Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins's Poem on Mary

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Bonus content. Uh, if you haven't read it, you must read it. If you have read it, read it again. There's a poem to Our Lady by Gerard Manley Hopkins, the great Jesuit poet, uh, whose poetry not only I, but many think is among the most beautiful poetry ever written, okay? And he's got a poem called The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe.

[00:00:26]I'm not going to read the whole thing, although it's worth reading the whole thing, but just a few lines here. Wild air, world-mothering air, nestling in me everywhere, but each eyelash or hair gurgles goes on betwixt the fleeciest, frailest, fixed snowflake that's fairly mixed with riddles and is rife in every least thing's life. So, air is part of everything that lives, right?

[00:00:53]This needful, never spent, and nursing element, my more than meat and drink that is We need air more than we need food.

[00:01:03]My meal at every wink, this air, which by life's law my lungs must draw, and draw now but to breathe is praise, minds me, reminds me, minds me in many ways of her who not only gave God's infinity to what I'm to infancy, welcome in womb and breast, birth, milk, and all the rest, but mothers each new grace that does not reach our race. Mary is the mother of all grace, right?

[00:01:34]Mary immaculate, merely a woman, and yet whose presence, power was got great as no goddesses was deemed dreaming, who this one work has to do, let all God's glory through.

[00:01:50]God's glory which would go through her and from her flow off, and no way but so. And then it goes on, but that is the blessed version compared to the air we live by Jeremiah Hopkins. Go to the internet. It's public domain now. You can get it.

[00:02:07]That's a bonus.