Third Sunday in Lent,
26th March 1848.
There is a passage in the Gospel of this day, which
may have struck many of us as needing some illustration. While our Lord was
preaching, a woman in the crowd cried out, "Blessed is the womb that bore
Thee and the breasts which Thou hast sucked" (Luke 11). Our Lord assents,
but instead of dwelling on the good words of this woman, He goes on to say
something further. He speaks of a greater blessedness. "Yea," He
says, "but blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it."
Now these words of our Lord require notice, if it were only for this reason,
because there are many persons nowadays who think they are said in depreciation
of the glory and blessedness of the Most Holy Virgin Mary; as if our Lord had
said, "My Mother is blessed, but my true servants are more blessed than
she is." I shall say some words then on this passage, and with a peculiar
fitness, because we have just passed the festival of Lady Day, the great feast
on which we commemorate the Annunciation, that is, the visit of the Angel
Gabriel to her, and the miraculous conception of the Son of God, her Lord and
Saviour, in her womb.
Now a very few
words will be sufficient to show that our Lord's words are no disparagement to
the dignity and glory of His Mother, as the first of creatures and the Queen of
all Saints. For consider, He says that it is a more blessed thing to keep His
commandments than to be His Mother, and do you think that the Most Holy Mother
of God did not keep the commandments of God? Of course no one, no Protestant
even - no one will deny she did. Well, if so, what our Lord says is that the
Blessed Virgin was more blessed in that she kept His commandments than because
she was His Mother. And what Catholic denies this? On the contrary we all
confess it. All Catholics confess it. The Holy Fathers of the Church tell us again
and again that our Lady was more blessed in doing God's will than in being His
Mother. She was blessed in two ways. She was blessed in being His Mother; she
was blessed in being filled with the spirit of faith and obedience. And the
latter blessedness was the greater. I say the Holy Fathers say so expressly.
St. Augustine says, "More blessed was Mary in receiving the faith of
Christ, than in receiving the flesh of Christ." In like manner St.
Elizabeth says to her at the Visitation, "Beata es quae credidisti,
Blessed art thou who didst believe"; and St. Chrysostom goes so far as to
say that she would not have been blessed, even though she had borne Christ in
the body, unless she had heard the word of God and kept it.
Now I have used
the expression "St. Chrysostom goes so far as to say," not that it is
not a plain truth. I say, it is a plain truth that the Blessed Virgin would not
have been blessed, though she had been the Mother of God, if she had not done
His will, but it is an extreme thing to say, for it is supposing a thing
impossible, it is supposing that she could be so highly favoured and yet not be
inhabited and possessed by God's grace, whereas the Angel, when he came,
expressly hailed her as full of grace. "Ave, gratia plena." The two
blessednesses cannot be divided. (Still it is remarkable that she herself had
an opportunity of contrasting and dividing them, and that she preferred to keep
God's commandments to being His Mother, if she could not have both.) She who
was chosen to be the Mother of God was also chosen to be gratia plena, full of
grace. This you see is an explanation of those high doctrines which are
received among Catholics concerning the purity and sinlessness of the Blessed
Virgin. St. Augustine will not listen to the notion that she ever committed
sin, and the Holy Council of Trent declares that by special privilege she
through all her life avoided all, even venial sin. And at this time you know it
is the received belief of Catholics that she was not conceived in original sin,
and that her conception was immaculate.
Whence come these doctrines? They come from the
great principle contained in our Lord's words on which I am commenting. He
says, "More blessed is it to do God's will than to be God's Mother."
Do not say that Catholics do not feel this deeply - so deeply do they feel it
that they are ever enlarging on her virginity, purity, immaculateness, faith,
humility and obedience. Never say then that Catholics forget this passage of
Scripture. Whenever they keep the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the
Purity, or the like, recollect it is because they make so much of the
blessedness of sanctity. The woman in the crowd cried out, "Blessed is the
womb and the breasts of Mary." She spoke in faith; she did not mean to
exclude her higher blessedness, but her words only went a certain way.
