Holy Family: St. Bernard: Homily 1 Super Missus 7-8: God is subject to Mary

The God and Lord of the angels Mary called her Son. My Son, she said, why hast thou treated us so? What angel would dare to do that? It is enough for them—in fact, they consider it a great privilege—that being spirits by nature, they are made God's messengers by grace and thus acquire the name of angels; for as David says, God has his messages carried by spirits. But as Mary knew she was God's mother, she could in all confidence call him her Son, whereas all the angels could do was to give his majesty their reverent service.

For his part, God did not disdain to be called what he had deigned to be. He lived there in subjection to them, the evangelist says a little later. Think who it was that was thus living in subjection, and who it was that he was subject to. The person in subjection was God, and he was subject to human beings. The God to whom the angels are subject, the God whom principalities and powers obey, was subject to Mary—and not only to Mary but to Joseph too, for Mary's sake.

Which is the more remarkable I leave it for you to decide; it is for you to say which impresses you the more: that the Son in his mercy should stoop so low, or that the mother should be raised so high. Wonder and amazement overwhelm us on both grounds. That God should Obey a woman was an unparalleled example of humility; that a woman should command her God was for her untold sublimity. Virgins are especially praised for following the Lamb wherever he goes. What praise, then, will be due to one who not only followed but preceded him?

We men must learn to obey. We are but earth, and must learn to be of service; we are dust, and must learn to submit. To hear the Evangelist, say of our Creator that he lived there in subjection to them should make us blush, mere ashes that we are and bursting with pride. God humbled himself, and do we dare to exalt ourselves? God subjected himself to men, but we want to lord it over our fellow men, and so we set ourselves above our Creator. How I wish that God would reproach me when he found me thinking such thoughts, as he reproached his apostle with the words: Back, Satan: for these thoughts of thine are man's, not God's. Whenever I want to thrust myself in before other men, I am trying to place myself above my God; and then my thoughts are undeniably man's not God's;  for of God we are told that he lived in subjection to them. We may scorn to follow another man's example, but we cannot think it beneath us to follow our Creator. And if we cannot, perhaps, follow him everywhere he goes, let us at least condescend to follow him to the depths he has stooped to for our sakes.