Lift Up Your Hearts

Today (Sunday 15th) is kept in the Church of England as the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary - what someone accustomed to the richer provision of Marian devotion found in other parts of the universal church once described to me rather disparagingly as "your all purpose General Synod Mary Day." In Medieval times the feast of Our Lady in the Harvest was  celebrated in mid August as a day off reaping and gathering (the reason for the long vacation was, of course to release the children to help in the fields at the point in the year when all hands are needed). A year or so ago the Haileybury chapel was beautified with an image of Our Lady. As Vice Chairman of the Anglican Society of Mary I heartily approve of that!

Image of Madonna & Child, Haileybury Chapel

Some of you may know Hilaire Belloc's poem.

Ballade of Illegal Ornaments

"...the controversy was ended by His Lordship, who wrote to the Incumbent ordering him to remove from the Church all Illegal Ornaments at once, and especially a Female Figure with a Child"

When that the Eternal deigned to look
on us poor folk to make us free
he chose a Maiden, whom He took
from Nazareth in Galilee;
since when the Islands of the Sea,
the Field, the City, and the Wild
proclaim aloud triumphantly

A Female Figure with a Child.

These Mysteries profoundly shook
the Reverend Doctor Leigh, D.D.,
who therefore stuck into a Nook
(or Niche) of his Incumbency
an Image filled with majesty
to represent the Undefiled,
the Universal Mother— She—

A Female Figure with a Child.

His Bishop, having read a book
which proved as plain as plain could be
that all the Mutts had been mistook
who talked about a Trinity
Wrote off at once to Doctor Leigh
in manner very far from mild,
and said: “Remove them instantly!

A Female Figure with a Child!”

Envoi

Prince Jesus, in mine Agony,
permit me, broken and defiled,
through blurred and glazing eyes to see
A Female Figure with a Child.