Month of May in Honor of Mary (Day 16)
May 16, 2026
Day 16
A reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (Is 53:1-5)
Who would believe what we have heard? To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
The servant grew up like a sapling before him, l like a shoot from the parched earth;
there was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him.
He was spurned and avoided by people, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,
one of those from whom people hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.
Yet it was our infirmities that the servant bore, our sufferings that he endured,
while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins,
upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed.
From The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to the Air we Breathe by Gerard Manley Hopkins
I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round
As if with air: the same
Is Mary, more by name.
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense
Her prayers his providence:
Nay, more than almoner,
The sweet alms’ self is her
And men are meant to share
Her life as life does air.
If I have understood,
She holds high motherhood
Towards all our ghostly good
And plays in grace her part
About man’s beating heart,
Laying, like air’s fine flood,
The deathdance in his blood;
Yet no part but what will
Be Christ our Saviour still.
Of her flesh he took flesh:
He does take fresh and fresh,
though much the mystery how,
Not flesh but spirit now
And makes, O marvelous!
New Nazareths in us,
Where she shall yet conceive
Him, morning, noon, and eve;
New Bethlems, and he born
There, evening, noon, and morn –
Bethlem or Nazareth,
Men here may draw like breath
More Christ and baffle death;
Who, born so, comes to be
New self and nobler me
In each one and each one
More makes, when all is done,
Both God’s and Mary’s Son.
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.
Musical Selection (St. Hildegard of Bingen)
O clarissima Mater sancte medicine, tu unguenta per sanctum Filium tuum
infudisti in plangentia vulnera mortis, que Eva edificavit in tormenta animarum.
Tu destruxisti mortem edificando vitam.
Ora pro nobis ad tuum Natum, stella maris, Maria.
O vivificum instrumentum et letum ornamentum et dulcedo omnium deliciarum, que in te non deficient.
Ora pro nobis …
Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto.
Ora pro nobis …
Brightest Mother of holy medicine, through your holy Son you poured
unguents into the plangent wounds of death that Eve founded for torments of souls.
You destroyed death by founding life.
Pray to your Son for us, star of the sea, Mary.
Life-giving instrument and joyful ornament, sweetness of all delights
that in you will never fail.
Pray to your Son for us …
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
Pray to your Son for us …
Prayer
Grant, Lord God, that we, your servants,
may rejoice in unfailing health of mind and body,
and, through the glorious intercession of Blessed Mary ever-Virgin, may
we be set free from present sorrow
and come to enjoy eternal happiness.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Health of the Sick)
Health of the sick, pray for us.