Therefore our Lord completed them. And therefore His Church after Him, dwelling
on the great and sacred mystery of His Incarnation, has ever felt that she, who
so immediately ministered to it, must have been most holy. And therefore for
the honour of the Son she has ever extolled the glory of the Mother. As we give
Him of our best, ascribe to Him what is best, as on earth we make our churches
costly and beautiful; as when He was taken down from the cross, His pious
servants wrapped Him in fine linen, and laid Him in a tomb in which never man
was laid; as His dwelling place in heaven is pure and stainless - so much more
ought to be - so much more was - that tabernacle from which He took flesh, in which
He lay, holy and immaculate and divine. As a body was prepared for Him, so was
the place of that body prepared also. Before the Blessed Mary could be Mother
of God, and in order to her being Mother, she was set apart, sanctified, filled
with grace, and made meet for the presence of the Eternal.
And the Holy
Fathers have ever gathered the exact obedience and the sinlessness of the
Blessed Virgin from the very narrative of the Annunciation, when she became the
Mother of God. For when the Angel appeared to her and declared to her the will
of God, they say that she displayed especially four graces, humility, faith,
obedience and purity. Nay, these graces were as it were, preparatory conditions
to her being made the minister of so high a dispensation. So that if she had
not had faith, and humility, and purity, and obedience, she would not have
merited to be God's Mother. Thus it is common to say that she conceived Christ
in mind before she conceived Him in body, meaning that the blessedness of faith
and obedience preceded the blessedness of being a Virgin Mother. Nay, they even
say that God waited for her consent before He came into her and took flesh of
her. Just as He did no mighty works in one place because they had not faith, so
this great miracle, by which He became the Son of a creature, was suspended
till she was tried and found meet for it - till she obeyed.
But there is
something more to be added to this. I said just now that the two blessednesses
could not be divided, that they went together. "Blessed is the womb,"
etc.; "Yea, rather blessed," etc. It is true, but observe this. The
Holy Fathers always teach that in the Annunciation, when the Angel appeared to
our Lady, she showed that she preferred what our Lord called the greater of the
two blessednesses to the other. For when the Angel announced to her that she
was destined to have that blessedness which Jewish women had age after age
looked out for, to be the Mother of the expected Christ, she did not seize the
news, as another would, but she waited. She waited till she could be told it
was consistent with her Virgin state. She was unwilling to accept this most
wonderful honour, unwilling till she could be satisfied on this point.
"How shall this be, since I know not man?" They consider that she had
made a vow of virginity, and considered that holy estate a greater thing than
to bear the Christ. Such is the teaching of the Church, showing distinctly how
closely she observes the doctrine of the words of Scripture on which I am
commenting, how intimately she considers that the Blessed Mary felt them, viz.
that though blessed was the womb that bore Christ and the breasts which He
sucked, yet more blessed was the soul which owned that womb and those breasts,
more blessed was the soul full of grace, which because it was so gracious was
rewarded with the extraordinary privilege to be made the Mother of God.
But now a further question arises, which it may be
worth considering. It may be asked, Why did our blessed Lord even seem to
extenuate the honour and privilege of His Mother? When the woman said,
"Blessed is the womb," etc., He answered indeed, "Yea." But
He went on, "Yea, rather blessed." And on another occasion, if not on
this, He said when someone told Him that His Mother and brethren were without,
"Who is My Mother?" etc. And at an earlier time, when He began His
miracles, and His Mother told Him that the guests in the marriage feast had no
wine, He said, "Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet
come." These passages seem to be coldly worded towards the Blessed Virgin,
even though the sense may be satisfactorily explained. What then do they mean?
Why did He so speak?
Now I shall give
two reasons in explanation:
1. The first
which more immediately rises out of what I have been saying is this: that for
many centuries the Jewish women had looked out each of them to be the Mother of
the expected Christ, and had not associated it apparently with any higher
sanctity. Therefore they had been so desirous of marriage; therefore marriage
was held in such special honour by them. Now marriage is an ordinance of God,
and Christ has made it a sacrament - yet there is a higher state, and that the
Jews did not understand. Their whole idea was to associate religion with
pleasures of this world. They did not know, commonly speaking, what it was to
give up this world for the next. They did not understand that poverty was
better than riches, ill name than good name, fast and abstinence than feasting,
and virginity than marriage. And therefore when the woman in the crowd cried
out upon the blessedness of the womb that bore Him and the breasts that He had
sucked, He taught her and all who heard Him that the soul was greater than the
body, and that to be united to Him in spirit was more than to be united to Him
in flesh.
2. This is one
reason, and the other is more interesting to us. You know that our Saviour for
the first thirty years of His earthly life lived under the same roof as His
Mother. When He returned from Jerusalem at the age of twelve with her and St.
