BOSSUET ON DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF ALL THE SERMONS FOR MARY'S FEASTS THROUGHOUT THE YEAR BY JACQUES BENIGNE BOSSUET BISHOP OF MEAUX CONDENSED, ARRANGED, AND TRANSLATED BY F. M. CAPES WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE REV. WILLIAM T. GORDON PRIEST OF THE LONDON ORATORY LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1899 hil (Distst. : GULIELMUS T. GORDON, Congr. Orat. ; Censor Deputatus. Imprimatur : HERBERTUS CARDINALIS VAUGHAN, Archiepiscopus Westmonast. Die izjanuarii, 1899. TO THE NINE CHOIRS OF ANGELS THIS ENGLISH FORM OF A GREAT PREACHER'S THOUGHTS ABOUT THEIR QUEEN is 2>e&fcateJ>. " Regina Angelorum, ora pro nobis /" INTRODUCTION. BOSSUET'S Sermons on the Feasts of our Blessed Lady number about twenty there being in many cases two or three, and sometimes even four, for the same festival. Some of these are mere repetitions of each other as to matter, with slight changes in form to suit different audiences or occasions, whilst others, though not actually verbal repetitions, are so much alike in portions that, presented to readers in their integrity, they would be simply weari- some. The writer of this English version has not therefore attempted a literal or consecutive translation of the sermons as they stand, but has aimed at so selecting, combining, and con- densing them, as to produce a set of discourses on Mary's Feasts throughout the year that should contain the whole substance of Bossuet's teaching ; and in passages of a strictly theo logical nature the actual words of the preacher x Introduction. have been adhered to as closely as they could be in English. Repetitions have been, as a rule, avoided, and where this could not well be done, the translator has tried to account for the repeated matter by reference to what has gone before, so as to show its necessity. On the other hand, care has been taken not to omit anything of im- portance to the preacher's train of thought ; and it is hoped that this small volume fairly sets forth the substantial contents of Bossuet's twenty sermons on the Feasts of our Blessed Lady. It may seem to many that another book on Devotion to our Blessed Lady is not needed as so many already exist. But different books suit different minds, and I have long wished to be able to put into the hands of English readers Bossuet's learned, logical, and at the same time devout exposition of Catholic doc- trine on our Lady's dignity, and on the relations which Almighty God has willed to establish between her and the members of the Mystical Body of her Divine Son. Bossuet's great ability and profound learning must command respect, and his readers cannot fail to be im- pressed with the authority with which his Introduction. xi familiarity with the Holy Scriptures, and his wide knowledge of the writings of the early Fathers of the Church, enable him to speak. Catholics, as well as non-Catholics, may need to have brought home to them that devotion to Mary is not merely a beautiful addition to Christian piety, but that it is essential to the full comprehension of the mystery of the In- carnation, as is shown by the action of the Council of Ephesus which not only decreed that the title of " Mother of God " was rightly given to Mary but condemned as heretics those who denied it. Now the very foundation of Bossuet's teach- ing on the honour and love due to our Blessed Lady, is that her co-operation in the Incarna- tion formed an integral part of the merciful design of God for the redemption of man, and that " our love of our Divine Saviour is the unchangeable foundation of our devotion to the Blessed Virgin". In proof of these proposi- tions Bossuet brings out so wonderfully the hidden meaning of the sacred words of Scrip- ture, and supports his interpretation with so many quotations from the writings of the Fathers, that we are filled with admiration, and the hearts of simple Christians are de- xii Introduction. lighted to find how their instinctive love of Mary, and confidence in the power of her inter- cession, are in harmony with the dogmatic teaching of the Saints and Doctors of the Church in all ages. To non-Catholics Bossuet's explanation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception will be most useful that doctrine has been so persistently misunderstood, and often so per- sistently misrepresented, that Bossuet's clear and logical defence of it will be invaluable, and will impress them the more from the fact that it was written so long before the Vatican Council defined it as an article of faith. From Bossuet's teaching we learn that, to quote Cardinal Manning's words, " the titles of honour given to Mary are not metaphors but truths they express, not poetical or rhetorical ideas, but true and living relations between her and her Divine Son and between her and our- selves ". I will conclude by again quoting Cardinal Manning, who warns Catholics "never to shrink from calling her that which God has made her ; never to fear to seek her in those offices of grace with which God has invested her ". " May our Divine Lord," he continues, " pre- Introduction. xiii serve us from giving way a hair's breadth, before the face of anti-Catholic censors, in the filial piety of our faith, or the childlike con- fidence of our devotion towards His Blessed Mother and our own." WILLIAM T. GORDON, Of the Oratory. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. ON THE GROUNDS OF DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN AND THE SAINTS (Preached on a Feast of Mary's Conception) i II. THE BLESSED VIRGIN'S CONCEPTION .... 17 III. MARY A FORESHADOWING OF CHRIST (Preached on a Feast of her Nativity) 39 IV. THE BLESSED VIRGIN'S NATIVITY 52 V. THE FEAST OF THE ANNUNCIATION 6g VI. THE FEAST OF THE VISITATION 83 VII. THE HlDDENNESS AND POVERTY OF JESUS AND MARY (Preached on a Feast of the Purification) . . 99 VIII. THE BLESSED VIRGIN'S COMPASSION .... in IX. THE ASSUMPTION OF MARY 132 I. ON THE GROUNDS OF DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN AND THE SAINTS, AND ON THE NATURE OF TRUE DEVOTION. (From a Sermon preached, on a Feast of Marys Conception.} DEVOTION to the Blessed Virgin is a matter concerning which there are two important points to be specially considered : first, the grounds on which this devotion is solidly founded ; secondly, the rules to be invariably followed in practising it. A clear understanding of these points will help us to honour her as true Christians ought, not on one of her feasts only, but on all those presented in succession by the Church to the observ- ance of the Faithful. With Advent, which opens the ecclesiastical year, comes the Feast of Our Lady's Conception. As on this day we really commemorate the first moment of her existence, and consequently that of our first relations with her as our most favoured fellow- creature, there could not be a more fitting day for treating the subject of why, and how, we are to pay her homage. 2 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. i. First, then, on what basis is our devotion to Mary founded ? " No one," says the Apostle, " can lay any foundation but the one that has been laid that is, Jesus Christ." Now, in a pre-eminent manner, Our Divine Saviour is the foundation of the honour we pay to the Blessed Virgin ; because we have received Him, in fact, through her. God predestined Mary, before all time, to be the means of giving Jesus Christ to the world. Having called her to so glorious a ministry, He did not choose that she should be a merely passive channel of His grace. He made her, farther, a volun- tary instrument who should contribute to the great work by the use of her own will. Is not this clear from the manner in which the Incarnation was announced to Mary ? When the moment for accom- plishing that Mystery which has kept all nature expectant throughout the ages has arrived, the Eternal Father sends an angel to make it known to her ; and the angel awaits the maiden's decision, so that the great act shall not be performed without her consent. The moment she has given this the heavens are opened, the Son of God is made man, and the world has a Saviour. Hence, the love and longing of Mary were in a measure necessary for our salvation. St. Thomas declares that "the fulness of grace she then received was so great that it brought her to a most intimate union with the Author of Grace; that this fitted her to Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and Saints. 3 receive into her holy womb the One who contains all graces ; and that thus, in conceiving Him, she became in some sort the source of that grace which He was to pour forth over all mankind and so concurred in giving the human race its Deliverer ". There is a necessary consequence of this fact which is not sufficiently borne in mind : namely, that God having once elected to give us Jesus Christ through the Blessed Virgin, this order of things can never change ; for the gifts of God are "without repentance". It is, and always will be, true, that having once received the Author of our salvation through her, we shall necessarily continue to receive help towards that salvation in the same manner. The Incarnate Word is the universal principle of grace ; but the Christian life in its various phases consists in the particular applications of the grace proceeding from this principle to the individual needs of each soul. Mary, having been once chosen as the means by which grace should come into the world, has, as a natural consequence, her share in its application to the souls of men for their salvation. Theology recognises three principal operations of Jesus Christ's grace : God calls us ; God justifies us ; God grants us perseverance. The calling is the first step ; justification constitutes our progress ; persever- ance brings the journey to an end, and gives us in our true country what can never be had together on earth rest and glory. 4 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Now, every Christian knows that for all these three states the power of Christ is needed ; but perhaps few really believe how clearly Scripture indicates Mary's perpetual association with their work in the soul. A few words, however, will prove this. (i) The Divine CM is typified by the sudden enlightenment that St. John the Baptist received in his mother's womb. If we reflect on this miracle we see in it an image of sinners called by grace. John, hidden within his mother's flesh, is in utter blindness and deafness: but who so blind and deaf as the sinner? The thunder of God's judgments breaks over him unheard ; the very light of the Gospel fails to open his eyes. Yet, in the dark places where he has hidden himself, does not God find him out, and show him the truth as in a lightning-flash ? Again : Jesus comes to John unexpectedly : He prevents him : He suddenly rouses and attracts his hitherto insensible heart. And how does God come to the sinner? He comes unasked, unsought, and calls him to repentance ; He inspires the sinful heart with a secret, unaccountable, disgust and bitterness that compel it to regret its lost peace and to long, almost unconsciously, for reconciliation. Even whilst the soul is in the act of fleeing from Him it suddenly finds itself arrested and compelled to turn. But once more : when God gives us, in the leaping of the unborn St. John, an image of the sinner " prevented by grace," He shows us at the same time Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and Saints. 5 Mary's concurrence in the work. If John, thus called, as it were struggles to escape from the prison that confines him, at whose voice does he so act ? " For, behold, as soon as the voice of Thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leapt for joy ! " So St. Elizabeth declares ; and St. Ambrose says that Mary " raised John the Baptist above nature," and by her mere voice caused him to drink in the spirit of holiness, before he had breathed the breath of life : " he obeyed before he was brought forth ". According to the same doctor, the grace given to Mary was so great that it not only kept her a virgin, but conferred the gift of innocence on those she visited. Hence we need not wonder if St. John, whom the mother of His Saviour anointed, so to speak, with the oil of her presence and the perfume of her purity for three months, was born and lived (as the Church's tradition holds) in perfect freedom from sin. (2) Justification, God's next great work in man's soul, is represented at the marriage of Cana in the persons of the Apostles. For what says the Evangelist? "Jesus turned water into wine" (His first miracle); " and He showed His glory, and His disciples believed in Him." The Apostles had already been called, but they had not hitherto had a lively enough faith to be justified : justification being attributed to faith as the first principle, or root, of all grace, though not sufficient by itself for salvation. The sacred text could not express "justifying faith" in clearer terms than it 6 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. does here ; but neither could it put before us more plainly the Blessed Virgin's share in this marvellous work. Was not that great miracle, confirming the Apostles' faith, the effect of Mary's charity and inter- cession ? True : when she first asked for the grace, she seemed to be repelled. " Woman," said the Saviour, " what is there between thee and Me ? My hour has not yet come" (John ii. 4). But though these words sound rough, and appear like a curt refusal, Mary did not hold herself refused. She understood her Son ; and she took His rebuff as typical of that ingenious love by which He often tests the prayer of faithful souls, only to show that humility and persevering confidence may win what a first request has not obtained. Her expectation was not deceived : Jesus, who had seemed to deny her, did what she asked ; and even St. Chrysostom says forestalled the hour He had determined on for His first miracle, to please her. Again : this miracle wrought at Mary's prayer is unlike other miracles of Christ in being worked for a really unnecessary thing. There is no special need of more wine at their wedding feast ; but His mother wishes it, and that is enough. Are we to believe it an accidental coincidence that she should interpose only in this particular miracle, which is followed by a result embodying an express image of the justification of sinners ? No : there can be no doubt that the Holy Spirit intended us to understand just what St. Augustine understood by Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and Saints. 