The New Eve
Establish thy word to thy servant, in thy fear.
Psalm 119, 38
Behold the handmaid of the Lord;
be it done to me according to thy word.
And the angel departed from her.
Luke 1, 38
What was essential in the Divine plan of salvation was that the Blessed Virgin Mary should have the freedom to decide whether to be the mother of our Lord and Savior. It was necessary that her liberty of will be honored for the sake of all righteousness in harmony with the Divine essence. God desired that Mary say Yes, and only then would He become incarnate to redeem the world in the Person of the Divine Word.
In Catholic theology, there is a marked difference between God's desires and decrees. What God desires is His antecedent will, and what God decrees is His consequent will. God desires that everyone be saved (Ezek 18:23; 1 Tim 2:4; 1 Jn 2:2, etc.), but He decrees that unrepentant souls must be cast into the everlasting fire of Hell in eternal expiation for their grave sins (Mt 25:41; Lk 13:3, etc.). So, God desired Mary to say yes to His will before He would become a man. What God desired (antecedent will) would not have been realized if Mary had said No to His messenger. But God’s decree (consequent will) that Mary should have the freedom to choose to be the mother of His Only-begotten Son would have been fulfilled whether she said Yes or No to Him.
If God has decreed or determined that we all say Yes to Him with no qualification or condition, then no human soul could possibly perish. Nor could we be at liberty to choose God and accept His will for the sake of His love and goodness above all else. If we choose to say No to God, the negative consequence of being alienated and separated from Him is something we bring upon ourselves (Deut 30:19; 2 Tim 2:12, etc.). God has willed with the necessity that we have the freedom to say Yes or No to His will, for He desires that we truly love Him to make our abode with Him (Jn 14:23).
God desires that we
say Yes instead of No, so He has given us the liberty to decide
for ourselves. He does not determine that we say yes to His will, or else our love for God and our faithful obedience to Him become non-sequiturs because of our love.
Similarly, God neither determined nor coerced Mary to say yes to the
angel Gabriel. God willed with the necessity that Our Lady be free to
choose Him over her natural desire. This liberty of will that God
decreed for Mary should have entailed consequences for her and all humanity.
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When God fashioned
Mary’s soul at the first instant of her conception, He knew that she would
confidently say Yes just by having created her without having to peer into the
future to discover for Himself what her answer to the angel would be (Scientia
media). It’s like someone who can know an entire story from beginning to end by looking at a book's cover. Mary couldn’t have said No because God infallibly knew in the immediate eternal present that she would
say Yes to Him. And since He knew Mary would say Yes, she would have had
to. Thus, God did not have to depend on her Fiat to become incarnate,
though He desired that she freely say Yes before He would.
For God, it wasn’t a
question of whether Mary would say Yes or No. God didn’t rely on other possible
options either if she should say No. Nothing outside of God can
constrain Him, for He infallibly knows all things that do or shall exist. But
God may obligate Himself to do what is righteous in concurrence with His moral
attributes. God decreed with necessity that He send the
angel Gabriel to Mary for her free consent so that all people might be saved as
He desired, knowing that she would say Yes to Him according to His will.
Elizabeth could also praise her kinswoman for her obedient act of faith
to Our Lady’s merit (Lk 1:45).
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God could only have
coerced Mary to say Yes if He did not know for certain what her reply would be
or if He knew she would say No. There is nothing glorious about God imposing
His will on anyone created in His image and acting like a benevolent tyrant or
a patronizer. And, of course, God sent His Son into the world because of His
absolute love for us, not because He had to. A traditional hyper-Calvinist will
tell us that God decreed or determined Adam should sin so that the Son could
save the Elect from the bondage of sin and damnation for the glory of God.
However, we, in turn, must freely reciprocate our heavenly Father’s love just
as Jesus did by being obedient to Him if we hope to be saved and make our
eternal dwelling with Him as He desires (Jn 14:15, 23; 15:10). Our salvation is
conditional. This is why God has written His laws in every human heart. These
laws concern our inner life, not our outward circumstances.
Our relationship
with God is covenantal from the time He first created Adam, who sinned by his
own free will, or else there could be no such thing as original sin in the
first place and no need for a redeemer and savior. Indeed, Mary proclaims in
her Magnificat: “My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my
savior” (Lk 1:46-47). Without her Fiat, our Blessed Lady would have no cause to
rejoice. God’s glory is proclaimed by the supernatural quality of our souls
through cooperation with His saving grace and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Our
righteousness must be our own in collaboration with the Holy Spirit to enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:20).
