French novelist George Bernanos evokes Mary’s innocent and loving eyes

Miracles are the pictures— the pretty pictures in the book. But remember this, lad, Our Lady knew neither triumph nor miracle. Her Son preserved her from the least tip-touch of the savage claw of human glory. No one has ever lived, suffered, died in such simplicity, in such deep ignorance of her own dignity, a dignity crowning her above angels. For she was born without sin— in what amazing isolation! A pool so clear, so pure, that even her own image— created only for the sacred joy of the Father— was not to be reflected. 

The Virgin was Innocence itself. Think what we must seem to her, we humans. Of course she hates sin, but after all she has never experienced sin, something that the holiest saints have experienced, including St. Francis of Assisi, seraphic though he may be. The eyes of Our Lady are the only real childlike eyes that have ever been raised to look at our shameful and sorrowful condition.

Georges Bernanos (1888-1948), excerpt from his novel, The Diary of a Country Priest (New York : The Macmillan Company, 1937 - translated from the original French)