Our Lady of Guadalupe

"Am I not here who am your Mother?
Are you not under my shadow and protection?
Am I not the fountain of your joy?
Are you not in the fold of my mantle, in the cradle of my arms?"

--words of Our Lady to Saint Juan Diego

Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas, pray for us.

Snow on sand

“Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,

Nor time unmake what poets know.”

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Snow

“About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.”

--A. E. Housman

To be loved

"Love is sufficient of itself; it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. Its profit lies in the practice. Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all He desires is to be loved in return. The sole purpose of His love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love Him are made happy by their love of Him."

--Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

A good book

“You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.”

--Paul Sweeney

Courage

“Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.”

--Alice M. Swaim

Tota pulchra es Maria: The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Tota Pulchra es Maria by Durufle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg_U-DtwwE4