Mater Amabilis

How shall it be when we see her there,
With heavenlight radiant on her face
Making a glow of her shining hair,
Marking each fold of her garment’s grace?

Breathless in awe shall the angels listen
While we, the fallen, declare her ours
Though all the stars of the morning glisten
Around her circlet of skyey flowers?

For only God and ourselves may claim
This loveliest, spotless, and sinless on
And call her “Mother”—O matchless name!
Whose God and Creator is her Son.

Who shall have words for that breathless hour
When death’s dark slumber is past awhile,
And heaven unfolds like a glowing flower
That blooms forever in Mary’s smile?

Mater Amabilis! Mother-my-own,
How shall I wait all the long years through,
Unsated with beauty, in exile lone,
Searching the skies for a sight of you!

“Mater Amabilis” from p. 43 of Our Lady of Springtime, by Sr. Mary Jean Dorcy, O.P.

It is with great joy that Our Lady’s little community honors her with diverse devotions during this month of May—a month especially dedicated to her since time immemorial. Marian hymns, always a staple in the Marian Sisters’ chapel, multiply, and Marian prayer and devotional books find a home in every Sisters’ hands. One of our dearest practices in honor of Our Lady is for each Sister to, on an appointed day, make for Our Lady a crown of flowers. The Sister will also choose a hymn to sing to our Blessed Mother while she is crowned and have the opportunity to entrust to Our Lady certain special intentions. To give her our intentions and place a crown upon her head shows her to be our Queen; but more than an expression of our—right and just—homage to our Queen, our crowning custom is an expression of our love for the tenderest of Mothers: God’s Mother, and our Mother.

In his treatise, True Devotion, St. Louis Marie de Montfort writes: “God the Father wishes Mary to be the mother of His children until the end of time…. All true children of God have God for their father and Mary for their mother…” (pp. 29 and 30) Then, “The first man born of Mary is the God-Man, Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ, the head of mankind, is born of her, [those] who are members of this head, must also as a necessary consequence be born of her.” (pp. 32). In this, St. Louis shows with clarity the beauty and truth of the doctrines of Our Lady’s divine and universal maternity. Elsewhere, St. Louis goes on in his praise of Our Lady; describing the love of all the best Mothers in the world combined into one heart, he declares that not even this ocean of love would equal the love of the Blessed Virgin for each one of us, her children in exile.

It is in a spirit of profound gratitude for the gift of kinship with Our Dear Jesus in being adopted by God the Father and bequeathed to His Most Holy Mother that we crown Our Lady, sing to her some fraction of our affection, and beg her for the grace to correspond to all the many graces her Divine Son wishes to shower upon us through her. We pray that Our Blessed Lady, model of Mothers and Virgins, strengthen you in your vocations, as she does for us in ours, and lavish upon you her motherly love as we joyfully sing praises to Our Mother, sweet Mary, this May.

A blessed Mother's Day to all Mother's!