The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-05-31
OUR LADY IN LITERATURE

Lord declared unto Mary" she has
been the ideal of virginity, the ideal
of motherhood, the model spouse, low
she has been the Refuge of Sinners,
the delight of saints, mother to both;
ever since, the Seat of Wisdom, the
Gate of Heaven, the Cause of Our
Joy, the Comforter of the Afflicted
The Church has rejoiced to honor her
whom the King hath deigned to
honor. Whenever the Cross was first
erected in each sad pagan land she
stood beneath it to cheer the mission
aries in their labors, to support the
martyrs on their glorious way of blood
and suffering; and, when, at last, the
blood and sweat bore fruit in great
cathedrals thronged with devout wor
shippers her image was placed close
beside her Sons.
Century after century the story has
been repeated: so will it run to the
end of time. Ever in private life, and
in the life of nations, Mary is revered;
in Gods Church she is honored; in
the heart of mankind she is enshrined:
and literature, in so far as it is worthy
of the name, being an echo of all that
is noblest in life, an effort to solve its
problems, and record of the heart
throbs of humanity, it follows that she
must be a power in the literature of
every people that knows, or has ever
known, the Church which Christ, her
Son, established. No other creature
ever aspired to the heights she at
tained; no other satisfies so fully the
longings of the human heart, or is SO
compassionate of failure, or knows so
surely the answer to the problems that
battle mans intellect, "dwarfed to
baseness." She is part of mans life;
she is part of his literature. That she
should have great power over what
touches her children so closely is but
reasonable; and this power she exer-
cises in two ways, the first of them,
through influence.
influence is an intangible thing, hard
to measure. 1t is ever more potent
1 than the unthinking realize. It's depth
land breadth are proportionate to the
prestige of the one who exercises it.
Mary's influence, then, must indeed be
vast. 1t is not too much to say that
everything written since Christ's death
in lands where He had been preached
has been sweeter and more hopeful
purer and holier, because of all Our
Lady was and is-except, of course
in those cases in which the writer
wilfully shut his eyes to truth and
beauty to revel in the false and the
gross.
Loftiest of Gods Creatures.
Instinctively the man of genius
thirsts for the ideal, seeks it, and per
ceives it more clearly than his fellows
Otherwise, genius we're poor thing;
meaningless; useless. Homer and Vir
gil and Aeschylus and Sophocles haC
no higher ideal than their own noble
minds were able to create. They coulG
not know the Lilly Among Thorns,
the best beloved creation of the mind
of God Himself; but in the light and
fragrance of her loneliness has genius
basked for 1900 years, beautifying the
world with her image, making marble
and canvas repeat it, stately prose and
verse of haunting sweetness enshrine
it. Dante has no need to search fol
an ideal of womanhood for the Para
disc, either when he laid his tribute
of loving praise at the feet of her who
is, in his words, "Of creatures all the
lowliest, Hottest one Term of Gods
counsel, fixed ere time begun" OF
when he sang of Beatrice, and earthly
love beautiful as it never was before
the Lily of Israel taught men how
sweet and high and holy love may be
Even in little love-lyrics, light, airy
and purely secular, this influence oil
hers is present. 1t breathes through
the songs of Walter Won der Vogel
weide, and those of every Catholic
poet, before and after him, whose
verse did not turn traitor to the faitf
that was in him. "The teacher of gooG
poets" was Mary called in the older
days.
Fathers of Church Praise Her.
The Church was hardly out of the
catacombs before her sons began tC
sound her praises in the immortal
prose of the Fathers of the Church
and the immortal hymns of the early
Christian poets. Herman de Verin
CHEN wrote tenderly of her; so die
Prudentius, the first of our poets; and
Fortunatus sang rapturously of the
Glorious Lady, throned in light,
Sublime, above the starry height"
1t was not long before the Christmas
Carols sprang into vigorous being, to
be loved for centuries by the simple
folk of many lands. They are full OF
quaint praise of Our Lady and breathe
childlike trust in the efficacy of heI
intercession; and they are gay and
sprightly, as befitted the songs of gen
erations of peasants too happy in the
hope of heaven to be saddened by the
hardships of the way. Those were
the days when England was "Merrie
England" when the Pope was the