God’s wisdom and a God’s love can choose out of a God’s possibilities, how his created home shall be. Who then shall dream, until he has seen it, what that thrice infinite perfection of the Holy Trinity shall choose out of his inexhaustible possibilities? Who, when he has seen it, shall describe it as he ought? The glorious, adorable, and eternal Word, in the ample range of his unrestricted choice, predestinated the bosom of Mary to be his created home, and fashioned, with well-pleased love, the Immaculate Heart which was to tenant it with himself. 0 Mary, 0 marvelous mystical creature, 0 resplendent mote, lost almost to view in the upper light of the supernal fountains who can sufficiently abase himself before thee, and weep for the want of love to love thee rightly, thee whom the Word so loved eternally?
There were no creatures to sing anthems, in heaven, when that choice was made. No angelic thunders of songs rolled round the Throne in oceans of melodious sound, when the Word decreed that primal object of his adorable predilection. No creations of almost divine intelligence were there to shroud their faces with their wings, and brood in self-abasing silence on the beauty of that created Home of their Creator. There was only the silent song of God’s own awesome life, and the eternal voiceless thunder of his good pleasure. Forthwith-we must speak in our own human way-the Holy Trinity begins to adorn the Word’s created home with a marvelous effluence of creative skill and love. She was to be the head of all mere creatures, having a created person as well as a created nature, while her Son’s created nature, with the Uncreated Person, was to be the absolute Head of all creation, the unconfused junction of God and of creation. She was to be a home for the Word, as the Bosom of the Father had been a home for him, realized and completed in unity of nature. The materials which the Word was to take for his created nature were once to have been actually hers, so that the union between the Word and His Mother should be more awesome than words can express.
Each Person of the Holy Trinity claimed her for his own special relationship. She was the eternally elected daughter of the Father. There was no other relationship in which she could stand to him, and it was a reflection of the eternal filiation of his uncreated Son. She was the Mother of the Son; for it was to the amazing realities of that office that he had summoned her out of nothing. She was the Spouse of the Holy Ghost for it was he who was wedded to her by the most transcendent of unions which the kingdom of grace can boast, and it was he who out of her spotless blood made that undefiled Flesh which the Word was to assume and to animate with his human Soul. Thus she was marked with an indelible character by each of the Three Divine Persons. She was Their eternal idea, nearest to that Idea which was the cause of all creation, the Idea of Jesus; she was necessary, as They had willed it, to the realization of that Idea; and she came before it in priority of time and in seeming authority of office. Such is the bare statement of the place which Mary occupies in the decrees of God. Our praise of Mary, in this one respect like our praise of God, of which it is in truth a part, is best embodied in our wonder and our love.
Now that the Incarnate Word was to come as a Redeemer, His Mother must be redeemed by Him with a singular and unshared redemption. Beautiful as she was in herself, and incalculable as were her merits, her greatest graces were not merited by herself, but by that Precious Blood which was to be taken from her own. The first white lily that ever grew on that ruddy stem was the Immaculate Conception; and when the time for Mary’s advent came, that was the first grace with which the Divine Persons began Their magnificent work of adorning.
Mary, the cause of our joy, was herself a growth of earth, a specimen of what an unfal1en world would have been; and it was on an earthly stem that Jesus himself, the joy of all joys, blossomed and gave forth his fragrance. Thus nature and life tend to joy at all hours. Joy is their legitimate development, their proper perfection. Nothing glorifies God so much as joy. There is no worship where there is no joy. For worship is something more than either the fear of God or the love of Him; it is delight in Him.
Fr. Frederick Faber -“Bethlehem”
O Beloved Mother Mary–Daugher of the Father, Mother of the Son and Spouse of the Holy Spirit–pray for us and obtain for us the graces needed to prepare our hearts for the coming of your Son at this holy time of Advent.
