Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 3
Immaculate Conception
Mary Conceived without Sin.
"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women." — Luke i. 28.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex.: I. Satolli. II. Mary's place in Redemption. III. Her blessedness.
I. 1. Protestant testimony and woman's sphere. 2. Exceptions. 3. Mary's prototypes.
II. I. John's vision. 2. Doctrine of original sin and its transmission. 3. Solitary exception.
III. Proofs of dogma: 1. New Adam. 2. Ave and Eva. 3. Canticle of Canticles.
Per.: 1. Protestant and Catholic. 2. Married, single; rich, poor. 3. Sodality.
SERMON.
Brethren, I remember long ago at school how the Professor, then Monsignor, now Cardinal Satolli — the Professor, I say, was wont to preface his every lecture with a simple invocation — a single Hail Mary. When asked why he never chose a longer or better prayer he replied that he knew none better or more appropriate. " For," said he, " as Mary, after the annunciation of the Angel Gabriel, conceived and bore the Saviour of mankind, so I pray that God may give me the eloquence of an angel to announce to you the word of God, that your souls may conceive of the Holy Ghost and bring forth salvation unto many." And in fact, the work of our Redemption — Christianity in its final analysis — must always bring us back to Mary. She was the first gentle flower to bloom forth in the springtime of the new era — that wondrous plant that bore her fruit in motherhood but still retained the blossom of her virginity. The name " Mary " is interpreted as the " bitterness of the sea," but the bitterness of her life was all her own: to us she became the star of the sea, leading us on to our glorious destination. " All generations," she says, " shall call me blessed." Twice blessed rather, for virginity and fruitful maternity are woman's greatest blessings, and Mary, the virginal Mother of the Man of men, became in the birth of her first-born the spiritual Mother of us all. Such a singular combination of prerogatives simply defies exaggeration. No eulogist of her, however perfect, but can say: " Condescend to hear my praises, O sacred Virgin, and give me strength against thy enemies."
Though Protestants, as such, never will and never can understand this devotion, still it was only the other day one of them said that woman need never hope to achieve her proper position in society until the Christian world unites in honoring Mary as she deserves. For it is a truth proven by human experience since the very beginning of humanity, that in the conduct of this world's affairs, be they social, political, or religious, woman's part must ever be an inferior one, secondary and subordinate to that of man. That such was and is Nature's intent is evidenced in the purely animal kingdom, where the distinctive characteristics of the sexes, their different organisms and duties, all proclaim the preeminence of the sterner sex and the consequent dependence of the weaker. Man, too, half animal, half spirit as he is, verifies in himself this universal law. His body mirrors Nature as faithfully as his soul reflects the image of God. But besides her bodily inaptitude, there is in woman's character a certain lack of force — a certain narrowness of mind and natural timidity — which, though in her legitimate sphere they be her fairest ornaments, must still ever render her unfit for the sterner duties of life. The demon tempter of our first parents by his artful methods betrayed his keen insight into woman's instability, for not directly but through woman's weakness was he enabled to accomplish the fall of man. Even the Creator Himself gives testimony of this truth. Having told in the first chapter of Genesis of man's creation as lord of the earth, He in the second chapter, and as it were, by an afterthought adds: " It is not good for man to be alone. Let us make for him a companion and helpmeet."
Nevertheless there is no rule without its exceptions. Not to mention the living examples in modern society, we find in the pages of history conspicuous instances of women, eminent in every branch of human activity — in literature, in the arts and sciences, in the council-chamber, on the throne, and even on the battlefield. The lives of such women as St. Catherine of Alexandria, of Queen Isabella of Spain, of Queen Catherine the Great of Russia, and of the immortal Maid of Orleans, all go to prove, if proof were necessary, how true it is that God frequently chooses the weak things of this world to conquer the strong.
