Christmas Card 2009

Mary Immaculate ...
This one work has to do
Let all God's glory through ...


Photo: Madonnina* on a Roman wall 2000

The Blessed Virgin
Compared to the Air We Breathe
- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-fixed
Snowflake; that's fairly mixed
With riddles, and is rife
In every least thing's life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life's law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God's infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our raceó
Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess's
Was deemed, dreamed; who
This one work has to do
Let all God's glory through,
God's glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.

The wonder of it all!

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
John 3:16, 17
Have a Merry 12 Days of Christmas
And a Blessed New Year!
My love and prayers are with you.
Roseanne

*Madonninas are little shrines to Mary with the Infant Jesus, which are built into walls and street corners in Italy. Most, like this mosaic icon with its gold background and its flanking marble columns from 1597 are exquisite works of art.