Advent Prayers regarding Mary

Sweet lady, remember me kindly.
- Medieval Benedictine prayer

The Virgin weighed with the Word of God
Comes down the road if only you’ll shelter her.
- St. John of the Cross, 1585

We fly to thy patronage, oh holy Mother of God.
Do not despise our petitions in our needs;
But deliver us from all dangers
Oh ever-virgin, glorious and blessed.
- Sub tuum, 4th c. prayer to Mary (earliest known)

No tender dw, no breeze or shower
But God in all his loving power
Raised you, a branch of his own nation,
To bear the joy of our salvation.
When he first thought of shining bright
With all the radiance of his light,
You were a gleam of his devising
Whose Word in pure gold uprising
We praise with you in every hour;
O fragrant rose and freshest flower.
- St. Hildegard of Bingen (1160)

Of her flesh he took flesh:
He does take fresh and frsh,
Though much the ystery how,
Not flesh but spirit now
And makes, O marvelous!
New Nazareths in us,
Where she shall yet conceive
Him morning, noon, and eve;
New Bethlems, and he born
There evening, noon, and morn.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. (1847)