ordained to be the mediatrix of peace between the sinner and God. “I am become in his presence as one finding peace.”[159] By which words St. Bernard gives encouragement to the sinner, and says: Go to this mother of mercy, and show her the wounds which thy sins have inflicted upon thy soul. Then she will certainly pray her Son that he may pardon thee by the milk with which she has nourished him, and the Son who loves her so much will certainly hear her.[160] So, too, the holy Church teaches us to pray the Lord to grant us the powerful intercession of Mary, that we may arise from our sins, in the following prayer: “Grant us, oh merciful God! strength against all our weakness; that we who celebrate the memory of the holy mother of God, may, by the help of her intercession, arise again from our iniquities.”[161] Justly, then, does St. Lawrence Justinian call her the hope of evil-doers, “spes delinquentium,” since she alone can obtain their pardon from God. St. Bernard rightly names her the ladder of sinners, “Peccatorum scala;” since she, this compassionate queen, offers her hand to poor fallen mortals, leads them from the precipice of sin, and helps them to ascend to God. St. Augustine rightly calls her the only hope of us sinners, since by her means alone we hope for the remission of all our sins.[162] And St. John Chrysostom repeats the same thing, namely, that sinners receive pardon only through the intercession of Mary.[163] Whence the saint in the name of all sinners thus salutes her: Hail! mother of God and ours; Heaven where God dwells; Throne from which the Lord dispenses all graces; always pray to Jesus for us, that by thy prayers we may obtain pardon in the day of account, and the glory of the blessed in heaven.[164] Finally, Mary is rightly called aurora: “Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising?”[165] Because, as Pope Innocent says, aurora is the end of night, and the beginning of day, well is the Virgin Mary, who is the end of vices and the beginning of virtues, designated as aurora.[166] And the same effect which the birth of Mary produced in the world, devotion to her produces in the soul; she puts an end to the night of sin, and leads the soul into the way of virtue. Hence, St. Germanus says: Oh mother of God, thy protection is immortal! thy intercession is life.[167] And in his sermon on the _Zone of the Virgin_,[168] the saint says that the name of Mary, to him who pronounces it with affection, is either the sign of life, or that soon he will have life.