On Being Mary

Pierre-August Renoir, "Mother and Child"

"Each saint has his special work: one person's work. But Our Lady had to include in her vocation, in her life's work, the essential thing that was to be hidden in every other vocation, in every life. She is not only human, she is humanity. The one thing that she did and does is the one thing that we all have to do, namely to bear Christ into the world."--Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God