7 the mystery ; and what, therefore, has been accepted as its meaning from the first ages of Scriptural interpretation. " The glorious Virgin " writes the great doctor " being Mother of our Head according to the flesh, had to be Mother of all His members according to the Spirit, by co-operating through her divinity in the spiritual birth of the children of God." Lastly, we must go on to see how she contributes not only to the birth of the soul but to its faithful perseverance. (3) As the Baptist typifies the sinner called out of darkness, and the Apostles at Cana in Galilee the soul justified by faith, so does St. John the Beloved at the foot of the Cross stand for the children of grace and adoption who persevere with Jesus to the end. With Mary, he follows Christ even to the Cross while the other disciples take flight, clinging with constancy to the mystical tree, and generously ready to die with his Lord. Thus, he is naturally a figure of the persevering Faithful. Now mark this to John, particularly, as we know, Christ gives His Mother : those whom he here typifies are to be Mary's special children. Surely, then, she will make it her peculiar care to beg the grace of perseverance for every Christian soul ? Here, then, is the promised proof: those who know what mysterious meanings are hidden beneath the words of the sacred text recognise, in these three 8 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. examples, that Mary through her intercession is Mother alike of the called, the justified, and the persevering ; and that her untiring love is in fact instrumental in every operation of grace. The great point for us to remember, as the solid ground of our devotion, is that her power with Our Lord remains the same now that it was during His life on earth ; for natural feelings are raised and perfected, not ex- tinguished, in glory. Hence, the most Blessed Virgin need never fear a refusal : Christ's own love pleads on the side of Mary's prayers, because the very human nature that He assumed speaks to Him through her ; and thus we have, for ever pleading our cause with God, that most powerful of all human advocates a Mother at the feet of her Son. 2. Now, having seen the real basis on which the honour paid by the Church to Our Lady rests (and woe be to those who would fain deprive Christians of her help !) let us carefully consider in what way devo- tion to her should be practised ; for, even though furnished with a lasting foundation for our piety, we may show it by what are only vain and superstitious practices. There is a true devotion, and a false one ; and the next point to treat concerns the kind of wor- ship that we owe respectively to God, to the Blessed Virgin, and to all the Saints. The fundamental rule of the honour we pay to the Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and Saints. 9 Blessed Virgin and the Saints is this : that we must entirely refer it all to God and to our eternal salvation. If it were not referred to God it would be a purely human act, and we surely know that the Saints, being filled with God and His glory, will not accept purely human devotion. What does "religion " mean but a binding to God ? And how could any act that was not religious please His holy ones ? Hence, all devotion to Mary is useless and superstitious that does not lead us to the possession of God and the enjoyment of our heavenly inheritance. This is, indeed, the general rule of all true religious worship : that it flows from, and returns to, God, and is in no wise diverted from Him by being extended to His creatures. To come to particulars in the matter : there are two special points, concerning prayer to Our Lady and the Saints, on which the Church is accused by her enemies of erroneous practice, the first of which is " idolatry ". In other words, Catholics are often charged with acting almost like the heathen in so using their canonised fellow-creatures as to be guilty of multiplying God, by turning them into so many minor deities to whom they pay divine homage. The folly and injustice of such an accusation is very simply proved by reference to the rule just given. The only honour recognised by the Church as due to her Saints is an honour strictly in accordance with that rule ; which rule is itself founded upon the central io Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. principle of our Faith ; namely, on the unity and supremacy of God. We Christians adore but one God ; single, omni- potent, creator and dispenser of all things ; in whose name we were consecrated at baptism ; and in whom alone< we recognise absolute sovereignty, unlimited goodness, and perfect fulness of Being. We honour the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, not by a worship of necessary service, or of subjection for, in the order of religion, we are free as regards creatures, and subject only to God but by an honour of brotherly love and fellowship. In them, we pay homage to wonders worked "by the right hand of the Most High " ; we revere the communication to them of His grace the diffusion, through them, of His glory. In short, what we honour in them is the very fact of their dependence on that Primary Being to Whom alone our true worship relates ; the sole principle of all good, and the end of all our desires, as of theirs. We must, then, entirely repudiate the fear, professed -by our enemies, that the glory of God can be diminished by our conceiving high notions of Mary and the Saints. Would it not be attributing miserable weakness to the Creator to imagine Him jealous of His own gifts, and of the light He sheds on His creatures ? Just as well might we expect the sun, if he had life, to be jealous of the moon, who shines merely by reflection of his own rays ! No matter how highly we may honour Mary's perfections Jesus Christ could not Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and Saints. 1 1 possibly envy her, seeing that He is Himself the source of every grace she possesses. Let the critics who accuse us of idolatry in our worship of the Saints remember that they condemn, with us, the Ambroses, the Augustines, the Chrysostoms, on whose doctrine and example they know our practice to be founded, and whom they themselves acknowledge as authorities. The second accusation commonly made against us is that we make for ourselves many mediators, instead of relying on " the One Sole Mediator, Jesus Christ, Who saved us with His blood " ; and our motive for this error is often, further, said to be that like certain ancient philosophers we deem God Himself, even though made man for us, to be inaccessible immediately from His extreme purity. Now, if any Catholic ever allows such a notion as this to lay hold of him, and make him put the Saints, to the smallest extent, in the place of Christ, it can only be because of his most culpable ignorance or neglect of his own Church's teaching. No one is taught so plainly as we are that we were created by God for immediate intercourse with Him ; but that we lost our privilege, for time, by sin ; and that we should have lost it also for eternity if the Son had not reconciled us to the Father by taking our sins on Himself. Hence, we ask absolutely nothing except in the name of Our Saviour, as every child who has properly learnt its catechism is fully aware. All we do, in begging the Saints' prayers, is to beg the prayers of those among our own brethren 1 2 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. who are specially dear to that Saviour Himself because of their supreme love for Him. We all Protestant and Catholic alike ask for the prayers of our living friends and fellow-Christians, and all believe that " the prayer of the just man availeth much ". The doctrine of " the Communion of Saints," as Catholics put it into practice, is merely the carrying out of this prin- ciple with regard to those who are already in the company of God, but whom we believe to be, through His power, still present in spirit among us, and to have our interests at heart though no longer with us in the flesh. There is yet another principle involved in the true doctrine of honour to the Saints, which must be touched upon before we leave the subject ; and that is the great advantage to ourselves contained in practising devotion towards them of a right sort. The Christian is bound to imitate what he honours, and the object of his worship must also be the model of his life. His God is a perfect God ; and hence he must try to make himself perfect, and worship only those who have given honour to their Maker by imitating His perfections. When we venerate the Saints it is not to increase their glory : that is full ; they have their perfect measure of it with God in heaven. We pay them homage over and above the motive of giving glory to God that we may incite ourselves to follow them, and we ask their prayers for the same purpose. This is the sense of the Church Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and Saints. 1 3 in instituting the feasts she does in honour of the Saints ; and it is shown in the collect for St. Stephen's Day, which says : " O Lord ! give us grace to imitate that which we honour ". It is the constant tradition of the Church that the most essential part of devotion to the blessed in heaven is to profit by their example. Without this, all homage is vain. Whatever indivi- dual saint we are devout to, we must try to acquire that one's special virtues, and most of all are we bound to do this where the Queen of all Saints the Virgin of virgins is concerned. If we deeply revere as every true Catholic does the virginal chastity which enabled her to conceive the Son of God in her womb, we can duly express our veneration only by doing our best, according to our states of life, to imitate it in our own souls. So far does St. Ambrose go in his conviction of the power which the reverent imitation of Mary's virtue may confer on her true clients, that he says : " every chaste soul that keeps its purity and innocence untarnished conceives the Eternal Wisdom in itself ; and is filled with God and His grace after the pattern of Mary ". To women in especial does this duty of following the Blessed Virgin's example apply. Many portraits have been painted of Mary, by many artists, each painting her according to his own idea. There can, however, be only one true likeness of her : namely, a copy of her character as shown forth in the Gospels, the account of which forms a portrait drawn, if we may 14 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. venture to say so, by the Holy Spirit Himself. And what is the character thus set before us in Scripture ? This must be specially noted. It is neither Mary's high intercourse with God, nor her great and special graces, nor her power, that is dwelt upon in the Gospels. All these are kept in the background. What is brought before our notice is simply her ordinary every-day virtues, so to speak, that she may be a model for daily, familiar use. Now, the essence of Mary's character, as thus displayed, is her modesty and self-restraint. She never thinks of showing herself, though she was doubt- less beautiful ; nor of decking herself, though young ; nor of exalting herself, though noble ; nor of enriching herself, though poor. God alone is enough for her, and constitutes her whole happiness. Her delights are in retirement ; and so little is she accustomed to the sight of man that she is troubled even at the appearance of an angel. Nevertheless, even in her trouble she thinks : she " considers within herself what manner of salutation this can be ". Surprise and dis- turbance neither put her off her guard nor stifle reflection. Again, when her thought has taken form in resolution, she speaks and speaks fearlessly. She has her chastity to guard ; and so great is a true virgin's love of this that it makes her not only deaf to the promises of man, but proof in reverence be it spoken even against the promises of God. Mary, therefore, answers Gabriel with no superfluous words, no curious or excited question or argument but with Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and Saints. 