Our Lady Saint Mary. J. G. H. Barry
understand in some measure the nature of the future deliverance and to look forward to the coming of One Who should be the embodiment of the divine action and the Representative of God Himself with a completeness which no previous messenger of God had ever attained.
It we would understand the Old Testament we must find that its intimate note is preparation, just as the intimate note of the New Testament is accomplishment. God is working to a foreseen end, and is working as fast as men will consent to co-operate and become the instruments of His purpose. The purpose is not one that can be achieved by the exercise of power; it is a purpose of love and can be effected only through co-operating love. And as we watch the final unfolding of that purpose in the Incarnation of God, we more and more become conscious of the preparation of all the instruments of the purpose which are working in harmony for the revelation of the meaning of God.
Of all the instruments of this divine purpose, one figure has preeminently fascinated the devout imagination because of her unique beauty, and has been the object of profound speculation because of the intimacy of her relation to God,--Mary of Nazareth. The vocabulary of love and reverence has exhausted itself in the attempt to express our estimate of her. The literature of Mariology is immense. And no one who has at all entered into the meaning of the Incarnation, of what is involved in eternal God taking human flesh, can wonder at this. Here at the crisis of the divine redeeming action, when the crowning mystery which angels desire to look into is being accomplished, we find the figure of a village maiden of Israel as the surprising instrument of the advent of God. We wonder: and we instinctively feel, that as all the other steps and instruments in God's redemption of man had from the beginning been carefully prepared, so shall we find preparation here. We understand that as God could not come in the flesh at any time, but only when the "fulness of time" had come; so He could not come of any woman, but only of such an one as He had prepared to be the instrument of His Incarnation.
It is involved in the very intimacy of the relation which exists between our Lord and His blessed Mother that she should be unique in the human race. We feel that we are right in saying that the Incarnation which waited for the preparation of the world socially and spiritually, must also be thought of as waiting for the coming of the woman who would so completely surrender herself to the divine will that in her obedience could be founded the antidote to the disobedience which was founded in Eve. The race waited for the coming of the new mother who should be the instrument in the abolishing of the evil of which the first mother was the instrument. And from the very beginning of the thought of the Church about blessed Mary there was no doubt that it was implied in her office in bearing the God-Man that she should be without sin--sinless in the sense of never having in any least degree consented to evil the thought of the Church has ever held her to be. It was held incredible that she who by God's election bore in the sanctuary of her womb during the months of her child-bearing Him who was Lord and Creator and was come to save the world from all the stain and penalty of sin should herself be a sinner. Without actual sin, therefore, was Mary held to be from the time that the thought of the Church was turned upon her relation to our Blessed Lord[6].
[6] It is true that a few writers among the Fathers see in blessed Mary traces of venial sin; who think of her intervention at Cana as presumptuous &c. But such notices are not of sufficient frequency or importance to break the general tradition.
For some time this seemed enough. It was not felt that any further thought about her sinlessness was needed. But as the uniqueness of Mary forced itself more and more upon the brooding thought of theologians and saints they were compelled to face the fact that her freedom from actual sin was not a full appreciation of her purity, was not an exhaustive treatment of her relation to our Lord. The doctrine of the nature of sin itself had been becoming clearer to the minds of Christian thinkers. All men are conceived and born in sin, it was seen. After S. Paul's teaching, the problem of sin was not the problem of sins but the problem of sinfulness. The matter could not be left with the statement that all men do sin; the reason of their sinning must be traced out. And it was traced out, under S. Paul's guidance, to a ground of sin in nature itself, to a defect in man as he is born into the world. He does not become a sinner when he commits his first sin: he is born a sinner. In other words, the problem of man's sinfulness is the problem of original sin.
What then do we mean by original sin? Briefly, we mean this. At his creation man was not only created innocent, but he was created in union with God, a union which conferred on him many supernatural gifts, gifts, that is, which were not a part of his nature, but were in the way of an addition to his nature. "By created nature man is endowed with moral sense, and is thus made responsible for righteousness; but he is unequal to its fulfilment. The all-righteous Creator could be trusted to complete His work. He endowed primitive man with superadded gifts of grace, especially the supernatural gift, donum supernaturale, of the Holy Spirit[7]."
[7] Hall, Dogmatic Theology, V, 263.
Our purpose does not require us further to particularize these gifts and our time does not permit it. We are concerned with this: the effect of man's sin was, what the effect of sin always is, to separate man from God. To sin, man has to put his will in opposition to the will of God. This our first parents did; and the result of their act was the destruction of their union with God and the loss of their supernatural endowments. They lapsed into a state of nature, only it was a state in which they had forfeited what had been conferred upon them at their creation. This state of man, with only his natural endowments, is the state into which all men, the descendants of Adam, have been born. This is the state of original sin. "Original sin means in Catholic theology a state inherited from our first human parents in which we are deprived of the supernatural grace and original righteousness with which they were endowed before they sinned, and are naturally prone to sin." (Hall, Dogmatic Theology, Vol. V, p. 281.) We can state the same fact otherwise, and more simply for our present purposes, by saying that by sin was forfeited the grace of union or sanctifying grace; and when we say that a child is born in sin we mean that it is born out of union with God, or without the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace. You will note here no implication of original sin as an active poison handed on from generation to generation. It will be important to remember this presently.
When, therefore, the thought of the Church began to follow out what was involved in its belief in the actual sinlessness of blessed Mary, in its holding to the fact that her relation to God was of such a close and indeed unique character that her actual sinfulness would be incomprehensible; it was at length compelled to ask, What, in that case are we to think of original sin? If the first Eve was created in innocence and endowed with supernatural gifts, are we to think that she whom the Fathers of the Church from the earliest times have constantly called the second Eve, she whom God chose to be the Mother of His Son, should be less endowed? Is it a fact any more conceivable that the virgin Mother of God should be born in original sin than that she should be the victim of actual sin? If by the special grace of God she was kept from sin from the time that she was able to know good and evil, is it not probable that the freedom from sin goes further back than that, and is a freedom from original as well as from actual sin? What is the meaning of the Angelic Salutation, "Hail, thou that art full of grace," unless it refer to a superadded grace, to such donum supernaturale as the first Eve received? There is indeed no precedent to guide in the case: the prophet Jeremiah and S. John Baptist had been preserved from sin from the womb, but this did not involve freedom from original sin. Still the fact that there was no precedent was not in anywise fatal; the point of the situation was just that there was no precedent for the relation to God into which Blessed Mary had been called. It was precisely this uniqueness of vocation which was leading theological thought to the conclusion of the uniqueness of her privilege: and this uniqueness of privilege seemed to call for nothing less than an exemption from sin in any and all forms. So a belief in the Immaculate Conception grew up despite a good deal of opposition while its implications were being thought out, but was found more and more congenial to the mind of the Church. She whose wonderful title for centuries had been Mother of God could never at any