At the Annunciation,
Mary led our way to God in the order of grace by helping make our pilgrimage of
faith possible. By her free consent to be the mother of our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ came into the world to save us from our sins and to exemplify in
his humanity what we must do to be saved in concurrence with his own spiritual
disposition (1 Jn 1:7; 3:3). Without free will, we couldn’t possibly possess
the supernatural virtues that sanctify and justify the soul before God and
unite it to Him.
That the Son of man
should suffer for our transgressions and die as an expiation for our sins
wasn’t an option for God either. Jesus himself said: “Was it not necessary for
the Messiah to endure these things and to enter into his glory?” (Lk 24:26).
So, what was also necessary was that our Lord be “made of a woman” who had the
liberty to accept or reject the will of God, as much as Eve had, as to fulfill
all righteousness (Gal 4:4). God didn’t depend on Mary’s reply to the angel,
but the Incarnation did. Nor did God depend on Eve to cast her and her husband
out of Eden. Adam and Eve had themselves banished from paradise by freely
disobeying God. They weren’t predetermined to sin, or else they would be morally
inculpable. Their disobedience, therefore, could be undone only by the
obedience of Jesus (New Adam) and Mary (New Eve) in their filial love for the
Father and complete willingness to propitiate His justice.
So, our Lord didn’t
have to become a man to expiate sin. Still, in His love and mercy for mankind, God
willed to reconcile the world to Himself by the sacrifice of the Son, provided
a woman should humbly and lovingly receive Him into the world (Rev 3:20). That
Mary should say Yes was as necessary as it was for her divine Son to suffer and
die to atone for the sins of mankind since the Father graciously willed her
moral participation and decreed it should be enough. The sacrifice Jesus made
of himself in the person of the Son was his humble and loving Yes to the Father
in his humanity (Jn 14:31). God would have it no other way, or else the angel
Gabriel wouldn’t have appeared to the Virgin Mary at all.
Thus, God desired
that Mary say Yes to His will and decreed that she shouldn’t decide to say No
if she hoped to be saved with the rest of humanity. Our Blessed Lady’s Yes to
God temporally preceded her Divine Son’s Yes to the Father. They brought the Lamb
of God into the world so that his Yes may redeem humanity (Jn 1:29). Mary
freely chose what God desired since she desired nothing but what He desired.
For this reason, the Holy Spirit overshadowed her, and she conceived and bore
God’s holy Son (Lk 1:35).
Mary sought the
fulfillment of their shared desire so that it would redound to God’s glory.
Whatever reward she might merit for her obedient act of faith was secondary in
value to her. Apart from her compassion towards fallen humanity, what mattered to her was that God should be appeased for the world's sins because of His infinite love and goodness in His justice. The handmaid of the Lord
proved to be the ideal model of what it means to have the saving theological
virtue of faith in charity and grace, without which no person can ever hope to
be saved.
The angel Gabriel
departed upon Mary’s Fiat as instantly as when he appeared to her. The purpose
of his visit was accomplished as expected when Mary humbly decided to align her will with God’s will so that what the angel had said to her should be
fulfilled. The original Greek text is transliterated genoito moi kata to rhēma.
What our Lady declared to the angel in Aramaic, therefore, was, “Be it to me
what you have said.” In other words, seeing that the angel was God’s messenger,
Mary said, “May it be for me by God’s will.” Our Lady’s
response was an act of faith working through love (Gal 5:5-6).
The expression genoito
(γένοιτό) or “be it” indicates that our Blessed Lady did not merely act in
passive submission like a slave who has no choice but to submit to her master’s
command in dreadful fear. Rather, she responded freely and appreciatively in a
spirit of great joy. This Greek word is a form of the verb ginomai
(γίνομαι) or “to come into being.” God’s word found fulfillment, and the
Incarnation happened because Mary found no true joy in this world except in
God. The Divine Logos would not come into the world unless He were joyfully and
lovingly received by the young maiden he chose to be His mother.
