Emptiness is the beginning of contemplation. It is emptiness like the hollow in the reed, the narrow riftless emptiness, which can have only one destiny: to receive the piper’s breath and to utter the song that is in his heart.
Our Lady’s was a reed through which the Eternal Love was to be piped as a shepherd’s song.
Think again of the symbol I have used for the virginal emptiness of Mary. These are made from material which must undergo some experience to be made ready for its purpose. The reed grows by the streams. It is the simplest of things, but it must be cut by the sharp knife, hollowed out, and the stops must be cut in it; it must be shaped and pierced before it can utter the shepherd’s song. It is the narrowest emptiness in the world, but the little reed utters infinite music.
Thus it is with us—we may be formed by the knife, pared down, cut to the least, to the minimum of our own being. The most moving fact in the whole history of mankind is that wherever the Holy Spirit has desired to renew the face of the earth, he has chosen to do so through communion with some humble human creature.
In the instances we know of, it is not been to great or powerful people that the Spirit has come but to the little or the frightened, and we have seen them made new, and known that the subsequent flowering of their lives was nothing else but Christ given to them by that sweet impact.
--Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God
Happy Feast of the Immaculate Conception!
Image source 1: https://www.facebook.com/267368477502392/posts/mother-mary-please-protect-the-pregnant-women-and-their-children-in-the-womb/645151976390705/
Image source 2: https://onbeing.org/poetry/song-of-the-reed/
Quotation source
No comments:
Post a Comment