The First Miracle Of His Grace
THE FIRST MIRACLE OF HIS GRACE
However, a remedy had been determined in heaven; a Redeemer was at hand; God was about to do a great work, and He purposed to do it suitably; “where sin abounded, grace was to abound more”. Kings of the earth, when they have sons born to them, forthwith scatter some large bounty, or raise some high memorial. They honor the day, or the place, or the heralds of the auspicious event, with some corresponding mark of favor; nor did the coming of Emmanuel innovate on the world’s established custom. It was a season of grace and prodigy, and these were to be exhibited in a special manner in the person of His Mother. The course of ages was to be reversed—the tradition of evil was to be broken. A gate of light was to be opened amid the darkness, for the coming of the Just—a Virgin conceived and bore Him.
It was fitting, for His honor and glory, that she, who was the instrument of His bodily presence, should first be a miracle of His grace; it was fitting that she should triumph, where Eve had failed, and should “bruise the serpent’s head” by the spotlessness of her sanctity. In some respects, indeed, the curse was not reversed. Mary came into a fallen world, and resigned herself to its laws; she, as also the Son she bore, was exposed to pain of soul and body, she was subjected to death—but she was not put under the power of sin. As grace was infused into Adam from the first moment of his creation, so that he never had experience of his natural poverty (until sin reduced him to it), so was grace given from the first in still ampler measure to Mary, and she never incurred, in fact, Adam’s deprivation. She began where others end, whether in knowledge or in love. She was from the first clothed in sanctity, destined for perseverance, luminous and glorious in God’s sight, and incessantly employed in meritorious acts, which continued until her last breath. Hers was emphatically “the path of the just, which, as the shining light, goes forward and increases even to the perfect day”; and sinlessness in thought, word, and deed, in small things as well as great, in venial matters as well as grievous, is surely but the natural and obvious sequel of such a beginning. If Adam might have kept himself from sin in his first state, much more shall we expect immaculate perfection in Mary.
–Discourses to Mixed Congregations