What gave Mary much
cause to rejoice was that which God had decreed from all eternity
should come through His chosen handmaid. Mary freely chose to do God’s
will by giving her salutary consent because she cherished the spirit of the
Torah and yearned for God’s justice and mercy to be visibly manifested in a
wicked world. She constantly sought the Lord throughout her life, understanding
and appreciating everything that pleased God. The Annunciation happened
because, in her humility and poverty of spirit, Mary sought nothing for her own
glory, owning that only God Himself could exalt her by looking with favor on his handmaid's lowliness (Lk 1:48).
The Annunciation
happened because of Mary’s love of God and her poverty of spirit. Eve helped
alienate humankind from God because of her pride and vanity. The Lord’s chosen handmaid was called to undo Eve’s disobedience and to do so in a reciprocal way: by being radically opposed. God’s goodness and
love required no other path than this one in His plan of redemption. It is through
Mary’s faith and love that the Son should undo the sin of Adam and conquer the
serpent once and for all. Mary was called to be more of a faithful helpmate
than a physically nurturing mother of the new Adam (Gen 2:18; Lk 11:27-28).
What happened, then,
was that the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary with a Divine proposition. She
wasn’t commanded to be the mother of our Lord in the least. The angel simply
revealed God’s plan to her, which Mary could embrace or
reject. Now, the angel speaks of the conception and birth of a son, whom Mary is
to call Jesus, as being definite future events. But this doesn’t necessarily
mean that Mary had no choice but to be the mother of the Lord. God’s
foreknowledge doesn’t determine our actions. Rather, God knew from all eternity
that His faithful handmaid would find no joy in this world except in life with
Him. And so, our Blessed Lady would joyfully say Yes to His will
without hesitation.
God knew that by the
efficacious influence of His actual graces and the prompting of the Holy Spirit, Mary would never want to say No to Him. Perhaps the apostle Paul had the
mother of our Lord in the back of his mind when he wrote: ‘For we are his workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we
should walk in them’ (Eph 2:10). And since “God desires that everyone be saved
and come to the knowledge of the truth,” He sent His angelic messenger to the
woman who He foretold to the serpent would crush its head by her act of faith
in charity and grace which bore the redemptive fruit of her womb.
The Holy Spirit
overshadowed Mary because He was already dwelling in her soul. The angel
appeared to her since she was a pure and chaste temple of God, the worthiest of
all young maidens to be the mother of the Lord (1 Cor 3:16). Mary understood
through the Spirit’s gift of wisdom and humbly accepted in faith that she was
God’s creative handiwork, and as such she was not “her own” but belonged
primarily to God her Creator Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). “The Word became flesh and
dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14), for Mary’s soul “magnified the Lord” (Lk 1:46).
Being “the temple of the living God,” there were no worldly idols in her soul
that could defile her. Mary was chosen to be the mother of God because she was
a true servant of Israel in the spirit – God’s chosen daughter who had no
affinity with sinful humanity (2 Cor 6:16).
God had put His
Spirit in Mary when He fashioned and sanctified her soul at the first instant
of her conception. He preserved her free from contracting the stain of original
sin so that His handmaid would always walk in His statutes and observe His
ordinances without ever falling from His grace. Without violating Mary’s
liberty of the will but being exceptionally persuasive, God caused her to
never want to say No to Him by the efficacy of His actual graces and the gifts
of the Holy Spirit, which enabled her to refrain from committing any personal
sins in either thought, word, or deed (Ezek 36:27; Lk 1:28).
Our Blessed Lady
“guarded the treasures” of the Holy Spirit entrusted to her as His
gifts throughout her entire life (2 Tim 1:14). She would have had to, or else
God wouldn’t have sent His messenger to her with His proposal. The mother of
God must never fall from grace but should always find favor with Him (Luke
1:30). Mary had no cause to fear the Divine justice, having been preserved free
from every stain of sin. The Annunciation happened because she bore the fruit
of the Spirit in conducting her life: “love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness” – and I should add humility and poverty of spirit (Gal 5:22). Our
Lord’s faithful and chaste handmaid lived her life “not in the flesh, but in
the spirit.” She conceived Christ because His Spirit dwelled in her. Mary could
be his mother, for she belonged to him, having been pledged to her Divine Son
by the grace of God in her own mother’s womb (Rom 8:9). Mary received a
singular anointing from Him, who would be her Son, upon her Immaculate Conception,
so that she would always abide in him, as to be a mother worthiest of him (1 Jn
2:27).