1 5 the calm and modest inquiry : " How shall this be done, because I know not man ? " Blessed among women ! to have spoken only in defence of her purity and to show her obedience ! What a contrast and example, at this supreme moment of her life, to the kind of women who never control themselves or pause to reflect in disturbing circumstances or before grave decisions ; but who let feeling and excitement get the better of them, pour themselves forth in vain and curious talk, or rush headlong into undertakings with- out knowledge or reflection ! And after this great event of the angel's mission, what is Mary's conduct ? Is she either selfishly filled in thought with her own greatness, or anxious for the immediate display of her glory to the world ? Just the contrary : wrapped in her deep lowliness, she is only surprised that God should have conferred such a dignity on her ; and mother of her Creator as she now is, whom all her fellow-creatures might well hasten to honour she hurries off to her cousin Elizabeth, to rejoice with her over the grace that she and her husband have lately received. And even there, with her own relations, she speaks of the miracle that has been wrought within her only because she finds they have already been made aware of it by the Holy Ghost. Here is an example to people who no sooner receive a dignity or honour, or achieve a success of any description, than they must proclaim it to the world ; who can keep nothing to themselves, but must 1 6 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. live in the glare of publicity ; and who are so inwardly self-absorbed that they have hardly a thought left for the concerns of others. Such, then thoughtful and prudent, modest, self- restrained, humble, and unselfish is this Virgin, of whom I repeat that we can never be her clients if we are not also her followers. St. Gregory Nazianzen has a beautiful saying : that " every man is the painter and sculptor of his own life ". May all those of Mary's sex raise to her honour an image formed of their own lives, chiselled by themselves in her like- ness ! They may do this by forming their characters after her great example ; by despising the vanities and frivolities of the world ; and by strictly abjuring all customs no matter how well received or sanctioned by society that may be in the slightest degree con- trary to charity or modesty. Mary will own that they truly honour her, and will unceasingly pray for them, when she sees them thus anxious to please her Son ; and they will please her Son when he sees them like to the Mother He chose. II. ON THE CONCEPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. 1 " Fecit mihi magna qui potens est." THE subject of the Blessed Virgin's purity in her glorious Conception, which the Church celebrates and which will be treated of in all Catholic pulpits to-day, has for a long time exercised the greatest minds ; and, of the many subjects that have to be expounded to the Faithful, it is perhaps one of the most difficult. I do not say this in the spirit of some orators, who ex- aggerate the poverty of their matter merely to exalt the rhetoric by which they intend to adorn it, for such a course would be utterly unworthy of a sacred theme ; but because it is necessary, for clearly bringing out the real beauty and truth of Mary's Immaculate Concep- tion, to begin by meeting some difficulties connected with the belief. The consideration of that terrible sentence pro- nounced by the Apostle against mankind in general 2 " all are dead : all have sinned : by the offence of one, unto all men's condemnation " 3 is alone enough 1 See Note p. 148, which forms an introduction to this Sermon. 2 2 Cor. v. 14. 3 Rom. v. 12, 16. 2 1 8 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. to make us wonder how an exception can be found to words of such wide application. But the universality of the curse is made still more plain by three different expressions used in Holy Scripture to represent the misfortune of our birth. The Bible first announces a supreme law which it calls " the law of death " : a verdict of guilt pro- nounced indifferently against every man born into the world. Who can be exempt from this ? Secondly, it tells us of a hidden and imperceptible venom, whose source was in Adam, and which infects each of his descendants terribly and inevitably. This was what St. Augustine called " contagium mortis anti- ques" and which made him say that the whole mass of the human race is contaminated. What preservative can be found against so subtle and penetrating a poison ? In the third place, we learn from Sacred Writ that all who breathe this infected air contract a stain which dishonours them, and destroys the image of God in them ; and which thus makes them as St. Paul says " naturally children of wrath "- 1 How hinder an evil that has actually become part of our nature for so long ? Such questions as these have disturbed the minds of some great thinkers whose opinions, however, the Church does not condemn by making it appear hard to prove Mary's perfect purity in her conception. It may be difficult, but I think we shall find it not im- 1 Ephes. ii. 3. On the Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 19 possible, to clear up doubts as to this great privilege of the Blessed Virgin. It is quite true that a "law of death" exists, to which every person born is subject ; but extraordinary people may always be dispensed from the most uni- versal laws. There is undoubtedly an insidious and contagious poison that has infected our whole race ; but we can sometimes escape contagion from a general epidemic by separating ourselves. We freely grant that an hereditary stain makes us natural enemies of God ; but grace may anticipate nature. Hence, the line of thought to be followed, if we would prove an exception, is this : that we must find dispensation opposed to Law ; separation, to Contagion ; and pre- vention, to an expected natural evil. I propose to show that Mary was actually dispensed from the Law in question, by that supreme A uthority which was so often exerted in her favour ; that she was separated from universal contagion by the Wisdom which plainly dis- closed Its unsearchable designs upon her, from before all time, by thus setting her apart; and that the Eternal Love of God so prevented her, where His anger was concerned, as to make her an object of mercy before she had time to become an object of wrath. If we can understand it aright, we shall find that in her own marvellous Canticle she herself announces all this. 1 " He that is mighty hath done great things 1 Luke i. 49. 2O Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. to me." She speaks first of power, to give honour to the absolute Authority by Whom she is dispensed : He that is mighty. But what has this Almighty One done ? " Ah ! " she declares, " great things." It is clear that she here recognises her separation from others by the great and deep designs of the Wisdom that has called her apart. And what, we may ask, could possibly bring these great marvels to pass except the eternal Love of God, ever active and ever fruitful, without Whose intervention Omni- potence itself would not act, whilst Infinite Wisdom would keep Its thoughts unexpressed and bring forth nothing ? It is this Love that does all things, and which consequently " has done great things to me " : this alone makes God to pour Himself forth upon His creatures : this is the cause of all existence, the principle of all bestowal : and hence it was this effectual love which, in working Mary's Conception, prevented the threatened evil by sanctifying her from the very beginning. By proving these three points, then, I shall both fully expound the text chosen, and explain and justify the high honour we pay to Mary in her most blessed Conception. i. It is decidedly a question whether, if it is the peculiar attribute of supreme authority to frame laws for whole nations, it is not even more perfectly char- On the Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 2 1 acteristic of such authority to reserve for itself the right of dispensing from them where wisdom requires it ; because the latter course, being extraordinary, seems to imply a higher degree of power and more independence than the former. If the majesty of Law is unequalled, and if to establish laws of his own is the highest and most sacred right of an absolute sovereign which it undoubtedly is then, when he makes those decrees themselves give way to his authority in special cases, he may be said with reason to raise himself above his own supremacy. This is God's mode of action when He works miracles, which are simply dispensations of things from the ordinary laws that He Himself had established ; and which he performs to make his omnipotence more manifest. Hence, at first sight, it seems clear that the power of dispensation, or exception, is the most certain mark of authority. On the other hand, equally strong arguments are put forward in favour of a different view. It is contended that because exceptions must always apply to an immensely smaller number than laws or they could not be so called and because a power exercised over numbers is surely more important than that exercised over a few, the establishing of universal Law is much the more absolutely authoritative work of the two. Again, it is urged that the continuous enforcement of permanent decrees is a truer sign of supreme power than the putting forth of occasional 22 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. ones to counteract them even though the latter act be in itself of a higher nature than the former. The only way of reconciling these differences is to grant at once that the special characteristics of the highest authority appear equally in both forms of proceeding. This view is expressed by St. Thomas when he says that all Law comprises two things : the general commandment and the particular application : as, for example, when Ahasuerus made a decree condemning all the Jews to death, but excepted Esther in applying that decree. In this rule of St. Thomas's, then, we have just what we are seeking : a statement of the equal greatness of the two acts ; for the authority of law-giving is displayed in the " general commandment," and that of dispensing in the " par- ticular application " ; and as it belongs to the maker of universal rules to judge of their suitability to special cases, it follows that the power of framing laws and that of dispensing from them are equally noble and inseparable attributes of a Supreme Ruler. These principles being granted, we may proceed with our subject. I am told that there is a Decree of Death pronounced against all men, and that to make an exception, even though in favour of the Blessed Virgin herself, would be to violate the authority of law. But according to the rule just laid down, I may reply to this that, the Legislator's power having two sides, you would impugn His authority no less by denying His power to dispense with the application in On the Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 23 this particular case, than by disputing His right to promulgate the general law in the first instance. St. Paul certainly declares in formal terms that " all are condemned " ; but this need not disturb us ; for in fully acknowledging the universal extent of the law, he in nowise excludes such reservations as the Sovereign may choose to make. By the authority of the law, incontestably, Mary was condemned like the rest of mankind ; but by the grace of special reservations, made for her by the Sovereign's absolute power, she was dispensed from having the decree carried out in her case. It may be objected that the whole strength of Law is weakened when its sacred dignity is sacrificed to the granting of dispensations. This is true, unless each dispensation is accompanied with three things : that it is granted only to an eminent person ; that it is founded on precedent ; and that the honour of the Lawgiver is concerned in it. The first condition is due to the law itself, the second to the public, and the third to the Ruler ; and without them an exception cannot justly be made. But where these conditions are combined, we may reasonably expect a special favour. Let us see if they were not so in the Holy Virgin. Where exceptions are made, or dispensations granted, amongst equals even though they be equals in great- ness one may justly fear for the consequences of deviation from the common rule. It must, however, 24 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. be at once apparent that there can be no question of equality with any one where Mary is concerned ; for in her case there is not only eminence, but ^-eminence. Is there a second Mother of God? Can there be another Virgin-mother to whom her prerogatives might possibly be extended ? There can surely be no doubt in any minds that that glorious privilege of maternity, through which she has contracted an eternal alliance with God, places her in a quite peculiar rank that can suffer no sort of comparison. From this very fact of her pre-eminence, it will of course be difficult to find a precedent for her exception from the law ; and, in fact, it would be useless to seek for such in any other Saint. An example for God's dealings in this matter can actually be found only in Mary herself; and the observation of a not uncommon fact in all history will here help us. It is very frequently the case that when Sovereigns have once begun bestowing favours in a certain direc- tion they continue to bestow them there with ever- increasing liberality : benefits seem to attract, and make precedents for, one another ; so that in a quarter where signal marks of favour have already been found, one may reasonably look for more. This principle is acknowledged by God Himself in the Gospels, when He says : " For to every one that hath shall be given" ; x which means that, in the order of His favours, a grace never goes alone, but is the pledge of many others. 