The Gift of Grace

With unending imagination God put a woman amongst us so that there might be grace amongst us – Our Lady whom everyone can call My Lady (Madonna). And thus He placed love with beauty amongst us. In her, amongst all creatures, a woman was given highest rank and a woman was entrusted with the largest task ever before entrusted to human creature: the task of generating the element of reunion between humanity and the Godhead. For an abyss had opened between these two that human yearning was never able to overcome.

The Author of human society placed a woman amongst us as a font of piety, joy, inspiration and nobility. And since this woman is a virgin she teaches to be pure and induces the fallen to be purified. And since this virgin is a mother, she is the font of grace for us, the fresh spring water of poetry, the bond of goodness and kindness. If you take away the Mother, human society will become gloomy as, like orphans we no longer find her maternal caresses and good help. Her joy can never be replaced by the pride of those who deny her, or by the foolhardy theories of dominators whose interest it is to remove both Mother and Father so that they can look at others as mere rivals to be subdued.

With this feast of the Assumption, Christendom re-echoes in mid-August that Christmas feast which honours the Son in midwinter. And it introduces into the weariness of life a thought of beauty, a virginal poem that overcomes selfishness and remembers the duties of solidarity.

For those who are not influenced by blind pride, politics or false knowledge there remains the revolutionary Messianic assurance of this young woman, by whose activity we are nevermore orphans. This Virgin is the Mother of all and her maternity sustains millions of the tormented and desperate still today.

Igino Giordani in: Le feste, International Publishers Association, 1954