What Catholics believe about Mary

To understand something of what Catholics believe about Mary, listen to this carol and absorb its words. This modern piece is called The Shepherd's Carol - "We stood on the Hills, Lady."

The King's Singers capture beautifully the atmosphere of the first Christmas. Listen and watch.

We find the carol addresses Mary, but the focus is on the Christ: "I am the Lord's servant. May it be done to me as you have said", she told the angel Gabriel. And so we can praise Mary, in all her humility, for accepting the role of mother of God so that Elizabeth could hail her with: "Blessed are you among women!" 

Here is the text of the poem by English-born Tasmanian poet and playwright Clive Sansom (died 1981) that was transformed into song by the music of choral maestro Bob Chilcott.

The Shepherd's Carol

We stood on the hills, Lady,

Our day’s work done,

Watching the frosted meadows

That winter had won.

The evening was calm, Lady,

The air so still,

Silence more lovely than music

Folded the hill.

There was a star, Lady,

Shone in the night,

Larger than Venus it was

And bright, so bright.

Oh, a voice from the sky, Lady,

It seemed to us then

Telling of God being born

In the world of men.

And so we have come, Lady,

Our day’s work done,

Our love, our hopes, ourselves,

We give to your son.

 Another poem that is a favourite for meditative consideration at Christmas is this by T S Eliot:

Journey of the Magi

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.”

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

Eliot's work is always complex, but a little study bears great fruit for the heart. I tapped into LitCharts to help understand Eliot's revelation as to how death is also linked to Jesus' birth. There are also many analyses of this poem on YouTube.

Elsewhere we read:

In the last twelve lines we learn that the kings were deeply affected and changed by their experience. The birth of Christ heralds the start of a new order and new truth, and yet the kings have to return to their kingdoms and to ‘an alien people clutching their gods’.

 Go here, low on the web page, to listen to a recitation of this poem.

Enjoy the insights music and voice can offer as we make our spiritual journey through this rich seasonal landscape.

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