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The original icon of Mary, the Mother of Good Counsel, has been in the keeping of members of the Order of St. Augustine for over Four hundred years. The church that enshrines the original fresco is located in the small town of Genazano, Italy. |
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SANDRO BOTTICELLI: Madonna of the Magnificat, c 1483. Detail, Uffizi, Florence. |
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PROLOGUE |
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The birds sing each day as the sun rises, and the meadows ring with the sound of the mountain stream. All creation praises God! |
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Ancient Israel knew this praise well. Her psalms and liturgy have seeded a garden of worship and contemplation for the modern world. |
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The first Book of Samuel proclaims the song of Hannah. In presenting her child to God, Hannah invokes the ancient priestly instinct. |
| The "Magnificat" of Mary is Hannah's song in a different octave! Together they have become a lyrical manifestation of a people in praise of God. |
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Mary's praise is made in the name of her son, Jesus: God's own Word proclaimed in flesh and blood to a world longing for the revelation of divine love. |
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The "Word" had been present all along - Immanence and Mystery-a Seed planted in the sacred garden of Creation - waiting, longing, ready! |
| Creation, so blessed, her Sanctuary beckons; and the mother "ponders all these things in her heart." |
| DOXOLOGY |
| A Word of Praise uttered from the depths of Creation. The Christ hidden through the ages - manifest under the stars a Song at the heart of God - incarnate in the rhythms of life. The Magi knew him well the Promised of Ages whose mercy lies at the cross-roads of human conflict, and whose name is Peace. |
| Mary his mother is also Earth - sacred cave for Womb and Sanctuary. The Word reverberates through Creation returning to the Source... divine Resonance... ancient Song... endless River... Alpha and Omega. The Spirit breathes in all as One a swirling dance - a shower of meteors intimate whisper - a breathing as rythmic as ocean waves. Creation in travail until now enters the festive Dance. |
| There is only Christ! The woman knows. |
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AT THE END OF THE DAY |
| A tiny sparrow sings at the top
of a winter's barren tree, a singular song of inner depth, and of joy, in a cloak of solitude. |
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The surrounding mountain hills
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| In a town at the edge of such woods an aging
woman
lays down her dreams at the end of the day. She counts her children's migration years: the fledgling colors of youth, the ruffled feathers of summer, and autumn's orphaned nests. |
| She knows the inevitable "passing" that awaits the dawn. |
| A small candle is lit in the darkening shadows
of fatigue and night. Soon it will be time to lay down everything - the time for eternal life. |
| This is mountain time - the time of ages -
a kinship moment with ocean and desert, It is a measure of blessing for all of life - and all of death, and it has it's joy! |
| There is a song at the heart of creation
the woman does not miss; the sparrow knows it too. |
| "Mortality so fleeting;
it's song so sweet." |
| THE PROMISE |
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I think that what we suffer in this
life can never be
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| From the beginning till now the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth. And not only creation, but all of us who possess the first fruits of the Spirit, we too groan inwardly as we await for our bodies to be set free. For we must be content to hope that we shall be saved. Our salvation is not in sight, and we should not have to be hoping for it if it were. But, as I say, we must hope to be saved since we are not saved yet. This is something we must wait for with patience... |
| ...The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit expresses our plea in ways that go beyond words, and God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what is meant, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to God's own mind. |
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Romans 8: 18 - 27 |
| THE VISION |
| Now a great sign appeared in the heavens: a woman robed with the sun, standing on the moon, and on her head a crown of twelve stars! She was pregnant and in labor crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth. |
| Then a second sign appeared in the sky: a huge red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and each of the seven heads crowned with a coronet. It's tail swept a third of the stars from the sky and hurled them to the ground. And the dragon stopped in front of the woman as she was at the point of giving birth so that it could devour the child as soon as it was born. |
| The woman was delivered of a boy, the son who was to rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And the child was taken straight up to God and to God's throne. The woman escaped into the desert where God had prepared a place for her to be looked after for twelve hundred and sixty days!" |
| MARIAN SPIRITUALITY |
| Christian tradition presents Mary as the Mother of God. |
| In Mary, the Almighty exults in the joy of giving
birth,
and the Divine is revealed as nurturing and compassionate. |
| Creation, receptive and vulnerable, reaches out
to
the power of transcendent love for fullness and salvation. The child seeks the mother; the human craves the divine. |
| Mary, the mother of Jesus, is an archetypal figure.
She is an icon for both the mother Earth and for God's people as Church. |
| As icon for the Earth, Mary is the inspiration of shrines,
sacred wells, and holy mountains everywhere when springs of faith defy the rigid walls of human expectation. |
| As icon for the Church, Mary images the communion
between mother and child: the promise of divine life cradled in human hands. |
| Mary is the moon reflecting the light of her sun-God child,
the Christ. Her wisdom is the quiet effulgence of his wisdom, the fruit of his promise. |
| She is woman-priest who offers the body and blood
of her own son in loving sacrifice for the redemption of the world. |
| Mary stands upon the moon with her crown of twelve
stars. She is the Mother of the Redeemer, Gate of Heaven, and Star of the Sea. |
| It is with this deeper understanding of Mary as the
Divine
Mother that the music of Magnificat resounds. |
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"Niagara Falls" |
