May 07 2009
Month of Mary, Day 7: Mary a Foreshadowning of Christ
Art and nature alike produce their works gradually, and God Himself does the same. The pencil precedes the brush; the architect’s design maps out the building to come:-there is no chef d’ oeuvre accomplished in the world but goes through its preliminary stages; whilst nature, in the development of her designs, often tries her ‘prentice hand in ways that seem almost like play.
The work in which our Maker most remarkably follows the same plan is that the Incarnation, for the sake of which He declared that He would “move the heaven and earth” (Haggai 2:7):-this being His One Work above all others. Although its fulfillment was not to be till “the middle of years” Hab 3:2), He nevertheless began it from the beginning of the world. The natural and the written Law-ceremonies and sacrifices-priesthood and prophets-were all, speaking reverently, merely sketches or outlines of the “perfect Man, Christ Jesus”. They are called by an ancient writer Christi rudimenta; and the grand work itself was reached only through a succession of images and figures that served as preparatory designs. But when the time comes close for the Mystery, God plans something yet more excellent than these:-He forms the blessed Mary, that He may represent Jesus Christ to us more naturally than before. He is about to send Him on earth, and so combines all His most beautiful characteristics in the person of her who is to be His mother.
Tertullian, contemplating and discussing the marvelous interest that God displayed in the act of forming man from “the slime of the earth,” seeks for some explanation of the immense pains that He bestowed on the work. He declares himself unable to believe that he put forth so much power, to mould so base a material, without some further great end in view: and this end, he finally concludes, is nothing less than Jesus Christ, Who is to be born of the race of man, and Whom God, therefore, chooses to typify to us by His manner of forming the first members of that race. Quodcumque limus exprimebatur, Christus cogitabatur homo futurus.
If this idea is true:-if God, when He created the first Adam, meant to trace out the second; if He formed our first father so carefully with Jesus our Savior in view, and because His Divine Son was to spring from him after many generations:-surely today, when we see Mary-who was to bear Christ within her womb-come into the world, we may conclude that in creating her God was thinking of our Lord and working for Him alone? Hence there is no cause for surprise either in His having formed her so carefully or in His endowing her with so many graces as he did: for to make her worthy of His Son He models her upon that Son Himself. Intending soon to bestow on us His Word Incarnate, on the day of Mary’s nativity He gives us an outline-I might almost say a beginning-of Jesus Christ, in one who, though a creature, is in some sort a living expression of His own perfections. Thus we may truly apply to such a day the Apostle’s beautiful words: “The night has passed and the day is at hand.”
The Redeemer of mankind, besides being in Himself an inexhaustible Font of Love, must necessarily possess the two qualities of exemption from sin and fullness of Grace. He must be innocent to purify us from our crimes, and full of grace to enrich our poverty; for these qualities are inseparable from the character and office of the Savior. When God formed the Blessed Virgin on the pattern of the Sun of Justice, some of the rays by which He was to dispel our darkness were permitted to shine forth in her, though only in a degree that faintly foreshadowed the brilliant light they were to shed over the world when they should stream in their fullness from Jesus Christ Himself; and hence it came that she was endowed with the very qualities that were to form an intrinsic part of her Divine Son’s human nature, especially with these two of innocence and fullness of grace. We are here to consider shortly both the cause and the manner of Mary’s likeness to her Son in these particular points:-and, first, the special relation of her innocence to His.
Continue at page 42, first full paragraph: “In the whole teaching of the Gospels…“
