The Immaculate
Fr. A. Raymond, SMM
The Immaculate
”Thou art all beautiful , O Mary, and there is no stain in thee!”
A THING is beautiful when it is without blemish; the least stain, the least defect detracts from its worth and often makes it lose all its beauty.
For instance, a tiny drop of oil spilt on a white satin gown is enough to spoil the whole thing. It is this truth, based on experience that the philosophers of old summed up by saying that for a thing to be good it has to be exempt from any defect; in other words, the least defect renders in some way evil that which was good.
Mary, Preserved From All Stain
Of course, God knew this better than we. Thus, in order that His Mother might be all beautiful, He decided to preserve her from all stain, even from the stain of Original Sin.
It is a tenet of our Faith that all children are born with the heritage of Original Sin. From their very entry into this world, they fall, they stray from God and consequently become His enemies and slaves of Satan. Each one of us is obliged to repeat these words of the prophet David: “Behold, I was conceived In iniquity; and my mother conceived me in sin.” The holy prophet Jeremiah, St. John the Baptist and St. Joseph who were sanctified in their mother’s womb were not exempt from this common curse. If at the moment of their birth they were already sanctified, they were not so at the moment of their conception; like us, at that moment, they were enemies of God.
When poison has been thrown into a well, all the waters that proceed from it are contaminated. Likewise, sin, having entered into the soul of Adam, head of the human race, has been communicated to the souls of all his descendants. Hence they are all born sons of wrath, according to these words of St. Paul: ‘. . . all of us . . . were by nature children of wrath” (Eph. II, 3). Now it is a terrible misfortune to be God’s enemy, even if only for one moment; yet this is the condition of every child before his baptism.
Now, St. Augustine and, after him, the Council of Trent warns us that when we speak of sin, no mention must be made of the Virgin Mary. The Lord possessed me the very moment He created me; when my soul came forth from His all powerful hands, He not only had dominion over me but I was His possession. His to do with as He pleased!
Mary God’s Possession
You will note that I have distinguished between dominion and possession; for we know that God has dominion over all creatures, over all men, according to these words of Holy Scripture. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.” God cannot be said to possess all men, however, since souls in the state of mortal sin or of children before baptism are in the actual possession of the devil. But over Mary, God has always had both the dominion and the possession. He did not wish her to belong, even for an instant, to the category of the ”children of wrath.” In other words, He wished to make her an exception to the general rule.
The Pieta: Italian Painter: Michelangelo: 1499
In the original publication of this article, the editor used a picture of the Pieta. For fun, The Queen uses a 3D Model of The Pieta, using a top down view in a perspective not normally seen in art. The original 3D model was created by By Scan the World – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0. The image is used with general permission.
He did not wish her to belong, even for an instant,
to the category of the ”children of wrath.”
Return to more The Queen: Articles
This was the first of several articles that The Queen entitles The Beauty, Goodness and Grace of Mary. What does that really mean? How about Beauty? What is Goodness and Grace? These articles appeared over portions of two years during the original publication of the Queen of All Hearts Magazine. The Queen makes them available to our readers within this publication. We recommend reading them in order. The next article may be found here : Mary, Above All Others.