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“You have knowledge of all things, and you know that I hate the
splendor of the wicked and abhor
the bed of the uncircumcised and of any alien.
You know my necessity—that I abhor the sign of
my proud position, which is upon
my head on days when I appear in public. I abhor it like a filthy
rag, and I do
not wear it on the days when I am at leisure. And your handmaid has not eaten
at
Haman’s table, and I have not honored the king’s feast or drunk the wine of
libations. Your
handmaid has had no joy since the day that I was brought here
until now, except in you, O Lord
God of Abraham. O God, whose might is over
all, hear the voice of the despairing, and save us
from the hands of evildoers.
And save me from my fear!”
Esther [C] 14, 14-19
In the spirit of Queen
Esther, the Virgin Mary possessed a steadfast love of God and trust in His
mercy. She felt sorrowful compassion for humanity in exile no less than the
Jewish heroine had for her people in their captivity. Mary’s Fiat rose to
heaven as sweetly as Esther’s prayer had risen to God, that He may deliver His
people from slavery to sin and the clutches of impending spiritual death. Mary
understood that God desired to be merciful to humankind and offer sinful
humanity its redemption with the coming of the promised Messiah. She desired as
much that God’s justice be manifested so that the enemies of mankind, viz.,
suffering and death, could be destroyed once and for all.
When our Blessed Lady
declared, “Be it done to me,” she wished to relieve the world of the distress brought about by its sinful condition. She believed that only God
could deliver the world from the powers of darkness through His Messiah if it
were His will. By the sanctifying light of faith, Mary saw that her Yes to God
would cast the prince of darkness from his throne and bring
permanent ruin to his dominion on earth and his wicked seed who have
cause to fear the Divine justice. God’s hatred for sin would now be turned
against the author of sin for His love and tender compassion for His
people (Gen 3:14). God would honor Mary’s consent, for His beloved handmaid was
a daughter after His own heart.
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Mary couldn’t possibly
want to say No, for the child she should bear would inherit the throne of
his father David and establish his heavenly kingdom on earth upon deposing the
dark ruler of this world (Lk 1:31-33). It was “in the presence of the lion”
which prowled around in the world to devour vulnerable souls that Mary freely
consented to be the mother of the divine Messiah. God honored her decision by
becoming incarnate since her will had aligned with His. Her soul “magnified the
Lord,” unaffected by pride and inordinate desires. There was no place for
alluring idols in the depths of her soul. Mary “never graced the banquets of
earthly kings or drank the wine of libations” to any idols, for the God of
Abraham was her only true joy.
Indeed, the Messiah was
forever her King and Savior, in whom her spirit rejoiced (Lk 1:46-47). In him,
she had hoped to find refuge and receive strength in a wicked world. She always yearned He would finally come to satisfy the righteous in their
hunger for justice and send away the wicked empty along with their vain riches.
Mary couldn’t resist the joy of bearing the One who she desired would rule the
world with a rod of iron or justice (Rev 2:27; 19:15). From his throne, he
would “scatter the proud in their conceit, cast down the mighty from their
thrones, and lift up the lowly” (Lk 1:50-51).
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Mary was blessed
(eulogemene) above all women for being chosen to be the Mother of God. Still, unless she first found joy in helping to accomplish what God desired, she
would never have been graced with the joy of being His mother, nor could there
be any explanation for Mary’s joy if she were nothing more than a subjected
slave who had no choice but to submit to her master’s command in fear of his
wrath. The angel assured our Blessed Lady that she had no cause to fear his
presence, and that was because she had found grace with God by having observed
His word throughout her life (Lk 1:30). And he implicitly assured her that she
would remain in God’s grace from that time on, or else she wouldn’t have been
chosen to be the mother of the Lord (Lk 1:28). Jesus himself would affirm that
his mother Mary was more or truly (menoun) blessed for her faith and impeccable
obedience to God rather than for being a natural mother to him (Lk 11:27-28).
