary to rediscover the common horizon toward which we are journeying.… The model of this spiritual disposition, of this way of being and journeying in life, is the Virgin Mary.

When a mother gives birth to a child, she uniquely imitates Christ in how she mirrors the paschal mystery: through the pains of labor and the resulting gift of newborn life, she enters into the sacrifice of Christ, taking up her cross and following him all the way to resurrection. Every mother who delivers a child offers her body and sheds her blood to give life, just as Christ did on the cross.