The world’s first love, Mary: Day 015

The world’s first love, Mary: Day 015 August 5, 2015

year_with_mary_fulton_sheenThe world’s first love

Archbishop Fulton Sheen explains how the Blessed Mother existed in the mind of God “as an eternal thought before there were any mothers. She is the mother of mothers—she is the world’s first love.”

All creatures below man correspond to the pattern God has in his mind.
A tree is truly a tree because it corresponds to God’s idea of a tree. . . . But it is not so with persons. God has to have two pictures of us: One is what we are, and the other is what we ought to be. He has the model, and he has the reality: the blueprint and the edifice, the score of the music and the way we play it. God has to have these two pictures because in each and every one of us there is some disproportion and want of conformity between the original plan and the way we have worked it out. The image is blurred; the print is faded.
For one thing, our personality is not complete in time; we need a renewed body. Then, too, our sins diminish our personality; our evil acts daub the can- vas the master Hand designed. Like unhatched eggs, some of us refuse to be warmed by the divine Love, which is so necessary for incubation to a higher level. We are in constant need of repairs; our free acts do not coincide with the law of our being; we fall short of all God wants us to be. . . .

There is, actually, only one person in all humanity of whom God has one picture and in whom there is a perfect conformity between what he wanted her to be and what she is, and that is his own mother. Most of us are a minus sign, in the sense that we do not fulfill the high hopes the heavenly Father has for us. But Mary is the equal sign. The ideal that God had of her, that she is, and in the flesh. The model and the copy are perfect; she is all that was foreseen, planned, and dreamed. The melody of her life is played just as it was written.
—Archbishop Fulton Sheen, The World’s First Love

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
Have I ever longed to have the melody of my life “played just as it was writ- ten”? Since that’s not possible for me as it was for Mary, is it nevertheless possible for God the composer to improvise, finding a way to transform my flat and sharp notes into a new and more beautiful composition?

CLOSING PRAYER
I waited patiently for you, Lord, and you turned to me and heard my cry. You put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to you! Blessed are those who make you their trust (see Ps 40:1, 3– 4).

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