The Blessed Virgin Mary

It is with great reason that the Church, addressing the glorious Virgin today, says to her in a thrill of joy: "Your birth, O Virgin Mother of God, has filled the whole world with consolation and joy, because the Sun of Justice, Jesus Christ our God, is born of you, He who has drawn us from the curse in which we were plunged, and has filled us with blessings, and who, having ruined the empire of death, has brought us into eternal life." Indeed, who is it that should not rejoice on the day and at the moment of the birth of this amiable princess? If the angel Gabriel assured Zechariah that many would rejoice at the birth of Saint John the Baptist, his son, who was to be only the angel, the prophet, and the precursor of the Messiah; with how much more reason should one thrill with joy at that of Mary, who is soon to be His mother! This feast is not for one city or for one people only: it is for the whole world. It is for the centuries that have been and that will be: it is for time and for eternity. Finally, it is a universal feast, because the good it promises and announces is not a particular and limited good, but a good that extends to all kinds of ages, conditions, and persons. The Eternal Father takes part in it, because a spouse is born to Him, who, representing His fecundity, will give a new nature and a new birth to His only Son. The Divine Word takes part in it, because a Mother is born to Him, who will clothe Him with a mortal body to be the Savior and Redeemer of the world. The Holy Spirit takes part in it, because a living temple is born to Him, which will be the most worthy subject of the influences and operations of His grace. The angels and men take part in it, because a Lady, a Mistress, and a Queen is born to them, who will contribute of her substance and her blood to produce for them a restorer. The Fathers in limbo take part in it, because a Dawn is born to them, who assures them that the time of their deliverance is near. Finally, all the centuries past and to come take part in it, because a Sovereign is born to them who will be, through her Son, God-Man, the source of their restoration and their happiness.

The princes and the great of the earth have always celebrated the anniversary of their birth with great solemnity, bestowing great largesse upon the people and providing public games and spectacles: this is what the Holy Scriptures teach us of Pharaoh, Antiochus, and Herod; Macrobius, of the ancient Romans; Herodotus, of the kings of Persia; and Ecclesiastical History, of most of the Caesars and Augusti. The wisest have condemned this custom and have published its error and vanity. Jeremiah, far from blessing the day of his birth, gives it only curses; Job wishes that the day he was born be erased from the number of days and never counted; and Solomon prefers the day we die to the one that gave us life; the Church herself, in speaking of the Saints in her Martyrology, removes the name of birth from the day they came into the world to give it to that of their death. But, if this pious sentiment is the most just and reasonable with regard to our amiable Sovereign, the birth of Mary is, neither for her nor for any other, a subject of affliction and regret, but rather a subject of consolation and joy. Indeed, what led Job, as well as other Saints, to regret the day of his birth is that they were born sinners and objects of the hatred and indignation of God; that they were born miserable and subject to the rigorous punishments of divine justice; that they were born fragile and with a continual inclination and propensity toward sin. Now, all these reasons have no place in Mary. She was not born a criminal and hated by God, but entirely holy and cherished by His divine Majesty. She was not born miserable and covered in curses, but perfectly happy and filled with graces and blessings. She was not born fragile, infirm, and inclined to sin, but strong, vigorous, and incapable of committing any sin.

Mary never contracted original sin, and her soul, at the moment of its union with her body, was preserved from all stain. It must be inferred from this principle that she was , from the tim péché originel Marian privilege and central dogma structuring the identity of the congregation. e of her birth, the object of the love and complacency of God; for, as among men there is no middle ground between sin and grace, so also, in God, with regard to them, there is no middle ground between love and hatred. He loves all those whom He does not hate, and He hates all those whom He does not love; since, therefore, Mary was not the object of the hatred and aversion of God, it must necessarily be said that she was the object of His love. But it is little to say that she was the object of His love: let us say that God, from that moment, loved her excellently, loved her singularly, loved her sovereignly. The Bridegroom, in the Canticle of Canticles, expresses this mystery to us by a marvelous gradation: He calls her His friend and His beloved: « Surge, » He says to her, « amica mea, speciosa mea, et veni, columba mea, in foraminibus petræ, in caverna maceriæ »: « Arise, my dearest, as well as the most beautiful of my lovers; it is enough, my dove, to be enclosed in the holes of the rock and in the cavern of the wall, » that is to say, in the womb of your mother, previously sterile; come, hasten, and appear to the day. He gives her the same name in a hundred other places in the same canticle; but He is not content with calling her His Beloved, He also calls her absolutely the Beloved. It must be noted that among the names of Our Lord, one of the most charming is that of *dilectus*, the Beloved. The Bride, in the canticle, often calls Him her Beloved. The eternal Father, on Mount Tabor, also honors Him with the same title: « This is, » He says, « my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. » But the King-Prophet calls Him twice absolutely the beloved: *Rex virtutum dilecti, dilecti*: the beloved, according to His divine Person, because, as Saint Paul says, He is the Son of the Father's dilection: *Filius dilectionis*; the beloved, according to His human nature, because He is the most beautiful and the most amiable of the children of men; the beloved with regard to God, the beloved with regard to creatures capable of love: *Dilectus, dilectus*. But He does not appropriate this name so much that He does not also communicate it to His bride: « I conjure you, » He says to the daughters of Jerusalem, « not to awaken the beloved until she wishes it. » And note that, according to the Hebrew, it is not *Dilectam*, the beloved; but *Dilectionem, amorem, delicias*, the very dilection, the very love, and the very delights, to make us understand that Mary has been the love and the delights of God, and that, as it is impossible for love to be without love, so it could not be that Mary was for a moment without being loved. Finally, the Bridegroom calls her *Carissimam in deliciis*; that is to say, she whom He loves above all others, and in whom He takes His greatest pleasure. The holy Fathers speak of it in the same way. Saint Bonaventure, in his book entitled: *De Speculo*, says excellently: « Quid mirum si præ omnibus diligat quæ præ omnibus est dilecta! » What wonder that this admirable Virgin loves God more than all others, she who has been loved above all others. And Saint Anselm calls the love of God for her immense, ineffable, impenetrable.

