The Boast Of Jesus And Mary
THE BOAST OF JESUS AND MARY
Such is her prerogative of sinless perfection, and it is, as her maternity, for the sake of Emmanuel; hence she answered the Angel’s salutation, Gratia plena (full of grace), with the humble acknowledgment, Ecce ancilla Domini; “Behold the handmaid of the Lord”. And like to this is her third prerogative, which follows both from her maternity and from her purity, and which I will mention as completing the enumeration of her glories. I mean her intercessory power. For, if “God heareth not sinners, but if a man be a worshiper of Him, and do His will, him He heareth”; if “the continual prayer of a just man availeth much”; if faithful Abraham was required to pray for Abimelech, “for he was a prophet”; if patient Job was to “pray for his friends,” for he had “spoken right things before God”; if meek Moses, by lifting up his hands, turned the battle in favor of Israel against Amalec; why should we wonder at hearing that Mary, the only spotless child of Adam’s seed, has a transcendent influence with the God of grace? And if the Gentiles at Jerusalem sought Philip, because he was an Apostle, when they desired access to Jesus, and Philip spoke to Andrew, as still more closely in our Lord’s confidence, and then both came to Him, is it strange that the Mother should have power with the Son, distinct in kind from that of the purest angel and the most triumphant saint? If we have faith to admit the Incarnation itself, we must admit it in its fulness; why then should we start at the gracious appointments which arise out of it, or are necessary to it, or are included in it? If the Creator comes on earth in the form of a servant and a creature, why may not His Mother, on the other hand, rise to be the Queen of heaven, and be clothed with the sun, and have the moon under her feet?
It is the boast of the Catholic Religion, that it has the gift of making the young heart chaste; and why is this, but that it gives us Jesus Christ for our food, and Mary for our nursing Mother? Fulfil this boast in yourselves; prove to the world that you are following no false teaching, vindicate the glory of your Mother Mary, whom the world blasphemes, in the very face of the world, by the simplicity of your own deportment, and the sanctity of your words and deeds. Go to her for the royal heart of innocence. She is the beautiful gift of God, which outshines the fascinations of a bad world, and which no one ever sought in sincerity and was disappointed. She is the personal type and representative image of that spiritual life and renovation in grace, “without which no one shall see God”. “Her spirit is sweeter than honey, and her heritage than the honeycomb. They that eat her shall yet be hungry, and they that drink her shall still thirst. Whoso hearkens to her shall not be confounded, and they that work by her shall not sin.”
–Discourses to Mixed Congregations