Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad because of her, all you who love her; exult, exult with her all you who were mourning over her! Oh, that you may suck fully of the milk of her comfort, that you may nurse with delight at her abundant breasts! For thus says the LORD: Lo, I will spread prosperity over Jerusalem like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing torrent. As nurslings, you shall be carried in her arms, and fondled in her lap; as a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.  When you see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bodies flourish like the grass; the LORD’S power shall be known to his servants, but to his enemies his wrath.

 

 

The Virgin is still woman and mother: in that we may read the sign of the new age…. For the Saint, more than for any other man, I am the maternal shadow leaning over the cradle — and the radiant forms assumed by youth's dreams — and the deep-seated aspiration that passes through the heart like some undisputed alien force— the mark, ineach individual being of Life's axis….

 

Since the beginning of all things, Woman has never ceased to take as her own the flower of all that was produced by the vitality of nature or the art of man. 

 

Who could say in what climax of perfections, both individual and cosmic, I shall blossom forth, in the evening of the world,  before the face of God? 

 

I am the unfading beauty of the times to come — the ideal Feminine. 

 

The more, then, I become Feminine, the more immaterial and celestial will my countenance be. 

 

In me, the soul is at work to sublimate the body — Grace to divinize the soul. 

 

Those who wish to continue to possess me must change as I change. 

 

Behold! 

 

The centre of my attraction is imperceptibly shifting towards the pole upon which all the avenues of Spirit converge. 

 

The iridescence of my beauties, flung like a mantle over creation, is slowly gathering in its outlying folds. 

 

Already the shadow is falling upon the flesh, even the flesh purified by the sacraments….

 

Soon only God will remain for you in a universe where all is virgin. 

 

It is God who awaits you in me !

 

Long before I drew you, I drew God towards me. 

 

Long before man had measured the extent of my power, and divinized the polarity of my attraction, the Lord had conceived me, whole and entire, in his wisdom, and I had won his heart. 

 

Without the lure of my purity, think you, would God ever have come down, as flesh, to dwell in his creation? 

 

Only love has the power to move being. 

 

If God, then, was to be able to emerge from himself, he had first to lay a pathway of desire before his feet, he had to spread before him a sweet savour of beauty. 

 

It was then that he caused me to rise up, a luminous mist hanging over the abyss — between the earth and himself— that, in me, he might dwell among you. 

 

Now do you understand the secret of the emotion that  possesses you when I come near? 

 

The tender compassion, the hallowed charm, that radiate from Woman — so naturally that it is only in her that you look for them, and yet so mysteriously that you cannot say whence they come — are the presence of God making itself felt and setting you ablaze. 

 

Lying between God and the earth, as a zone of mutual attraction, I draw them both together in a passionate union.  — until the meeting takes place in me, in which the generation and plenitude of Christ are consummated throughout the centuries. 

 

I am the Church, the bride of Christ.  I am Mary the Virgin, mother of all human kind.

 

It might be thought that in this conjunction of heaven and earth I am destined to disappear as a useless handmaid, that I will have to vanish like a shadow before the reality. 

 

Those who love me should dismiss this fear….

 

When you think I am no longer with you — when you forget me, the air you breathe, the light with which you sec — then I shall still be at hand, lost in the sun I have drawn to myself…

 

— And at that moment you may see with wonder how there unfolds, in the long web of my charms, the ever-living series of allurements — of forces that one after another have made themselves felt ever since the borderline of nothingness, and so brought together and assembled the elements of Spirit — through love. 

 

 

 

 

O Virgin pure, immaculate, O Lady Theotokos. 

O fleece bedewed with every grace. 

O Virgin Queen and Mother.

More radiant that the rays of the sun, and higher than the heavens. 

O joy of virgin choruses, superior to the angels. 

O brighter than the firmament and purer that the sun's light. 

More holy than the multitude of all the heavenly armies. 

 

 

O ever virgin Mary of all the world, the Lady. 

O Bride all pure immaculate, O Lady Panagia. 

O Mary Bride and Queen of all, the cause of our rejoicing. 

O noble Maiden, gracious Queen, supremely holy Mother. 

More honored than the Cherubim, beyond compare more glorious

Than the unbodied Seraphim, transcending the angelic Thrones. 

 

 

Lord our God,

your loving providence is always wise and unfailing;

through the prayers of the Blessed Virgin,

Mother of your Son,

remove from us all that would harm us

and grant us all that will be for our good.

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. (Mother of Divine Providence)