"I Make All
Things New"
Our Blessed Lady. By C. C. Martindale, S.J. (Sheed and Ward, 7s. 6d.).
Reviewed by MGR. ALBAN GOODIER, S.J., Archbishop of Hierapolis.
,, BEHOLD from henceforth all generations "—and she might have added, "all countries "— " shall call me blessed." This could well be taken as the text for all the sermons in Father Martindale's book on our Lady.
Of course it is unlike any other book that has ever been written on the same subject.
It approaches the Church's doctrine on our Lady from a new angle; it first reads the minds of its readers, and then gives them the truth in language which, while always old, yet appears always new.
This, we .imagine, is Father Martindale's attraction in everything he says or writes, whether to stevedores and dock-labourers, or to less impressionable listeners at Farm Street. Both alike, and all alike, if they arc to be influenced, must be aroused; and the one way to awaken an audience is to give them something new, something they have not, or think they have not, heard before. Father Martindale is always giving his hearers and readers something new; not only in the actual sermons, but also, as if his newness of mind flowed over. in constant illuminating footnotes.
Thus does he pour out " new things and old "; for our Lady is older than her So, Christ our Lard made Man, yet is she
always as new as the sunlight in the morning. And like the sun, "clothed with the
sun," she shines in his pages all the world over, front the morning east to the setting in the west; in all the colours of the sun's spectrum, but always the same bright glory.
In these sermons her rays shine on the ages, the nations, the climates of the earth; each has a different flower and fruit; offer ing a different garland to the Queen of all the world.
To intensify the attraction, Father Martindale almost bewilders us with his illustrations, taken from everywhere, from the past and the present. He has the gift of indefinite readiness; his information is not stowed away in the archives of the mere student; it is ready for use at a moment's notice, and startles us again to attention by its unexpectedness.
We learn, or re-learn, much about our Lady in this volume, but converging on her, or flowing out from her, we learn much about many other things as well.