The Lord’s handmaid
heard the word of God and kept it treasured in the depths of her immaculate
heart, not because she feared the Divine wrath but because she loved
God more than any created thing. So, she had no cause to fear His wrath, unlike
the wicked. ‘There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear because
fear has to do with punishment’ (1 Jn 4:18). God’s grace went before the Virgin
Mary from the first instant of her conception, through her birth, and until her
Dormition since she was predestined to be the Mother of God (Isa 7:14; Lk
1:35, 43). She was infallibly made and kept pure of heart and inviolate in body and soul by the power of divine grace, which our Blessed Lady was exceptionally endowed with and opened her soul to because of her election to the Divine Maternity. Now to Him, the one who could keep Mary from falling and present her
before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy, be glory, power,
majesty, and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord (Jude 1:24-25).
From the time God first
promised Abraham that He would make him the father of many nations, at the time
God established His covenant with His chosen people through Moses at Mount
Sinai, during the reign of the Davidic kings, and through the time of the prophets,
all things were hastening towards the day when the Holy Spirit would come,
bringing the light of life and fire from heaven. Ezekiel envisioned the coming
of the Paraclete whom Christ would send as he promised he would after his
resurrection and ascension into heaven: “Therefore prophesy and say to them,
‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and
cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.
“Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O My
people, and brought you up from your graves. “I will put My Spirit in you, and
you shall live, and I will place you in your own land” (Ezek 37:12-14). And
again: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within
you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give
you a heart of flesh” (Ezek 36:26; cf. Acts 2:17).
It was on Pentecost that
the Scriptures were fulfilled. On this day, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit
came down in the upper room. At the same time, all the disciples were “persevering with one
mind in prayer with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his
brethren” (Acts 1:14). Mary was placed at the center of this small company of
disciples when the Holy Spirit came down upon them in a rush of wind and with
fire because of her association with Him in the hypostatic order of Christ’s
incarnation. The Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and the disciples
present there since He had already come upon Mary. By the descent of the Holy
Spirit, the Church was born. The word of God was conceived by all the faithful
in the upper room in the womb of their souls as the living Word of God had been
conceived in the womb of his most Blessed Mother because of her immaculate
heart.
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All this began with the Blessed Virgin Mary, the handmaid of the Lord, when the angel
Gabriel appeared to her in the month of Nisan to give her the good news of
salvation. Mary conceived the Divine Word in her womb, for she had found favor
with God, who had put His spirit within her at the first instant of her
conception. The Spirit came into her heart and filled her soul with abundant grace. And, so, she physically conceived Jesus, as the
Apostles and all the disciples would spiritually conceive him, for the Church
to be born. There could be no Church without her spotless and
unblemished prototype: The Blessed Virgin Mary. No bride of Christ could have
been born without the personal spouse of the Holy Spirit who has sanctified the
Church by His presence only by having first sanctified Mary’s womb. Our Blessed
Lady represents the nuptial union between Christ and his Church.
What was fulfilled on
Pentecost in the heart and soul of mankind was anticipated in the heart and
soul of Mary. She was the first member to have formed the mystical Body of
Christ with her Son as Head. Our Blessed Lady pronounced her Fiat because the
charity of God was poured forth into her heart by His sanctifying grace through
the Spirit who was given to her (Rom 5:5). She received the Spirit of adoption
as a daughter of God whereby she could joyfully cry “Abba Father” (Rom 8:15):
“May it be done to me according to thy word.” There could be no Pentecost
without the Incarnation, no incarnation without the Virgin Mary. Her Fiat or
loving consent was her “I do.” The Annunciation was Mary’s wedding day. Her
marriage with the Divine Bridegroom in the Holy Spirit was consummated the
first instant she conceived him in her womb so that he would be conceived in
the womb of the virgin Church and born into the world through the proclamation
of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments – signs of our new life
with God.
Perhaps we could say the
Church was born at the Annunciation. The Incarnation did occur within the
sanctuary of Mary’s immaculate heart. Her innermost being was where her Divine
Son was initially conceived before he should physically enter his mother’s sacred
womb. Mary the Immaculate Mother was in her person the “holy and unblemished
bride” of her Son – a living symbol of the Church (Eph 5:27). The Holy Spirit
overshadowed and filled her with an abundance of even more grace since she was
trusting and obedient to God whom she loved and adored above all created
things. The heart of Mary was a redeemed heart of flesh, which foreshadowed the upper room where the redeemed would be gathered, waiting for the promised Spirit to inflame their hearts with the law of Christ.
