Birth of Our Lady - Marymas Feast Day

 

Happy Marymas.  Elena at Fountain of Elias has a very thoughtful post on today's feast.

Image:  Giotto's The Birth of the Virgin

The Birth of the Virgin

Tomorrow, September 8 -- nine months after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8 -- the Church celebrates the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In a reflection on the birth of Mary at Tradition in Action, Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira notes:

“Scripture tells us that the tunic that Our Lord wore was a source of grace that cured those who touched it; this being the case, you can imagine how Our Lady, the Mother of the Savior, was a source of graces for whosoever would approach her . . . For this reason we can say that at her nativity, immense graces began to shine for mankind and the Devil started to be smashed. He perceived that his scepter had been cracked and would never be the same again."

Image:
Zurbarán’s, “Birth of the Virgin”, from Wikimedia Commons. In the public domain.

Thank You for the Light (Fitzgerald, 1936)

 

 

I've always enjoyed vignettes because they give the reader the sense of having found the fragment of a novel to be filled in.

 

Thank You for the Light by F. Scott Fitzgerald is just such a vignette.  It's only a few pages, belatedly discovered by Fitzgerald's grandchildren among his effects and published by the New Yorker in 2012 although the same magazine rejected it many decades ago.

 

It's about Mrs. Hanson, a 1930s traveling saleswoman addicted to nicotine who goes to a Catholic church hoping to light her cigarette from a votive candle.  In so doing, she has an encounter with the Blessed Mother.

 

One realizes that the end of the vignette is just the beginning of a very long journey for Mrs. Hanson.  In fact, although superficially very different, the piece reminds me of the transforming experience for Sarah Miles in the Deborah Kerr movie version of Graham Greene's novel The End of the Affair.

 

The vignette is available at the New Yorker online