It is difficult in this day and age to imagine Christianity without the beneficent presence of the Blessed Virgin. Next to Christ, of all those who grace the pages of the New Testament, Mary is perhaps the one who touches us the most. Her motherly love often allows even the doubting to approach her. Her story - an unprepared teenage girl, charged with a daunting task and the scorn of her community, raising a son knowing always that she cannot protect him from the fate that will rob her of him - elicits our empathy. She inspires not only devotion and meditation, having mysteries and ritual of her own, but also song and poetry.