But why did the Lord have such love for her? He himself gives the reason in the same canticle, through another gradation no less remarkable than the first: "You are beautiful," he says to her first, "you are pleasant, you are charming": Pulchra es, speciosa, formosa. And do not believe that he speaks of one and the other beauty, of that of the body and that of the soul. Mary possessed both. She was beautiful with bodily beauty, although she had been conceived by the way of an ordinary generation; the Holy Spirit, nevertheless, had applied himself to forming for her a perfectly beautiful body. This is why she is compared to what is most beautiful in the corporeal world: to the dawn in its birth, to the moon in its fullness, and to the sun at its noon. Saint Denis, in one of his letters, assures us that "she was so beautiful that, without the faith which teaches us that there is only one God, one would have taken her for a divinity." And Saint Ambrose adds that "her charms were so pure that they inspired chastity in those who looked at her." She was beautiful with spiritual beauty: for beauty is born of order and variety. Now, in the soul of Mary, everything was wonderfully well ordered: the spirit was subject to God, the sense was subject to the spirit, and the flesh obeyed both with a just dependence; the will did not precede judgment, the appetite did not precede reason, and the passions only arose as much as a wise discretion allowed them to appear. There was also an excellent variety of all kinds of virtues. The whiteness of a purity more than angelic, the vermilion of a charity all burning, and the shadows of a very profound humility.

But the Bridegroom is not content to say that she is beautiful, he adds "that she is all beautiful": Tota pulchra es. Beautiful in all the ages and in all the states of her life, beautiful in all the faculties of her body and her soul, beautiful in all her thoughts, her desires, and her actions; beautiful in her understanding through the gifts of wisdom and counsel, beautiful in her will through her inviolable attachment to God, beautiful in her appetite through the virtues of strength and temperance, beautiful in everything, and universally beautiful. Finally, he says that "her beauty surpasses all other beauties, and that she is the most pleasant of all women": Pulcherrima inter mulieres. Which a learned author expresses by these words: Omnium pulchritudinum pulcherrima pulchritudo: "The most beautiful and the most charming beauty of all beauties." This is therefore what made her, from the moment of her birth, the object of God's love; and this is also what must oblige us to render to her at this moment our humble duties, and to offer her our heart and our love, so that by loving her, we may be loved by her, according to what she says in chapter VIII of Proverbs: Ego diligentes me diligo: "I love those who have love for me."