Going back further still, we find the same exception proving the same rule. In the history of God's chosen people special mention is made of five women who, at different times, were the joy and the crown of their age: Mary, the sister of Moses and Aaron, who led the Israelites through the Red Sea, chanting the while her magnificat to the Lord; Abigail, the wife of Nabal, David's enemy, whose eloquence and beauty so touched the king's heart that he spared her husband and her people, and styled her blessed among women; Ruth, whom filial devotion led far from home and fatherland, and whose faithfulness finally gained for her first place in her master's love and house; Judith, who having slain Holofernes, the scourge of her people, was styled by them " the Glory of Jerusalem, the Joy of Israel; " and finally Anna, the mother of Samuel, — Samuel whom she wrung from God by prayers and tears, only to return him magnanimously to the Lord. Now it is a singular fact, providential surely, that the initial letters of these five names — Mary, Abigail, Ruth, Judith and Anna, taken in order spell the name Maria; spell the name of her in whom were focused all the virtues of those that preceded her and those that followed; who was second only to the Man-God. If a greater than John the Baptist was never born of woman in the Old Law, surely, with the single exception of Christ, a greater than Mary was never born of woman in the New. The painter Zeuxis, we are told, depicted his ideal woman by copying the various graces of many models into one figure, and ancient mythology has it that each divinity lent a charm to grace the Queen of Love. A myth, yes, but a myth founded on a fact— on Mary's creation. She is that Ruth whose loving heart recked not of home or country but only of her people and her Lord; she is that Judith who slew man's bitterest foe when she crushed the head of the serpent; she is that Abigail by whose eloquent beauty the wrath of the King of kings was turned to mercy. The Child of her prayers she gave, like Anna, freely to the Lord; but most of all she is that Mary who alone of mortals passed through the sea of this sinful world dry-shod and without a stain. Man may say that but for Eve Adam had never sinned; he may point to his sex deified in the person of the Saviour; but still, speaking of the purely mortal, we can and do turn to-night to a woman, to Mary, and salute her in the words of the poet as: " Our tainted Nature's solitary boast."
Brethren, in the Apocalypse Mary is described as the Woman clothed with the sun of God's effulgent grace, the moon — the changeful moon — under her feet, and on her head a crown of stars — the brightest star of them all her Immaculate Conception. Alone of mortals, she, from the instant of her creation, was preserved from the stain of original sin. We read that the prophet Jeremias and John the Baptist were sanctified in their mother's womb, but still each was created, each conceived, in sin. In fact, with Mary as a solitary exception, every child of Adam is heir to Adam's guilt. In the beginning God made man right, says Ecclesiasticus, right with the rectitude of order — his soul and its higher powers subject to God, his lower nature subject to his reason and will, and the whole visible universe subject to the composite man. The world was then an earthly paradise, no labor, no want, no affliction from without, no misery from within, but happiness and immortality here, and the assured vision of God hereafter. But man, like the angels, was tried, and man, like the angels, fell. The angels sought equality with God in power, and man, equally guilty, sought equality with God in knowledge. And as in their case so in other and all cases: self-exaltation ended in humiliation, for God anathematized man and freed his subjects from their allegiance to him. " Cursed be the earth," He said, " thorns and thistles will it bear thee. Thou shalt labor and toil all the days of thy life, and as dust thou art, so unto dust thou shalt return." Original sin, with its effects, was the complete subversion of the primitive harmony established between God and man, between man's higher and lower natures, and between man and the world; and this sin and its effects we all inherit. " Behold," says the Psalmist, " I was conceived in iniquities, and in sin did my mother conceive me." And St. Paul adds, " as by one man sin entered this world, and by sin death; so death hath passed upon all men from him in whom all men have sinned." As the wages of sin is death, and as all men die, we must naturally conclude that all men are conceived children of wrath in original sin. It stains the unborn, and the newly-born; it stains man in whatever stage of unbaptized existence he may be, for only sin excludes from happiness, and Christ has said: "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he can never enter the kingdom of heaven." The Church attests this fundamental dogma by celebrating the feasts of the saints, not on the day when in sin they came into this world, but on the day of their death, when, sinless, they passed to glory. St. Jerome discourages inquiry as to how original sin is transmitted, saying: " It is as though one fallen overboard were asked ' How came you there? ' and should reply, ' Ask not how I came here, but seek rather how you may get me out.' " Anyhow, our natures were corrupted in Adam and Eve as waters in their source, with this difference, that human nature is not purified in transmission. As the different members of my body may become guilty of crime, though not acting by their own volition but under the influence of my perverse will, so we, as we are of the great body of humanity, contract the guilt of a sin of which the head alone was guilty. Adam and Eve were a representative committee of two, chosen from the myriads of human possibilities. Theirs was a test case; their fate our fate; so that we all share in their sin and punishment as we should have shared in their happiness had they remained faithful to God. One single exception is recorded — the Virgin Mary. Of her alone we can say with the Canticle: "All beautiful art thou and there is no stain in thee." In St. John's vision of her, the moon under her feet denotes the absence in her of all stain or change— denotes her to be as Longfellow styles her: " The peerless queen of air, who as sandals to her feet, the silver moon doth wear."
