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Our Lady
The Blessed Virgin has inspired prophecies, prayers, love poems and other writings by
sacred and profane authors throughout the centuries, in every generation and clime. These
texts make up the treasury of sacred literature of all mankind.
Pope Benedict, at a great gathering in an Italian city, addressed a beautiful prayer
to Our Lady which said, in part:
Such art thou, Holy Mother, in the creed and in the worship of the Church, the defence of
many truths, the grace and smiling light of every devotion. In thee, O Mary, is fulfilled,
as we can bear it, an original purpose of the Most High. He once had meant to come on
earth in heavenly glory, but we sinned; and then He could not safely visit u,, except with
shrouded radiance and a bedimmed mahesty. for He was God. So He came Himself in
weakness, not in power; and He sent thee a creature in His stead, with a creature's
comeliness and lustre suited to our state. And now thy very face and form, dear Mother,
speak to us OI the Eternal; not like earthly beauty, dangerous to look upon, but like the
morning star, which is thy emblem, bright and musical, breathing purity, telling of
heaven, and infusing peace. O harbinger of day! O hope of the pilgrim! lead us still as
thou hast led; in the dark night, across the bleak wilderness, guide us on to our Lord Jesus
guide us home.
“The eyes of Our Lady are the only real child-eyes that have ever been raised to our
shame and sorrow… they are eyes of gentle pity, wondering sadness, and with something
more in them, never yet known or expressed, something that makes her younger than sin,
younger than the race from which she sprang, and though a mother by grace, mother of
all graces, our little youngest sister.”
Anticipating the Passion (from the life of the Virgin Mary) by Rainer Maria Rilke
If you had really wanted to be strong,
you would not have come from a woman's womb.
For messiahs are quarried from mountains
where the sturdy and strong comes from stone.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
For me--for me--
God knows that I am feeble like the rest!--
I often wandered forth, more child than maiden,
Among the midnight hills of Galilee,
Whose summits looked heaven-laden;
Listening to silence as it seemed to be
God's voice, so soft yet strong--so fain to press
Upon my heart as heaven did on the height,
And waken up its shadows by a light,
And show its vileness by a holiness.
Then I knelt down most silent like the night,
Too self-renounced for fears,
Raising my small face to the boundless blue
Whose stars did mix and tremble in my tears.
God heard them falling after--with His dew.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
It is enough to bear
This image still and fair--
This holier in sleep,
Than a saint at prayer:
This aspect of a child
Who never sinned or smiled--
This presence in an infant's face:
This sadness most like love,
This love than love more deep,
This weakness like omnipotence,
It is so strong to move!
Awful is this watching place,
Awful what I see from hence--
A king, without regalia,
A God, without the thunder,
A child, without the heart for play;
Ay, a Creator rent asunder
From His first glory and cast away
On His own world, for me alone
To hold in hands created, crying--Son!
XIII.
Sergei Bulgakov
In the words [of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov], when the Holy Spirit came to dwell in the Virgin
Mary, she acquired "a dyadic life, human and divine; that is, She was completely deified,
because in Her hypostatic being was manifest the living, creative revelation of the Holy
Spirit" (Archpriest Sergei Bulgakov, The Unburnt Bush, 1927, p. 154). "She is a perfect
manifestation of the Third Hypostasis" (Ibid., p. 175), "a creature, but also no longer a
creature" (P. 19 1)....But we can say with the words of St. Epiphanius of Cyprus: "There
is an equal harm in both these heresies, both when men demean the Virgin and when, on
the contrary, they glorify Her beyond what is proper" (Panarion, Against the
Collyridians). This Holy Father accuses those who give Her an almost divine worship:
"Let Mary be in honor, but let worship be given to the Lord" (same source). "Although
Mary is a chosen vessel, still she was a woman by nature, not to be distinguished at all
from others. Although the history of Mary and Tradition relate that it was said to Her
father Joachim in the desert, 'Thy wife hath conceived,' still this was done not without
marital union and not without the seed of man" (same source). "One should not revere the
saints above what is proper, but should revere their Master. Mary is not God, and did not
receive a body from heaven, but from the joining of man and woman; and according to
the promise, like Isaac, She was prepared to take part in the Divine Economy. But, on the
other hand, let none dare foolishly to offend the Holy Virgin" (St. Epiphanius, "Against
the Antidikomarionites"). The Orthodox Church, highly exalting the Mother of God in its
hymns of praise, does not dare to ascribe to Her that which has not been communicated
about Her by Sacred Scripture or Tradition. "Truth is foreign to all overstatements as well
as to all understatements. It gives to everything a fitting measure and fitting place"
(Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov).
(http://www.answers.com/topic/sergei-bulgakov#cite_note-5)