There is no niggardly weighing and measuring in
the Virgin's character. She has given her gifts to us all, and given them to
the full. Just as the Sun of Justice, Christ our God, makes his light shine on
the evil and equally on the good, so that other unfailing light, the holy
Virgin, sends out the beams of her mercy on all alike, and is kind and
sympathetic to all without distinction; her compassion goes out to us unstinted
in all our difficulties.
Innumerable multitudes were filled with joy when
that bright lamp, burning with the brightness of God himself, was seen for the
first time—when Mary appeared in her mother's womb. The conception of God's
virgin mother was a token of the joy that was to come to the world.4 Well might
the prophet ask in his marriage-song: Who is this, whose coming shows like
the dawn of day? No moon so fair, no sun so majestic, no embattled array so
awes men's hearts.
Mary entered the world radiant, like dawn, because
at her immaculate conception the true Sun was over her. Though the Sun of
Justice was not yet to rise from within her, he none the less bestowed upon her
rising a kind of morning glory: he poured over her a copious supply of the
beams of his own light, and with them she routed those powers of darkness which
Eve had called into action.
When she is called, fair as the moon, it is no
idle comparison: for of all the heavenly bodies, the moon is the one most like
the sun; it derives its beauty from that likeness and from its own luster. And
like the moon, Mary outshines in her manifold purity all the thousands of stars
that stand in God's sight. She is as fair, then, as the moon; in fact, she is
fairer: she is fair in every respect. There is no blemish in her, whether of
original sin or of actua1: no blemish at all; not the shadow of one. She is as majestic, as choice, as the sun.
That other Sun, the sun's Creator, is choice as well—chosen out of thousands.
They are both the Lord's choice: he out of thousands of men, she out of
thousands of women.
No embattled array so awes men's hearts as
Mary. How
the princes of darkness must have shuddered when they saw her coming out to
meet them—a woman, immaculately conceived against all precedent and equipped
with the strongest of all armor. When her soul was infused into her body,
mighty hosts of spiritual powers, countless armies of blessed spirits were on
duty. Not a doubt of it: there they were, on guard round the spotless bed that
stood waiting for Solomon;2 and there they watched for the enemy, ready to
pounce if he tried to break in where the eternal King was to lie.
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