A Mother and Her Child

(Editor’s Introduction: Not much needs to be said to introduce this piece. We are satisfied merely to say that it was an address Fr. Feeney gave in 1942 on the very popular “Catholic Hour,” Bishop Fulton Sheen’s Sunday night radio program aired on NBC Radio. Bishop Sheen was known to say that Fr. Feeney was the only one he trusted to sit in as his substitute on the program.)

My dear listeners, this is my last talk, and before I begin it, I am going to make three acknowledgements of gratitude to those to whom I should be most grateful.

First to you, for listening to me, if you have listened, and for liking what I have said, if you have liked any of it. Second, to the National Broadcasting Company and the National Council of Catholic Men for letting me speak. And third to God, for making it possible for any human voice, not merely mine, to travel, almost miraculously, such tremendous distances into your homes, wherever you are on Sunday evenings.

Tonight I am going to speak about a mother and her child, about a human mother and her Divine Child. Report has it — to speak cautiously by way of a beginning — report has it, that there was once such a mother who bore such a Child, that the mother was human, and the Child, divine. Report has it that this event occurred about nineteen hundred and forty-two years ago, and that is why we call this the year of Our Lord 1942, because it is one thousand, nine hundred and forty-two years since His birth. Report — let me go on saying it this way for a moment — report has it that the mother was a little Jewish girl in her early teens and that she lived in a small town called Nazareth, which is in the province of Galilee, the northern province of Palestine, called the Holy Land, where most of the Old Testament was fulfilled, and where dwelt God’s greatest spiritual race, the Jews.

Report goes on to say that an angel, a spirit from a world above us, took temporary shape, and as God’s messenger, appeared to this little girl and said, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” And the angel told her in very simple words that God was going to become man, to assume our nature, to become one of us, and to show us in flesh and blood what God looks like, and that she to whom the angel spoke was to be His mother. Report declares that this little Jewish girl was greatly astonished, as well she might be, but being, though poor, a little thoroughbred of the house of David, she spoke back to the angel with quiet dignity, and asked, “How shall this be, for I know not man?” And the angel went on to explain that there was to be, for a Child’s sake, and for a Child’s reason, a most exquisite and divine delicacy in the birth of Jesus. By the power of sheer love, untouched by man, God was to make her fruitful. And Mary, for that was the little virgin’s name, bowed her head and said, “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

And so was the Divine Incarnation achieved.

And nine months later there is more report of a small deserted stable in Bethlehem, in Judea, the southern province of Palestine this time, where this young maid and mother had been obliged to go for the sake of a political requirement. And there, in that stable, her Child was born. And there, in that stable, God was laid, as a baby, and shown in our flesh, and released into our world.

That’s all of the story I have time enough to give tonight, my dear listeners, though there is much more to it, as many of you know. But let me start with what I have so briefly said, and let me explain why I have prefaced each sentence of this story with the phrase, “Report has it.” Because I wish first to inquire from some of my listeners who may disbelieve it, “Wouldn’t you like it to have been true?” Don’t you think it would have been nice of God to have so loved us as to take our nature as His own, abide in it, breathe our air and eat our food, suffer our suffering and sleep our sleep? Would it not indicate that we are not quite as forgotten by our Creator as we seem to be in some of our darker moments? Would we not have extra reason to be proud of our human race if we knew that one of our little girls was so loved by God that He who is motherless in eternity should have chosen Her to be His mother in time? Are you provincial enough to have a distaste for our Emmanuel, our God With Us, because His mother was a Jew? Are not the Jews members of our human race, with bodies and souls and minds and hearts and a power to know and suffer and love the same, identically the same, as ourselves?

If you have a daughter of your own, would it not comfort you to take her in your arms this evening, and tell her the story of the Incarnation in some simple words, words like these which Thomas Butler,1 the poet, has used in his address to a child?

There was a little girl like you,
With eyes as big and bright and true,
She loved to laugh and play and run
The same as you or anyone.
And in the April of the year,
When all the long lost flowers appeared,
An angel came to her one day
And said to put her dolls away.
She meekly bowed her little head,
To what the blessed angel said,
And swift as the flying of a dove
She changed from child to mother love.

Such was the incident of Mary and the angel; the love was Divine, the little mother was human, and the Child was God. This is Christianity.

