Icon of Salus Populi Romani in the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome.
Recounted by pious tradition to have been painted by St. Luke the Evangelist.
"That God should have condescended to become a human mother's son; that one woman whose womb was sanctified as the holy temple and tabernacle of the living God should have been permitted to walk the earth -- these wonders make up the sum total of the earth's actual purpose and they are the fulfillment of all its expectations." (pp. 25-26)
- Fr. Alfred Delp SJ, “The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp”, 1963 Herder and Herder New York
See also: The Prison Meditations of Father Delp
See also: The Prison Meditations of Father Delp
Please find a far more radical non-sentimental Understanding of the "Lady", or the great "She", Shakti, the Goddess via this reference - an introduction to He and She IS Me
ReplyDeletewww.beezone.com/shakti/TheShaktiHerPlaywithAdiDa.html
Thank you for this reference. You might be interested in the latest book by Fr. Francis Clooney SJ, His Hiding Place is Darkness (though I regret the masculine pronoun used in the title). Fr. Clooney weaves together Christian and Hindu poetry. From the introduction:
Delete"To love deeply and affirm deep truths in a world where many loves flourish in the particular, we need first of all to be grounded in the specificity and particularity in our own enduring love … "It is better, then, to honor the fragility of this passionate and particular truth about Jesus—or Krishna, or the beloved known by still other names—while admitting that this claim “speaks for itself ” only in particular places and times. No matter how universal the truth, what we say is still the tale of the comings and goings of a beloved whose presence cannot be conceptualized as simply universal. To speak to the truth and love central to our faith bears with it an acute awareness of the failures and gaps that make claims to faith more fragile, vulnerable—and only in that way more convincing. The more evident and difficult the failing of our words, the deeper their truth. This book is not an elegy about the end of theology, but rather a plea that we leave room for the silence that comes upon us when we stretch our words beyond their capacity, mindful that we are speaking of just one love even when others are nearby."