Appendix to the Third Part

The history of the Predestination of Jesus and Mary hence their unity and inseparability. The Immaculate Conception is a mystery belonging to both, and the first mystery of both. I. The peculiar force and majesty of the mystery of the Immaculate Conception.

It is the first dawn of the world s redemption.
The fountain of all the other mysteries of Jesus and Mary, and of the seven sacraments, and of the Church.
It interprets as nothing else does the character of God, and illuminates His eternal. decrees.
It illustrates and unriddles the wonderfulness of creation.
It beautifies the Church, her doctrines, and her ceremonial, and crowns the desires of holy hearts through many generations.

II. Chiefly, it is the primary revelation of Mary s similitude to Jesus. Points of likeness.

Slie was exempt from original sin, which none ever were before in their conception.
The gift of actual -sinlessness,
She could not he tempted inwardly the devil had no such power because of her innocence.
Her hiddenness and marvellous infancy.
A prodigy of suffering, yet not for her own sake.
The.resurrection of her body.
Her Assumption answers to His Ascension.
She is treated in the world now as the Blessed Sacrament is, unknown, unrealised, shorn of glory.
Her interior possessing the spirit of Jesus in unknown measure, far beyond her outward resemblance.
Her share in the victories the saints have won before and after Christ.
In her degree she is the light of the Church He the Sun, she the Moon.
As God communicates Himself through Jesus, so Jesus communicates His gifts through her.
Her Queendom, like His Headship, is over angels as well as men.
The similarity of her features to His how wonderful this resemblance must be to the angels, who know God, and gaze on Him In carnate, a living copy of His creature.

III. It was the grand work of the Most Holy Trinity in power, in wisdom, and in joy;

and so love of Mary is, as it were, the signet of the Most Holy Trinity set upon our souls.

Love of Mary a power with God, with her, with others, over devils, and over self.
Love of Mary a wisdom beyond art and science, literature and philosophy, giving a knowledge of God, grace, sin, creation, Jesus, eternal and invisible things.
Love of Mary a joy not temporal, hut eternal, and so a shadow of our predestination.

To know Mary is to love her. How we should bless God for this enchanting knowledge! The ills of life are many, achings of body, pangs of heart, remorse of conscience, peril of salvation, yet it is worth while to have risked all this, and a thousand times more than this, to have gazed on her sweet life, lisped in prayer her most beautiful of names, to have known her, to have loved her, and to be her child; yes, to be as Jesus was, the spotless Mother s Child!

THE MOTHER AND HER MANY SONS.

I. The beauty of Mary is shown by the fact that the Word elected her out of His infinite ideals. She was His Mother by choice: she is ours by the appointment of her Son, who shares her with us. 1. She was no choice of ours, but the merciful ordinance of God: just as He made the privilege of our loving Him into a precept.

We cannot do without her, as the Gospel now stands.
She was given to us from the Cross, to Him at Nazareth: to both of us in the Immaculate Conception.
She has been the ruling power of all the good of our past lives.
That she is our Mother is the great fact of our lives: else we are not of our Brother s family.

II. The Immaculate Conception as it regards us is a mystery of grace.

It is the second greatest mercy human nature could have; the Hypostatic Union being the first.
It is the diadem of graces overtopping all that angels and men have ever received.
A grace more for the glory of God and the honour of Jesus than any other.
A source of perpetual joy in heaven, and boundless confidence on earth.

The five graces involved in the Immaculate Conception. 1. Immunity from all venial sins collectively. 2. Extinction of fomes. 3. Cease less light of grace. 4. Endless love of God in act.

I know not whether very great saints or very great sinners should most love this mystery: extremes meet: it truly can be no devotion of the commonplace or lukewarm.

III. The exercise of our Lady s Maternal office shadows forth the Holy Trinity.

Her immense participation in the power of the Father, the wisdom of the Son, and the love of the Holy Ghost.
It is carried on even when we neglect or offend her.
Capable of almost numberless degrees, as grace itself is.
Desirous of being more and more exactingly called on, just as God loves prayer.
On the whole her maternal solicitude is proportioned to our devotion, just as God is gentle with the gentle, liberal with the liberal, and perverse with the perverse.

More confidence! Ask more! Ask greater things! It is no dream: the hour is to come when we shall see her. We shall hear her voice and be delighted by her beauty, and kiss those hands which have sent us so many graces; and then, and not till then shall we know to the full the abounding joy and exultation with which all heaven and its angels are overflowing because the Queen of paradise, the dear Empress of angels and of men, your Mother and mine, was through the omnipotence of unutterable love, conceived without stain of sin!

THE MOTHER OF THE IMMACULATE QUEEN.

God vouchsafes to make preparations for His great works, as men do, and for our sake: they are full of beauty, wisdom, and winningness.

Thus predestination preluded creation.

I. Preparations for the Immaculate Conception

On earth.
The yearnings of Eve and of all genera tions for the Mother of the Deliverer.
The burden of this desire upon the hearts of the good and holy.
The weary sighs and tears of the patri archs and prophets. Elias and Carmel.
The needs of the sin-desolated world coming to a head.
The tremulous supernatural expectation diffused over the earth.
In Heaven.
Her predestination.
Her not being included in the decree which regarded sin.
The Divine Persons concur in electing her to be the Mother of the Incarnate Word.
The Eternal Son in His wisdom conceives the idea of her glorious soul.
The angels behold the idea of their Queen in Him. Where their sanctity ends, hers begins. II. The theatre of the actual mystery.
Again God chooses, as He chose Mary; His choice must he a great saint, full of the peculiar spirit of Jesus.
She must he an image of the suffering and abasement of Jesus and Mary.
St. Anne her life, and that of St. Joachim.
The mystery accomplished: announced by angels, hidden like Incarnation, the crown of humility.
From that moment, St. Anne was the queen of earth; God s gifts to her, retinue of angels, inward holiness and joy.
St. Anne begins the devotion to the Immaculate Conception, which the Church now grounds upon an article of faith.

III. The mysteries of St. Anne.

To her God s beautiful eternal secret is con fided.
Her joy in Mary s infancy, and her wonder at her childish actions.
Her heroic sacrifice of her in the temple, like Mary s at the Presentation.
Her death she receives from the Soul of Jesus the beatific vision she is with Mary during the forty days ascends with Jesus.
Her joy at Mary s Assumption and Coronation.

IV. The prerogatives of St. Anne.

Prerogatives of the saints of the Hypostatic Union.
Power with Joseph, as Mary s hushand.
Power with Mary, as her mother, like Mary s power with Jesus.
Power with Jesus, because of the Immaculate Conception.
Power with the angels, as a sort of queen-mother.
Power with the apostles, on the same ground.
Power with the Holy Trinity, as the elect vessel and theatre of their greatest grace.

Let all who have a devotion to the Immaculate Conception put themselves in a special way under St. Anne. It was St. Anne, who opened in the secret solemnities of that everblessed mystery the everlasting jubilee of Jesus, and it was within her womb that God granted the first and the completest plenary indulgence in the world!

THE IMMACULATE QUEEN.

I. Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament.

We have to speak of the Mother in the Presence of the Son.
He is present as God, with a peculiar presence of the Most Holy Trinity.
As Man. 1. Prophet of the world. 2. Priest. 3. King. 4. Owner of all temporal things. 5. Judge.
To Mary He is in addition, 1. Her God. 2. Her Creator. 3. Her Redeemer. 4. Her Son.
He is come, we have dared to hring Him to keep the feast, just as we call her to come and worship Him for us in the Litany at Benediction.

II. The three kingdoms of Jesus the King: Mary s place in them all.

Nature.
Below the angels. 1. Joy of this to us. 2. Her gifts greater than theirs. 3. Her exaltation greater.
The same as that of saints, and sinners.
The same as the nature, by which Jesus is Blessed Sacrament, prophet, priest, king and judge.
Both the spiritual and material world were created because of Jesus and herself.
Grace.
All creation, angelic and human, resulted in a state of grace.
Grace in baptism, of release from original sin.
Preservation from actual mortal sin.
Exemption from venial sin.
Sanctifying in the womb.
Solitary grace of Immaculate Conception. 1. From decree 2. From momentary touch 3. From root of sin 4. Highest act of redeeming grace 5. So she needed redemption most, and Jesus was more truly and highly a glorious Kedeemer by this mystery than by the redemption of all the world beside. 3. Glory.
Baptised infants.
Multitudes of unplaced saints.
Angels.
Hierarchy of the Incarnation.
Herself.
The Sacred Humanity, THEN the blaze of the Unspeakable and Incomprehensible glory.

