Part II : The Crown of Power : Chapter 1 : 9-11

Chapter 1 : Understanding the basis of Part II

The Holy Virgin was created only because of and for the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ - otherwise she would never have been.

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)

There would have been no Holy Virgin if the divine Word had not become incarnate 

5th reason

 9   Finally, as further proof of this proposition we may pray in aid  the judgement of the holy Doctors: that of all rational creatures there is not a single one who is so obliged to our Lord Jesus Christ as His Holy Mother, not only for the incomparable favours of grace that she received from Him but also because she is the only one who is indebted to Him for her being and for her creation. 

It must be remembered that God’s decision to bring us into being came before His decision on the Incarnation of His beloved Son. Accordingly, we cannot say that we were produced in consideration of Jesus Christ, who was not at this point in God’s plan. This is the teaching of Saint Augustine who, writing against the heretic Pelagius in his Epistle number 115, speaks in the following terms:

Christian hearts should be under no mistake and need to realise that the grace about which the Apostle preaches so loftily is not that which we received in creation so as to be made men, but that by which we have been sanctified so as to be made just. For it must not be thought that Jesus Christ died for those who were not yet in being in order that they might be created, but rather that He died for those who are sinners in order that they might be justified. With regard to the holy Virgin, however, this was not the case. She was not chosen by the Divine Word to be His Mother until after He had accepted that was to become Incarnate. This meant that she was able to receive (and did in fact receive) her being from Him along with what would accompany it, inasmuch as from that instant she began to receive her merits, and the first grace accorded to her in this respect was that of being chosen, created and predestined as the Holy Virgin.

Is not this what the great Archbishop of Toledo meant (whom I quoted in Part I of this work), when he genuflected at the feet of this glorious Lady, calling her out of respect and in astonishment: the only fruit of the Redemption? Now why would she be the only fruit, granted that the redemption of the world affected so many people and in such an effective manner, unless it were because she was the only person who owed everything that she was to the grace of the Redeemer? Was it not for this same reason that Saint Dionysius of Alexandria[1] called her the only-begotten daughter of life, as if recognising that she would be, not only in terms of grace but also according to nature, the daughter of Him who said that He is the way, the truth and the life[2]?

Footnotes

[1] Epist. adversus Paulum Samosatenum.

[2] John xiv. 6.

 10   From all that has been written so far, it follows firstly that what we have said about the Holy Virgin – that she was created because of the Saviour, and without Him she would never have been – does not take anything away from her, granted that we do not think any less of the Word Incarnate just because He would not have come to be were it not to deal with the problem of sin. For my own part, far from allowing this consideration to diminish the esteem that I should have for the most sacred Virgin, on the contrary I derive therefrom a particular motive for honouring her, since it teaches me to see her as a work altogether divine, one that the world would never have merited to see if she had not been conceived and brought into being for such a sublime destiny.

 11   It follows secondly (as we mentioned in Part I) that Jesus and Mary are so closely linked to one another that there is no way of separating them or of considering the one without the other. 

Jesus was conceived in Mary, and Mary was conceived for Jesus. Jesus does not wish to be – other than through Mary, and Mary cannot be – other than for Jesus. Whoever says Jesus, says the Son of Mary, and whoever says Mary, says the Mother of Jesus: a Mother who was chosen after He had rejected all those daughters of Adam who were included in God’s first plan. Jesus is a perfect likeness of Mary, and Mary is drawn in a simple manner from the idea of Jesus. 

This is the teaching of the pious Arnold of Chartres in a book which he has left containing his praises of the Holy Virgin. No one should be surprised, therefore, to see Jesus and Mary in company with each other from now on since the remainder of Part II will show the wondrous rapport between them: a rapport which should be all the more dear to us because so greatly to our benefit.

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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 2025