“He
has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat,
and hath
exalted the humbled.”
He
had said it ... so many, many times – and we would not listen.
We had seen it, and still did not believe.
The mighty toppled, the Cedars of Lebanon broken as withered reeds,
the proud brought down in their arrogance ... and, yes, the humbled
raised up to take the emptied thrones of fallen kings.
One saw ... and understood.
And even when she did not see, and did not understand ... she believed!
So God set her above all men, all women, all the sons and daughters
of Eve ... from Abraham who would immolate all hope on the sad heights
of Moriah, to John who stirred in joy at her very voice in the womb
of Elizabeth her kin.
Her
“Yes”
still resounds through the corridors of time, lingers in soaring,
endless spires, in thatched hopes built anew a hundred times on
searing plains, in the slums and barrios where stifled voices know
the dialect of the Queen of the Poor.
It is a song which sings that the raiment of the poor is not shame
... for, behold, it was lowliness that mantled her in beauty, and
covered her with grace!
In her humility, her lowliness, Mary toppled the world of the arrogant,
and she topples it still! ... sets the heel of her Son against
that Dreamless Malice who would make of her children a kingdom of
the dead while yet they live ... that they may die twice! Mary,
Mother of Life, and the living, will not suffer them death!
Gentle Mother, she is the River of Life whose supple waters — most
yielding of all things — overcome even stone, the most unyielding
of things — making of mountains mere walls through which her grace,
poured out on her children, courses to the endless sea of God's
love.
The hardest of hearts subdued by the gentlest of hearts!
How can this be? Tell us, Mary ... Mother of God, and Queen of the
Poor?
“Because
He that is mighty, hath done great things to me; and Holy is His
Name.”
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A Poor Clare Colettine Nun
for the Boston Catholic Journal
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Totally Faithful to the Sacred
Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Holy See in
Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti
verbum Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power,
and yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My
Name.”
(Apocalypse 3.8)
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