O Glorious Lady, Throned In Rest

 'O glorious Lady, throned in rest, amid the starry host above, who offered nurture from your breast to God, with pure maternal love.'

This the first stanza of a hymn text by the 19th century English divine, John Mason Neale, an Anglican scholar and hymnographer and contemporary of Saint John Henry Newman.  Like Newman, Neale was part of the Oxford movement and had a particular devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Unlike Newman, in the end, Neale never undertook the ultimate step of becoming a Roman Catholic.  

In Morning Prayer this morning for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception - a Marian dogma confirmed by another contemporary of Neale's, Pope Pius IX in 1854 - I came across this beautiful hymn to the Blessed Mother, entitled: "O Glorious Lady Throned in Rest" sung by Kathleen Lindquist in an album entitled : "Hymns and Chants of the Divine Office, Vol.1"

All of which coincides nicely with the Virgo Lactans or Nursing Mother of God icon* I've started working on as a way of meditating on the mystery of the Incarnation during Advent and Christmas.  How Mary could give birth to God, much less nourish and nurture her Creator from her own body is a lot to reflect on, which I do better with a brush in my hand. 

*In the Christian East icons of this type had the title of Galaktotrophousa in Greek and Mlekopitatelnitza in Slavonic.