Mary was born a saint, Mary: Day 191

Mary was born a saint

Our Lady’s immaculate conception, St. Alphonsus reasons, means that she was born already a saint.

It’s indeed right to celebrate with festivity and universal joy the birth of our infant Mary. For she first saw the light of this world a baby, it is true, with regard to age, but she was already great in merit and virtue. Mary was born a saint, and a great saint. But to form an idea of the greatness of her sanctity, even at this early point in her life, we must consider the greatness of the first grace with which God enriched her.

To begin with, it is certain that Mary’s soul was the most beautiful that God had ever created. After, of course, the work of the incarnation of the Eternal Word, this was the greatest work, and most worthy of himself, that an omnipo- tent God ever did in the world. St. Peter Damian calls it “a work surpassed only by God.” The grace that the Blessed Virgin received exceeded not only that of each particular saint, but of all the angels and saints put together. And she received this grace, exceeding that of all men and angels together, in the first instant of her immaculate conception.

Mary was chosen by God to be the mother of the divine Word. For this reason, observes the theologian Denis the Carthusian, “as she was chosen to an order superior to that of all other creatures, it’s reasonable to suppose that from the very beginning of her life, gifts of a superior order were conferred upon her. These would have been such gifts that they incomparably surpassed those granted to all other creatures.” Indeed, it can’t be doubted that when the Per- son of the Eternal Word was, in God’s decrees, predestined to become man, a mother was also destined for him, from whom he was to take his human nature. And this mother was our infant Mary. —St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
What extraordinary challenges would Joachim and Anne have faced in trying to rear a child who never sinned, given that they themselves, though holy people, were not sinless?

CLOSING PRAYER
From a “Novena to Maria Bambina”: Holy child Mary, mystical dawn, gate of heaven, you are my trust and hope.

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