Brethren, for us Catholics, the ultimate proof that Mary was immaculately conceived must ever be the fact that for centuries this truth was accepted by the entire Catholic world, and defined at last as an article of our faith by Pius IX. in 1854. Nor are we without reasons for the faith that is in us. This privilege of Mary was foreshadowed in the words of God to the demon-seducer of our first parents: " I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed, and she shall crush thy head." We can readily understand the enmity between Mary's Son and Satan, but that Mary herself should, as promised, vanquish the serpent, is explainable only on the theory that she was never for an instant subject to him by sin, that she was immaculately conceived. Jesus and Mary were prefigured in Adam and Eve — they are as like as the light of to-day and to-morrow, and yet they differ as the waning twilight from the coming dawn. Adam's hands, outstretched toward the forbidden fruit, point to death and darkness; the hands of Christ in Gethsemani, receiving from the angel the chalice of His sufferings, point to life and light: and it was not until the water from the side of Christ on the cross trickled down on Adam's skull that life met death in Baptism. Adam was made of immaculate earth, as yet uncursed — a true figure of the stainless Virgin who was to conceive and bear the Saviour. " Holiness becometh Thy house, O Lord," says the Psalmist; and Mary's body was the house of the Lord; the material from which He built Him an earthly habitation. Christ was the wisdom of the Father, and Holy Writ has it that " wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul nor dwell in a body subject to sin." To deny the Immaculate Conception of Mary is, to my mind, scarcely less blasphemous than to assert that the humanity of Christ Himself was stained with original sin, for did He not become flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone? And who does not recoil in horror from the thought that even the adorable body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament of the altar should have had its origin in anything defiled by sin? The Immaculate Conception of Mary is a necessary corollary of Christ's absolute sinlessness. It was asserted by John the Baptist when he refused to baptize the Saviour in the Jordan. It was asserted by Christ Himself when He demanded of His enemies: " Which of you shall convince Me of sin? And what fellowship is there of God with Belial? "
But apart from her divine Son, Mary in the Scripture vindicates in her own person this article of our faith. Mary's destiny was to undo what Eve had done, and whatever in the order of grace Eve lost, Mary regained. Mary is the direct antithesis of Eve. Ave — Eva — even their very names are an inversion, the one of the other. It was due to God's dignity and power that His fair creation should be restored by exactly the same means wherewith by the demon it had been destroyed. Eve sprang from Adam and became his mother in error and death; Mary sprang from God and became the Mother of the Man-God — the truth and the life. Eve consented to the prince of darkness, but it was to an angel Mary said: " Be it done unto me according to thy word." Mary brought forth her Son without loss of virginity and without pain, whereas had she ever even for an instant been the subject of original sin, God's words would have been verified of her as of every daughter of Eve: " I will multiply thy sorrows and in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children." Eve came to fill the world with the thorns and thistles of human afflictions, but the Canticle, speaking of Mary's conception, says: " The winter is now past, the rain is over and gone, and the flowers have appeared in our land." She is the flower of the field and the lily of the valley. "As the lily among the thorns," says the Canticle, " so is Mary among the daughters of Eve." She is the fleece of Gedeon, bathed in the heavenly dew, while all around was parched with the breath of hell. Upon Mary, says the Psalmist, grace came down as the dew upon the fleece, and from her it spread broadcast, and was increased by the preaching of the Apostles and their successors, until it became as showers gently falling upon all the land, for their sound hath gone forth into all the earth and their words unto the ends of the world. She is the ark of Noe unsubmerged by the universal deluge of sin; alone on the world of waters, a solitary refuge for the remnant of mankind.