Joseph, it is expressly said that He was subject to them. This is a very strong
expression, but that subjection, that familiar family life, was not to last to
the end. Even on the occasion upon which the Evangelist says that He was subject
to them, He had said and done what emphatically conveyed to them that He had
other duties. For He had left them and stayed in the Temple among the doctors,
and when they expressed surprise, He answered, "Wist ye not that I ought
to be in the things which are My Father's?" This was, I say, an
anticipation of the time of His Ministry, when He was to leave His home. For
thirty years He remained there, but, as He was steadily observant of His home
duties, while they were His duties, so was He zealous about His Father's work,
when the time came for His performing it. When the time of His mission came, He
left His home and His Mother and, dear as she was to Him, He put her aside.
In the Old
Testament the Levites are praised because they knew not father or mother, when
duty to God came in the way. "Who said to his father and to his mother, I
know you not, and to his brothers, I am ignorant of you" (Deut. 33).
"They knew not their children." If such was the conduct of the
sacerdotal tribe under the Law, well did it become the great and one Priest of
the New Covenant to give a pattern of that virtue which was found and rewarded
in Levi. He too Himself has said, "He who loveth father or mother more
than Me, is not worthy of Me." And He tells us that "every one who
hath left home or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children
or lands for His name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess
eternal life" (Matt. 19). It became then Him who gave the precept to set
the example, and as He told his followers to leave all they had for the
Kingdom's sake, in His own Person to do all that He could, to leave all He had,
to leave His home and His Mother, when He had to preach the Gospel.
Therefore it was
that from the beginning of His ministry, He gave up His Mother. At the time He
did His first miracle, He proclaimed it. He did that miracle at her bidding,
but He implied, or rather declared, that He was then beginning to separate from
her. He said, "What is between Me and thee?" And again, "My hour
is not yet come," that is, The hour cometh when I shall acknowledge thee
again, 0 my Mother. The hour cometh when thou rightly and powerfully wilt
intercede with Me. The hour cometh when at thy bidding I will do miracles: it
cometh, but it is not yet come. And till it is come "What is between thee
and Me? I know thee not. For the time I have forgotten thee."
From that time we
have no record of His seeing His Mother till He saw her under His Cross. He
parted with her. Once she tried to see Him. A report went about that He was
beside Himself. His friends went out to get possession of Him. The Blessed
Virgin apparently did not like to be left behind. She went Out too. A message
came to Him that they were seeking Him, could not reach Him for the press. Then
He said those serious words, "Who is My Mother?" etc., meaning, as it
would appear, that He had left all for God's service, and that, as for our sake
He had been born of the Virgin, so for our sake He gave up His Virgin Mother,
that He might glorify His heavenly Father and do His work.
Such was His
separation from the Blessed Mary, but when on the Cross He said, "It is
finished," this time of separation was at an end. And therefore before it
His blessed Mother had joined Him, and He seeing her, recognized her again. His
hour was come, and He said to her of St. John, "Woman, behold thy
son," and to St. John, "Behold thy Mother."
And now, my
Brethren, in conclusion I will but say one thing. I do not wish your words to
outrun your real feeling. I do not wish you to take up books containing the
praises of the Ever Blessed Virgin, and to use them and imitate them rashly
without consideration. But be sure of this, that if you cannot enter into the
warmth of foreign books of devotion, it is a deficiency in you. To use strong
words will not mend the matter; it is a fault within which can only gradually
be overcome, but it is a deficiency, for this reason, if for no other. Depend
upon it, the way to enter into the sufferings of the Son, is to enter into the
sufferings of the Mother. Place yourselves at the foot of the Cross, see Mary
standing there, looking up and pierced with the sword. Imagine her feelings,
make them your own. Let her be your great pattern. Feel what she felt and you
will worthily mourn over the death and passion of your and her Saviour. Have
her simple faith, and you will believe well. Pray to be filled with the grace
given to her. Alas, you must have many feelings she had not, the feeling of
personal sin, of personal sorrow, of contrition, and self hate, but these will
in a sinner naturally accompany the faith, the humility, the simplicity which
were her great ornaments. Lament with her, believe with her, and at length you
will experience her blessedness of which the text speaks. None indeed can have
her special prerogative, and be the Mother of the Highest, but you will have a
share in that blessedness of hers which is greater, the blessedness of doing
God's will and keeping His commandments.
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