Caryll Houselander describes the gentle motherhood of Mary in the book, Reed of God.
”While we are seeking in one another for the lost Child, Our Lady still seeks and finds Him in us.
The gentleness that floods our hearts when we see a woman with child floods Our Lady’s heart when she looks down upon the world, for through her the Holy Spirit has made humanity large with the Christ-child, and she, who is so essentially ours, who is one of the human race, is compelled with is in the mutual tenderness which can have but one answer: ‘Little children, love one another’
The Christhood that she recognizes in us is that we are her children: ‘Mother, behold your child.’
This is the most wonderful trust of all, which Christ has given to us, to be Himself to Our Lady. He has actually given His love for her into our keeping. We are trustees of His love in our love for one another. He has given us His heart to give to the Bride of Life.
Devotion to Our Lady is the treasure of the Catholic Church. If proof were wanting that she is Christ’s church, none could be surer than this. She has never ceased, all through the ages of Christianity, to foster this tender love for the Mother of God. As soon as a child can walk, he walks to Our Lady’s altar and puts one more candle to shine among the countless cnadles at her feet, one more bunch of flowers from the fields is pushed into her hand or laid across her gilded shoes; and when he is old and nodding before the altar, it is the same thing.
Every trifling thing is told to her and every great sorrow; she is the sharer of all earth’s joys and griefs.
She is not wearied with our littleness; her smile comes down to us like a benediction through the sea of flickering candles, and she blesses our wild flowers withering at her feet. For each one of us is ‘another Christ’; each one, to Mary, is her only child. It is therefore not tedious to her to hear the trifles that we tell her, to look at the bruises that we bring to her, and seeing our wound of sin, to heal it.”