Our Lady Saint Mary. J. G. H. Barry
rather such solution puts us in the presence of new and, it may well be, deeper and more perplexing questions. "Are there no limits to the demands of God upon us," we sometimes despairingly ask? And the answer is, "No: there are no limits because the end of the road that we are travelling is in infinity." The limit that is set to our perfecting is the perfection of God, and if we grow through all the years of eternity we shall still have attained only a relative perfection.
So the successful passing of one test cannot be expected to relieve us from all tests in the future. It is the dream of the child that manhood will set it free; and he reaches manhood only to find that it imposes obligations which are so pressing that he reverses his dream and speaks of his childhood as the time of his true freedom. The meeting of spiritual tests is but the proving of spiritual capacity to meet other tests. To our Lady it might well seem that the acceptance of the conditions of the Incarnation was the severest test that God could assign her; that in the light of the promise she could look on to joy. But the future concealed a sword which should pierce her very heart. The promise contained no doubt wonderful things--this wonder of God's blessing that she was now experiencing in the coming of the Holy Ghost, in the very embrace of God Himself: this is but the first of the Joyful Mysteries which were God's great gifts to her. But her life was not to be a succession of Joyful Mysteries, ultimately crowned with the Mysteries of Glory. There were the Sorrowful Mysteries as well. They were as true, and shall we not say, as necessary, as valuable, a part of her spiritual training as the others. She, our Mother, was now near God, with a nearness that was possible for no other human being, and it is one of the traditional sayings of our Lord: "He that is near Me is near fire." And fire burns as well as warms and lights. She is wonderful, the Virgin of Nazareth, in this moment when she becomes Mother of God: and we share in the rapture of the moment when in the fulness of her joy she hardly notices S. Gabriel's departure: but we feel, too, a great pity for her as we think of the coming days. So we kneel to her who is our Mother, as well as Mother of God, and say our Ave, and ask her priceless intercession.
Gabriel, that angel bright,
Brighter than the sun is light,
From heaven to earth he took his flight,
Letare.
In Nazareth, that great city,
Before a maiden he kneeled on knee,
And said, "Mary, God is with thee,
Letare."
"Hail Mary, full of grace,
God is with thee, and ever was;
He hath in thee chosen a place.
Letare."
Mary was afraid of that sight,
That came to her with so great light,
Then said the angel that was so bright,
"Letare."
"Be not aghast of least nor most,
In thee is conceived of the Holy Ghost,
To save the souls that were for-lost.
Letare."
Fifteenth Century.
PART TWO
CHAPTER III
THE ANNUNCIATION II
And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.
S. Luke I. 38
O God, who through the fruitful virginity of blessed Mary didst bestow on mankind the rewards of eternal salvation: grant, we beseech thee, that we may experience her intercession for us through whom we were made worthy to receive the author of life, even Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord.
Roman.
Mary's momentary hesitation had been due to the surprise that she felt at the nature of the angelic message and the difficulty that there was in relating it to her state of life. That she, a virgin, should bear a son was vastly perplexing; but the answer of S. Gabriel speedily cleared away the difficulty: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee."
Blessed Mary had no difficulty about the supernatural; she was not afflicted with the modern disease that there are no things in heaven and earth save such as are contained in our philosophy. She was not of those who "cannot believe what they do not understand," It was enough for her that a message had come from God: and no matter how little she was able to understand the mode of God's proposed action within her, she was willing to offer herself to be the instrument of the will of God. No doubt that was an habitual attitude and not one taken up on the spur of the moment. It is indeed very rarely that what seem spontaneous actions are really such; and S. Mary's first word was nearer spontaneity than the second. Her exclamation in answer to the angelic Ave was the natural expression of her surprise at so unexpected a message: its variance from all her thought about her life was the thing that struck her; and therefore her instinctive, "How can this be?"
In this second word we have a quite different attitude. Here is revealed to us the profound and perfect humility of the Blessed Virgin. This answer comes from the experience of her whole life. It is of such utterances that we say that they are revealing. What we at any time say, does in fact reveal what we are--what we have come to be through the experience of our past life. And no doubt it is these instinctive utterances which are called out by some unexpected occurrence that reveal more of us than our weighed and guarded words. Back of every word we utter is a life we have lived. We have been spending years in preparing for that word. Perhaps when the time comes to speak it, it is not the word we thought we were going to speak, it was not the prelude to the action we thought that we were going to perform; it reveals a character other than the character that we thought we had. How often the Gospel brings that before us! We see the young Ruler come running with his brave and perfectly sincere words about inheriting eternal life; and then we see him going away when the testing of our Lord demonstrated that he only partly meant what he said. It was not S. Peter's brave words, "Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee," that revealed the truth about the Apostle; but the words that were called out by the accusation that he was of the company of Jesus: "Then began he to curse and swear, saying, I know not the man." We have no doubt that he knows himself better when he catches the eye of the Master turned upon him and goes and weeps bitterly. And it is true, is it not, that it is through words called out and thoughts stirred by the unexpected that we often get new insight into our real state. A sudden temptation reveals a hidden weakness, and we go away shamed and crushed, saying, "I did not suppose that I was capable of that."
But, thank God, the revelation is sometimes the other way; the testing uncovers unexpected strength. Of many a man, after some strong trial, we say, "I did not know that he had so much courage, or so much patience." The quiet unassuming exterior was the mask of an heroic will of which very likely not even the possessor suspected the true quality. The annals of martyrdom are full of these revelations of unsuspected strength. Here in the case of Blessed Mary the quality revealed is that of humility so perfect that it dreams not of revolt from the most searching trial. It reveals the character of our Mother better than pages of description can do. What we see in response to the bewildering messages brought by S. Gabriel is the instinctive movement of the soul toward God. There is utter absence of any thought of self or of how she may be affected by the purpose of God; it is enough that that purpose is made