The Maternity of Our Lady and all her blessings
All the privileges and prerogatives of the Blessed Virgin Mary—including her Immaculate Conception and unsurpassed purity—were to prepare her to be the Mother of God.

In this chapter, dealing with Our Lady’s consent at the Annunciation and the immediate Incarnation of Christ that followed, Fr Coleridge discusses…
The necessity of Our Lady’s consent
What happened immediately when she gave this consent
How her prior and subsequent privileges revolved around her “divine maternity.”
See also:
Mary at the Annunciation
From
The Mother of the King—Mary During the Life of Our Lord
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1886, Bk II, Chapter II, pp 99-107
St. Luke i, 26-38.
Headings added from contents page. Some line-breaks added.
Mary free in her consent
It must always be remembered that all these marvels which are spoken of in the words of the Angel might have been brought about by an act of the Divine Power alone, and without any consent or consciousness on the part of our Blessed Lady.
When Eve was formed from the side of Adam, he was not informed beforehand of what was to take place, nor was his consent asked. He was not informed beforehand because his consent was not required.
But in the execution of the decree of the Incarnation God proceeded in a different way, not by the use of the power of His Majesty, but by the gracious sweetness of His condescension and reverence for His creature, so informing beforehand our Lady of what He was to do, as to make the performance of this great work an act in which she had her part, by her perfect and ready submission, by a voluntary act of her own will, which was in itself ineffably beautiful and meritorious.
All through this scene of the Annunciation, Mary is acting according to the instincts of her most consummate prudence, purity, humility, and charity, and the virtues which she has exercised all through are crowned and surpassed in their merit by the perfect oblation of herself which is expressed in her last words, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy word.”
Thus she appears to ground her consent to the proposal of the Angel on the will of God her Lord and Master, though it was for her the highest of exaltations, the most sublime of dignities, the greatest of joys.
Her obedience
It was all these, but it was these because it was the will of God, Whose handmaid she was, and her words imply that if the message had contained abasement instead of exaltation, and humiliation instead of dignity, it would have been the same to her, because it was the word of her Lord.
And indeed, perhaps, even then, that most blessed soul, in her contemplation on the prophecies, may have discerned that as the Christ was certainly to suffer, so the dignity of being His Mother could not but bring with it a chalice of suffering to herself.
And the words in which she signifies her acceptance are the largest possible, “Be it done to me according to thy word.” Whether she had divined it or not, understood it or not, exactly all that was contained in the terms of the message which conveyed to her the intimation of God’s will, that she wished to be done to her.
These considerations must suffice to set before us the first of the two points of which mention was made at the outset of this chapter, namely, the wonderful sublimity of the grace and merits of our Lady before the great mystery took place. It is certain that the perfection of her virtues as here displayed must have won for her, according to the ordinary rules of the distribution of grace, a most marvellous confirmation and increase of all that she had already received.
But, besides this, as at this moment the dignity of the Motherhood of God was actually conferred upon her, it is equally reasonable to suppose that the collation of this dignity brought with it immense gifts, in keeping with all the elevation which it implied, and all the offices to God, to our Lord, and to mankind which it involved.
The Incarnation of Christ
Immediately on the words of Mary followed the accomplishment of the Incarnation.
All came about as the Angel had said. The Holy Ghost formed the Body of our Lord out of her blood. His Soul was created by the operation of the Divine Power, the Soul and Body were at once united one to the other, and the Divine Person of the Word of God took to Himself the Sacred Human Nature thus produced.
In that most absolute silence of the night, in the little chamber of the cottage in front of the cave where Mary dwelt, with no pomp or visible manifestation by which the creation might know what was being done, the greatest act of the power and mercy of the Creator was accomplished. In a moment God had become Man, and the whole universe was renovated and elevated by His Presence.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus began to beat, the homage of the Incarnate Son rose up to the throne on high—a homage worthier of the majesty of God than the adoration of a thousand worlds, summing up in itself and adorning with its own beauty and merit the worship of creation.
Who can count up the difference between the world with Jesus Christ, and the world without Him?
Elevation of Mary
It is by this measure that we must give an account to ourselves of the elevation which came at the same moment to the Blessed Virgin, who had been chosen as the instrument of this ineffable condescension.
We have seen how great Mary was in the designs of God and in His prediction of the coming mercy on the race of men. We have traced her from the wonderful grace of the Immaculate Conception and the accompanying gifts bestowed on her soul, the anticipation in her case of the power of using her faculties and graces, the capacity of working, always with perfect meritoriousness, through her life in the womb of Anne to her birth, her childhood, her education and training in the Temple, on to the dedication of herself by her vow to God and her final preparation for her office as His Mother in the mystery of her Espousals.
In the dialogue of the Annunciation she has manifested the most perfect virtue, the most consummate intelligence and prudence, and, after receiving with calm tranquillity the most startling message, and taking in with unshaken faith the most stupendous revelations, she has said the word on which the execution of the great Counsel of God was made to depend. She has mounted up ever higher and higher, until the magnificence of her beginning seems dwarfed by the majesty which she has now reached.
But the moment of the Incarnation, as it was like no other moment in the past history of the creation, and as its effects changed and left their stamp on the whole future of that history, so was it unlike any other moment in the series of the ascensions of Mary, a moment the results and fruits of which in her were to last on for ever.