The mystery of the heart of the Church was initially manifested in the heart of Mary when she joyfully consented to be the mother of God incarnate and our Divine Bridegroom. She kept God’s words and signs, pondering them in her heart and even more fervently since the angel appeared to her. (Lk 2:19, 51). The Holy Spirit came down in the upper room because Mary had persevered in faith to the end. Through her perseverance in faith, conversions of the heart in living souls would occur from the day the Church was born (Acts 2:41). Mary truly is the Mother of the Church, our mother in virtue of our marriage covenant with her divine Son (Jn 2:2-11).
Thus, Mary represents
the Church her Son has established – the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven
– as the prototype of all faithful believers. Because of her faith in working
through love, God’s only Son became man by the power of the Holy Spirit. By her
salutary consent, many sons and daughters were to be born to God from the womb
of the Church by the power of that same Holy Spirit who overshadowed her. All
the prophecies were fulfilled in Mary, Isaiah’s sign of the restoration, for
the Holy Spirit had breathed life into her soul, this same Spirit who shall
change the world in the last age in collaboration with her.
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I delight to do Your will, O my God;
Your Law is within my heart.
Psalm 40, 8
What Ezekiel envisioned with other prophets was God’s establishment of His New Dispensation, which would replace the Old and include the Gentiles, who, together with the faithful remnant of Israel, would constitute His heavenly kingdom, the Church of the New Testament. The Christian ethic was not to be found in a collection of commands and norms but was to be the Holy Spirit Himself, who, in essence, is love. Mary
was the first of God’s newly chosen people to be moved and motivated
by the Holy Spirit as God is in His deeds.
Mary is the prototype of
the Church: the living members of Christ’s mystical body in virtue of their
baptism and adherence to the one true faith. She conceived the Word of
God in her womb because she faithfully collaborated with the Holy Spirit, who
prompted her to live the same way as God in emulating her Divine Son.
God looked with favor on His handmaid because she opened her heart and soul to
the Spirit given to her. Mary was chosen to be the mother of God
incarnate because she lived by the spirit of the law,
the natural law of love and freedom which God had inscribed in every human
heart. This law is love, which is the person of the Holy Spirit, our
instructor. By following this single command, Mary could abide in God as all
her Son’s faithful disciples do by fulfilling their baptismal commitments (Mt
22:37-40; 1 Jn 4:16).
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Our Lord and Savior came
into the world because the maiden he had chosen to be His mother was filled
with the Holy Spirit, specially prepared by God to receive Him in her holy
womb. He had filled her soul with His sanctifying grace and regenerated her heart
in anticipation of sanctifying her womb and His personal dwelling place with
His presence. There was unity and harmony between the Holy Spirit and Mary, a true daughter of God and His covenant with her people. Unlike most of the
Jews in her time, she was in no dire need to be solely dependent upon the
religious instructions of her elders and kept in rein. God Himself was her
counselor whom she heeded with spiritual perfection.
Indeed, Mary was free of
the law's curse, for the Holy Spirit dwelled inside her and ruled her soul, instructing her on how to live. Not once did she commit a personal sin, for her heart was pure and untainted. Mary abided in God’s love, for
the door to her heart was always left open to Him. She joyfully received all
she was taught in the depths of her heart and soul (1 Jn 2:27) just as she had
the angel's words in humility and poverty of spirit. The Annunciation
happened because Mary was like a child who depended on her father for
all her spiritual needs. Mary pondered all His words in humble silence and
kept them in her heart. The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary because she allowed
Him to lead her in doing what He desired. In this sense, she was truly free and completely personalized in the divine image she was originally created in
(2 Cor 3:17).
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Hence, Mary conceived and bore the Divine Word and made man because she desired only what God desired. The Spirit Himself bore witness with her spirit (which rejoiced in God, her savior) that she was truly a daughter of God after His own heart (Rom 8:16). And so, the Church was born when Mary joyfully declared: “May it be done to me according to thy word.” The mystery of Mary is the same mystery of the Church, whose existence is grounded in the faith and love she possessed as the result of the Spirit’s presence (the life-giving water of Christ that draws us to the Father) within her (Rev 22:17), without which Christ would not have been conceived in her womb and entered the world for our redemption. And unless we fail to emulate the faithfulness of our Blessed Mother, our redemption will not be applied.
