This “angelic salutation,” as it is called, is very pleasing to the Blessed Virgin. Whenever she hears it, it seems to renew in her the joy felt when Saint Gabriel announced that she was to be the Mother of God. That is why we should frequently recite the Hail Mary. “Greet her with the angelic salutation,” says Thomas à Kempis, “for it makes her very happy to hear that prayer.” Our Lady revealed to Saint Matilda that no one could greet her in a more pleasing way than by reciting the Hail Mary.

As the year begins its slow ascent toward spring, I welcome March—with its release from the bitter cold and a promise of coming crocuses just peeping up from ground level. This time of year always brings with it a sharper realization of how our lives are transformed by God’s cycle of nature and how the blessings of each season drop down like dew on souls that have been tossed and torn by life’s harsh winds.

I was thinking about this phenomenon just the other day as I was leaving the art museum. As I exited the big front door and made my way down the gray granite steps, what I saw (cars and faces, bikes and runners, vendors and a cobalt blue sky) was transformed from everyday ordinariness into an impressionistic painting. It was like I was still in the museum! What a benediction, I thought.

HOW WELL I REMEMBER the 1960s—a watershed time in many respects. History-making events occurred in society, in politics, in science, and in the Church. In the beginning of the decade, we elected John F. Kennedy to the presidency of the United States. Not far into the decade, he was brutally assassinated. Before the decade ended, our society was rocked with race riots and blessed with Martin Luther King, Jr. Again a great leader was gunned down. (O Jerusalem, you slay the prophets sent to you!) Science thrust us into the space age, enabling us to land a man on the moon.