For Saturday
"And above them(ed. the saints) all--for who would concede that place of honour more anxiously than themselves?--stands the Virgin Mother of Christ, the sorrowful Mother of us all. Not less intimate because so high above us, not loved less personally because her munificence is so wide, she permeates the thought, the art, the poetry, the lives of Catholics with radiance as of a spring day, or of good news heard suddenly. Protestants have said that we deify her; that is not because we exaggerate the eminence of God's mother, but because they belittle the eminence of God. A creature miraculously preserved from sin by the indwelling power of the Holy Ghost--that is to them a Divine title, because that is all the claim their grudging theologies will concede, often enough, to our Lord himself. They refuse honour to the God-bearing Woman because their Christ is only a God-bearing Man. We, who know that God could (if He would) annihilate every existing creature without abating anything of His Blessedness or His Glory, are not afraid less the honour done to His creature of perfect Womanhood should prejudice the honour due to Him. Touchstone of Truth in the ages of controversy, Romance of the medieval world, she has not lost, with the rise of new devotions, any fragment of her ancient glory. Other lights may glow and dim as the centuries pass, she cannot suffer change; and when a Catholic ceases to honour her, he ceases to be a Catholic. "- Msgr. Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics