Since Wednesday is the feast day of St. Catherine of Siena – Mystic of the Incarnate Word, I thought it would be appropriate to share with you a prayer written by one of the great female Doctors of the Church to the Blessed Virgin Mary that I recently came across titled, ‘In Praise of Mary.’

O Mary, Mary, temple of the Trinity. O Mary, bearer of fire. O Mary, dispenser of mercy. O Mary, restorer of human generation, because the world was repurchased by means of the sustenance that your flesh found in the Word. Christ repurchased the world with His Passion, and you with your suffering of mind and body.

O Mary, peaceful ocean. O Mary, giver of peace. O Mary, fruitful land. You, O Mary, are that new plant from which we have the fragrant flower of the Word, Only-begotten Son of God, because this Word was sown in you, O fruitful land. You are the land and the plant.

O Mary, vehicle of fire, you bore the fire hidden and veiled beneath the ash of your humanity. O Mary, vase of humility, in which there burns the light of true knowledge with which you lifted yourself above yourself and yet were pleasing to the eternal Father; hence He took and brought you to Himself, loving you with a singular love.

With this light and fire of your charity and with the oil of your humility, you inclined His Divinity to come into you – although He was first drawn to come to us by the most ardent fire of His inestimable charity.

Today I ardently make my request, because it is the day of graces, and I know that nothing is refused to you, O Mary. Today, O Mary, your land has generated the Savior for us. O Mary, blessed are you among women throughout the ages!