The Predestination of Mary

I. “The woman whom the Lord hath prepared for my Master’s Son” (Gen. xxiv. 44). Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the centre of creation; according to St. Paul, “the first-born of all creatures” (Col. i. 15). All things were made by Him, and in His image, and in order to lead up to Him; He is therefore the first conceived in the ideas of God. All that concerns Him is important; every such thing was foreseen and decreed from eternity. Adam, Abraham, David, the prophets, the people of Israel, were great, solely because of Him who was to spring from that stock. St. John the Baptist, who announced Him and prepared the way before His face, was sanctified from his mother’s womb, and declared to be the greatest of men. There was one who stood nearer to the Messias than David, who prepared His way more than St. John, viz., the woman who bore to Him the closest of all possible relations, that of mother. Mary gave Jesus of her very substance; for nine months He lived with her life; her blood flowed in His veins, and passed from her heart to His. None could love Our Lord as His Mother did; He loved none as He did His mother. Wonderful were the privileges of the Magi, the shepherds, the Apostles; vastly more so were those of Mary. She was greater and holier, and therefore more efficaciously predestinated than any other of the human race after her Child. Pay her the homage and love due to her singular and august position.

II. “The Most High hath sanctified His own tabernacle; God is in the midst thereof” (Ps. xlv. 5, 6). Every one of the elect is chosen and predestined by God in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. i. 4). Those who have a special function in the service of God are ordained to it and prepared for it. Our Lord is the first, and He “was predestinated Son of God in power” (Rom. i. 4). Next, standing out beyond all the rest of mankind in the order of God’s predestination, is the Blessed Virgin. No other one of the human race was necessary for the Incarnation. Not one of us would be missed had we not come into existence. But such a mother was necessary in order that the Son of God should be made flesh. The Virgin-Mother is the correlative of God made man. Her relation to Him joins her necessarily with Him in the divine disposition of things. She is predestined in the predestination of her Child. She is therefore a special object of divine care, and is, in an eminent degree, the daughter of the Eternal Father. The Lord was with her in a unique manner, and therefore she was decreed to be full of grace and blessed amongst women (Luke i. 28). Endeavour to correspond to your predestination as the Blessed Virgin did to hers.

III. As a consequence of her eternal predestination, Our Lady was proclaimed by God in figure and prophecy as no other has been except Jesus Christ. God spoke of her to the serpent in Eden: “I will put enmities between thee and the woman . . . she shall crush thy head” (Gen. iii. 15). To Achaz the sign was given: “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and His name shall be called Emmanuel” (Isa. vii. 14). Another prophet said: “The Lord hath created a new thing upon the earth: a woman shall compass a man” (Jerem. xxxi. 22). Our Lady was typified by Jael, Judith and Esther, all of whom delivered the people of God from bondage, and were declared “blessed among women.” She was represented in figure by the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the word of God on the tables of stone, and a measure of the bread from heaven given to the Israelites in the desert; also by the propitiatory or mercy-seat on which God rested between the Cherubim. Israel therefore watched for the appearance of the Mother of the Messias as for the first gleam of dawn on the mountain tops heralding the rising sun. The position of the Blessed Virgin is greater still in the hearts of Christians and in the Church, but it is greater beyond all in the divine plan of Redemption. Do not fail in honouring her whom God has so honoured.