1 Matt. xxv. 29. On the Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 25 Now, apply this to the Blessed Virgin. Had she been subject throughout her life to ordinary rules we might easily believe her also " conceived in iniquity," in the same manner that others are. But when we find her enjoying a general dispensation from all common laws in every circumstance ; when, according to Catholic faith and the teaching of the most approved Doctors, we see her not suffering in Child-birth, free from con- cupiscence, living a spotless life, and dying a painless death ; when we learn that her reputed husband was but her guardian, her Son being the miraculous Child of Virginity, born through the power of the Holy Spirit instead of by the ordinary way of nature : in short, when we find Mary singular in everything : why should we expect her Conception to be the only part of her life that was not supernatural ? It is much more logical to judge this event in the light of the rest, and to believe that it was a miracle in keeping with her whole life. Thus, the two first conditions of a satisfactory dispensation the superiority of the person con- cerned, and the existence of precedents in her favour are clearly shown to be here fulfilled. I hope further to show that the third condition required is also present, and that the glory of the King Jesus Christ Himself is manifestly promoted by this dis- pensation. It has been finely remarked that in certain cir- cumstances " Princes themselves gain what they give, 26 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. when their gifts are such as do them honour". 1 Now, Our Lord certainly honours Himself when He honours His Mother ; and thus it may be truly said that He gains all He bestows upon her, because it is certainly grander for Him to give than for her to receive. However, a yet closer reason for our Divine Saviour's action in this matter lies in the fact that, having Himself put on this human flesh, for the express purpose of destroying that fatal decree which we have called " the law of death," it was if we may so speak only becoming to His own greatness to leave no possible place where it could claim to hold absolute sway. We must follow up this design, and see what victories it has won, in detail. This law of spiritual death reigns over all men, and over all periods of each man's life. When we incur its penalties at an advanced age, Jesus Christ defeats it by His grace ; the new-born infant groans under its tyranny, and He effaces it in baptism ; it condemns the unborn child in the womb of his mother, so Our Saviour has chosen to free certain illustrious souls from its dominion there, by sanctifying them before birth, as in the case of St. John the Baptist. 2 But this terrible law goes yet farther back : it reigns over the very beginnings of man by seizing upon him the instant he is conceived [that is, animated]. Is Jesus 1 Alaric, in Cassiodorus, Variar., lib. viii., Epist. xxiii. 2 Also, according to the tradition of the Church, the Prophet Jeremias. On the Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 27 Christ, the all-powerful conqueror, to be defeated in this one spot alone? Shall His sacred Blood the divine remedy that delivers us from all evil be in- effectual to prevent it? Surely not. Then, shall Its power remain for ever unused, and not be ex- erted on any of Christ's members ? No: the Saviour of mankind cannot fail to choose at least one among His creatures, even for the sake of His own glory, in whom to show forth the full power of His Precious Blood : and what specially chosen creature should this be but His mother ? There is another aspect of the question which must be most carefully considered, for it makes us feel even more strongly that to doubt Mary's Immaculate Con- ception would be almost to depreciate the value of the Blood of Christ. This most sacred stream, we must never forget, not only had to flow over Mary, as over the whole race, to redeem her ; but it was to have Its human source in her body. This is a wonderful and overpowering thought ; but it is absolutely true, or Christ would not be God and man ; and, being true, can we doubt that Our Lord's honour requires the very channel whence He was to receive His own Blood to be purified in its beginning ? But to bring this about Mary's Son must hinder the law of death from taking effect in her, at the first moment she becomes a living person : that is, at the instant of her conception. Thus He pays due honour to the Life-giving Stream Itself, by honouring the spot whence it was to spring. 28 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. We must not, then, look for Mary's name in the catalogue of those condemned by the fatal decree : it has been blotted out simply by that Divine Blood drawn from her own chaste veins, and applied by her Son to His own true glory with fullest efficacy for her benefit. The three conditions are thus shown to be complied with, and I have proved my first point : that the Blessed Virgin was justly dispensed, by the rightful authority, from suffering under the general condem- nation. Tertullian has said that, because of the Supreme Majesty of God, it is not only glorious for His creatures to consecrate their lives to His service, but that it is even right for them to offer Him " the submission of flattery " : Non tantum obsequi ei debeo, sed et adulari : 1 in other words, that we must not only obey His direct commandments, but keep every movement of our being so completely dependent on His will that we are ready to comply with the smallest sign of His pleasure. What Tertullian says of God Himself, our common Father, I would say of His Church, Mother of all the Faithful : that we should be ready, as good Christians, not only to follow her precepts, but to respond to the slightest expression of her desires. Now, she does not compel our obedience by placing belief in the Immaculate Conception of Mary amongst her Articles of Faith which we must accept under pain 1 Tertull., de Jejun,, n. 13. On the Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 29 of sin ; but by the very Feast of to-day she invites us to acknowledge it. Let us, then, say with perfect and fearless confidence that the Blessed Virgin was conceived without spot ; and, in so doing, honour Jesus Christ in His Mother : believing that He wrought a special work in her conception because she was chosen from among all others to conceive Him. 2. It is the very fact of this peculiar relation of Mother and Son between Mary and Christ the fact that He Himself was conceived in her womb which is the great argument for our second point to be proved : the belief that His Wisdom separated her in a peculiar manner from the universal contagion that all other souls contract when united to " flesh of sin ". And I say advisedly " in a peculiar manner " : for, observe, all who are saved by Baptism, actual or of desire before or after Christ's coming are separated, by being freed from the effects of the taint they have contracted, through grace. In fact, God has carried out this principle of " separation " in many forms from the beginning of all things : Holy Writ speaks of His " separating " one part of the universe after another from the first-formed matter ; and, just as He first divided earth, sea, and sky from the shapeless mass, so He now parts the faithful from the mass of criminal humanity by that grace which is the work of the Holy Spirit, who has chosen them out from all eternity. 30 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. What else but this does St. Paul mean, when he speaks of " Him, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace ? " x Hence, the fact of the Blessed Virgin's separation is common to the whole body of the elect ; it is the nature of it that is peculiar to herself, on account of the cause. We may take, as a help towards considering this mystery in detail, some beautiful words of Eusebius, in his second Homily on Our Lord's Nativity. He says, speaking of Mary's bliss in having conceived her Saviour : " Thou hast deserved to receive first Him whose coming was promised throughout all ages ; and thou alone dost possess by a peculiar gift the joy that is common to all men". 2 If Jesus Christ is a common possession if the Mysteries of His Life were wrought for the whole world in what way could the Blessed Virgin possess Him " alone " ? His death was a public sacrifice, His Blood the price of all sins, His preaching the doctrine for all nations : the fact that, directly the Divine Infant was born, the Jews were called to Him by angels and the Gentiles by a star, clearly shows that He belongs to the entire earth. The whole world has a right to the Son of God, because God's goodness bestowed Him on all. Never- theless O wondrous dignity of Mary! amid this universal ownership she has a peculiar right of 1 Gal. i. 15. 2 Per tot saecula promissum, prima suscipere mereris adventum ; ct commune mundi gaudium, peculiar! munere sola possides. On the Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 31 possessing Him alone, because she can claim Him as her Sow : a title which no other creature can share. God Himself and Mary, only, can call the Saviour " Son" ; and by this most sacred tie Jesus Christ gives Himself to her in such a manner that the general treasure of all men may be truly called her particular property : sola possides. But, it may be said, however glorious such a separation may be, what effect will it have in sancti- fying her conception ? To answer this question we must show that Our Saviour's own Conception exerts a secret influence over that of the Blessed Virgin, to which it imparts grace and sanctity ; and we shall do this best by first calling to mind a truth full of comfort to all Christians : namely, that the life of the Saviour of souls has a particular relation to every part of our own lives, that it may sanctify them. The Apostle expresses this truth when he says : " Jesus Christ died and rose again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and the living "- 1 Observe the relation : the Saviour's life sanctifies ours ; our death is consecrated by His. And it is the same throughout : He clothed Himself with our weakness, which strengthens us in infirmity He has felt our troubles, which consoles us in affliction and makes it holy and profitable to us : in short, Christ took upon Himself all that we are ; and there is a secret relation between Him and us which causes our sanctification. And whence comes 1 Rom. xiv. 9. 