Mary and the Trinity

It's Trinity Sunday, and I thought I'd mention an article that has Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins linking in his poetry the Trinity with Mary - "To Minister That Matter": Mary and the Trinity in Hopkins' "The Blessed Virgin Compared To The Air We Breathe" - by Mary McDevitt, a lecturer at Stanford University (link). Here's just a little bit of the introduction ...

Almost six centuries after Duns Scotus defended the Immaculate Conception, and twenty-five years after the definition of that dogma, the English Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins said this about, if I may use a play on words, his country's "matrimony" in a sermon for that feast day:

"It is a comfort to think that the greatest of the divines and doctors of the Church who have spoken and written in favor of this truth [the Immaculate Conception] came from England: between 500 and 600 years ago [Duns Scotus] was sent for to go to Paris to dispute its favour. The disputation or debate was held in public and someone who was there says that this wise and happy man by his answers broke the objections brought against him as Samson broke the thongs and withies with which his enemies tried to bind him.i"

The writer of these words had himself a lyric voice of great power, a voice that also broke the "thongs and withies" of the sometimes pedestrian English religious verse of his time, as later generations would discover. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that Hopkins, with his tour de force verbal manipulations, his intricate weaving of metaphor , imagery and wordplay with an incarnational vision, not only recaptured both the medieval lyric's complex theology and the wit of the metaphysical or baroque lyric, but revealed a fresh poetic voice. Perhaps less familiar than his sonnets and the "Wreck of the Deutschland", however, are Hopkins' pieces devoted to Mary, no less ardent in their devotion to her than his medieval hero’s defense of the Immaculate Conception. Two in particular, "The May Magnificat" and "The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe", are superb works. In this paper, I will discuss the latter poem, focusing in particular on Hopkins' representation of Mary's relationship with the Trinity .......


And here's the poem by Hopkins that she mentions ...

37. The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe

WILD air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed 5
Snowflake; that ’s fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing’s life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element; 10
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life’s law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise, 15
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God’s infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast, 20
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our race—
Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet 25
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess’s
Was deemèd, dreamèd; who
This one work has to do—
Let all God’s glory through, 30
God’s glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.

I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round 35
As if with air: the same
Is Mary, more by name.
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense 40
Her prayers his providence:
Nay, more than almoner,
The sweet alms’ self is her
And men are meant to share
Her life as life does air. 45
If I have understood,
She holds high motherhood
Towards all our ghostly good
And plays in grace her part
About man’s beating heart, 50
Laying, like air’s fine flood,
The deathdance in his blood;
Yet no part but what will
Be Christ our Saviour still.
Of her flesh he took flesh: 55
He does take fresh and fresh,
Though much the mystery how,
Not flesh but spirit now
And makes, O marvellous!
New Nazareths in us, 60
Where she shall yet conceive
Him, morning, noon, and eve;
New Bethlems, and he born
There, evening, noon, and morn—
Bethlem or Nazareth, 65
Men here may draw like breath
More Christ and baffle death;
Who, born so, comes to be
New self and nobler me
In each one and each one 70
More makes, when all is done,
Both God’s and Mary’s Son.
Again, look overhead
How air is azurèd;
O how! nay do but stand 75
Where you can lift your hand
Skywards: rich, rich it laps
Round the four fingergaps.
Yet such a sapphire-shot,
Charged, steepèd sky will not 80
Stain light. Yea, mark you this:
It does no prejudice.
The glass-blue days are those
When every colour glows,
Each shape and shadow shows. 85
Blue be it: this blue heaven
The seven or seven times seven
Hued sunbeam will transmit
Perfect, not alter it.
Or if there does some soft, 90
On things aloof, aloft,
Bloom breathe, that one breath more
Earth is the fairer for.
Whereas did air not make
This bath of blue and slake 95
His fire, the sun would shake,
A blear and blinding ball
With blackness bound, and all
The thick stars round him roll
Flashing like flecks of coal, 100
Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt,
In grimy vasty vault.
So God was god of old:
A mother came to mould
Those limbs like ours which are 105
What must make our daystar
Much dearer to mankind;
Whose glory bare would blind
Or less would win man’s mind.
Through her we may see him 110
Made sweeter, not made dim,
And her hand leaves his light
Sifted to suit our sight.
Be thou then, O thou dear
Mother, my atmosphere; 115
My happier world, wherein
To wend and meet no sin;
Above me, round me lie
Fronting my froward eye
With sweet and scarless sky; 120
Stir in my ears, speak there
Of God’s love, O live air,
Of patience, penance, prayer:
World-mothering air, air wild,
Wound with thee, in thee isled, 125
Fold home, fast fold thy child.