If the Blessed Virgin was not born a criminal and an object of God's hatred, she was also not born miserable and subject to the punishment of justice. It is true that, according to the word of her Spouse, "she was a lily among thorns": that is to say, she spent her whole life in the midst of thorns of all kinds of sorrows and afflictions. But this does not mean that she can be called "miserable." The thorns with which she was surrounded were not the effects of the curse that God gave to Adam, when He told him that the earth would be cursed under his labor, and that it would produce thorns and thistles for him; they were, on the contrary, the effects of a gentle and loving providence, which willed that Mary should suffer to merit greater rewards, to cooperate more nobly in our Redemption, and to give us more beautiful examples of virtue. Let us rather say that Mary was born blessed and the precious vessel where the divine Goodness poured out its greatest treasures. Indeed, the love of God cannot be sterile, and theologians themselves, considering its property, say that, although by its nature it is effective, it nevertheless only terminates in the creature in an efficacious manner, and by doing good to it; since it is therefore constant that God had an immense love for Mary at the moment of her birth, let us not doubt that, from then on, He filled her with an infinity of goods. I find that He communicated to her three plenitudes: a plenitude of grace and holiness in the essence of her soul; a plenitude of light and wisdom in her understanding; and a plenitude of virtue and perfection in her will. He communicated to her a plenitude of grace and holiness; the angel Gabriel told her later that she was full of grace: Gratia plena; Saint Epiphanius, in a book he wrote on her praises, and Saint Anselm, in a treatise on her excellences, assure that her grace was immense, ineffable, and worthy of the astonishment of all ages: this must not be limited to the time of her death, her childbirth, and her annunciation; but it can and must be extended to all the moments of her life; for, as she was destined to be the Queen of Saints and the Mother of the Saint of Saints, it was necessary that she be prepared early on by a supereminent grace for such a high dignity. And this is also what makes the same Fathers and several others call her a spiritual Sea, an Abyss and an Ocean of grace, a Treasure of holiness, and a great Miracle, and even the greatest miracle in the order of creatures that has come from the hands of the Almighty. God also communicated to her a plenitude of light and wisdom; for it is she who says in the book of Proverbs, chap. VIII, according to the application that the Church makes of it in its offices: "I am wisdom, and counsel is my dwelling: I am found in the most studied deliberations, and the most judicious advice comes from me." Also, Denis the Carthusian recognizes in her a very luminous and very abundant infused wisdom, Saint Bernardine of Siena assures that even, in her first sanctification, she received a knowledge so clear and so penetrating that she perfectly knew the creatures and the Creator; and the same Saint Anselm prefers her light on our divine mysteries to that of all the Apostles, and says that she surpasses it in merit and evidence, without any comparison. Finally, God communicated to her a plenitude of virtue; for she possessed them all at the moment she came into the world, and, as she already had the light of reason and the use of her intellectual faculties, she performed the most eminent and heroic acts of them. Thus, she adored God in the unity of His essence and in the trinity of His persons; she lowered herself before His majesty to the very center of her own nothingness; she consecrated herself to His service with the whole extent of her soul; she thanked Him with all her strength for the graces she had received from His goodness; she abandoned herself to His guidance for all the dispositions of His providence; she offered herself to all kinds of sorrows and sufferings for His glory; finally, she raised herself toward Him through the great efforts of her love. She was only a child of a day, of an hour, of a moment; but her supernatural acts were already holier and more perfect than those of all the Cherubim and all the Seraphim, and she alone had more virtues than all other creatures combined.

The Blessed Virgin was not born fragile and subject to sin, but in a happy inability to commit it. It is not that she was impeccable by her nature, like Jesus Christ, her only Son, who, being God, could not sin; nor that she was so by the glorious vision, which, at most, was only granted to her during this life for a few moments; but she was so, on one hand, by the perfect integrity of her nature, which had nothing that would turn her away from the good or incline her toward evil; on the other, by the strength and eminence of her grace, which filled and possessed her so much that she acted only through its movements; by the abundance and efficacy of divine assistance, which carried her in all things to what was most perfect; by a gentle guidance of divine Providence, which removed from her everything capable of soliciting her to sin. This impeccability is undoubtedly far below that of the Son of God; but it is sufficient to exclude all kinds of sins and defects, and in fact, the Council of Trent, sess. VI, c. II, teaches that the Blessed Virgin never committed Concile de Trente Ecumenical council of the Catholic Church aimed at responding to the Reformation. any, and that she preserved her innocence without stain and without any defect until the end of her life.

Thus, the reasons that the Saints had for cursing the day of their birth are in no way found in Mary; on the contrary, she has every reason to bless the moment she appeared on earth. We must also, for the same reason, celebrate a great feast, and rejoice with her for the graces with which she was filled at that moment, especially since she received them no less for us than for herself, and that the most precious gifts conferred upon her were so as a result of the great work of our Redemption.

For more details on this illustrious nativity of the Blessed Virgin, we refer the reader to her life, in volume XVI of this work, and to the discourse on her Conception. We shall say only a few words about it. Having been conceived in the womb of Sa sainte Anne Mother of the Virgin Mary. int Anne, after a long sterility, and having remained nine months in her bowels, according to the custom of other children, she was born on September 8, in the mountains of Judea, and in the house of the sh eepfolds of S saint Joachim Father of the Virgin Mary. aint Joachim, her father. Shortly after, the sacrifice ordained to erase original sin was offered for her, although she had not contracted it, and she was given the name Mary; at the end of eighty days, Saint Anne, to obey the law, carried her to the temple, in order to perform the ceremonies of her purification; but she did not leave her there, for this time waiting, to dedicate her to the holy altars, until she was able to walk all by herself. God, for His part, gave her a guardian angel, who, according to Ildefonsus and Blessed Peter Damian, was S saint Gabriel Archangel messenger of the Incarnation. aint Gabriel; for, as the former says in the sermon on the Assumption: *Tota Virginis causa ei a Domino commissa prædicatur*: "Everything that concerned the Blessed Virgin was committed to Saint Gabriel by the wise providence of God."