III. Her great unllkeness to Jesus was her growth in grace. Hence her growth in the Church. Scripture authority.

Growth in heaven.
Empty throne filled. 2. Accumulated intercession. 3. Love of the angels. 4. Multitude of the daily saved.
Growth on earth.
By doctrines. 2. By feasts. 3. By religious orders. 4. By saints. 5. By coun cils. 6. By popes. 7. By devout people.
Growth in our hearts.
Love. 2. Faith. 3. Keverence. 4. Confidence. 5. Thanksgiving to the Most Holy Trinity.

Oh how the spirit of the coming Christmas leaps forward into our hearts to teach us to keep this feast. Angels rejoice and triumph! men, rejoice and bless the abundance of redeeming grace. Today a Queen is created for you of the House of David, good tidings of great joy that shall be to all the people a Mother is given to us, and the government is on her shoulder, and her name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the most high Lady, the Mother of the Lord to come, the Princess of Peace. Her empire shall be multiplied, of her peace there shall be no end. Blessed be the Most High God, above all things blessed for the Immaculate Soul of Mary which He this day so gloriously created, and in the same moment so gloriously redeemed.

Blessed Sacrament, my Lord and my God, my Saviour and my Judge, true Man and Son of Mary, I a sinner have dared to speak of Thy sinless Mother; forgive me and be indulgent to me for every word which has fallen short of her immense dignity and incomparable majesty, arid for the sake of her Immaculate Conception grant to every soul here tonight the grace to love Thy Mother according to Thy commandment, and after the measure of Thy Sacred Heart, so that not one among us shall be lost!

PRAYING FOR SINNERS.

The world lias a great many wants, and good Christians have a great many wants also; but it so happens that the world s great want is the same as a good Christian s great want a right appreciation of spiritual things. This want is the source of all mischief.

I. One of the spiritual things in question is the favour of Mary.

Intellectually what is there you would not sacrifice for it?
Except the grace and love of God, what can come near it?
Yet we do not appreciate it as we ought.
And this from want of faith in her power, and want of experience of her goodness.
This month we are going to offer devotions to her, the likeliest to secure her favour: and today I will speak of praying for those who are in sin.

II. The world of sinners.

The dreadfulness of their state in the sight of the angels.
Their multitude, and daily increase.
Their secrecy such unlikely persons.
The grace they have resisted.
Their immense power against God. Yet on the other side
The good and sweetness there is amongst them.
How much also to pity, and often to ex tenuate.
How much struggle also, although inefficacious.
What immense capabilities many of them have for glorifying God.
How much work one real conversion does, and how many miracles it involves.

III. This is Mary s world.

It is given over to her in a special and official manner.
She knows how Jesus yearns over it.
Hence those have almost a claim upon her mercy, who are so sadly in need of it.
How much love of her there is even in that dark multitude.
Yet in a great measure she has to work through us: just as God vouchsafes to depend on us Himself.

IV. The devotion of praying for sinners.

Almost the favourite devotion of the saints., 2. How it cultivates union with _ Jesus, and fosters love of Mary.
Praying for particular sinners, or classes of sinners, or places.
Praying, as in the case of the Holy Souls, for those God wills, and leaving all to Him.

Might I speak of the shape of this deyotion, which is sweetest to myself? Pool of Bethsaida¹ the man who was there for thirty-eight years so let us pray for the soul which is close to conversion, has been waiting longest, and has none near to put him in. I do not think it would be out of the way to expect to convert one soul a day, and give it to Mary to offer. We should not see our work it might be by the burning rivers of Africa, or on the icy shores near the Pole, or in the great city, or in the quiet country it might be one of our own kith and kin, or a stranger and a foreigner it might be a king or a labourer, a child at school who has just com mitted his first mortal sin, or an old man in his agony with thousands of them. But these would be among the delightful secrets which we should learn in heaven, and perhaps from Mary s lips.

