Our Lady of America

Our Lady of America
© Cecilia Lawrence
July 7th 2012
Watercolor and Ink
8 by 11 inches

"Hail, Mary, White Lily of the Glorious and Always-Serene Trinity!
Hail brilliant Rose of the Garden of heavenly delights!
Hail, O You, by whom God wanted to be born
and by whose milk the King of Heaven wanted to be nourished!
Nourish our souls with effusions of Divine Grace! Amen."
Hail Mary of Gold~ St. Gertrude the Great



I finished my picture of Our Lady of America! I had been wanting to do this for many, many years, and I had even started another picture a long time ago that is…eh…rather unfortunate-looking. But anyway, I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out. I was trying to get it done by the Fourth of July, but that obviously didn’t end up happening. Ah well.

Anyway, so a brief description of what I did here. Sister Mildred (Mary Ephrem) Neuzil (August 2nd 1916 – January 10th 2000), a nun of the Congregation of the Precious Blood in Dayton, Ohio, received many apparitions of Jesus and Mary in the 1950s, finally culminating into the propagation of this special devotion to Our Lady as the Immaculate Mother of America. I put Sister Mildred’s description of this particularly apparition down below, but I added a bit more detail-wise.

Firstly, I decided that for this image of Our Lady of America (since she is the patroness of our country under the title of the Immaculate Conception), I wanted to depict her with the traditional imagery of the Immaculate Conception, namely, the description in Revelations 12:1: "A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." So Our Lady is standing in front of the sun, with a halo of twelve stars, standing on the moon, and crushing Satan (represented as a black snake) under her. The earth is below her, showing the United States (or, err…most of it. Alaska and Hawaii would have been a tad bit difficult to squeeze in there, aesthetically speaking). A halo of 50 stars (obviously representing the fifty states) surrounds her (Personally, it rather reminds me of Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37:9, when he says: “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”). The Holy Spirit descends down from Heaven to hover above her while He sheds the rays of His Grace and Mercy upon the world. Around the corners are four seraphim—with red, white, and blue wings (okay, and some gold too. )—adoring the Triune God, and also giving reverence to Mary as the Mother of God.

"Who is she that rises forth like the dawn,
fair as the moon,
pure and bright as the sun,
and as terrible as a many-bannered army?"
(- Song of Songs 6:10)

The appearance of Mary in this particular image corresponds more-or-less to the description of Our Lady of America. She appeared wearing a white robe, with a pure white mantle and a white veil. She wore a tall crown, bore a scepter comprised of three lilies, and had her hand held slightly above her Immaculate Heart, which was ringed about in flames.

And that’s about all I have to say!