Brethren, there is one more text of Scripture from many that might be adduced concerning the Immaculate Conception. In the sixth Canticle we read: " Who is she that cometh forth as the dawn; fair as the moon, bright as the sun; terrible as an army set in array? " All the beauties of Nature, of the day, of the night, and of the intervening time — the aurora — are here attributed to Mary. She came as the dawn, pure and sweet, with the promise of a glorious day. St. Francis of Assisi loved to meditate gazing on the rising sun: "For," said he, " with the eye of faith I can see therein the dawn of man's Redemption. It was another and beautiful way of saying he loved to meditate on Mary's Immaculate Conception. Fair as the moon. In all Nature there is nothing lovelier than the pale queen of night, as with stately tread she ascends the throne of heaven, while the stars like flowers strew her royal way. She shines with a borrowed light, 'tis true, as Mary did, but still star differs from star in glory, and Mary is the brightest of them all. And lest we should imagine that like the moon there is any spot or change in her, the Canticle adds that Mary is bright as the sun. One and the same halo surrounds Mary and the Child in her arms. If a brief vision of God on Mount Sinai made the face of Moses shine like the sun, what shall we say of Mary, who for thirty long years basked in the smiles of the Saviour? Through her the light of divine truth and the warmth of divine love suffused this world, thawing out the congealed heart of the sinner and starting up the rivulets of human sympathy. Finally, to the powers of darkness she is terrible as an army set in array. As the shadows of night fly westward in confusion before the dawning aurora, so the demons before the coming of Mary, — for she was the first to throw off the yoke of Satan, the first to put his forces to flight.
Brethren, you came here to-night with the simple faith of little children, to gather around Mary, your Mother, to pay her your tribute of love, and to make or renew your promises of obedience to her maternal instructions. There are many, alas! that stand aloof in proud self-sufficiency, and sneer, perhaps, at what they consider our weak puerility. But be not deceived. Christ, pointing to a group of children, said to His followers: " To be My true disciples, you must be as these." " For," says St. Paul, " God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble." It is not the high hills, but the valleys that catch the heavenly downpour, and the deeper the valley the more it holds. Hence, Mary was full of grace because the Lord regarded the humility of His handmaid. Never be ashamed or afraid to profess yourselves children of Mary. If you are married, pray to Mary the Mother of God, the spouse of the Holy Ghost; if you are single, let Mary, the Virgin of virgins, be your ideal. If you are rich, be a lady-in-waiting on the Queen of heaven, or a member of her royal guard; if you are poor you will find congenial company in the humble home of Nazareth; if you are a sinner — and who of us is not? — turn to the Refuge of sinners, to Mary, the Mother of mercy. Fidelity to your sodality is a mark of predestination. You are the successors of that first sodality — the little band of shepherds that crowded round the crib of Jesus, land your praises, like theirs, are caught up by the angel choir and wafted to the ears of God. You follow Him with Mary and the pious women of Jerusalem, to wipe His agonized face like Veronica, or like Simon, to help Him carry His cross. Your faithfulness and perseverance, I predict, will gain for you the privilege of being among the first to meet Him at the general resurrection: among the first to reenter with Jesus and Mary into the kingdom of heaven.