Now don’t tell me, my dear listeners, that it doesn’t make any difference whether this story is true or not. One who starts tampering with truth that way will soon get his mind out of order. Say the story of the Incarnation is true, or, it is not true, but do not say it does not make any difference. It may not make much difference in the way you run your business, wind your watch, smoke your cigar or butter your bread, but it makes a tremendous difference in the way you think and all the difference in the world in the way you pray. Was Jesus God, or was He not? If He was not, then we may well despair, for we have been cheated by an imposter whom God has allowed to claim His prerogatives and assume His name.

“All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth.” Does anyone but God talk that way? “Before Abraham was, I Am.” Does that sound like the statement of just another “nice man”? “I abjure you” Jesus was asked, “to tell us, art thou the Christ, the Son of the Living God?” And He replied, “Thou hast said it.” The answer was called a blasphemy, for blasphemy it was — or else, the truth.

Fr. Feeney with three puellulæ who just made their First Holy Communion.

Everyone knows that Jesus was a “nice man.” But nice men do not give out the real Bethlehem, a real Calvary, or a real Redemption. Nice men are as impotent to promise out the kingdom that is not of this world as they are to settling affairs of this one. Furthermore, nice men do not tell lies when they are asked, point blank, for the truth. If Jesus was not God, then in the name of holiness and truth, we have been cheated by God so insidiously that we can never return to Him again in prayer and confidence, or ever expect another revelation. The pagans will go on building up their ancestral religions, their race worship, their holy divinities on the ruins of our revelation, but I promise them that our revelation will haunt them for all the rest of history, for our revelation and our religion is the one that thought God was good enough to become a child for love of us, until it was discovered that the child was a liar.

Report has it that Jesus, Mary’s Child, was God. And don’t you worry. The report is true. It is nineteen hundred years since the report began, and the report is still holding on, for a lie gets swamped out, usually with the years, and always with the centuries, but the truth lasts.

There was a little girl like you… If any father or mother is holding their own little daughter in their arms tonight, while I am speaking, let me say to her the whole of Thomas Butler’s poem.

It is interlaced with a refrain that runs: O dulcis, et pia, puellula Maria!

Maria means Mary, for that was God’s mother’s name. You know, “Ave Maria,” “Hail Mary.” Well, O dulcis, et pia, puellula Maria in Latin means “O sweet, O holy, O little maid Mary.” And so here’s the way the whole poem goes:

There was a little girl like you,
With eyes as big and bright and true,
She loved to laugh and play and run
The same as you or anyone…
O dulcis, et pia
Puellula Maria!

And in the April of the year,
When all the long lost flowers appear,
An angel came to her one day
And said to put her dolls away…
O dulcis, et pia
Puellula Maria!

She meekly bowed her little head,
To what the blessed angel said,
And swift as the flying of a dove
She changed from child to mother love…
O dulcis, et pia
Puellula Maria!

Thus as the years go by for you,
You’ll change, as children all must do,
Love with its burdens, love with woe,
Will come as it came, long, long ago…
To dulcis, et pia
Puellula Maria!

But lest your little heart be torn,
With sorrows ache and sorrows thorn,
Teach it to love, and ever stand
Close to the touch of the little hand…
Of dulcis, et pia
Puellula Maria!

And when you’re old and gray and lone,
She’ll come to claim you for her own,
Take you to heaven, out of pain,
Make you a little girl, ever again…
O dulcis, et pia
Puellula Maria!

Who will? God’s mother will! For she was God’s mother! The angel told her she was going to be, and Jesus, her little Child, proved that the angel told the truth.

O beautiful as the moon, chosen as the sun, terrible as an army in array, you are the Queen of Angels, you are the Mother and Queen of men. You originated on this little planet of ours, pertain to our race, and are related to us, not by the angelic ties of love and thought, but by the very fibers of flesh and blood. You are still a woman, even in the awful, majestic status bestowed on you by God. You are the Mother of Divine Grace, powerful in your intercession. You are not God, but you are the gate to God, the Gate of Heaven. There is no passing to eternal life, except through you. You are understanding, marvelously simple and unsuspicious, tender towards us poor sinners in our meannesses and our mistakes. You take each of us by the hand when we die and lead us to the Beatific Vision, for the radiant beauty of the human nature in which God redeemed the world was begotten in your womb. You are God’s Mother, and you are our Lady!

My dear listeners, that is all. This is Father Feeney, Leonard Feeney, saying at long last, “God bless you, goodnight and goodbye.”