I. On the Grounds of Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints

ON THE GROUNDS OF DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN AND THE SAINTS, AND ON THE NATURE OF TRUE DEVOTION.

(From a Sermon preached on a Feast of Mary's Conception.)

Devotion to the Blessed Virgin is a matter concerning which there are two important points to be specially considered: — first, the grounds on which this devotion is solidly founded; secondly, the rules to be invariably followed in practising it. A clear understanding of these points will help us to honour her as true Christians ought, not on one of her feasts only, but on all those presented in succession by the Church to the observance of the Faithful.

With Advent, which opens the ecclesiastical year, comes the Feast of Our Lady's Conception. As on this day we really commemorate the first moment of her existence, and consequently that of our first relations with her as our most favoured fellow-creature, there could not be a more fitting day for treating the subject of why, and how, we are to pay her homage.

First, then, on what basis is our devotion to Mary founded? " No one," says the Apostle, " can lay any foundation but the one that has been laid — that is, Jesus Christ." Now, in a pre-eminent manner, Our Divine Saviour is the foundation of the honour we pay to the Blessed Virgin; because we have received Him, in fact, through her. God predestined Mary, before all time, to be the means of giving Jesus Christ to the world. Having called her to so glorious a ministry. He did not choose that she should be a merely passive channel of His grace. He made her, farther, a voluntary instrument who should contribute to the great work by the use of her own will. Is not this clear from the manner in which the Incarnation was announced to Mary? When the moment for accomplishing that Mystery — which has kept all nature expectant throughout the ages — has arrived, the Eternal Father sends an angel to make it known to her; and the angel awaits the maiden's decision, so that the great act shall not be performed without her consent. The moment she has given this the heavens are opened, the Son of God is made man, and the world has a Saviour.

Hence, the love and longing of Mary were in a measure necessary for our salvation. St. Thomas declares that "the fulness of grace she then received was so great that it brought her to a most intimate union with the Author of Grace; that this fitted her to receive into her holy womb the One who contains all graces; and that thus, in conceiving Him, she became in some sort the source of that grace which He was to pour forth over all mankind — and so concurred in giving the human race its Deliverer ".

There is a necessary consequence of this fact which is not sufficiently borne in mind: namely, that God having once elected to give us Jesus Christ through the Blessed Virgin, this order of things can never change; for the gifts of God are "without repentance". It is, and always will be, true, that having once received the Author of our salvation through her, we shall necessarily continue to receive help towards that salvation in the same manner. The Incarnate Word is the universal principle of grace; but the Christian life in its various phases consists in the particular applications of the grace proceeding from this principle to the individual needs of each soul. Mary, having been once chosen as the means by which grace should come into the world, has, as a natural consequence, her share in its application to the souls of men for their salvation.

Theology recognises three principal operations of Jesus Christ's grace: God calls us; God justifies us; God grants us perseverance. The calling is the first step; justification constitutes our progress; perseverance brings the journey to an end, and gives us in our true country what can never be had together on earth — rest and glory.

Now, every Christian knows that for all these three states the power of Christ is needed; but perhaps few really believe how clearly Scripture indicates Mary's perpetual association with their work in the soul. A few words, however, will prove this.

(i) The Divine Call is typified by the sudden enlightenment that St. John the Baptist received in his mother's womb. If we reflect on this miracle we see in it an image of sinners called by grace. John, hidden within his mother's flesh, is in utter blindness and deafness: but who so blind and deaf as the sinner? The thunder of God's judgments breaks over him unheard; the very light of the Gospel fails to open his eyes. Yet, in the dark places where he has hidden himself, does not God find him out, and show him the truth as in a lightning-flash? Again: Jesus comes to John unexpectedly: He prevents him: He suddenly rouses and attracts his hitherto insensible heart. And how does God come to the sinner? He comes unasked, unsought, and calls him to repentance; He inspires the sinful heart with a secret, unaccountable, disgust and bitterness that compel it to regret its lost peace and to long, almost unconsciously, for reconciliation. Even whilst the soul is in the act of fleeing from Him it suddenly finds itself arrested and compelled to turn.

But once more: — when God gives us, in the leaping of the unborn St. John, an image of the sinner " prevented by grace," He shows us at the same time

Mary's concurrence in the work. If John, thus called, as it were struggles to escape from the prison that confines him, at whose voice does he so act? " For, behold, as soon as the voice of Thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leapt for joy! " So St. Elizabeth declares; and St. Ambrose says that Mary " raised John the Baptist above nature," and by her mere voice caused him to drink in the spirit of holiness, before he had breathed the breath of life: — " he obeyed before he was brought forth ". According to the same doctor, the grace given to Mary was so great that it not only kept her a virgin, but conferred the gift of innocence on those she visited. Hence we need not wonder if St. John, whom the mother of His Saviour anointed, so to speak, with the oil of her presence and the perfume of her purity for three months, was born and lived (as the Church's tradition holds) in perfect freedom from sin.

(2) Justification, God's next great work in man's soul, is represented at the marriage of Cana in the persons of the Apostles. For what says the Evangelist? "Jesus turned water into wine" (His first miracle); "and He showed His glory, and His disciples believed in Him." The Apostles had already been called, but they had not hitherto had a lively enough faith to be justified: — ^justification being attributed to faith as the first principle, or root, of all grace, though not sufficient by itself for salvation. The sacred text could not express "justifying faith" in clearer terms than it does here; but neither could it put before us more plainly the Blessed Virgin's share in this marvellous work. Was not that great miracle, confirming the Apostles' faith, the effect of Mary's charity and intercession? True: — when she first asked for the grace, she seemed to be repelled. " Woman," said the Saviour, " what is there between thee and Me? My hour has not yet come " (John ii. 4). But though these words sound rough, and appear like a curt refusal, Mary did not hold herself refused. She understood her Son; and she took His rebuff as typical of that ingenious love by which He often tests the prayer of faithful souls, only to show that humility and persevering confidence may win what a first request has not obtained. Her expectation was not deceived: Jesus, who had seemed to deny her, did what she asked; and even — St. Chrysostom says — forestalled the hour He had determined on for His first miracle, to please her. Again: this miracle wrought at Mary's prayer is unlike other miracles of Christ in being worked for a really unnecessary thing. There is no special need of more wine at their wedding feast; but His mother wishes it, and that is enough. Are we to believe it an accidental coincidence that she should interpose only in this particular miracle, which is followed by a result embodying an express image of the justification of sinners? No: there can be no doubt that the Holy Spirit intended us to understand just what St. Augustine understood by the mystery; and what, therefore, has been accepted as its meaning from the first ages of Scriptural interpretation. " The glorious Virgin " — writes the great doctor — " being Mother of our Head according to the flesh, had to be Mother of all His members according to the Spirit, by co-operating through her divinity in the spiritual birth of the children of God."

Lastly, we must go on to see how she contributes not only to the hirih of the soul but to its faithful perseverance.

(3) As the Baptist typifies the sinner called out of darkness, and the Apostles at Cana in Galilee the soul justified by faith, so does St. John the Beloved at the foot of the Cross stand for the children of grace and adoption who persevere with Jesus to the end. With Mary, he follows Christ even to the Cross while the other disciples take flight, clinging with constancy to the mystical tree, and generously ready to die with his Lord. Thus, he is naturally a figure of the persevering Faithful. Now — mark this — to John, particularly, as we know, Christ gives His Mother: those whom he here typifies are to be Mary's special children. Surely, then, she will make it her peculiar care to beg the grace of perseverance for every Christian soul?

Here, then, is the promised proof: — those who know what mysterious meanings are hidden beneath the words of the sacred text recognise, in these three examples, that Mary through her intercession is Mother alike of the called, the justified, and the persevering; and that her untiring love is in fact instrumental in every operation of grace. The great point for us to remember, as the solid ground of our devotion, is that her power with Our Lord remains the same now that it was during His life on earth; for natural feelings are raised and perfected, not extinguished, in glory. Hence, the most Blessed Virgin need never fear a refusal: Christ's own love pleads on the side of Mary's prayers, because the very human nature that He assumed speaks to Him through her; and thus we have, for ever pleading our cause with God, that most powerful of all human advocates — a Mother at the feet of her Son.

Now, having seen the real basis on which the honour paid by the Church to Our Lady rests (and woe be to those who would fain deprive Christians of her help!) let us carefully consider in what way devotion to her should be practised; for, even though furnished with a lasting foundation for our piety, we may show it by what are only vain and superstitious practices. There is a true devotion, and a false one; and the next point to treat concerns the kind of worship that we owe respectively to God, to the Blessed Virgin, and to all the Saints.

