28 Am I Not Your Mother? boy, with his divine lips he fills that beautiful body with the breath of life. The mysterious expression of Genesis—he blew into his nostrils the breath of life (Gn 2:7)— reveals to us that if the body has its origin on earth, the soul, immaterial and enduring, is infused in us by a breath from God. Something similar happens in the formation of peoples. There is something in them that has an earthly origin, which is formed by the swaying of human events: families that multiply, legendary expeditions of nations, wars and conquests that change the face of the earth. There is something in a people, however, that does not sprout from the fragile clay, but descends from the heights. It is a light that concentrates everything into an ideal, a love that melts all hearts into only one yearning, a mysterious force that pushes all souls to work and suffer for a collective good. We call this immaterial and fertile principle that gives unity to peoples and races—by analogy with our spirit— the national soul and the soul of the people. As for the individual man, so also for entire peoples: the body is formed by hands, but the soul is infused only by the lips. In order to forge the soul of our country and our race, God chose the immaculate lips of Mary as his instrument. The aboriginal races that mixed with the noble Spanish race formed the body of our people.
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