To be preserved from sin is the greater honor, Mary: Day 177

To be preserved from sin is the greater honor

Which is more honorable, St. Alphonsus asks: to fall and be rescued, or never to have fallen in the first place? The latter is more honorable, of course, and so it was with Mary.

A person may be redeemed in two ways, as St. Augustine teaches us:
One is to be raised up after he has fallen. The other is to be prevented from fall- ing in the first place. And the second way is without a doubt the most honorable.

“The one who is prevented from falling is more honorably redeemed than the one who, after falling, is raised up,” says the learned teacher Francisco Suárez. “For in this way the injury or stain that the soul always contracts by falling is avoided. This being the case, we ought certainly to believe that Mary was redeemed in the more honorable way, the way that was more fitting for the Mother of God.”

As St. Bonaventure remarks, “We should believe that the Holy Spirit, as a very special favor, redeemed and preserved Mary from original sin by a new kind of sanctification, and he did this in the very moment of her conception—not that sin was in her, but that it otherwise would have been.”

On the same subject, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa elegantly remarks: “Oth- ers had Jesus as a liberator, but to the most Blessed Virgin, he was a pre-liberator.” By this he means that all others had a Redeemer who delivered them from the sin with which they were already defiled. But the most Blessed Virgin had a Redeemer who preserved her—because he was her Son—from ever being defiled by sin in the first place.
—St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
Does Mary’s sinlessness make her seem unapproachable? Or does it make me more confident that she’ll receive me with a holy mercy?

CLOSING PRAYER
From a prayer of St. Ildephonsus: Give a mother’s milk to your Creator, Mary; nurse the One who made you, and who made you in such a way that he could be fittingly made from you.

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