Stilla Maris

Stilla Maris

St. Jerome often receives credit for being first to call the Virgin Mary “Star of the Sea”; but it is almost certain that he translated the Hebrew Miriam as Stilla Maris, “drop of the sea,” which was later changed to Stella, “star.”

Only once tears glistened on his face:

When we first told him, that first terrible time;

But my frail cheeks have been their resting place

So often that my face is salty, rimed.

My anger, not my sorrow, is so great

And so I seem to play the furious child.

“But her Son suffered too,” I tell my hate,

Trying to seek solace in that mother mild.

It’s said that St. Jerome is mistranslated,

Or mis-transcribed when we call her our star.

A drop of the sea is she whose tears are mated

With mine, drops of brine that travel far.

God promises to wipe our tears away;

She glistens in the firmament today.