Holidays - Seasons Greetings!

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace-! The anthem came from Heaven to Mary. Even in the veil of the shadow, her soul had been the first of all earth to hear Heaven singing its King.

And to her alone was it given in that hour to hear and know the song of the earth which the voices of Heaven had awakened and which was pealing now around all the earth in high, shrill, heart-melting sweetness.

There were tears in that song of earth, tears through which the song came bursting in swelling, straining joy. There was pain in that song, pain that was earth old, pain that had known no ceasing; and every pain was fused now into the high, glad note of glory triumphing. And there was patience and long travail in that song of earth, patience and the illimitable courage of suffering; and these things sang now all in glory to God. For it was the song of the women, the cry of the daughters of earth.

Eve sang in the terrifying, unknown loneness of the first birth pangs of earth. Rachael sang it to God in the sorrow of her barrenness. The benighted, the weak, the unguided, the motherless sang it in all the days and all the ways of the world.

Now it was the song of women from whom the yoke was being lifted. It was the glad, ecstatic cry of Motherhood come into its own. It was Woman, at last, coming to the shrine and throne which is her place in the world.

Mary heard the weeping of the Woman in the Garden, as she crept trembling away from the sight of the Lord. But now in the voice of that weeping there was the joy of the Promise fulfilled. The mother of earth cried to all her daughters of the ages that her rebuke and theirs was taken away. God was faithful. No more would He multiply sorrow unto them and unto their conception. No more should they bring forth in sorrow. For the head of the serpent was crushed. Eve saw it and was glad, and her daughters through all the earth cried with her, out of sorrow, out of travail, out of long enduring patience; crying out the glory of God in the Babe that was born to them all.

It was Motherhood and Infancy, the miracle of the world’s existence, crowned now in the Godhead of the Babe that lay in the manger.

In the Light that came from Heaven Mary saw the daughters of earth as they had been from the beginning, until now.

She saw the yoke which man in sinful cruelty and strength had forced upon the weaker one.

Out of the dim past there came trooping the millions of women, bearing chains, the immemorial spoil and loot of the conquering male. Out of the caves and the wild places of earth they came, in their eyes the look of the hunted. From out of burning cities they were led, in weeping leaden-footed bands, ever turning for a last look at the flames that rose over their dead. Out of the fields they were driven, still yoked to the beasts of burden at whose side they had been driven to work. Always the misery, always the loss and the piercing, grim pain of life had been theirs. Never a sorrow, never a misfortune, never a brutality in the entire world but that the greater, deeper portion was the woman’s.

So it had been from the beginning, from the nature of things. Creation had given women infinitely greater capacities and ways of suffering than had been given to men. And men, in their strength, in their cruelty and sin, even in the terrible things which they called religion, had ever worked to fill out all the capacities of women for suffering.

All this there was, and more, in the cry which Mary heard, the cry of the daughters of Eve, singing now their joy to the Babe that was born to them.

There was the cry of her own mothers of Israel. She heard them wailing in the land of death, in the baking, steaming mudflats of the Nile, where the wheel turned ever and the whip of the oppressor layover their bending backs. Their tired sighing came out of the long, long years of the desert wandering. Out of Babylon came the wail of those who lived and died in chains. And the nearer generations of her mothers, she heard them crying that age long cry for the One who was to come. Through them He was to come. Now He was come and their cry went up, the fullest, most gladsome voice of all the daughters of earth, glorifying God and this His Son.

And all the desolate ones of earth cried, too, in triumph.

Women who had wept in secret, because their arms might never feel the weight of a child, because God had not listened and had left them unblessed; all these cried out now, with Rachael risen from her tomb, with the women who go down to the burning ghats of the world, cried out with all those whom life had robbed, cried in great, glad voice the cry of those who had been forgotten and were now enriched in God because this Babe lived.

Now deeper than all, swelling through all the earth, came the cry of the common lot. The great, the uncounted majority of all women from the beginning to the end, the women bearing many children, in poverty, in patience and bravery and the face of the chances of life, the voices of these were legion and they filled all the earth. Hardship, the bearing of burdens, the carrying of water, the making of the home fires of the world, these were ever their part, and shall be. In the great, enduring bravery of their kind, they came forward, generation behind generation, filling the lines where hunger and disease and rapacity and war thinned the ranks of the children of men. Nor ever did they murmur, nor ever complained, but counted simply in the great heart of them that this was their business in God’s world. But now they came, many throated, deep voiced, strong in the strength of endurance, crying to the King that was born among the sons of men. And their cry was not for themselves. They were used to give all. To the end they would go on giving all. But to the King they cried, crying for the little ones who had never been set in the sun of life.

They cried of the babes whom poverty, disease and sin had sent crippled into the world. They told of Moloch, the world that in selfishness and suicidal folly had taken their children from their arms and had made them to run before they could walk, and had made them to work before they knew even how to play.

Because the King was nigh, was passing by, they had suddenly found voice, these many of all the earth. Now should they be heard, these women who knew the language of babes. To Him would their cry come, to this King that was born of women.

And Mary knew their voices, all, as they cried to her Son, the King.

She knew the quiver of pain that ran like a wailing minor note through the swelling gladness of their cry. Because she was the Woman, the Woman of the Promise, the cry of all women was the cry of her own soul.

The tears that crested the waves of joy in the voices of these women of earth were her own tears now, breaking in the joy and gladness of her soul.

Their prayers, breathed through the tears and the voices of joy, were her own prayers to the King, her Son.

Let these things no more be! 0 King of Heaven and now King of earth, these be the voices of the daughters of earth. Theirs are the burdens, theirs are the tears, and theirs are the travails of earth. Through them all men live. Through them the earth is peopled and is not a desert waste. Through them, and through them alone, there is beauty, there is goodness, there is grace found on earth.

King, listen unto their many voices.

And in the new found joy of their crying Mary knew that the King listened.

For this was He come into the world. For this was He promised of old to the Woman in the Garden, to make issue with sin and death.

She felt the cry of her own heart in this its great hour merging into the cry of these, the women of earth, the mothers of earth.

Once she had sung in her exaltation, “All generations shall call me blessed.” Now she knew that men through all the ages would write and sing and teach of her. But only these mothers of earth would ever understand. Only these women, who had looked upon a man child and called him king, would know what was in her heart now.

These were her kin, her sisters of the entire world. And with them she cried and prayed and gloried in the King that was come to lead the steps, to heal the wounds, to bathe the souls of the children of the daughters of earth.