When Jesus Christ ceases to be Man as well as God, then will Mary cease to be the Mother of God, and when the fruits of the Incarnation are wiped out of Heaven and earth, then will the effects of the exaltation of Mary fade away from her.
Her privileges
This, then, which is the central moment in the history of God’s dealings with His creatures, is naturally the central moment also in His dealings with His Mother.
All that has gone before has been only her preparation for that dignity. At this moment that dignity is hers, never throughout eternity to be taken away from her. It is natural that we should try to give to ourselves some account of what is contained in the truth.
Let us take the catalogue of her privileges as they are counted over for us by the saints, and see how they all depend on this one fundamental grace of her selection for the Divine Maternity.
The immunity from original sin, the sanctification of her soul which accompanied her Immaculate Conception, the acceleration of her power of knowing and loving and acting meritoriously, the graces she had received at her birth and during her childhood, have been already mentioned as given to her as the preparation for this crowning grace.
Mother of God
Now, then, she is the Mother of God.
She is made, in the first place, a Mother in a new and unheard-of way, a way which preserves to her the glory of her spotless Virginity, together with the fruitfulness of Maternity. Thus she is Virgin and Mother at the same time, a Virgin beyond compare, in the beauty of her purity, which was not a negative beauty only, but the beauty of the closest union with the ineffable purity of God, and a Mother beyond compare in her fruitfulness, which germinates no less a treasure than the Incarnate God Himself.
It must, moreover, be remembered that far more is meant when Mary is called the Mother of God, as to her relations with her Son, than could be the case as to the same relations in ordinary cases.
The Son Who was conceived in her womb was from the very first instant of His Conception perfect in His Manhood as in His Godhead. We know that He could not but have had, from the first, that complete and uninterrupted use of all His inherent faculties and powers, which we suppose to have been imparted to His Mother when she was a child, for the more rapid advance of her sanctity, and for His sake.
This must have materially influenced and coloured her relations and intercourse with Him from the very beginning. It may be that we cannot produce any certain proof that the heart of His Blessed Mother was enabled to converse with Him intelligently while He was in her womb, although, if St. Elisabeth could understand the joy of St. John while he was yet unborn, it might seem in accordance with theological reason to conclude that our Lady had the same or a higher and more continual privilege.
But in any case, the relations between our Lady and her Son were intimate, loving, intelligent in a degree which could exist in no other case, because they were each capable of more perfect and penetrating intimacy, more tender love, more entire sympathy of heart and of mind than any other souls that have come from the hands of the Creator. Thus her Maternity must have been a greater and tenderer Maternity than any other, and His relations to her as her Son were in a like manner most perfect in their kind.
And the ties between the parent and the child are ordinarily more or less limited to the affections and mutual services of this life, whereas the Motherhood of Mary and the Sonship of our Lord were from the beginning realities which belonged to the eternal Kingdom of God, they have remained in Heaven as on earth, they are active and operative now as of old at Nazareth, and thousands and thousands of mercies and wonders in the realm of grace are continually issuing from them.
The Three Persons and Mary
Many of the saints are fond also of the contemplation which dwells on the relations which were begun at the moment of the Incarnation between our Blessed Lady and the Persons of the Eternal Father and of the Holy Ghost, and these also are relations which did not end with the accomplishment of the mystery, but live on in all times in the Kingdom of Heaven.
As our Lord is the Son of the Father, so also is He the Son of His Mother, and thus by a special act of the power of His Father, which is the foundation of a peculiar relation of Mary to the Father, which is expressed by saying that she is His daughter in a way of her own.
The Holy Ghost brought about the Incarnation in her womb, and then she became in a special way beyond that in which it can be said of all saintly souls, the Spouse of the Holy Ghost. He had yet much to do in the consummation of that sanctity with which she was to be clothed at the time of her glorious entrance into Heaven, but all the history of the work of this grace in her must have been a continuation of the sanctification now imparted to her.
In this sense, the work of this moment lasted on forever, and increased continually in the gifts of the three Divine Persons to this chosen Mother.
Her other titles
There are other privileges of our Blessed Lady in the list of which we are speaking, which may be considered as founded upon the grace of the Divine Maternity which she now received, although the time at which they began to manifest themselves in actual exercise was not yet.
Thus, for instance, she is called the Virgin of virgins, in various senses, for her Virginity was altogether her own, and of a perfection not shared by others, and in this sense, the privilege we speak of was hers at this time. But in another sense, the name applies to her by virtue of that large and most beautiful company of virgins who have followed the holy counsel of continence as her children, of whose praise and of the fruits of whose work in the world, the Church is full. In this sense, the privilege was something yet future.
So again, when we speak of her as the Mother of the Redeemed, as the Gate of Heaven, as the Queen of Mercy, as having the Passion communicated to her, and as being exalted above all creatures, these are privileges which flow from her Maternity, and are contained in it as in germ, but the time for their development had not come at the moment of the Incarnation.
The privileges which are thus expressed are the fruits and issues of our Lord’s greatness, and of the accomplishment of His work in the world. She has them from Him, and when she became His Mother, she received her right to them, and began to be, in relation to those whom He has redeemed and exalted, what the names imply by which she is designated in respect of them.
This is the final part of this chapter.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge’s The Mother of The King
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