The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1900-04-21
THE BLESSED VIRGIN.

(By his Eminence Cardinal Gibbons)
The world is governed more by Ideals
than by ideas; it is influenced more by
living, concrete models than by abstract
principles of virtue
The model held up to Christian women
Is not the Amazon, glorying in her mar
Spartan woman who made female per-
lection consist in the development OF
physical strength at the expense OF de-
cirum and moaesty; it Is not the goddess t.5
taries regard beauty of form and per-
sonal charms as the highest type of fe-
male excellence; nor is 1t the goddess of
imperial will like Juno No, the model
held up to woman from the very dawn
of Christianity is the peerless Mother of
our Blessed Redeemer.
She is the pattern of virtue alike to
maiden, wife and mother. She exhibits
the virginia. modesty becoming the maid,
the conjugal fidelity and loyalty of the
spouse, and the unttrtng devotedness OF
the mother.
The Christian woman is everywhere
confronted by her great model. Mary
portrait gazes down upon her from the
wall. Her name is repeated in the pages
pronounced from the pulpit. Affairs and
temples are dedicated in her honor. Fes-
tivals are celebrated in her praise In a
word, the Virgin Mother is indelibly
stamped on the intellect, the heart, the
memory and the imagination OF the Chris
tan daughter.
y,
the moral elevation of woman can hardly
be overestimated. She is the perfect
combination of all that is great and good
and noble in Pagan womanhood, with no
alloy of degradation.
Hers is exquisite beauty. but a beauty
more of the soul than of the body; it
delights without intoxicating. The con-
temptation of her eXciteS no inward re-
bellion, as too often happens with Grecian
models She is the mother of fair love
devoid of sicl1ly sentimentaltty or sensu-
atty.
pride or imperiousness. We find in her
moral strength and heroism without the
sacrifice of female grace and honor-a
noisy action. What Spartan mother ever
displayed such fortitude as Mary exhib-
tied at the foot of the cross?
1t seems to me that some writer's are
disposed to lay undue stress on the adj
mirable and tender qualities of Mary and
of holy Christian women without dwell
ing sufficiently on the strong and robust
points of their character The Holy
heightened eulOgy on woman. What does
the Holy Ghost especially admire in her?
Not her sweet and amiable temper or her
gentle disposition, though of course she
possessed these qualities, for no woman
is perfect without them. No: He admires
her ,valorr. courage. fortitude, and the
not say, who shall find gentle
woman?' but rather. Who shall find
valiant woman? AS things brought from
afar and from the uteermost coasts is the
price of her." 1t is only heroic virtues
practiced in heroic degree that the
church canoniZes.
After our Lord Jesus Christ, no one
has ever exercised SO salutary an inf1u-
ence as the Blessed Virgin on society, on
the family and on the individual.
The Mother of Jesus exercises through
out the Christian commonwealth that
hallowing influence which a good mother
yields over the Christian family.
What temple or chapel. how rude soever
it may be, is not adorned with a painting
or statue of the Madonna? What house
is not embellished with an image of
Mary? What Catholic child is a stranger
to her familiar face?
The priest and the layman, the scholar
and the illiterate the prince and the
peasant, the mother and the maid
acknowledge her benign sway.
And if Christianity is so fruitful in
comparison with paganism in conjugal
fidelity, in female purity, and in the re-
spect paid to womanhood, these bless
ings are in no small measure due to the
force of Mary's all pervadlng example
and influence. Ever since the Son of
God chose woman to be His mother,
man looks up to woman with a homage
akin to generation.
The poet Tennyson pays the following
tribute to Mary's sanctifying influence:
This is indeed the blessed Marys land,