The fundamental rule of the honour we pay to the

Blessed Virgin and the Saints is this: that we must entirely refer it all to God and to our eternal salvation. If it were not referred to God it would be a purely human act, and we surely know that the Saints, being filled with God and His glory, will not accept purely human devotion. What does "religion " mean but a binding to God? And how could any act that was not religious please His holy ones? Hence, all devotion to Mary is useless and superstitious that does not lead us to the possession of God and the enjoyment of our heavenly inheritance. This is, indeed, the general rule of all true religious worship: that it jiows from, and returns to, God, and is in no wise diverted from Him by being extended to His creatures.

To come to particulars in the matter: there are two special points, concerning prayer to Our Lady and the Saints, on which the Church is accused by her enemies of erroneous practice, the first of which is " idolatry ". In other words. Catholics are often charged with acting almost like the heathen in so using their canonised fellow-creatures as to be guilty of multiplying God, by turning them into so many minor deities to whom they pay divine homage. The folly and injustice of such an accusation is very simply proved by reference to the rule just given. The only honour recognised by the Church as due to her Saints is an honour strictly in accordance with that rule; which rule is itself founded upon the central lo Devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

principle of our Faith; namely, on the unity and supremacy of God.

We Christians adore but one God; single, omnipotent, creator and dispenser of all things; in whose name we were consecrated at baptism; and in whom alone^ we recognise absolute sovereignty, unlimited goodness, and perfect fulness of Being. We honour the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, not by a worship of necessary service, or of subjection — for, in the order of religion, we are free as regards creatures, and subject only to God — but by an honour of brotherly love and fellowship. In them, we pay homage to wonders worked "by the right hand of the Most High "; we revere the communication to them of His grace — the diffusion, through them, of His. glory. In short, what we honour in them is the very fact of their dependence on that Primary Being to Whom alone our true worship relates; the sole principle of all good, and the end of all our desires, as of theirs. We must, then, entirely repudiate the fear, professed by our enemies, that the glory of God can be diminished by our conceiving high notions of Mary and the Saints. Would it not be attributing miserable weakness to the Creator to imagine Him jealous of His own gifts, and of the light He sheds on His creatures? Just as well might we expect the sun, if he had life, to be jealous of the moon, who shines merely by reflection of his own rays! No matter how highly we may honour Mary's perfections Jesus Christ could not possibly envy her, seeing that He is Himself the source of every grace she possesses. Let the critics who accuse us of idolatry in our worship of the Saints remember that they condemn, with us, the Ambroses, the Augustines, the Chrysostoms, on whose doctrine and example they know our practice to be founded, and whom they themselves acknowledge as authorities. The second accusation commonly made against us is that we make for ourselves many mediators, instead of relying on " the One Sole Mediator, Jesus Christ, Who saved us with His blood "; and our motive for this error is often, further, said to be that — like certain ancient philosophers — we deem God Himself, even though made man for us, to be inaccessible immediately from His extreme purity. Now, if any Catholic ever allows such a notion as this to lay hold of him, and make him put the Saints, to the smallest extent, in the place of Christ, it can only be because of his most culpable ignorance or neglect of his own Church's teaching. No one is taught so plainly as we are that we were created by God for immediate intercourse with Him; but that we lost our privilege, for time, by sin; and that we should have lost it also for eternity if the Son had not reconciled us to the Father by taking our sins on Himself. Hence, we ask absolutely nothing except in the name of Our Saviour, as every child who has properly learnt its catechism is fully aware. All we do, in begging the Saints' prayers, is to beg the prayers of those among our own brethren who are specially dear to that Saviour Himself because of their supreme love for Him. We all — Protestant and Catholic alike — ask for the prayers of our living friends and fellow-Christians, and all believe that " the prayer of the just man availeth much ". The doctrine of " the Communion of Saints," as Catholics put it into practice, is merely the carrying out of this principle with regard to those who are already in the company of God, but whom we believe to be, through His power, still present in spirit among us, and to have our interests at heart though no longer with us in the flesh.

