God Alone—Through Mary
GOD ALONE—THROUGH MARY
Now it must be observed that the writings of St. Alphonsus, as I knew them by the extracts commonly made from them, prejudiced me as much against the Roman Church as anything else, on account of what was called their “Mariolatry;” but there was nothing of the kind in a particular copy that was sent to me. After inquiring, I was told that there certainly were omissions in one Sermon about the Blessed Virgin. This omission, in the case of a book intended for Catholics, at least showed that such passages as are found in the works of Italian Authors were not acceptable to every part of the Catholic world. Such devotional manifestations in honor of our Lady had been my great crux as regards Catholicism. I say frankly, that I do not fully enter into them now. I trust I do not love her the less, because I cannot enter into them. They may be fully explained and defended; but sentiment and taste do not run with logic: they are suitable for Italy, but they are not suitable for England.
But, over and above England, my own case was special; from a boy I had been led to consider that my Maker and I, His creature, were the two beings, luminously such, in rerum naturâ. I will not here speculate, however, about my own feelings. Only this I know full well now, and did not know then, that the Catholic Church allows no image of any sort, material or immaterial, no dogmatic symbol, no rite, no sacrament, no Saint, not even the Blessed Virgin herself, to come between the soul and its Creator. It is face to face, “solus cum solo,” in all matters between man and his God. He alone creates; He alone has redeemed; before His awful eyes we go in death; in the vision of Him is our eternal beatitude.
Solus cum solo: I cannot completely recall what I gained from the Volume of which I have been speaking; but it must have been something considerable. At least I had got a key to a difficulty. In these Sermons there is much of what would be called legendary illustration, but the substance of them is plain, practical, awe-filled preaching upon the great truths of salvation. What I can speak of with greater confidence is the effect produced on me a little later by studying the Exercises of St. Ignatius. For here again, in a matter consisting in the purest and most direct acts of religion,—in the colloquy between God and the soul, during a season of recollection, of repentance, of good resolution, of inquiry into vocation,—the soul was “sola cum solo;” there was no cloud interposed between the creature and the Object of his faith and love. The command practically enforced was, “My son, give Me thy heart.” The devotions then to angels and saints as little interfered with the incommunicable glory of the Eternal, as the love which we bear our friends and relations, our tender human sympathies, are inconsistent with that supreme homage of the heart to the Unseen, which really does but sanctify and exalt, not jealously destroy, what is of earth.
I am not sure that I did not also at this time feel the force of another consideration. The idea of the Blessed Virgin was as it were magnified in the Church of Rome as time went on,—but so were all the Christian ideas; as that of the Blessed Eucharist. The whole scene of pale, faint, distant Apostolic Christianity is seen in Rome, as through a telescope or magnifier. The harmony of the whole, however, is of course what it was.
–Letter to Dr. Pusey