32 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. this marvellous communication between His states and ours ? The Apostle would reply that it comes from the fact that the Saviour, dying and suffering, belongs to us : He gives us His death and His sufferings ; and in them we find graces that impart sanctity to our own, by making them like His. All Christians may say this ; but there is one relation to Him which the Blessed Virgin only can claim : she alone has the right to say " The Redeemer, when He was conceived as man, gave Himself to me by a peculiar title, and in such a manner that His conception breathed sanctity into mine by its secret influence ". This, then, is the argument for Mary's being separated from the universal taint in her conception : that she was chosen to be the parent of God made man ; that He was given to her by the Heavenly Father, to conceive, and to bear within her sacred womb ; and that whilst she thus bore Him though for the rest of His life He was to belong equally to all men she had a right of peculiar possession, as the Mother who had conceived Him: " peculiari munere sola possides ". Hence, it was surely just that Our Lord should do something singular for her who had been set apart by Divine wisdom to bear this singular relation to Him : that the office for which she was destined should draw down a peculiar bless- ing of sanctification on her own conception ? We must, then, acknowledge Mary as separated by an extraordinary operation of the Son of God, Divine On the Conception of the Blessed Virgin^ 33 Wisdom Itself ordained the separation, because of the peculiar tie between her and her Son which made it just for her to share His privileges. We see, further, that the Blessed Virgin in her sepa- rateness has something in common with all men and something peculiar to herself: for, as was said above, we are all separated from the mass by belonging to Christ. But Our Lord has a double tie with Mary : one as Saviour, in common with the whole race ; the other as Son, by which He belongs only to her. By the first tie, she is bound to be parted from the mass like all other men ; by the second, she is bound to be set apart from it in an extraordinary manner. In this work, we behold the Divine Wisdom once more bringing order out of confusion as formerly in the case of the elements. Here is a mass of criminal humanity, from which a creature has to be separated in order to be made mother of her Creator. Jesus Christ is her Saviour : hence she must be separated in the same way as others ; but Jesus Christ is also her Son, and therefore she must be separated from others : if others are delivered from evil, she must be preserved from it, so that its very course may be hin- dered. How can this be, except by some more special communication of her Son's privileges ? He is exempt from sin : Mary must be exempt also. Thus Wisdom has separated her from others ; but still she must not be confounded with her Son, since she is of necessity infinitely beneath Him. How, then, are we to distin- 3 34 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. guish between them ? In this way : Jesus Christ is exempt from sin by nature, Mary by grace ; Jesus Christ by right, Mary by privilege and indulgence. It is clear, then, that she may say of her separation " He that is mighty hath done great things to me " ; and we may now go on to see how grace filled her so completely that the anger which threatens every child of Adam could not influence her conception, because it was forestalled by merciful love. 3- If Holy Scripture tells us that the Son of God, in taking our flesh, also took upon Him all our in- firmities, sin alone excepted ; if the plan that He had formed of making Himself like unto us caused Him not to disdain hunger, or thirst, or fear, or sadness, or a thousand other weaknesses that seem unworthy of His dignity : then still more must we believe that He was deeply imbued with that just and holy love, impressed upon us by nature itself, for those to whom we owe life. This truth is, indeed, evident ; but I wish to show here that it was that special love which prevented the Blessed Virgin in her happy conception and I will explain my meaning fully. I shall consider the filial love that Our Saviour bore to Mary under two conditions : namely, in the Incarnation, and before the Incarnation, of the Divine Word. No Christian can find it hard to believe that it existed in the Incarnation, for as it was by this On the Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 35 fact that Mary became the Mother of God, it was also in the accomplishment of that august mystery that God acquired the feelings of a Son for Mary. But it is not so easy to understand how filial love for His holy Mother can have been found in God before He became incarnate, as the Son of God is her Child only on account of the humanity He took upon Him. Nevertheless, if we look farther back we shall discover that love which "prevented" Mary by the profusion of its gifts, already existing ; and the understanding of this truth will prove the love of God for our nature. There are three things that distinguish the Blessed Virgin from all mothers : she gave birth to the Bestower of grace ; her Son differing in this from all others could put forth His full powers from the first moment of His life ; and, which is most wonderful of all, she was the mother of a Son Who existed before her. These three facts produce three magnificent effects in Mary. As her Son is the Bestower of grace He gives her a very large share of it ; as He is able to act from the moment of His birth, He need not delay His liberality towards her, but begins to shower His gifts the instant she has conceived Him ; lastly, having a Son Whose Being preceded hers, she is so miraculously placed that the love of that Son can go before her even in her own conception, and make that event innocent : it was indeed her right that such a Son should so benefit her. This truth is made still clearer through a doctrine 36 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, held by some of the Fathers about the way in which the Son of God has loved the Blessed Virgin from eternity. They have drawn the doctrine from some- thing that we must have often wondered at ourselves : from the way in which God, throughout Holy Scripture, appears to delight if we may say so in behaving as man : how He actually copies our actions, our manners and customs, our feelings and our passions. Now He will say, by the mouth of His prophets, that His Heart is seized with compassion ; then, again, that it is inflamed with anger : that He is appeased, that He " repents Him," that He is glad or sorrowful. What means this mystery? Does it become a God to act thus ? For the Incarnate Word to speak in this fashion seems natural, for He was man ; but for God, before He was man, to act and speak as men do seems truly strange. It may be reasonably suggested that He does it to bring His Sovereign Majesty within our reach ; but the Fathers find a more mysterious reason for it. They tell us that God, having once resolved to unite Himself to our nature, judged it not beneath Him to adopt all its feelings beforehand : nay, that He made them His own, and might even be said to have studied how to conform Himself to them. If it is not irreverent to illustrate so great a mystery by a familiar example, I would suggest a parallel in the ordinary conduct of a man who is expecting a civil or military appointment. He has not got it ; but he prepares for it by adopting in advance all the habits of On the Conception of the Blessed Virgin. 37 mind that are proper to it ; and he tries in good time to acquire either the gravity of a judge or the generous courage of a soldier. God has determined to become man : He has not done so in the days of the Prophets, but it is certain that He will. Hence, we are not to wonder if He takes pleasure in appearing to the Patriarchs and Seers in human guise, by speaking and acting like a man before He has become one. And why ? Tertullian answers admirably : to prepare for the Incarnation. He Who is to stoop so low as to assume our nature, is serving (with all reverence be it spoken) His apprenticeship, by conforming to our ways. " He accustoms Himself little by little to being man ; and learns from the beginning what He is to be in the end." * Let none, then, think that God awaited His coming on earth to have a filial love for the Blessed Virgin. That He had resolved to become man was enough to make him adopt a man's feelings ; and if He took those upon Him, would He be likely to forget the feelings of a Son the most natural and human of them all ? Hence He has always loved Mary as His Motherland looked upon her as such from the first moment she was conceived : could He, therefore, look upon her with anger ? Would sin in her be consistent with so many graces, vengeance with love, enmity with union ? Sin, it is true, has raised a wall of separation 1 " Ediscens jam inde a primordio, jam inde hominem, quod eraf futurus in fine." Lib. ii., adv. Marcion, n. 27, 38 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. between God and man has established a natural enmity ; but may not Mary say with the Psalmist : In Deo meo transgrediar murum ? l Yes : she will not be shut off by a barrier she will pass over the wall and how ? " In the name of my God : of that God Who, being my Son, is mine by a peculiar right : that God Who has loved me as His mother from the first moment of my life : that God Whose all-powerful and prevenient Love has turned aside the wrath that threatens every child of Eve." Such is the work that has been wrought in the Blessed Virgin ; and we may, therefore, safely cry : " O Mary, miraculously dispensed, peculiarly separated, mercifully prevented, help our weakness by thy prayers, and obtain for us sinners this grace : that we may so forestall by penance the punishment due to our sins, as to be at last received into the Kingdom of eternal peace, with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost". 1 Ps. xvi. 32. 39 III. MARY A FORESHADOWING OF CHRIST. (Preached on a Feast of Mary's Nativity.} " Nox prascessit, dies autem appropinquavit " (Rom. xiii. 12). ART and nature alike produce their works gradually, and God Himself does the same. The pencil precedes the brush ; the architect's design maps out the build- ing to come : there is no chef d'ceuvre accomplished in the world but goes through its preliminary stages ; whilst nature, in the development of her designs, often tries her 'prentice hand in ways that seem almost like play. The work in which our Maker most remarkably follows the same plan is that of the Incarnation, for the sake of which He declared that He would " move the heaven and the earth " 1 : this being His One Work above all others. Although its fulfilment was not to be till " the middle of years," 2 He nevertheless began it from the beginning of the world. The natural and the written Law ceremonies and sacrifices priest- ii. 7. 2 Habac. iii. 2. 40 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. hood and prophets were all, speaking reverently, merely sketches or outlines of the " perfect Man, Christ Jesus ". They are called by an ancient writer Christi rudimenta ; and the grand work itself was reached only through a succession of images and figures that served as preparatory designs. But when the time comes close for the Mystery, God plans something yet more excellent than these : He forms the blessed Mary, that He may represent Jesus Christ to us more naturally than before. He is about to send Him on earth, and so combines all His most beautiful char- acteristics in the person of her who is to be His mother. Tertullian, 1 contemplating and discussing the mar- vellous interest that God displayed in the act of forming man from " the slime of the earth," seeks for some explanation of the immense pains that He bestowed on the work. He declares himself unable to believe that He put forth so much power, to mould so base a material, without some further great end in view : and this end, he finally concludes, is nothing less than Jesus Christ, Who is to be born of the race of man, and Whom God, therefore, chooses to typify to us by His manner of forming the first members of that race. Quodcumque limits exprimebatur, Christus cogitabatur homo futurus. If this idea is true : if God, when He created the first Adam, meant to trace out the second ; if He 1 De Resur. earn., n. 6, Mary a Foreshadowing of Christ. 41 formed our first father so carefully with Jesus our Saviour in view, and because His Divine Son was to spring from him after many generations : surely to- day, when we see Mary who was to bear Christ within her womb come into the world, we may conclude that in creating her God was thinking of our Lord and working for Him alone ? Hence there is no cause for surprise either in His having formed her so carefully or in His endowing her with so many graces as He did : for to make her worthy of His Son He models her upon that Son Himself. Intend- ing soon to bestow on us His Word Incarnate, on the day of Mary's nativity He gives us an outline I might almost say a beginning of Jesus Christ, in one who, though a creature, is in some sort a living ex- pression of His own perfections. Thus we may truly apply to such a day the Apostle's beautiful words : " The night has passed and the day is at hand ". The Redeemer of mankind, besides being in Him- self an inexhaustible Fount of Love, must necessarily possess the two qualities of exemption from sin and fulness of grace. He must be innocent to purify us from our crimes, and full of grace to enrich our poverty ; for these qualities are inseparable from the character and office of the Saviour. When God formed the Blessed Virgin on the pattern of the Sun of Justice, some of the rays by which He was to dispel our darkness were permitted to shine forth in her, though only in a degree that faintly foreshadowed 42 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. the brilliant light they were to shed over the world when they should stream in their fulness from Jesus Christ Himself; and hence it came that she was endowed with the very qualities that were to form an intrinsic part of Her Divine Son's human nature, especially with these two of innocence and fulness of grace. We are here to consider shortly both the cause and the manner of Mary's likeness to her Son in these particular points : and, first, the special re- lation of her innocence to His. In the whole teaching of the Gospels there is nothing more touching than God's gentle and loving way of treating His reconciled enemies : that is, converted sinners. He is not satisfied with blotting out our stains and washing away our filth : to His infinite goodness it is but a little thing that our sins should do us no harm : He would have them actually profit us. He draws out of them such benefits for our soul that we even feel constrained to bless our very transgressions, and to cry with the Church : Felix culpa ! * His grace seems to struggle with our sins for the upper hand ; and St. Paul says that it even pleases Him to make grace abound more where sin has abounded. 