Mother

Thank you Sue of Catholic Community.

In a garden Mary stood when Springtime's radiant beauty
Wrapped the world in sunlight and filled her heart with joy.

Down the garden-path there ran a slender little Figure
Bringing her a gift of love - He, her God, her Boy!

Mary opened wide her arms to take her sheaf of lilies:
"Mother!" called her little Son, and never had she heard
In the angel's message, in brooklet, or in bird-song,
Music half so lovely as that one tender word.

On a hill-top Mary stood one sadder, later Springtime.

All the earth was wrapped in gloom beneath that blood-stained Cross;
Memories thronged about her, memories of His Childhood,
Adding to her loneliness, her pain, her sense of loss.

Mary opened wide her arms but His were nailed securely "
Mother!" breathed her dying Son, and never had she heard
In her sword-pierced heart that knew the very depths of sorrow
Anything approaching the pathos of that word.

"Mother! Mother Mary!" a million hearts are calling,
"Open wide again those arms, and in their warm embrace,
Take the children Jesus gave you on that darkened hill-top
When He named you Mother of the sin-stained human race."

Sr. Maryanna Robert, Cyril.
Our Lady's Praise in Poetry.
Poughkeepsie, New York: Marist Press, 1944.