MAGNIFYING  MARY

Quote for today - traditional day for celebrating the birthday of Mary - September 8, 2010

"The idea of the blessed Virgin

was as it were magnified

in the Church or Rome,

as time went on, -

but so were all the Christian ideas;

as that of the blessed sacrament.
The whole scene of pale, faint,

distant apostolic Christianity

is seen in Rome,

as through a telescope or magnifier.

The harmony of the whole,

however, is of course what it was.

It is unfair then

to take one Roman idea,

that of the Blessed Virgin

out of what may be called its context."

Cardinal John Henry Newman [1801-1890]: Apologia pro Vita Sua, 4, (1865-66).

Icon on top: Our Lady of Vladimir