“I am the Mother of God, and this is Himself, and He is the boy you will all be wanting at the last.” ~words of Our Lady from an Irish story
Jesus Christ is the boy that all shall be wanting at the last. His birth is the Good News that might be printed in every newspaper across the world every single day of the year. Oh, to hear this Good News each time one turned on the television, or glanced at the news on the internet! That would paint the news of the world in a whole different light, eh? In April, I posted the following story from G.K. Chesterton; it illustrates the Good News to which I am referring:
I heard a story in Ireland years ago about how someone had met in the rocky wastes a beautiful peasant woman carrying a child. And on being asked for her name she answered simply: “I am the Mother of God, and this is Himself, and He is the boy you will all be wanting at the last.” I have never forgotten this phrase, and I remembered it suddenly long afterwards.
I was looking about for an image of Our Lady which I wished to give to the new church in our neighbourhood, and I was shown a variety of very beautiful and often costly examples in one of the most famous and fashionable Catholic shops in London… But somehow I felt fastidious, for the first time in my life; and felt that the one kind was too conventional to be sincere and the other too primitive to be popular… and I ended prosaically by following the proprietor to an upper floor, where there was a sort of lumber room, full of packages and things partially unpacked, and it seemed suddenly that she was standing there, amid planks and shavings and sawdust, as she stood in the carpenter’s shop in Nazareth. I said something, and the proprietor answered rather casually: “Oh, that’s only just been unpacked; I’ve hardly looked at it. It’s from Ireland!”
She was a peasant and she was a queen. She was barefoot like any colleen on the hills; yet there was nothing merely local about her simplicity. I have never known who was the artist and I doubt if anybody knows; I only know that it is Irish, and I almost think that I should have known without being told. I know a man who walks miles out of his way at regular intervals to revisit our church where the image stands. She looks across the little church with an intense earnestness in which there is something of endless youth; and I have sometimes started, as if I had actually heard the words spoken across that emptiness: “I am the Mother of God and this is Himself, and He is the boy you will all be wanting at the last.”
~ G.K. Chesterton (b. 1874- d. 1936), Christendom in Dublin. The statue that Chesterton purchased, as told in Christendom in Dublin, is pictured in Brandon Voyt‘s travel diary in the “Chesterton” entry; scroll through post until you reach the St. Teresa’s Church section, here.
Yes, he is the boy we shall all be wanting at the last: Mary’s boy, our Savior.
For today, let us remember the Good News in song: God rest you merry, Gentlemen:
1. God rest you merry, gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour
Was born upon this day,
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray.
- O tidings of comfort and joy,
- For Jesus Christ, our Saviour was born on Christmas day.
2. In Bethlehem, in Jury[12]
This blessed babe was born
And laid within a manger
Upon this blessed morn
The which his mother Mary
Nothing did take in scorn.
- O tidings, &c.’
3. From God our Heavenly Father
A blessed Angel came,
And unto certain Shepherds
Brought tidings of the same,
How that in Bethlehem was born
The Son of God by name.
- O tidings, &c.
4. Fear not, then said the Angel,
Let nothing you affright,
This day is born a Saviour
Of virtue, power and might;
So frequently to vanquish all
The friends of Satan quite.
- O tidings, &c.
5. The Shepherds at those tidings
Rejoiced much in mind,
And left their flocks a feeding
In tempest, storm and wind,
And went to Bethlehem straightway,
This blessed babe to find.
- O tidings, &c.
6. But when to Bethlehem they came,
Whereas this infant lay,
They found him in a manger,
Where oxen feed on hay,
His mother Mary kneeling
Unto the Lord did pray.
- O tidings, &c.
7. Now to the Lord sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace;
This holy tide of Christmas
All other doth deface.
- O tidings, &c.
That is such good news.
And, despite it being May, I bid you all a Merry Christmas.
~SCF
~Link to the website of St. Teresa’s Catholic Church, Beaconsfield, England; parish of G.K. Chesterton, information on Chesterton’s life in the parish.
~Image: Adoration of the Shepherds, source.
