Our Lady of the Broom

I discovered a small treasure on the shelf of my mother's home in Italy.

I write this week from Italy, where I sit in the house I grew up in, situated underneath a Renaissance church, in an ancient town that is busy preparing itself for Easter.

The day we arrived in Trevignano, I found a small treasure on the shelf in my mother’s living room, propped up against a row of old books. It looks like a mass card, but instead of a prayer it has a poem called Our Lady of the Broom.

The large and lovely lessons

You taught with little breath

In the liturgy of labor

In the house of Nazareth

Are such fantastic simple things

That mortals may presume

To call the Queen of Seraphim

Our Lady of the Broom

For you who rule the angels

Built up our legacy

By living a life of little things

That we do every day.

You cooked, cleaned, washed and mended,

Scrubbed the kitchen floor,

Teaching a world the woman’s way

To worship and adore.

How beautifully you taught us

Where all perfection lies

By seeing all salvation in

The work before your eyes,

Immensity in little space

The world in the humble room

You swept and kept and care for,

Our Lady of the Broom.

— drawing by Ed Willock

— verses by J.G. Shaw

Our Lady of the Broom, illustrated by Ed Willock

Ed Willock was my mother’s neighbour in a small Catholic community called Marycrest, where she grew up with her large family and a group of other like-minded large families who had left the concrete jungle (mostly the Bronx) to homestead in the woods on the New York-New Jersey border. These days the area is quite suburban, but in the 1950’s, for these idealistic young Catholics, it was the deep woods somewhere very far away. The men built their own and each other’s homes, the women raised their many children in tandem, in friendship and neighbourly support.

The Hudson’s — my mother’s family — had ten children. The Willock's had twelve. Among them were my mother’s best friend, Liz, and a son, Michael, who my mother loved when she was a girl, but who died in violent and mysterious circumstances when still in his teens. The bucolic setting did not save this family from tragedy — Ed Wilock, the father and the artist of the lovely drawing of Our Lady of the Broom, himself died tragically young.

I googled the poem and its author, but found little information — just this Tweet referencing the poem found in an “old book for Catholic moms published in 1953,” including a photograph of Ed Willock’s drawing. So from that I deduce that the art work of my mother’s old neighbour was well respected enough to be published and shared among American Catholics of the time. 

The poem itself is very apt for the setting I currently am in. “Liturgy of labour” is the perfect phrase to describe what I see the people of this town engaging in right now. The trees and shrubs are being cut back, the outdoor tables in restaurants cleaned down, the bakeries in full production for the big day tomorrow. There is a sense of common purpose, and I love it. Being in a place of tradition and ritual is enormously comforting. 

Last night was the Good Friday procession — in which hooded men walk through the town dragging wooden crosses. Their feet are bare and chained. Children followed behind holding candles. Hymns were sung. Processions are a pretty common occurrence in most Italian towns, but this one always stood in my childhood memories as being particularly eerie. The procession carries the Eucharist, which had been put on display in the smaller of the two churches in the village. And yesterday afternoon — on the suggestion of our 88 year old neighbour Maria Assunta — we paid a visit. The pews were full. The mood inside was solemn. All the candles were lit and I watched the light dance and enjoyed the silence and revelled in the peace. 

I cannot put into words how important Italy is  — to me, personally, because I love food and wine and conviviality; but to our entire Western patrimony. She is the jewel of Europe, the finest nation in the world, but like many places, she has fallen on hard times. Here in Trevignano, it’s easy to miss the signs of degradation, because it’s a prosperous and welcoming town. But even just a few miles outside the village, the evidence is there: busted roads, uncollected trash, abandoned buildings. On a trip here a few years ago, driving through Emilia Romagna to the north of Rome, we came upon prostitutes both young and old standing beside the highway off-ramps. I thought that particular degradation had long disappeared — my Irish husband nearly lost control of the car when I told him what the poor women were doing. He’d never seen anything like it.

But because this is Italy, there is always hope — because Italy has always been a place of chaos and decay and corruption alongside the laughter and the beauty and the joy. It’s a truly wonderful thing to remember how brief our own part of this journey is and how many have come before us. 

Happy Easter friends.