Mary, be warmth to the world, Mary: Day 353

Mary, be warmth to the world

Caryll Houselander was an English Catholic spiritual writer, poet, and art- ist. In the concluding verses of a poem about Mary, whom she calls “The Reed” into which God breathed to make “infinite music,” she asks Our Lady to soothe our troubled world with her lullaby.

Mary, Mother of God, we are the poor soil and the dry dust;

we are hard with a cold frost.

Be warmth to the world; be the thaw,

warm on the cold frost; be the thaw that melts,

that the tender shoot of Christ, piercing the hard heart,

flower to a spring in us.

Be hands that are rocking the world to a kind rhythm of love;

that the incoherence of war and the chaos of our unrest be soothed to a lullaby;

and the round and sorrowful world, in your hands,

the cradle of God.

—From Caryll Houselander, “The Reed”

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . .  .

For whom is the poet seeking Mary’s maternal care? What might it mean to view the world as “the cradle of God”?

CLOSING PRAYER

From a prayer of St. Joachima Vedruna de Mas: Most holy Virgin, you were constituted mother of sinners at the foot of the Cross. Give us your holy blessing so that, sheltered under your holy mantle, we may follow in your footsteps, and be truly meek and humble of heart.

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