Page:O'Donnell - Hail Holy Queen 03 - Mother of Mercy.djvu/3

 position that she had never occupied before. Under the aegis of Christianity, motherhood—God's agency for the reproduction of human life—was seen for the first time as one of mankind's greatest glories. To the pagan, woman was to be used for the gratification of the senses. He regarded her in much the way he did his other chattels. To the Christian, woman is a vessel of election, a repository of the soul made in the image and likeness of God.

To the Christian woman, the career of motherhood, next to the religious life, is the noblest and the greatest on earth. To be God's agent in bringing a child into the world; to be the instrument for making possible the continuation of the Christian heritage; to be the handmaid, as it were, for enabling others to enjoy the Beatific Vision with the blessed in heaven—such is woman's high destiny. What a vocation, O noble mother! And, by the grace of God, it is yours.

Blessed by special graces received in the sacrament of matrimony, motherhood goes forward as the great stabilizing and refining force of the human race. And the virtues of the true mother, whose ideal is ever the Blessed Mother, have contributed all throughout the centuries in Christian lands to the culture of succeeding generations. The true mother always basks in the reflected glory of the Mother of God—stabat juxta crucem—and with her true mother's love brings comfort and solace to her erring children because of her mercy and tenderness of heart.

The true mother instills into her children a deep and lasting devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Such a one, for example, was the Mother of Padraic Pearse, the Irish patriot of a generation ago. The love for the Mother of God shared by this mother and son is beautifully expressed in a poem that Pearse wrote in Kilmainham Prison the night before he was executed. It was a little poem his mother had asked him to write in such fashion that it would seem to be said by her about him.

Dear Mary, thou who saw thy first-born Son Go forth to die amidst the scorn of men, Receive my first-born son into thy arms Who goeth forth to die for men; And keep him by thee till I come to him. Dear Mary, I have shared thy sorrows, And soon shall share thy joys.

One has only to read history for proof of the statement that