(Information printed on the inside cover of the book)
THE MOTHER OF GOD
Fr. Valentine Long, O.F.M.
Human imperfection is innate to the human condition. Yet, we still
instinctively crave that unflawed nobility of person found in our first
parents. Desperately, we grasp at shadows, the celebrity, the
charismatic, always ending up with just a taste, a little short. The
author notes that "there remains a crying need for a superior to these, a
paragon of absolute perfection," a lasting ideal and guide.
"The demand has been better supplied than is commonly realized. The
crying need, thanks be to heaven, did not go unheeded. It found its
answer at Nazareth, all of two thousand years ago, when the grandparents
of Jesus Christ were granted a child. The sensitive who despair humanity
have not been cheated in their demand. They only think they have. They
may find the perfect fulfillment of it, if they but knew, in a creature of
their kind whom the angels serve, the glorious Mother of God.
"But Mary is not an unfounded ideal. She is a rich reality: a woman
who took to heaven with her a sensitive understanding of our vicissitudes,
having experienced them; a mother bequeathed from the cross to the
children of men, whose concern for them never runs out of tenderness, even
though they be so many. She is, moreover, the queen of the angels whose
glorified body serves notice to the faithful on earth than beatitude
awaits their own bodies, let death do what it will
"She is the creature closest to the Trinity, nobler than the angel,
the fairest of women, the superior of every man but the Son she bore, the
Queen of Creation whose glory by comparison would pale to a feeble glow
the splendor of the sun and reduce to a paltry inferiority the
magnificence of the universe. It is the truth. Let it nourish our hope.
Let it feed out pride. She who is all this, is one of ours."
FR. VALENTINE LONG, O.F.M. has received the degrees of B.A., M.A. and Litt.
D. He has taught at Siena College, Loudonville, N.Y., and at St.
Bonaventure, N.Y., in both the university and Christ the King Seminary.
Over the years, he has lectured extensively, done a radio program,
contributed to an educational series on TV, written scores of pamphlets
and magazine articles, and published a variety of books including NOT
ON BREAD ALONE, THEY HAVE SEEN HIS STAR, MAGNIFICENT MAN, FOUNTAIN OF
LIVING WATERS, WHATEVER COMES TO MIND, BERNADETTE AND HER LADY OF GLORY,
AND THE ANGELS IN RELIGION AND ART. In all his works, Father Long's
sustained purpose is to reveal to a harassed generation the essential
dignity of man.