2 In fact, He receives penitent sinners back with so much love that innocence itself might almost be said to have cause for complaint or at least for some jealousy at the sight of it. The 1 Blessing of the Paschal Candle on Holy Saturday. 2 Rom, v. 20, Mary a Foreshadowing of Christ. 43 extreme gentleness with which He treats them, if their regret for sin be but real, appears to do away with all further need for regret. Let but one sheep stray from His side, and it seems to become dearer to Him than all the others who remained constant ; like the father in the parable, His heart melts over His returned prodigal rather than over the elder, faithful brother. We seem, indeed, at first sight to have ground for saying that the penitent sinner has the advantage over the just who have not sinned : that restored virtue may triumph over innocence preserved ; never- theless, it is not so. We may never doubt that innocence is a privileged state ; and if there were no other reason for maintaining this it would be enough to remember that Jesus Christ chose that state for Himself. Observe the terms in which the great Apostle declares His Divine Master's innocence : l Talis decebat ut esset nobis pontifex : " It was fitting that we should have a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens : Who needeth not to offer sacrifices for His own sins " but, being holiness itself, expiates sin. Must not the Son of God, then, have dearly loved the innocence that He took for His own lot ? No : His tender feelings for converted sinners does not place them above holy souls that have never been stained by sin. Only, just as we feel the blessing of 1 Hebr. vii. 26, 44 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. health most keenly on recovering from a long illness, though we would far rather have been spared the illness and kept our strength unbroken ; or, again, as a lovely mild day in the midst of a hard winter is peculiarly enjoyed from its unexpectedness, yet is by no means so pleasureable as a long mild season would have been : so, humanly speaking, we may under- stand how Our Lord lavishes tenderness on freshly converted sinners, who are His latest conquest ; yet nevertheless has a more ardent love for His early friends, the Just. We may, indeed to go higher for an explanation describe His whole attitude, as re- gards the "one sinner that repenteth" and the " ninety- nine just," very shortly and simply by keeping in mind His twofold nature, which causes Him to feel differently as Son of God and as Saviour of men. Though Jesus Christ, as Son of God, may take pleasure in seeing at His feet a sinner who has returned to the right path, yet, being Himself essential Sanctity He must love the innocence that has never strayed with a stronger love ; for as it is nearer to, and more perfectly imitates, His own infinite holiness, He can- not help honouring it by closer familiarity. What- ever favour the tears of a penitent may find in His eyes, they can never equal the pure charm of a holi- ness ever-faithful to Him. But when God becomes man to save us from our sins He, as our Saviour, comes to seek the guilty : for them He lives, because to them He was sent, Mary a Foreshadowing of Christ. 45 How does He Himself describe the object of His mission? "/ came not to seek the Just," 1 that is to say : "Though they may be the most noble and worthy of My friendship, My commission does not extend to them. As Saviour, I am to seek the lost ; as Physician, the sick ; as Redeemer, those who are captive." Hence it is that He loves only the society of such as these because to them alone He was sent into the world. The angels, who never fell, may ap- proach Him as Son of God : that is the prerogative of innocence ; but, in His quality of Saviour, He gives the preference to sinners ; just as a doctor who, as a man, will prefer to hold intercourse with the healthy, would nevertheless, as a physician, rather tend the sick. Here is an evangelical interpretation of the whole mystery which is full of comfort for sinners like us. At the same time, however, it tells strongly in favour of Mary's perpetual purity ; for if the Son of God loves innocence so intensely, could it be that He should find none on earth? Of course He has it Himself in the highest degree of perfection ; but shall He not have the satisfaction of finding here below something like Himself, or at least slightly approach- ing His own spotlessness ? We cannot believe that He should have to live entirely among sinners without the consolation of intercourse with one spotless soul, and who should this be but His mother? If He must spend His life in seeking sinners throughout the 1 Matt. ix. 13. 46 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. whole range of Palestine, and find criminals wherever He turns outside His home, surely just within it He may find wherewith to feast His soul on the lasting beauty of unsullied holiness ? True : Our Lord not only never shows contempt for sinners by banishing them from His presence, but actually calls them to the highest offices in His king- dom. He entrusts the charge of His flock to a Peter who has denied Him ; He puts the publican Matthew at the head of the Evangelists ; and makes Paul, the chief of persecutors, into the first of preachers : not the just and innocent, but the converted sinners, have the first places. Nevertheless, He does not take His holy mother from among their ranks : between her and others there must be a difference of a special kind, and to which careful attention must be paid ; for it is an essential and fundamental part of the subject I am treating. Christ chose the former the penitent sinners whom He put in high places for others ; and He chose Mary for Himself. For others : " All things are yours, whether it be Paul, or Apollo, or Cephas "^ Mary for Himself: " My beloved to me, and I to Him 2 : He is my Only One and I am His only one ; He is my Son, and I am His mother ". He drew those whom He chose for others from the ranks of sinners that they might the better announce His mercy and the remission of sins. His whole design was to restore 1 I Cor. iii. 22. 2 2 Cant. ii. 16. Mary a Foreshadowing of Christ. 47 confidence in souls that were cast down by guilt ; and who could better preach divine mercy than those who themselves furnished striking examples of it ? Who could say with greater effect that it was " a faithful saying . . . that Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners," than a St. Paul who could add " of whom I am the chief" ? l It was just as if he had said to the sinner whom he wanted to win : " Fear not ; I know the hand of the physician I would send you to. He Himself has sent me to tell you how He cured me : how easily how tenderly ; and to promise you the same happiness " : as St. Augustine said in after years. 2 It was, then, a truly wise means of drawing sinners to God to have His mercy proclaimed to them by men who had so deeply experienced it. St. Paul teaches this plainly : " For this cause," he says, " I have obtained mercy ; that in me first Jesus Christ shall show forth all patience, for the information of them that shall believe unto life everlasting ". 3 Thus we see why God honours reconciled sinners with the first offices in the Church : for the instruction of the Faithful. But if this was the course He pursued with those whom He appointed for the good of others, it was not His mode of proceeding where the extraordinary, privileged, and cherished being was concerned whom He created for Himself only : with her whom He 1 i Tim. i. 15. 2 Serm. clxxvi., n. 4, torn, v., col. 841. 3 i Tim. i. 16. 48 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. chose for His Mother. In her case He did not, as whea He chose His Apostles and Ministers, what was profitable to the salvation of all but what was most sweet and satisfying to Him, and most for His own glory. She was to possess none but Him for her own, and He none but her, and therefore He would have her innocent from the beginning. The gift of perfect innocence, of course, may not be too freely lavished on our corrupt nature ; but for God to bestow it on His own Mother alone cannot be called lavish ; whilst to refuse it even to her would be restricting it too far. We may, then, I repeat, consider that with Mary's birth a preliminary ray of the full light of Christ is shed on the world : as St. Peter Damian beautifully puts it : Nata Virgine surrexit Aurora} But, perfectly as her innocence foreshadows His, we are not to suppose that it puts her on a par with Him ; for it belongs to Jesus by right, to Mary only by privilege ; to Jesus by nature, to Mary only by giace and indulgence ; in Jesus we honour the very source of all innocence, in Mary only a stream from that source. Mary's inno- cence, in short, is but the outflowing on to a specially chosen creature, of Christ's own freedom from sin : and her spotlessness possesses a quality in which it differs from the purity of other innocent creatures, which is peculiarly comforting and encouraging to us. Inno- cence of life in ordinary human beings is rather apt to 1 Sermon xi. (in Assumpt. B. Mar. Virg.). Mary a Foreshadowing of Christ. 49 be a reproach to those of bad life, and to have a repelling effect on the guilty by seeming to condemn them. In Mary, however, the Divine Innocence from which hers is derived shines forth with its own character : and that character does not consist in a purity that seems to judge or reproach criminals, but in one that exists only to be their life and salvation. Hence this holy and innocent creature never repels or discourages us by the sight of her faultlessness, as she uses it only to raise and win pardon for us ; whilst by the shining light of her purity we may see to cleanse away our own offences. Then, having done this, we may become spiritually rich by filling our emptiness at the fountain of those innumerable graces, the possession of which as I said above constitutes the second special likeness of Mary to her Son. To treat adequately of these graces is, however, more difficult than to discuss her inno- cence ; for the mere recollection of her dignity as Mother of God makes it easy to realise her exemption from sin. But when it comes to setting forth the fulness of her graces, the mere thought of their number is overpowering, and one knows not where to begin. What I propose, therefore, is to indicate what their extent must be by considering the principle whence they all sprang, rather than to attempt describing them individually. This principle, of course, is the same as that of every grace and virtue that has adorned the whole human 4 5O Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. race from the beginning : the fact of Jesus Christ's union with mankind. But His union with His Mother is so much closer than with any other creature that it must naturally result in her 'being much more richly endowed with grace than any one else : indeed, we can hardly place any limit to the endowments that such a bond as hers with her Son would entitle her to. Had this bond been only such a one as ordinary mothers have with their children it must have brought her innumerable gifts from God ; but we must re- member what is too often overlooked, that the tie between Mary and Christ was something beyond that of mere parent and child, in two ways. First, it was a spiritual tie ; for Mary as we are specially told in Holy Scripture conceived her Son by Faith. When she went to visit St. Elizabeth the latter cried : " Blessed art thou that hast believed ! " * which was as much as to say, " thou art a mother, indeed, but it is thy faith that has made thee so ". From this the Fathers of the Church have unani- mously argued that the Blessed Virgin's union with her Son began in the exactly opposite way to that of ordinary mothers. They are united to their children corporally at first, conceiving them naturally, according to the flesh ; but she conceived hers purely by the Spirit, apart from nature, and had no corporal union with Him till after her act of faith and obedience had enabled her to receive Him within her : Prius concepit 1 Luke i. 43. Mary a Foreshadowing of Christ. 