Hail, Bright Star
March 25, 2015
The Annunciation by Bl. Fra Angelico at the Convento di San Marco, Florence
FEMINISM, which is the hatred of womanhood and manhood embodied in the myth of feminine infallibility, could never take root in a culture that truly loved and honored the Mother of God. Feminism has been the most virulent in those nations — Britain, America and Russia — which have spurned Mary and rejected national veneration of her. Feminism could never reconcile its theories of history and male oppression with true devotion to this one woman or explain why women were queens and abbesses, virgins involved in great charitable and intellectual enterprises and mothers who owned property and businesses during the age when Mary was accorded the most respect. She is the lodestar of feminine excellence. Her humility is towering strength. It crushes the serpent underfoot.
Today, on the Feast of the Annunciation, we honor the day when this poor Jewish girl was approached by an angel and assented to the unimaginable. “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” she would later say to her cousin, Elizabeth. Is there any greater rebuke to feminism’s claims?
Mary has a special role to play in these times. This age is far, far worse than the age before the Incarnation, when there was widespread corruption for good reason. St. Louis de Montfort wrote in his True Devotion to Mary:
“It is through Mary that the salvation of the world was begun, and it is through Mary that it must be consummated. Mary hardly appeared at all in the first coming of Jesus Christ, in order that men, as yet but little instructed and enlightened on the Person of her Son, should not remove themselves from Him in attaching themselves too strongly and too grossly to her. This would have apparently taken place if she had been known, because of the admirable charms which the Most High had bestowed even upon her exterior. This is so true that St. Denis the Aeropagite tells us in his writings that when he saw our Blessed Lady he would have taken her for a divinity, because of her secret charms and incomparable beauty, had not the Faith in which he was well established taught him the contrary. But in the second coming of Jesus Christ, Mary has to be made known and revealed by the Holy Ghost in order that, through her, Jesus Christ may be known, loved and served. The reasons which moved the Holy Ghost to hide His spouse during her life, and to reveal her but very little since the preaching of the Gospel, subsist no longer.”
There is no heart that seeks her maternal help and solicitude that is denied. Her name is said to mean “star of the sea.” Like a star, she emits light but her radiance never fades. Says one author, “She floods the whole earth with her light, warms minds rather than bodies, fosters virtues, melts away sins. She, I say, is that brilliant shining star lifted in nature above this vast and boundless sea, gleaming with merits, enlightening by her example.”
Hail, bright star of ocean,
God’s own Mother blest,
Ever sinless Virgin,
Gate of heavenly rest.
Taking that sweet Ave
Which from Gabriel came,
Peace confirm within us,
Changing Eva’s name.
Break the captives’ fetters,
Light on blindness pour,
All our ills expelling,
Every bliss implore.
Show thyself a Mother;
May the Word Divine,
Born for us thy Infant,
Hear our prayers through thine.
Virgin all excelling,
Mildest of the mild,
Freed from guilt, preserve us,
Pure and undefiled.
Keep our life all spotless,
Make our way secure,
Till we find in Jesus,
Joy forevermore.
Through the highest heaven
To the Almighty Three,
Father, Son and Spirit,
One same glory be. Amen.
— Comments —
Joe A. writes:
I have bad news for your mediaevalism, Laura. UK at least seems to be stable, although most of that “fertility” is certainly Mohammedan.
Laura writes:
I have bad news for your modernism, Joe. The average university-educated woman in Britain has her first child at the advanced age of 35. Ever hear of dysgenics?
Laura adds:
By the way, since you’re down on mediaevalism, would you mind returning the Bible and the English monarchy and that magnificent rip-off known as the Anglican Church? Without those dark ages, you wouldn’t have the first or the last and the monarchy would be in even worse shape than it is now.
And throw in Oxford University, please.