We should know that we were working for God we should be sure we were working with success it would almost be sweeter because it is all in the dark, in that darkness of faith which will one day change so sweetly into light.

in.

MEDITATIONS ON THE HOLY ANGELS.

I. The silence of God before the creation of the

Holy Angels.

His infinite happiness without creatures.
His independence of all relation to them.
The immensity and variety of possible worlds and creatures.

II. The Creation.

God s choice of this world out of all possible worlds.
The utter dependence of creatures on Him.
The eternal silence broken by the beautiful creation of Angels.

III. The existence of the Angels.

Spiritual substances possible.
Suitable for God s glory and the good of the world.
Belief of all ages in the existence of Angels.

IV. The spirituality of the Angels.

The substance of the Angels the most subtle in the world.
They are more spiritual than the soul of man.
Yet gross, and as it were material, compared with God.

V. The great number of the Angels.

The ninth choir contains, according to a common opinion, as many guardians as there are, have been, or will be souls of men.
Eight choirs remain unnumbered.
The great glory of God from the multitude of His courtiers.

VI. The distinction of the Angels.

They might have been all of one species.
Probably they are of twenty- seven species, three in each choir.
Glory of the Creator in this distinction.

VII. The order of the Angels.

St. Paul, ravished to the third heaven, classes them in three hierarchies.
These subdivided into three choirs.
The choirs into three ranks of different species.

VIII. The understanding of the Angels. (1)

Their substance the most noble after that of God, and so their understanding the most subtle.
Their knowledge of the secrets of nature.
Their knowledge of theology and the attri butes of God.

IX. The understanding of the Angels. (2)

They receive their ideas and images immediately from God.
Their knowledge is intuitive.
Their understanding is always in action.

X. The things which the Angels do not know by their natural science.

Things future.
The secrets of hearts.
The Incarnation and its mysteries. XL The will of the Angels.
The freedom of it.
The marvellous power of it as regards God.
Their love of each other.

XII. The movement of the Angels.

The perfection of it.
They move all at once, as being indivisible substances.
Their great power in moving other sub stances, whether spiritual or material.

XIII. The time, place, and end of their creation.

The time when God said, Let there be light, or when He created the heavens.
The place in the heavens.
The end to adorn and beautify the heavens for the greater glory of God.

XIV. The supernatural gifts received by the Angels at the moment of their creation.

Sanctifying grace, with faith, hope, charity, and other infused virtues.
Revelations, as of the Most Holy Trinity, Incarnation, guardianship of men, future events, fires of hell, &c.
Actual grace to elicit supernatural acts and merit.

XV. The different orders of Angels.

They have received different graces and ex cellences.
They have each distinguishing and special virtues.
All other virtues are however included in the case of each, in their own special eminence.

XVI. The first hierarchy.

The Seraphim, inflamed with love."
The Cherubim, glorious for supernatural science.
The Thrones, eminent for especial submission to the Divine "Will.

XVII. The second hierarchy.

The Dominations, filled with zeal for the kingdom of God.
The Virtues, replete with invincible force in the service of God.
The Powers, possessed of marvellous benignity.

XVIII. The third hierarchy.

The Principalities, eminent for purity of in tention.
The Archangels, lovely for their peculiar participation in the virtues both of their supe riors and inferiors.
The Angels, delightful to God from the humility with which they govern the world.

XIX. The probation of the Angels.

The time of their temptation was very short.
Two thirds persevered in their peculiar graces.
The battle in heaven.

XX. The sinning angels.

There were some of all the orders.
Their sin was pride.
Especially, St. Thomas thinks, complacency in their own exceeding beauty.

XXI. The judgment of the Angels.

They had a particular judgment, though they will have to appear again at the general judgment.
God gave those who had persevered a third beatitude, in addition to their natural and supernatural beauty; it consisted in the Beatific Vision of Himself.
The awfulness of His justice upon the evil Angels, though He foresaw all their hatred of Him, and the misery they would cause.

XXII. The principal pains of the fallen Angels.

The pain of loss.
The pain of sense, although they are spirits.
The knowledge that it is all irrevocable.

XXIII. The occupations of the fallen Angels

St. John v. ↩

Chapter 18 of 18

Appendix to the Third Part

Footnotes