51 mente quam corpore, St. Augustine says. 1 Thus, its spiritual nature is the first great distinction between Mary's motherhood and that of other women. The second difference between them is that Christ chose to be miraculously born without a human father, and thus to receive His sacred flesh and blood from her alone when He became man. Hence His tie with her was not merely that of an only Son, but of an only Son to Whom she stood humanly speaking in the place of both parents, and from Whom she therefore had the right to a double share of His holy affections. Here, then, we have plainly set before us the Blessed Virgin's title to the " fulness of grace," modelled on that of Christ Himself, that I have claimed for her ; and from the greatness of her claim we may judge of the liberality with which it would be granted. When we see so clearly what she is to be to Him, we find no room left for doubting that He will send her into the world not only free from sin, but actually endowed with every virtue, that she may thus truly shadow forth, as a faithful image, the Messias to Whom she is to give birth when the time is ripe. Christ, we must never forget, is the Author of His own Mother's exist- ence ; and if even ordinary man is formed on the model of the Sacred Humanity, how much nearer to it must not that Mother's likeness be? 1 Sermon ccxv., n. 4, torn, v., col. 950 5 2 IV. ON THE NATIVITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. (Being two of Bossuet's Sermons combined.) "Quis, putas, puer iste erit? " (St. Luke i. 66). BEFORE the birth of Our Lord, all good men who lived in expectation of Israel's Redeemer incessantly longed for His coming. They ardently desired that the Eternal Father should hasten the hour of sending them their Deliverer ; and the transports of joy with which they would have greeted the smallest sign that that hour was approaching may be well imagined by us. Suppose them, then, to have known when the Blessed Virgin was born that she was to be the Saviour's Mother, what may we not conclude would have been their delight? Even as those races that worship the sun rejoice at the sight of his herald, the dawn, so would the men of faith in Israel have been enraptured at the thought of beholding the glorious birthday of her who was to usher in the coming of the " Desired of all Nations ". We who come after them can under- stand their feelings. Moved by reverence for Him Who chose her for His Mother, we come to-day to do On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. 53 honour to this newly-risen star : to deck her cradle not, indeed, with actual lilies and roses but with the holy desires and heartfelt praise that are the true flowers of the Spirit. I shall best express what I have to say of Mary's Nativity by arranging my subject under certain definite heads. I shall try to show that her first great advan- tage as the Mother of Jesus Christ will be her lasting blessedness in loving Him with a quite unequalled affection, and her second prerogative the corresponding love incapable of comparison that He will bear to her. I hope further to prove that she will possess a third wonderful privilege in the fact that her union with Jesus will unite her also in the closest manner with the Eternal Father ; and finally to explain how this union will confer on her the Motherhood of the Faithful, who are at once children of the Father and brethren of the Son. The subject is great and difficult ; but I enter upon it with confidence in the helping grace of the Blessed Trinity ; for is not Mary daughter of the Father, mother of the Son, and spouse of the Holy Ghost ? I. To begin with the two first-named privileges : my first point is that this new-born maiden is unspeakably blessed in being predestined to experience such ex- ceeding love for Him Who is alone really worthy of our hearts. 54 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. We all acknowledge that the highest gift ever given by God to His saints is love for the Lord Jesus. From the beginning of all ages, before His coming, He was the delight of the Patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob could hardly contain their joy at only remem- bering that He was to be born of their race. How, then, can Mary, from whose very flesh He is to spring who is to gaze on Him sleeping in her arms, or feeding from her virginal breast do otherwise than feel her whole being dilate with love of Him? And after- wards, when with His first infant lisp He begins to call her "Mother"; when, as His childish speech develops a little, she hears Him offer His earliest tribute of praise to God His Father ; and when, later, she sees Him in the privacy of home moving about, eagerly obedient to her lightest word : how burning will not be the ardour of her love ? But, besides the grace of loving Our Lord, another great gift of God is to be able to think much of Him. We well know that His Name is honey to the lips, light to the eyes, and a flame to the heart : 1 God has conferred a nameless grace on every one of His words and actions, to think on which is Eternal life. Those who think of them often, undoubtedly find unspeak- able comfort in so doing. In this practice consisted the whole sweetness of Mary's life : we see from the Gospels that she incessantly went over and over again in her thoughts whatever her Son said to her and 1 St. Bernard, Serm. xv. in Cant., n. 6, torn, i., col. 1311. On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. 55 whatever was said to her about Him : Maria autem conservabat omnia verba hcec in corde swo. 1 Only by depriving her of life itself could one have obliterated these thoughts from her heart, for they formed part of her very life-blood. If even ordinary mothers have their interests bound up in those of their sons how much more must Mary's have been so bound ? How intensely must she have admired His life, been charmed by His words, suffered in His passion, loved with His love, and rejoiced in His glory ! And when He returned to His Father, what must have been her impatience to go to Him ? St. Thomas 2 says that the inequality amongst the Blessed in Heaven will consist in this : that those who have most ardently desired the Divine presence in this world will enjoy it most abundantly in the next, because the sweetness of enjoyment is in pro- portion to the desire. By the burning impatience of St. Paul, who so craved for his Lord's embrace in eternity that he ardently wished to " be dissolved to be with Christ," 3 we may judge somewhat of what would be the feelings and longings of Christ's mother. Even Tobias's mother felt terribly one year's absence from her son : 4 and what an immeasurable distance between her love and that of Mary ! What, then, must be the place in Heaven to be attained by the Blessed Infant round whom our thoughts are centring to-day? If 1 Luke ii. 19. 2 I. Part., Quaest. xii., art. v . 3 Phil. i. 23. 4 Tob. v. 23 et seq. 56 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. her greatness is to be according to the measure of her desires she must surpass all the hierarchies of angels ; for her only fitting place amongst the heavenly hosts will be-close to the throne of her much-loved Son Himself, there to share the most intimate secrets of His heart, and to exert her all-powerful influence with Him for ever : there to offer those petitions for us which His filial love will make Him unable to refuse. This thought brings us naturally to consider the other side of our great subject : that Love with which the Son of God honours the Blessed Virgin. If it is difficult to treat the first affection as it deserves, it seems well-nigh impossible to say anything adequate of the second ; for in as far as Our Lord necessarily surpasses Mary in all other things, so He must be far greater in His capacity of Son than she in that of Mother. The only suitable, as well as the most moving, way of treating such a subject is to see what can be found about it in the Gospels : as, indeed, may be said of all subjects ; for one word of Holy Scripture has more power over the soul than all that human eloquence can produce. What, then, can we discover in the Sacred writings that will help towards some realisation of Christ's feelings for His Mother ? Nothing, I think, to equal the wonderful account of His deep love of human nature itself. It is worth while to make a short digression for considering this. On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. 57 The manner in which Our Saviour took upon Him- self everything belonging to man sin alone excepted even to our greatest infirmities, is an unanswerable argument against those unpardonable heretics who, having dared to deny the reality of His sacred flesh, necessarily denied the reality of His sufferings and human passions. By doing this they deprived them- selves of the greatest possible consolation ; for, what- ever sort of trouble we may be afflicted with, we may always remember that we have the honour of en- during it in our Divine Master's company, when we know that all His human weaknesses were actually real. If a man suffers from want, let Him think of His Saviour's hunger and thirst, and extreme indigence. Is he injured in reputation ? His Lord was " despised and rejected of men ". Does some depressing in- firmity keep hold of him ? Christ " suffered unto death ". Or, again, we may be overpowered by a crushing sense of weariness : then we can go to the garden of olives, and there behold Our Lord in a state of such fear, sadness, and overwhelming oppression that He actually sweats blood and water at the mere thought of His trial. No one has ever heard of such a thing as this in the case of any other person ; therefore we may safely say that never did any human being possess feelings so tender, so deli- cate, and so strong, as Our Saviour's : though they were kept under extreme control because of being perfectly subject to the Will of His Father. 5 8 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Now, the relation that all this bears to the special point under consideration is twofold. First (as we have already seen in connection with the subject of Mary's immaculate conception) the thought that Christ took upon Himself, so wholly and sincerely, such infirmities of our race as might even seem un- worthy of Him, makes us certain that He cannot possibly have failed to adopt the universal and natural feeling of filial devotion towards her who had bestowed His human life upon Him. Next, if we remember how deeply the special acuteness of His feelings would make Him love His Mother on even ordinary grounds, we shall the better understand what must have been His affection for such a mother as Mary, in return for such gifts as He had received from her. It is not too bold to say that, as man, He owed to her besides life itself a portion of His glory, and the purity of His flesh. This statement, though perhaps a little startling at first sight, is none the less true ; neither does it in any way detract from the glory of the Master. It may be well proved from an argument set forth by St. Augustine in many fine passages of his writings, but especially in his books against Julian. This great man, from the lamentable fact that concupiscence has a share in all ordinary births, draws the conclusion that that accursed thing corrupting whatever it comes near so poisons the matter whence our bodies are formed that the flesh composed of it necessarily con- On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. 59 tracts corruption. Hence, the glorified bodies which we are to have at the Resurrection will not be born anew " of the will of man, or of the will of the flesh " ; but the spirit of God wi!4 breathe life into them again, when they shall have left in the Earth all the impurities of their first birth. Now, if the concupiscence attached to the ordinary mode of generation has thus deeply contaminated our bodies, we may be sure that the fruit of virginal flesh will, contrariwise, draw marvellous purity from its incorrupt root ; and as Our Saviour's sacred flesh must of necessity exceed the very Sun itself in purity, He chose from eternity as we have also seen in speaking of her conception a Virgin Mother from whom He should take this flesh, so that she might bear her Son by faith alone, untouched by concupiscence. What, then, must we believe this Child born to-day will become ? " Quis, putas, puer iste erit ? " To love God, and to be loved by Him, are two purely gratuitous, supernatural, gifts to all ordinary beings. But she is to be the Mother of God : her Divine Saviour is to be her Son. Therefore, as a mother, she will naturally love her Son ; whilst she will have a right to His love, as her Child, which no other human being can possess. From this necessary mutual love spring two impor- tant consequences. First, the greatness of the gifts that Our Lord will undoubtedly bestow on His Mother ; secondly, the wonderful relation of Mary to the Eternal Father which this beautiful tie between 60 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, Mother and Child will produce : for can the Father help loving what the Son loves ? Is it not in the very person of God the Son that heaven and earth are to be reconciled ; and are not all our hopes actually founded on His being the eternal bond between God and man ? So that it must be taken as indisputably established that she, through whom this bond is formed, will be especially loved. But the union of Mary with God the Father, caused by her wonderful maternity, is not merely a tie on the human side, as may possibly be supposed. It includes a further and peculiar privilege, the nature of which I shall now go on to discuss separately. 