XII — THE GROWTH OF CHARITY IN MARY

Presence of God. — O Mary, teach me the secret of growing continually in charity.

Meditation

1 — One must not think that Mary Most Holy, because from her origin she was established in the highest degree of holiness ever attained by the greatest saint, was therefore dispensed from any personal activity, from any effort: quite the contrary! For her too, as for us, this life was the “way” in which one must always progress in charity; for her too, as for us, personal correspondence to grace was required. And Mary’s great merit was precisely this: to have corresponded with maximum fidelity to the immense gifts received. Certainly, the privileges of her Immaculate Conception, the state of holiness in which she was born, and her divine motherhood were pure gifts of God; nevertheless, far from receiving them passively - as a casket receives the precious objects placed in it - she received them as a free person, capable of adhering with her own will to divine favors through full correspondence to grace. St. Thomas teaches that, if Mary could not merit the Incarnation of the Word, nevertheless, by the grace received, she merited that degree of holiness which made her worthy mother of God (cf. III q. 2, a. 11, ad 3), and she merited it precisely through her collaboration with grace. In Mary too, therefore, we can consider progress in holiness, a progress that depended not only on the new abundance of grace that God infused into her at determined moments of her life - as is thought to have happened at the moment of the Incarnation - but also on her personal activity, wholly informed by grace and charity, by means of which she knew how to make fruitful the treasure entrusted to her by the Lord. Mary is, in the full sense of the word, the “faithful Virgin” who knew how to trade one hundred percent the talents received from God. Yes, by pure divine liberality and in view of the most lofty mission for which she was destined, the maximum measure of grace ever given to a mere creature was granted to her, “but she corresponded to it with the maximum fidelity of which a creature is capable. Fullness of grace on God’s part, therefore, and fullness of fidelity on Mary’s part,” so that “her beautiful soul,” says St. Alphonsus, “without ever stopping, always flew to God and always grew in loving Him.”

2 — Theology teaches that the increase of grace and charity in us derives from meritorious works, that is, from good works done under the influence of charity. When a person does good works “with all the heart,” the merit thus acquired - and this always consists in an increase of grace and charity - is immediately granted; then his spiritual life at once grows in intensity. Keeping this doctrine in mind, one can intuit in what proportion the capital of charity and grace that God had deposited there from the first moment of her existence had to develop in Mary’s soul. When we think, as St. John of the Cross points out, that the Virgin’s soul was never moved, and therefore never delayed, by attachment to creatures - and that therefore in her there were never human ulterior motives, nor narrowness deriving from egoism - but that she always acted purely under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, we must conclude that Mary grew continually in grace and charity and that charity became in her truly without measure. In this way one explains how, already holy and already established in union with God from her origin, she could continually progress in holiness, whose constitutive elements are precisely grace and charity. The generous and faithful impetus with which she responded to divine invitations, met every manifestation of God’s will, accepted every disposition of divine Providence, and fulfilled all her daily duties, placed her in this magnificent state of incessant and most rapid progress in love. Mary’s luminous example encourages us to apply ourselves with all our heart to God’s service, so that we too may grow rapidly in charity.

Colloquy

“O Mary, You knew God’s gift and did not lose one atom of it; You so pure, so luminous as to seem Light itself: Speculum justitiae; You whose life was so simple, so lost in God that almost nothing can be said of it: Virgo fidelis, You are the faithful Virgin, the one who kept all things in her heart” (E.T. I, 10).

O Mary, what a marvelous spectacle it is to contemplate your soul growing unceasingly in love, ascending without pause to the highest peaks of holiness! In you nothing delays divine action, nothing hinders the development of charity. “Who is this that comes up from the desert, filled with delights, leaning upon her beloved?” (Cant. 8, 5). It is You, O my Mother, You who, under the Holy Spirit’s guidance and sustained by Him, always ascend from grace to grace, from virtue to virtue. O Mother of fair love, full of grace, O faithful Virgin, help me to correspond faithfully to God’s gifts! Do not allow my misery to render grace vain in me. Help me, my Mother, to conquer the innumerable resistances of my weak and cowardly nature, draw me by the gentle charm of your example, that I too may follow you on the way of perfect charity.

O my Mother, You who so burned with love for God, deign to give me at least one spark of it. You prayed your Son for those spouses who lacked wine, saying: vinum non habent; and will You not pray for me, lacking as I am in love of God while so bound to love Him? Say then: amorem non habet. And obtain this love for me. I ask You no other grace but this. O Mother, by how much You love Jesus, hear me; show how great is the grace You possess before Him by obtaining for me a light and a divine flame so powerful that it may change me from sinner into saint and, detaching me from every earthly affection, set me wholly aflame with divine love. Do it, O Mary, for You can do it. Do it for love of that God who has made You so great, so powerful, and so compassionate” (St. Alphonsus).