There is yet another principle involved in the true doctrine of honour to the Saints, which must be touched upon before we leave the subject; and that is the great advantage to ourselves contained in practising devotion towards them of a right sort. The Christian is bound to imitate what he honours, and the object of his worship must also be the model of his life. His God is a, perfect God; and hence he must try to make himself perfect, and worship only those who have given honour to their Maker by imitating His perfections. When we venerate the Saints it is not to increase their glory: that is full; they have their perfect measure of it with God in heaven. We pay them homage — over and above the motive of giving glory to God — that we may incite ourselves to follow them, and we ask their prayers for the same purpose. This is the sense of the Church in instituting the feasts she does in honour of the Saints; and it is shown in the collect for St. Stephen's Day, which says: " O Lord 1 give us grace to imitate that which we honour ", It is the constant tradition of the Church that the most essential part of devotion to the blessed in heaven is to profit by their example. Without this, all homage is vain. Whatever individual saint we are devout to, we must try to acquire that one's special virtues, and most of all are we bound to do this where the Queen of all Saints — the Virgin of virgins — is concerned. If we deeply revere — as every true Catholic does — the virginal chastity which enabled her to conceive the Son of God in her womb, we can duly express our veneration only by doing our best, according to our states of life, to imitate it in our own souls. So far does St. Ambrose go in his conviction of the power which the reverent imitation of Mary's virtue may confer on her true clients, that he says: " every chaste soul that keeps its purity and innocence untarnished conceives the Eternal Wisdom in itself; and is filled with God and His grace after the pattern of Mary ".

To women in especial does this duty of following the Blessed Virgin's example apply. Many portraits have been painted of Mary, by many artists, each painting her according to his own idea. There can, however, be only one true likeness of her: namely, a copy of her character as shown forth in the Gospels, the account of which forms a portrait drawn, if we may venture to say so, by the Holy Spirit Himself, And what is the character thus set before us in Scripture? This must be specially noted. It is neither Mary's high intercourse with God, nor her great and special graces, nor her power, that is dwelt upon in the Gospels. All these are kept in the background. What is brought before our notice is simply her ordinary every-day virtues, so to speak, that she may be a model for daily, familiar use. Now, the essence of Mary's character, as thus displayed, is her modesty and self-restraint. She never thinks of showing herself, though she was doubtless beautiful; nor of decking herself, though young; nor of exalting herself, though noble; nor of enriching herself, though poor. God alone is enough for her, and constitutes her whole happiness. Her delights are in retirement; and so little is she accustomed to the sight of man that she is troubled even at the appearance of an angel. Nevertheless, even in her trouble she thinks: she " considers within herself what manner of salutation this can be ". Surprise and disturbance neither put her off her guard nor stifle reflection. Again, when her thought has taken form in resolution, she speaks — and speaks fearlessly. She has her chastity to guard; and so great is a true virgin's love of this that it makes her not only deaf to the promises of man, but proof — in reverence be it spoken — even against the promises of God. Mary, therefore, answers Gabriel — with no superfluous words, no curious or excited question or argument — but with the calm and modest inquiry: " How shall this be done, because I know not man? " Blessed among women! to have spoken only in defence of her purity and to show her obedience! What a contrast and example, at this supreme moment of her life, to the kind of women who never control themselves or pause to reflect in disturbing circumstances or before grave decisions; but who let feeling and excitement get the better of them, pour themselves forth in vain and curious talk, or rush headlong into undertakings without knowledge or reflection!

And after this great event of the angel's mission, what is Mary's conduct? Is she either selfishly filled in thought with her own greatness, or anxious for the immediate display of her glory to the world? Just the contrary: wrapped in her deep lowliness, she is only surprised that God should have conferred such a dignity on her; and — mother of her Creator as she now is, whom all her fellow-creatures might well hasten to honour — she hurries off to her cousin Elizabeth, to rejoice with her over the grace that she and her husband have lately received. And even there, with her own relations, she speaks of the miracle that has been wrought within her only because she finds they have already been made aware of it by the Holy Ghost. Here is an example to people who no sooner receive a dignity or honour, or achieve a success of any description, than they must proclaim it to the world; who can keep nothing to themselves, but must live in the glare of publicity; and who are so inwardly self-absorbed that they have hardly a thought left for the concerns of others.

Such, then — thoughtful and prudent, modest, self-restrained, humble, and unselfish — is this Virgin, of whom I repeat that we can never be her clients if we are not also her followers. St, Gregory Nazianzen has a beautiful saying: that " every man is the painter and sculptor of his own life ". May all those of Mary's sex raise to her honour an image formed of their own lives, chiselled by themselves in her likeness! They may do this by forming their characters after her great example; by despising the vanities and frivolities of the world; and by strictly abjuring all customs — no matter how well received or sanctioned by society — that may be in the slightest degree contrary to charity or modesty. Mary will own that they truly honour her, and will unceasingly pray for them, when she sees them thus anxious to please her Son; and they will please her Son when he sees them like to the Mother He chose.