It has always been the habit of Catholics in danger and in troublous times to fly for refuge to Mary.
Pope Leo XIII
Pope Francis at noon CST today will be consecrating the world today to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Non-Catholics I think have a hard time understanding what Mary means to us. Chesterton, a Catholic convert, comes close I think to conveying some of what Mary means to us in The Ballad of the White Horse:
And when the last arrow
         Was fitted and was flown,
         When the broken shield hung on the breast,
         And the hopeless lance was laid in rest,
         And the hopeless horn blown,
         The King looked up, and what he saw
         Was a great light like death,
         For Our Lady stood on the standards rent,
         As lonely and as innocent
         As when between white walls she went
         And the lilies of Nazareth.
         One instant in a still light
         He saw Our Lady then,
         Her dress was soft as western sky,
         And she was a queen most womanly—
         But she was a queen of men.
         Over the iron forest
         He saw Our Lady stand,
         Her eyes were sad withouten art,
         And seven swords were in her heart—
         But one was in her hand.
         Then the last charge went blindly,
         And all too lost for fear:
         The Danes closed round, a roaring ring,
         And twenty clubs rose o’er the King,
         Four Danes hewed at him, halloing,
         And Ogier of the Stone and Sling
         Drove at him with a spear.
         But the Danes were wild with laughter,
         And the great spear swung wide,
         The point stuck to a straggling tree,
         And either host cried suddenly,
         As Alfred leapt aside.
         Short time had shaggy Ogier
         To pull his lance in line—
         He knew King Alfred’s axe on high,
         He heard it rushing through the sky,
         He cowered beneath it with a cry—
         It split him to the spine:
         And Alfred sprang over him dead,
         And blew the battle sign.
         Then bursting all and blasting
         Came Christendom like death,
         Kicked of such catapults of will,
         The staves shiver, the barrels spill,
         The waggons waver and crash and kill
         The waggoners beneath.
         Barriers go backwards, banners rend,
         Great shields groan like a gong—
         Horses like horns of nightmare
         Neigh horribly and long.
         Horses ramp high and rock and boil
         And break their golden reins,
         And slide on carnage clamorously,
         Down where the bitter blood doth lie,
         Where Ogier went on foot to die,
         In the old way of the Danes.
         “The high tide!” King Alfred cried.
         “The high tide and the turn!
         As a tide turns on the tall grey seas,
         See how they waver in the trees,
         How stray their spears, how knock their knees,
         How wild their watchfires burn!
         “The Mother of God goes over them,
         Walking on wind and flame,
         And the storm-cloud drifts from city and dale,
         And the White Horse stamps in the White Horse Vale,
         And we all shall yet drink Christian ale
         In the village of our name.
         “The Mother of God goes over them,
         On dreadful cherubs borne;
         And the psalm is roaring above the rune,
         And the Cross goes over the sun and moon,
         Endeth the battle of Ethandune
         With the blowing of a horn.”
Mary to us, as we repeat in the Salve Regina, is our life, our sweetness and our hope. She is our mother just as she is the mother of God. She is a never failing source of aid through her Son. In times of trouble she is the first, last and best refuge for we poor children of Eve.
Pope Leo XIII said it best in his encyclical Supremi Apostalus Officio in 1883:
Consecration-Sanctification-Conversion-Victory!