The Crown of Excellence : Chapter 8 : § 3. 14

Chapter 8 : The Seventh 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)

Mary’s soul was unique in being totally free of any sin

§ 3. That the Holy Fathers say that the MOTHER OF GOD was incapable of sin, and how this is to be understood

The second principle : Mary continually shows a most ardent love of God

THE SUPERNATURAL LOVE OF THE HOLY VIRGIN

 14   Everything I have just said would not have been particularly significant if this love had not risen to the higher level represented by the keep. There it was rendered supernatural in a process of purification, being continually refined in the divine heart which could with good reason be called the crucible, or following the blessed Martyr Methodius[1], the treasury of pure love. For God’s prevenient grace had disposed this heart to love, over all things. This means that everything which entered therein became holy, immediately receiving the form, the weight, the colour, the sound and the value of the finest gold of pure charity. This charity continued to grow according to the measure of the accompanying grace, which was so prominent in its beginnings and so prodigious in its progress that the love it accompanied surpasses anything men could imagine and goes beyond the understanding of all created minds.

I should like to think you can recall what I said earlier about Mary’s first sanctification and the favour that God granted by lifting the veil from her eyes so that she might behold His beautiful countenance. This was like a bonfire with two levels, where the flames of divine love caught hold so violently as to shoot higher than the ardour and ecstasies of the highest Seraphim. Truth to tell, love itself is constituted of the fire of love and love’s power of attraction. When this sublimated soul contemplated the length and the breadth and the height of all she owed to God, her heart caught fire (thanks to divine grace) with such a blaze of love that only a miracle prevented it from being reduced to ashes.

Now if she began so nobly, it did not mean she would then ease back in her fervour with the passing of time; in fact, she redoubled it so that it continued to grow right to the end, without interruption. It is just not possible to know how much she benefited from seeing at the start of her life the adorable face of God, which the Holy Angels desire to gaze upon without ceasing. This sight was a source of multiple joys and extinguished in her every other sort of ardour, with the result that anything she saw afterwards seemed in comparison altogether unworthy. She saw that the unique object of her desires was truly worthy of a love which was infinite. Unable to offer such, she nevertheless did everything that a creature could who had received extraordinary, prevenient grace : she let fly arrows towards Heaven which were so ablaze with her love that God was as though constrained to love her still more, so that she grew beyond measure in grace and favour. 

Who, in the name of Heaven, could adequately portray this impassioned encounter between on the one side the great Monarch of the Universe pouring prevenient grace into a soul with inestimable blessings, and on the other this same soul striving to express her love in a way beyond the comprehension even of the Angels? Or who could explain how, after God redoubled His graces so as not to be outdone by His creature, Mary’s own heart blazed even more ardently as she strove with all her might to love and to adore her benefactor? What tongue could describe how far the blazing fire in this seraphic heart would reach in the end, with its ardour being continually recharged and boosted so as to shoot up globes of fire incessantly from this furnace of love?

Let us be frank and admit it is beyond our wit to know the answer and we shall now move on to learn some more from what the Saints have bequeathed to us.

Footnotes

[1] Orat. in Hypapante.

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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