HAIL, FULL OF GRACE!
In my previous post, we looked at why Mary is the Queen who intercedes for us with her Son, lifts up souls fallen from divine grace, and reconciles them to God.
Now we’ll discover why this amazing and compassionate lady is not some ordinary woman who ‘happened’ to carry Our Lord in her womb.
COULD JESUS HAVE BEEN BORN OF ANY WOMAN?
Non-Catholics are baffled by the importance given to Mary. It’s true that she doesn’t feature heavily in the New Testament, the way the Apostles or St. Paul do.
Yet the Angel Gabriel greeted her with the words “Hail, full of grace”, which alone sets her apart from most of mankind! And she is called “blessed among women” (Luke 1:42) by her cousin Elizabeth, who recognizes her as the Mother of Our Savior.
And consider this statement from Catholic Answers: “Mary is the Mother of God, the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. Consequently, Jesus received His DNA from the Blessed Mother, Mary, and, by extension, her direct ancestors.” Still think she was an ordinary woman?
Mary also instigated Jesus’ first miracle, causing His ministry to begin, as we saw in the First Blog Post.
So for Catholics, it doesn’t make any sense that God should choose some random Jewish woman to bear His Son. The woman upon whom was bestowed that amazing honor would have to be spotless. Jesus could not have been born of an ordinary sinner. He is the New Covenant, and by carrying the New Covenant in her womb for nine months, Mary became the Ark of the New Covenant.
Mary is portrayed above in her role as Our Lady of Guadalupe, the only apparition in which she appeared as a pregnant lady.
The Ark of the New Covenant could not be a sinful woman; she had to be pure. God prepared the perfect woman to bring Our Lord into the world, and thus was born the Immaculate Conception.
WHY IS MARY CALLED THE ‘IMMACULATE CONCEPTION’?
The Church did not create the term ‘Immaculate Conception.’ It is how Mary referred to herself when she appeared to Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, in the southwest of France in the Pyrenees, during an apparition recognized by the Catholic Church.
“So, what?” you might say, “I’m not Catholic, and I don’t have to believe in apparitions.”
Actually, neither do Catholics. But, to help us believe in her apparitions, Our Lady often performs miracles when she appears to mortals, which even skeptics can’t deny. On this particular occasion, she caused water to flow out of dry ground, which has now become the famous Lourdes spring, site of 70 official miraculous healings and tens of thousands more unrecognized ones. (See also the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, witnessed by a vast crowd of believers and non-believers and the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe.)
When visiting the lady in white the Lourdes grotto, Bernadette had no idea what the term ‘Immaculate Conception’ meant. She asked the beautiful apparition who she was, partly because her parish priest, Father Peyramale, was growing frustrated and told her to.
The lady replied: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Uneducated but devout, Bernadette had no idea what those words meant when she repeated them to the priest. Stunned, he informed his bishop, aware Bernadette could never have heard the term before; he knew she was telling the truth – and that Our Lady was appearing to the young peasant girl.
MARY, THE EPITOME OF HUMILITY
Father Gabriel Amorth, the famous exorcist, had several encounters with Satan, and asked him why he hated Mary so much. Here are Satan’s responses:
“She makes me angry because she is the humblest of all creatures, and because I am the proudest; because she is the purest of all creatures, and I am not; because, of all creatures, she is the most obedient to God, and I am a rebel!”
“I am more afraid when you say the Madonna’s name, because I am more humiliated by being beaten by a simple creature, than by Him (Jesus Christ)…”
“Because she always defeats me, because she was never compromised by any taint of sin!” (my italics)
Father Amorth also recalls, “During an exorcism, Satan told me, through the possessed person, ‘Every Hail Mary of the Rosary is a blow to the head for me; if Christians knew the power of the Rosary, it would be the end of me!’”
Mary was totally obedient to God. When the Angel Gabriel appeared to her and announced that she would be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and conceive a child out of wedlock, he appeared to be condemning her to death by stoning under Jewish law. But Mary accepted it as God’s Will, and said, “Be it done unto me, according to Thy Will.” (Luke 1:38)
She showed complete obedience to God and her complete humility was a sign of how worthy she is to be the Mother of Jesus.
Mary is no ordinary woman!
Given the above, it is impossible to underestimate Mary’s importance in the salvation of the human race. Recognizing this, Catholics venerate her. We don’t worship her: worship belongs to God alone. But we realize how special she is and ask her to intercede for us with her Son.
It amazes me that she loves all of us so much that she is willing to do this, even though it was thanks to our past, present and future sins that her Son had to endure the cruel tortures and death which she witnessed. Yet she bears us no grudge; instead she actively works for our salvation. It’s more than we deserve!
Only a truly holy person could do that.
Hilary Walker Books 