The Crown of Excellence : Chapter 7 : § 2.12-13

Chapter 7 : The Sixth Star or Splendour in the Crown of Excellence of the Mother of God

Continuing our translation of the 1845 reprint of Fr François Poiré's Triple Crown of the Mother of God (1643 French edition).

Notre Dame des Grâces, Cotignac.(Poggi, 2020)

That she is peerless in her graces and merits

§ 2. The increase of grace in the Holy Virgin

The progress made by the Holy Virgin up to the Saviour’s death

 12   Now, the grace of the Holy Virgin at the moment of the Divine Word’s conception is beyond the power of speech to describe; it cannot be believed therefore, argues St Augustine[1], that the passage of time would have reduced it. 

On the contrary, it would be impossible for any person, other than He alone who deigned to take from her the Nature which He created, to explain the effects later produced. St Athanasius had taught this previously in these words[2]:

We call her full of grace, forasmuch as through the plenitude of the Holy Ghost who came  upon her she was filled with every heavenly grace. These graces should net be regarded as one-off gifts but rather they stayed with her while she bore in her womb the fruit of life and remained until the end of her earthly sojourn.

Indeed, it seems to me that it would be unacceptable to judge that the Virgin lost her merits whilst she was still breast-feeding the Son of God, while she was wrapping Him in swaddling clothes, while she was caring for Him with such love, while she accompanied Him on His journeys, whilst she listened to His teaching, or whilst she suffered for Him and with Him. On the contrary, reason obliges us to acknowledge that, among the exercises of her active and contemplative life, she attained such a high degree of merit that it caused the Angels to ask in astonishment[3]: Who is she that goeth up by the desert, as a pillar of smoke of aromatical spices, of myrrh, and frankincense, and of all the powders of the perfumer? For to set forth here her acts of Faith, Hope, Charity, her acts of Obedience, Patience, Strength, Zeal and all the other virtues which arose unceasingly from her sacred heart as from the Altar of incense; to describe with what purity and perfection she accompanied them and to report all the achievements of her daily progress – to do this would be more difficult than numbering the stars in the Heavens or the grains of sand on the seashore[4]. We will need to wait and see in the mirror of the divine Essence what it will please His majesty to reveal to us. We can however cry out a million times the He is thrice Holy[5], not only in Himself but in this His Spouse whom He created to be, after the Word incarnate, the wonder of all holiness.

The progress made by the Holy Virgin up from the Saviour’s death until her own death

 13   As for the third stage in Mary’s life, from the Ascension of Our Lord to her own Assumption, I can say only that her time was spent in encounters opening up opportunities for the foremost and most heroic of her virtues, in continual conversations with the Blessed Spirits and with her beloved Son, in ecstasies arising out of the highest contemplation, in burning ardour during her most fervent Communions, in regular visits to holy places, in hierarchical actions arising from her role as heavenly mistress and teacher and the divine lessons she gives to the Masters of the world, and in the charitable work she performed for the Saviour’s newly founded Church. In short, in the simple and ordinary practice of the most beautiful deeds of which a simple creature is capable. This is what compels the Blessed Lawrence Justinian to say[6]:

it is not possible to explain the great passion of the love in this beautiful soul, the ardour of her holy desires which set her heart on fire and the power of the repeated sighs with which she she stormed Heaven in her prayers.

Following the idea of this great Saint, we can perhaps picture Mary's progress in terms of a fiery globe which has been kept turning in a furnace and which finally manages to break out of the prison where it was held by force; it then launches itself without any resistance and, travelling at extraordinary speed, it passes up through the lower and middle regions of the air; the closer it draws to its natural abode, the more it increases its speed, so as to be faster in the end than the strongest of winds. 

This is a rough and ready image but it may help us to understand how the MOTHER OF GOD increased the rate of her spiritual progress throughout her life; how she gained further impetus as she drew closer to Heaven, her natural home; and how, having for a long time outstripped all others, she came to surpass herself in new practices of holiness.

Footnotes

[1] Serm. de Assumpt., t. IX operum.

[2] Serm. de Sanctisima Deipara.

[3] Cant. 3. 

[4] As the stars of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea be measured: Jer. xxxiii. 22.

[5] Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, all the earth is full of his glory. Isai. vi. 3.

[6] Serm. de Assumpt.

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The Vladimirskaya Icon. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.

 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam. 

© Peter Bloor 2024