The Church has not always celebrated this feast. No trace of it is found in French authors before Blessed Fulbert, Bishop of Chartres, who lived at the beginning of the 11th century; it is mentioned neither in the Council of Mainz, celebrated in the year 813, nor in the *Capitularies* of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, nor in the ecclesiastical books of that time. But the same Fulbert, in the first volume of the *Nativity*; Saint Bernard, in his *Epistle CXXIV*, and Peter, Abbot of Celles, in the sixth book, *Epistle XXIII*, mention it as a feast celebrated with great solemnity. As for other countries, it is also not certain when it began to be solemnized there. Saint Augustine, in sermons XX and XXII of the *Saints*, makes it sufficiently clear that it was unknown to him and that it was not yet celebrated in his time in the Church, since he says that no birth was celebrated other than that of Our Lord and that of Saint John the Baptist; this was because Holy Scripture speaks only of these two, and the first feasts of the Church were established to honor the mysteries marked in the books of the New Testament. It is true that, in the office of this day, a sermon by the same Saint Augustine is read, which is the XVIII of the *Saints*, with these words: *Gaudeat terra nostra tantæ Virginis illustrata natali*: "Let our earth rejoice, being ennobled by the birth of such a Virgin". But it must be noted that Saint Augustine did not compose this sermon for the day of the *Nativity* of Our Lady, but for that of her *Annunciation*, and that he did not write *natali*, birth, but *solemni*, solemnity. So it is the Church which, by a pious accommodation, changed the word *solemni* to *natali*. Some authors have written that this establishment should be attributed to Pope Innocent IV, who lived in the year 1250: he wou ld have been led pape Innocent IV 13th-century pope who testified to the saint's miracles. to do so by a vow that the cardinals had made, before his election, for the happy success of such a great affair, when the Church had been troubled for nearly two years by a very dangerous schism. But there is no appearance that this feast, being already so famous in France, as it appears from what we have just said of Fulbert of Chartres, Saint Bernard, and Peter of Celles, was not yet received and authorized in Italy. What Innocent IV did, therefore, was to give it an octave, just as Pope Gregory XI later gave it a vigil.

The Roman *Ordo* and the *Sacramentary* of Saint Gregory, which must be attributed to the 6th and 7th centuries, mention it; but it is not certain that these are not additions that were made to them in the course of time, as has often been done to rituals and books of divine offices; we also have an illustrious mention of it in the book of *Virginity* by Saint Ildefonsus, who lived in 667. But many believe that this book is not by him; at least it is not among those works that are indubitable. Thus, we cannot precisely mark the time and the century when this feast began. Baronius estimates that it was shortly after the Council of Ephesus: the heresy of Nestorius condemned, and the glorious Virgin authentically recognized and declared Mother of God, her devotion increased wonderfully in the hearts of the faithful; but it was not universal at first, and it is likely that having been instituted in some particular church, it did not spread to others until the passage of time. However, Father Thomassin, in his book on the Institution of Feasts, believes that it began in France, and that it was from there that it spread to Spain, Italy, and other nations; as he does not give it a beginning in France until shortly before Fulbert of Chartres, he does not consider it any older in all the other countries of Christendom.

According to Du Saussay, in his Martyrology, Saint Maurilius, Bishop of Angers, who lived in the 4th and 5th centuries, was its author. And, in fact, this feast was formerly called the Angevine; but it would have had to be long confined to his diocese, without being received in other places, since, as we have said, the calendars of divine offices of the 9th century make no mention of it.

Be that as it may, we do not doubt that the faithful have always rejoiced at the birth of this divine Dawn, who appeared on this earth only to announce to us the rising of the Sun of Justice. Let us also show her our love by taking part in this joy; but as she asks of us our sanctification rather than our applause, let us imitate her diligence in dedicating herself to the service of her God. She did not wait, to do so, until she was of an advanced age; she did it from her birth, she did it even from the moment of her conception. Let us not wait either, to do so, until the time of our death; but let us do it from this moment on. Our days and our years are not too long to render to God what we owe Him. He has loved us from all eternity; He did us good from the moment of our formation in our mothers' wombs, and He does not cease to do so: let us respond to so many graces with an inviolable attachment to His service, and may nothing be capable of turning us away from it.

We have retained, for this notice, the account of Father Giry.