DAILY MEDITATION (TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8)

MEDITATION OF THE DAY

The Morning Star

When in the beginning “light was made” and God divided the night from the day, he might have left it at that, a simple change from dark to light. But God is all beauty and color is his creature. Out of the reach of man (who, if he could lay hands on it, would probably try to change it) God placed between the night and the day the radiant curtain of the dawn. For all time it was to shine there as a promise, heralding the day….

The world had been a long time in spiritual darkness, shuddering under the frown of its Creator’s anger, when dawn lighted its undeserving skies with the first lovely streaks of light…. The world’s Redeemer was its light and salvation. So it is that the hope, the promise, and the loveliness of dawn should be early associated with Our Lady, who gave to the world its Lord of Light.

“Morning Star,” we call her in the litany; in the Canticle of Canticles she is prefigured by the words, Who is she that comes forth as the morning rising?

To us looking back, as to those patriarchs looking ahead for the long four thousand years, Mary is the dawning, Christ the perfect day. Dark as the world may seem today, it can never be quite dark again since Mary came on earth. Mary, whose birth was the dawning hope for mankind, brought to us the light of the world.

Sister Mary Jean Dorcy, o.p.

Sister Mary Jean († 1988) was a Dominican sister and a prolific author and illustrator, especially of children’s literature. [From Our Lady’s Feasts. Published by Sheed & Ward, 1945. Reproduced by kind permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.]