By JOHN YOUNG
An acquaintance of mine put forward a view of why God chose Mary of Nazareth, rather than some other woman, to be the mother of Jesus. The reason, he suggested, was that of all women God saw that she was the most fitting.
But he had it back to front. God chose to make her, rather than someone else, to be the only woman fit for this honor. So He didn’t look for someone who had been conceived immaculate: He chose her to be conceived immaculate.
Actually the same principle applies to everything created by God, and in this respect His decisions are radically different from ours: We look at a situation and are guided accordingly in our response. We react to realities beyond our control.
God, on the contrary, is in supreme control of all things and knows eternally everything that will happen, positively willing some things while permitting others for the sake of a greater good.
In the case of the Blessed Virgin, God willed from all eternity that she would be the perfect Mother of the Incarnate Word. She is, in Wordsworth’s beautiful phrase, “Our fallen nature’s solitary boast.” Such were the graces showered on her, from her Immaculate Conception onward, that she never committed even the least venial sin.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen says that God has two images of each of us: an image of what we should be and an image of what we actually are. But of Mary, he says, God has only one image, for she alone of all human persons was perfect.
Not only did she avoid every sin, even venial, but she always did the best thing. In our case, we often avoid sinning but do imperfect acts, as when we choose to stay in bed instead of going to Mass on a weekday, although going to Mass would have been the better thing to do. For most of us, our lives are full of these imperfect acts. We won’t be punished for them, because they are not sinful, but they retard our spiritual advancement and leave us more open to sin.
Mary had the infused virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, the moral virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude, and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit from the moment of her Immaculate Conception, and had these more fully than any other human person. She advanced in her natural knowledge as we all do.
In her human nature she, like all of us, is lower than the angels, for they are pure spirits; but supernaturally she is higher than the highest angel: The grace in her soul elevates her above them all. So she is rightly called Queen of Angels.
Did she intend to remain a virgin all her life? The Church has no definitive teaching on this, but Catholic sentiment answers affirmatively. It is also the obvious implication of her words to the Angel Gabriel, “How can this be, for I know not man?”
The Catholic Church teaches infallibly that celibacy for the love of God is a higher state of life even than marriage, so it seems fitting that the human person who had the greatest love of God would instinctively choose that state of life.
Also in God’s design, the great St. Joseph was uniquely fitted to be Mary’s husband. He was not conceived immaculate, but he had the high sanctity fitting him to be the foster father of God made man.
On that first Christmas night, when God was born as man, His accommodation was a stable, and His life would soon be threatened by the murderous King Herod. But He had the consolation of the devotion of the highest of His creatures and of the great St. Joseph, and then of the shepherds.
Further, in His Beatific Vision Jesus saw all the love and devotion of every one of us at every Christmas till the end of time.
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