“The eyes of Our Lady are the only real child eyes that have ever been raised to our shame and sadness. Yes, lad, to pray to her properly, you have to feel those eyes of hers upon you. They are not the eyes of indulgence- for there is no indulgence without some kind of bitter experience. No, they are eyes of tender compassion, sorrowful surprise, and with something more in them, something inconceivable, inexpressible, something which makes her younger than sin, younger than the race from which she sprang, and though a mother, by grace Mother of All Graces, the youngest sister of the human race.”

Georges Bernanos (1888-1948), Diary of a Country Priest (1936)