a word, every thing that enabled him to suffer for sinners whom he loved. As this mode of our redemption would have been impossible without Mary, as she had had so large a share in ministering to him all the materials of bodily and mental agony without sin on her part: he then created her Mother of the elect, by giving her bowels of compassion for all men: he gave her from the royal throne of suffering as the Captain of our salvation, the honours due to her for following him so closely in his agony and passion. Already she had had opportunies of doing more for our salvation by prayer, and by arguing with Jesus in his retirement, than any creature ever had done, and this deserved an immense reward. But her Son was God, and God (says St. Austin) 'makes one that finds him more capacious, that he may seek again to be filled, the instant he has begun to be capable of holding more 1.' It became a dying God to bequeath, as far as he could, his own bowels of compassion for sinners to his benefactress and his Mother. It may have been foolishness in God to make himself indebted to a woman, but it would be yet greater foolishness not to have foreseen what would be the consequences of so doing. .Either let us boldly deny that he was born of the Virgin Mary, or consistently affirm, that having these powers to make her more capacious of likeness to himself, he remained a dutiful Son to the end of his days. 9. All who reflect must acknowledge, that in Aug. de Virginit. 6. Plane Mater fuit membrorum ejus, quod nos sumus, quia cooperata est caritate, ut fideles in Ecclesiâ nascerentur qui illius capitis membra sunt. ap. Tromb. v. p. 17. Nobis salutem conferant consigning John to Mary, Jesus set an example of love to friends upon our death-beds; and in consigning Mary to John, an example of love to parents. But here the process is reversed in part, and we have been contending, that, considering who Jesus was and who Mary was, the former act was an example of love not to John only, but to Mary also. He constituted her participatrix in our redemption, by bequeathing to her as a son the dearest object of his affections, except herself. He made her a Mother to him, by giving her a heart of love as nearly as possible like to his own heart, which loved St. John to the end'. As in the creation of children after the flesh, the debasing pleasures through which we are by a sore judgment born into the world, are the same nearly in both parents: so in this case the pains of Jesus and Mary are as nearly alike as circumstances admit. As theologians are of opinion that the sin of Adam was greater than that of Eve, so the pain of Jesus is greater than that of Mary. As pain belongs to a woman who brings forth children in sin, so Mary now was filled with pain and sorrow, and became the Mother of us all, by no less a paroxysm of pain than the agony, spiritual martyrdom, and desolation, which she felt at the death of Jesus her God and her Son. The very intensity of her feeling for Jesus, filled her with such a quick and pain-striking love for those he loved, for sinners, for our own selves, that this intense love itself deserved the highest honour God her Son could give her. No greater honour can be found than that she should be made the way to Christ for all henceforward, as Christ was the way to God. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the i John xiii. 1. Lord. Mercy is mine, I will intercede, says his Mother. This may be looked upon as putting the feelings of Catholics towards Mary in the broadest possible light and therefore it is hoped, that now it is perfectly plain, that in making her the cooperatrix of our redemption, we do but honour Christ the more. For what else do we than represent him at the lowest ebb of that majestic power which shone forth in him, as able to confer upon his Mother a gift of the most transcendent and winning majesty? Plainly we make him the giver and her the recipient, him the source and her the channel. Him we have made, in the most absolute sense, full of grace from the first: her only in such sense full, as not to be incapable after thirty years of close and intimate access to the source of grace, of being dilated so as to receive a new and extraordinary gift. If from that Passion dead bodies of the saints gained a power of appearing to many, surely it is not too much for it to give to the living heart of Mary the gift of Maternity over all the elect! Many prophets and just men desired to see the things which she saw, and did not see them; and to hear the things which she heard at Nazareth, and did not hear them. David had often protected Jerusalem with his prayers, and for his sake it was not destroyed. It was fitting therefore that the new Jerusalem should be placed under Mary's patronage and protection, and that the Mother should have a greater honour than the remote ancestor of Christ, the sharer of his griefs a more excellent glory than the type of them. 10. But it may be said, if this doctrine be true, the case of those who die in ignorance or dislike of the privileges attributed to Mary is truly awful. For at this rate they will be despising not man but God, and setting aside his ordinance, and trying to climb up to him some other way instead of that one which he has appointed on the Cross, and hallowed with the sanction of his dying breath. To this I reply, that, putting this objection at its highest, all we see of God's dealings in the natural or moral world, would lead us to think him very wasteful, so to express it, if we did not remember his sovereign power to create fresh creatures in place of those he has suffered to perish. Certainly we cannot explain how, with power to bring not only seeds but inchoate animals and men to perfection, he yet seems so often to throw them away; or how it is consistent with his goodness to supply and bless nourishment for those who will only grow up to damn themselves, and to send eternal souls into the world by roads, in which their baptism is sure, humanly speaking, to be precluded. Supposing then it were the doctrine of the Church, that no person who had come to years of discretion could possibly be saved without recourse to Mary, even this terrible aspect of things would be very far from wanting strong analogies to support it. God could not be judged for not giving men grace to come to Mary, any more than he can be judged for not giving them grace to come to the Sacraments. Certainly such a theory as this would put us under strong obligations of charity to try and persuade men to come to Mary, but it would not be an absurd or inconsistent theory. It is useful to notice this, that people may not suppose that there can by no possibility be instances where God will punish men very severely indeed for not having recourse to his sacred Mother to remove their doubts, and to obtain them other graces. Nay it is possible that in certain instances he may treat persons capable of reflecting upon it, as guilty of the great insult of condemning himself of foolishness for having a mother at all; so intensely irrational does it seem to admit, that God took flesh of a woman, and gave her no privileges in consequence! 11. But a more kindly and merciful view of this may be taken, if we consider the office of a natural mother towards her children, as a clue to that of this supernatural Mother. Now a mother watches the child, when it is in that stupid night of ignorance, and that brute-like state, which the fall has brought upon us. She prays for it she does for it numberless offices of which the child is quite unconscious, nay, at which it shews signs of anger, peevishness, and jealousy. And what infancy is to this life, that our whole life is to the world to come. Mary may watch with motherly anxiety then over souls out of the reach of the light of faith, may intercede for them, and check them through the graces she earns for them amid their natural waywardness and lust. We see that in nature some children are more precocious even to a surprising degree than others, and so it is in grace. Some are allowed to recognise that loving parent early in the stage of their existence; others are not allowed to see her hand over them till the infancy of their existence is gone by. Yet all who now have the life of God in them, will in the end find Mary to be the Mother of all living. Still if an affectionate intercourse between Bacon. de Augm. Scient. vii. 1. p. 348. Quemadmodum Aristoteles ait adolescentes posse etiam beatos esse, sed non aliter quam spe; eodem modo Christiani fide edocti VOL. II. II debemus nos omnes minorum et adolescentium loco statuere, ut non aliam felicitatem cogitemus quam quæ in spe sita est. |