Our Blessed Lady and
Handmaid of the Lord was the first laborer to joyfully work in her Son’s
vineyard for the salvation of souls in faith, working through love by consenting
to be his mother and following him all the way to the Cross on Calvary (Mt
20:1-16). Without her presence at the foot of the Cross, no blood
(justification) and water (regeneration) would have flowed from our Lord’s side
to give birth to the Church as one visible corporate entity united in faith,
for there could be no Calvary unless Mary faithfully stood beneath the Cross
uniting her interior suffering with her Son’s anguish because of sin. Without
the Blessed Virgin Mary, no Disciple could be standing there with her as
a fellow pilgrim of faith rejoicing in God’s salvation despite the great
trials.
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Early Sacred Tradition
“For as Eve was seduced by the word of
an angel to flee from God, having rebelled against His
Word, so Mary by the
word of an angel received the glad tidings that she would bear God by
obeying
his Word. The former was seduced to disobey God, but the latter was persuaded
to
obey God, so that the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin
Eve. As the human
race was subjected to death through [the act of] virgin, so it was saved by a virgin.”
St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, V:19,1
(A.D. 188)
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“Holy and wise in all things was the
all-blessed Virgin; in all ways peerless among all nations,
and unrivalled
among women. Not as the first virgin Eva, who being alone in the garden, was
in
her weak mind led astray by the serpent; and so took his advice and brought
death into the
world; and because of that hath been all the suffering of
saints. But in her alone, in this Holy
Virgin Mary, the Stem of Life hath shot
up for us. For she alone was spotless in soul and body.”
St. Gregory Thaumaturgus
On the Holy Mother of God
(262 A.D.)
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“It was, to divulge by the manner of
His Incarnation this great secret; that purity is the only
complete indication
of the presence of God and of His coming, and that no one can, in reality,
secure this for himself, unless he has altogether estranged himself from the
passions of the
flesh. What happened in the stainless Mary when the fullness of
the Godhead which was in
Christ shone out through her, that happens in every
soul that leads by rule the virgin life.”
St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, 2
(A.D. 371)
“And if the God-bearing flesh was not
ordained to be assumed
of the lump of Adam, what need was there of the Holy Virgin?”
St. Basil, To the Sozopolitans, Epistle 261
(A.D. 377)
“The first thing which kindles ardour
in learning is the greatness of the teacher. What is
greater than the Mother of
God? What more glorious than she whom Glory Itself chose? What
more chaste than
she who bore a body without contact with another body? For why should I
speak
of her other virtues? She was a virgin not only in body but also in mind, who
stained the
sincerity of its disposition by no guile, who was humble in heart,
grave in speech, prudent in
mind, sparing of words, studious in reading, resting
her hope not on uncertain riches, but on
the prayer of the poor, intent on
work, modest in discourse; wont to seek not man but God as
the judge of her
thoughts, to injure no one, to have goodwill towards all, to rise up before her
elders, not to envy her equals, to avoid boastfulness, to follow reason, to
love virtue.”
St. Ambrose, On Virginity, 2:15
(A.D. 377)
‘There shall come forth a rod out of
the stem of Jesse, and a flower shall grow out of his roots.’
The rod is the
mother of the Lord–simple, pure, unsullied; drawing no germ of life from
without but fruitful in singleness like God Himself…Set before you the blessed
Mary, whose
surpassing purity made her meet to be the mother of the Lord.”
St. Jerome, To Eustochium, Epistle 22:19,38
(A.D. 384)
“Mary, the holy Virgin, is truly great
before God and men.
For how we shall not proclaim her great, who held within
her
the uncontainable One, whom neither heaven nor earth can contain?”
St. Epiphanius, Panarion, 30:31
(ante A.D. 403)
“We must except the holy Virgin Mary,
concerning whom I wish to raise no question when it
touches the subject of
sins, out of honour to the Lord; for from Him we know what abundance
of grace
for overcoming sin in every particular was conferred upon her who had the merit
to
conceive and bear Him who undoubtedly had no sin.”
St. Augustine, Nature and Grace, 36:42
(A.D. 415)
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“Hail, Mary, you are the most precious
creature in the whole world;
hail, Mary, uncorrupt dove; hail, Mary, inextinguishable lamp;
for from you was born the Sun of justice…
through you, every faithful soul achieves salvation.”
St. Cyril of Alexandria, Homily 11 at the Council of Ephesus
(A.D. 431)
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