2. The line of reasoning that I shall take upon this point an exceedingly delicate one, on account of the ease with which one may fall into error on the subject has been to some extent suggested by what has been already said of the Blessed Virgin's love for her Son. The doctrine I would now set forth rests on the conclusion that this love of hers did not stop short at His humanity ; but, taking that humanity for a con- necting link, passed on to the Divine Nature, which is inseparable from it. If we would illustrate such a deep theological point by something familiar, we can only remember once more how the love of any really devoted mother extends to everything connected with her son : to his friends his general concerns his On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. 61 possessions, and so on : but, most of all, to whatever has to do with his own person, about which she is apt to be sensitive to the very highest degree. Now, let us ask, what was the Divine Nature to the Son of Mary? In what way, and how nearly, did it touch His Person ? We need only our Faith to give an answer. Every day, when we say our Creed, we profess belief in " Jesus Christ the Son of God born of the Virgin Mary ". Do we, then, understand that He whom we acknowledge as the Son of Almighty God, and He who was born of the Virgin, are two persons ? Most certainly not. It is the same Person Who, being God and man, is Son of God according to the Divine Nature, and Son of Mary according to humanity. Hence it is that the Fathers declared the Blessed Virgin to be the Mother of God. It was faith in this truth that triumphed over the blasphemies of Nestorius, and that will make the devils tremble to the end of the world. Now, surely, if I say that Mary must love her Son entirely no one will venture to dispute it : and if it is true that both these natures belong to Him, then she must necessarily cherish Him as a God-man. The mystery of such a love, it is true, can be compared to nothing on earth ; and hence we are compelled to raise our thoughts even as high as the Eternal Father Himself to find a comparison. Ever since human nature was joined to the Person of the Word, it has necessarily been an object of complacency to the Father. These are lofty thoughts, 62 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, I acknowledge ; but, as they are really fundamental principles of Christianity, it is of importance that they should be understood by the faithful ; and I shall put forward nothing that cannot be proved from the Scriptures. Of whom, then, are we to suppose that the Eternal Father was speaking when that miraculous voice from God broke forth on Mount Tabor : " This is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased " ? * Was it not of that Word made flesh who was then appearing transfigured before the eyes of His Apostles? By such an authentic declaration as this, therefore, God made it clear that His Fatherly Love reaches to the humanity of His Son ; and that, having joined the human nature so closely to the Divine, He will never more separate them in His affections. In this declara- tion, too, if we can but thoroughly grasp it, we shall find the whole foundation of our hope to consist ; for it puts before us the fact that Jesus, Who is man even as we are, is recognised and loved by God as His own Son. Now, let none take scandal when I say that there is a certain likeness to this love of the Father in the Blessed Virgin's affection, inasmuch as her love em- braces at once the Divinity and humanity of her Son which God's almighty Hand has so closely joined : for God, in His mysterious counsels, having judged it fitting to decree that the Virgin should beget, in Time, that One Whom He is continually begetting 1 Matt. xvii. 5. On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. 63 in Eternity, has thus in some sort associated her with His eternal act of generation. Consider this deep mystery well : understand that to make her mother of that self-same Son to Whom He is Father, is indeed to let her take part in His own begetting. Hence, having once given her, as it were, this share in His eternal act of generation, it was becoming, and worthy of His wisdom, that a spark of His Infinite Love for that Son should enkindle her breast. As the providence of God disposes of all things with wonderful justice, it seems even necessary that He should fill the Blessed Virgin's heart with an affection far beyond that of mere nature, and reaching even to the very highest degree of grace ; so that she might have for her Son feelings that should be at the same time fit for a mother of God, and worthy of a God- man. Not even the intellect of the sublimest of angels could enable one to comprehend this most perfect union of the Eternal Father with her. God " so loved the world," as Our Lord Himself says, " as to give His only-begotten Son " ; x and the Apostle further declares that He has " also, with Him, given us all things ". 2 If, then, He did this out of the true affection He had for us because He had given us His Only-Begotten as Master and Saviour, what far greater designs must not His unspeakable love have made Him form for Mary, concerning whom He had decreed that Jesus 1 John iii. 16. " Rom, viii. 32. 64 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. should belong to her in the same capacity in which He belongs to Him : that she should be the Mother of His only Son, and that He would be the Father of hers ? O prodigious abyss of love ! The mind gets beyond its depth in trying to think of this mysterious union : in considering what an object of delight Mary must have been to the Father, from the moment when a Divine Son common to a woman of flesh and to the Godhead Himself became the bond between Him and her. Truly, then, whatever praises we may offer to a Child with this destiny are far below her deserts. The mere contemplation of her grandeur as pre- destined Mother of God dazzles our mental sight, and makes us unable to speak of her as we would. But, having treated of her to the best of my power in this great position, which seems to raise her so far above us, I would now bring her shortly before you in that relation to ourselves which I have referred to as a special consequence of her alliance with the Eternal Father. I may, as my final point, show how her greatness must necessarily be a beneficent great- ness, and how her wonderful dignity carries with it the office of Mother of the Faithful. 3- It is the very nature of God, who possesses in Him- self every perfection and everything that can possibly On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. 65 have existence every grace and gift, every beauty that we behold in creation to give. One of the noblest and most worthy of many ideas that we may form of the Divine Essence is to look upon It as not only a treasure-house of unlimited perfections, but as one that must open and pour itself forth on creatures. And why ? Chiefly because one of its chief attributes is goodness. To begin with, creatures would never exist at all if God did not draw them forth from their nothingness by imparting to them, so to speak, a share of His own Being ; and we have already discussed the great extent to which His love for man makes Him go in bestowing favours upon Him. St. Augustine says that there are only three reasons for giving at all : first, necessity, or compulsion ; secondly, self-interest, or expectation of some advantage in return ; thirdly, beneficence, which proceeds from pure goodness. It is very clear that God cannot give from either of the two first motives ; hence He must give out of simple love, which is the quality proper to goodness. But if love is proper to goodness, fertility is proper to love. Indeed, one sort of fertility is love, as opposed to the fertility of nature. In the ordinary course of things we see people without children adopt them ; and hence St. Augustine often calls charity " a Mother " : Charitas Mater est. 1 Now, this double kind of fertility that we see in creatures emanates 1 In Ep. Joan., tract ii., n. 4, torn. Hi., part ii., col. 838. 5 66 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. from the same quality in God, whence all paternity proceeds. The Nature of God is fruitful, and pro- duces His Son by Nature Whom He begets in Eternity. The love of God is fruitful, giving Him adopted sons ; and all who are His " children by adoption " are born of this second fertility. Mary shares in the natural fertility of God by begetting His own son ; but as the sole cause of her dignity, and of Christ's Incarnation, is the love of God for man, she must necessarily also share in the fertility of His Love by begetting the Faithful, in whose birth she has " co-operated by her charity " : cooler ata est charitate. 1 Mary, then, is at the same time Mother of Christ and our Mother ; and this gives us double reason for keeping the anniversary of her birth with joy, since it gives her a twofold power of intercession. To be a perfectly efficacious intercessor before the throne of God, the one who pleads must possess equal nearness to God and to man ; and of what creature but Mary can this be said ? As Mother of Christ she is close to the Eternal Father, and as Mother of the Faithful she is close to us : hence her position as a pleader is quite exceptional. But if she is, by virtue of her dignity and office, necessarily Mother of the Faithful, not all the Faithful are her worthy children whom she will acknowledge and help : on certain conditions only may we rely on 1 St. Aug. de Sancta Virginit., n. 6, torn, vi., col. 343. On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. 67 her powerful intercession. These conditions, however, may all be reduced to one : to the fulfilment of the Will of God after the pattern of Our Lord Jesus Christ. If Mary's existence is bound up, as we have seen that it is, in that of her Son, those only who love Him can be loved by her ; and He Himself has placed the true test of love for all Christians in obedience. But our obedience is to be like His : and what was that ? It was very simple : Christ pleased not Himself. 1 He did only the Will of His Father without any choice as to what It should be ; and as the Father's Will was suffer- ing, He suffered "unto death". His Mother did the same : she had not even a sight of the glory on Mount Tabor, but had to bear her full share of the ignominy of the Cross. Nay, it was actually at the foot of the Cross that her Son specially proclaimed her our Mother ; and this for two reasons : that she might have a true experience of the deepest sorrows of motherhood, so as to sympathise with us ; and that we might know how only through courageously and lovingly suffering what God wills, and taking up our cross as He has commanded, can we ever be her genuine children. And to finish my subject with a suggestion far above ordinary human ideas this is not all. We may do more than be worthy and trustful chil- dren of Mary, by doing the Will of God in all things and loving the Cross. We may even O wonderful thought ! share in some sort the glorious privilege 1 Rom. xv. 3. 68 Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. of her Maternity. If this sounds impossible or pre- sumptuous, listen to Christ Himself; for does He not say : " He who doth the Will of My Father Who is in Heaven, the same is My brother, and My sister, and My Mother"? 1 1 Mark iii. 32, seq. V. FOR THE FEAST OF THE ANNUNCIATION. " Creavit Dominus novum super terram : faemina circumdabit virum " (Jerem. xxxi. 22). OUT of that great and terrible wreck, in which human reason lost its chief possessions, and especially the Truth for which God had formed it, the mind of man has retained a vague and uneasy desire to recover some vestiges of that truth ; and of this desire has been born an almost incredible love of novelty, which appears in the world in various forms, and exercises minds of various kinds. Some, it merely impels to collect countless foreign curiosities ; more energetic spirits are driven by the feeling to exhaust themselves in attempts to discover fresh walks in art, or in the management of business ; whilst others, again, search nature for her hidden secrets from the same motive. In short, it may be asserted of this desire for " some- thing new " that throughout the universe no feeling has a stronger hold on human nature, or is a more common incentive to all forms of activity. To cure this disease, God Himself sets before us in Scripture 7