Monday, December 7, 2020

Sermon of St. Thomas of Villanova: Serm. in Concept. Virginis The light of Mary



    Sermon of St. Thomas of Villanova: Serm. in Concept. Virginis  The light of Mary

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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