Poems, Prayers and Mary Song

This is the day of the wedding feast for Mary, her Assumption into Heaven, her home-coming, her reunion with Jesus, her union with God. This is a day for sweet hymns. Today we celebrate the icon, the perfect woman, the one who images us all at a level of such wholeness that we can only call it holiness! Mary....

So what better way to celebrate than to sing with a sweet hymn of words from the poet priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).

Just a teaser here, but visit this link for more of his art!

The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe

...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 race—
Mary Immaculate,

Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess’s
Was deemèd, dreamèd; 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.

I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round
Be thou then, O thou dear Mother,
my atmosphere;
My happier world, wherein
To wend and meet no sin;
Above me, round me lie
Fronting my froward eye
With sweet and scarless sky;
Stir in my ears, speak there
Of God’s love, O live air,
Of patience, penance, prayer:
World-mothering air, air wild,
Wound with thee, in thee isled,
Fold home, fast fold thy child.