What was it like for Mary to have God incarnate in her womb?
She had, for a time, the entire responsibility for adoring Jesus on behalf of all mankind.
She had, for a time, the entire responsibility for adoring Jesus on behalf of all mankind.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How Mary alone understood and adored Christ in his hidden life within her
That all honour due to his kingship and office was offered through her
Why her union with his Sacred Heart surpassed all known communion of saints
He shows us that, in that hidden time, Mary stood in the place of all creation before her Son.
For more context on this section, see Part I.
The WM Review produced an audio meditation based on parts of this chapter as a part of the Preparing for Total Consecration series:
Our Lord’s Life in the Womb
The Nine Months
Chapter VII
Burns and Oates, London, 1885
Headings and some line breaks added.
After the Annunciation, no one else knew that the Word had become flesh
What was it like for Mary to have God incarnate in her womb?
Our Lady adoring
In all these points it is natural to suppose that our Lord’s Life in the womb was understood by His Blessed Mother, at least, from the very beginning.
It was her special duty and delight to adore Him in this stage of His infinite condescension, all the more because she was either entirely or nearly alone among mankind in having any cognizance of these humiliations and virtues. This would be occupation enough to feed her soul and heart.
But there are other ranges of truth connected with the infantine existence of our Lord, of which we have not yet spoken. For we have said nothing as yet of the titles and prerogatives of our Lord, which were His by right from the first moment of the Incarnation, and which called for the homage and acknowledgment of His creatures, all the more because they were His for their sakes. Such was His Royal Majesty, His Headship of the human race and of all creation, His power as Lawgiver, as Redeemer, as the Light and Sanctification of the world, as the Prince of Peace, our Spouse, our Pastor, our Example.
He is not more truly King of Heaven and of earth, now that He reigns at the right hand of the Father, than He was when Mary carried Him in her womb. But now His throne is honoured by the incense of the continual adoration of millions of saints and angels, and the homage of all earth and Heaven. Then He was unknown on earth, and the multitudes of His saints had not been admitted to Heaven, which He was to open to them as the fruit of His humiliations. All the particulars of His condition were manifested to His Mother.
It was Mary’s office to honour Him in the name of all, to sympathize with His humiliation and His sufferings, to join her heart with His in the continual stream of loving acts of thankfulness and adoration and self-oblation which rose from Him before the throne of His Father.
Our Lady and the Sacred Heart of her Son
We see some of the breathings of the Sacred Heart in the Magnificat, of which we shall presently have to speak, and we cannot doubt that the presence of our Lord with her in this most marvellous way was a grace which raised her daily higher and higher in her most consummate perfection.
We are nowhere told of the secret intercourse and converse which united the Hearts of Jesus and Mary in a continual exchange of the most fervent affections at this time. This is a secret of Heaven, though we cannot doubt that every movement and thought of our Blessed Lady must have been divinely influenced thereby. No heart was like hers for perfect docility to interior movements and the inspirations of God, and it is natural to think that no heart was more likely to receive them in so great abundance and magnificence. Her position with regard to our Blessed Lord was altogether unique, in Heaven and on earth.
If our Lord can be so lavish of His interior converse, as we see Him to have been in the case of some of the saints of whose interior history we know the most, revealing Himself especially to them with the utmost familiarity at times such as that of Holy Communion, it is only rational to think that His communications of His secrets and His intercourse, Heart to heart, with His Blessed Mother, must have been far surpassing anything of which record remains to us. The ecstasies and raptures of the saints who have been most favoured in this respect, in which their existence seems to have been altogether absorbed and their ordinary life superseded, need not be looked for in her who was so much nearer to Divine things than any one else could be.
Thus she could bear the most wonderful communications of a supernatural kind without having the calm tenour of her life disturbed thereby. It is not surprising that nothing of this kind should be recorded of our Blessed Lady, that the very scanty accounts which have reached us of her, represent her as walking on from day to day, without anything about her to attract notice from men.
But the thoughts on which we have been dwelling may show how unlikely it would be that she should have been left without the perfect intelligence of the mystery that had taken place in her, in all its bearings. And if this is supposed to have been the case, we can understand how sublime and interior a life she must now have led until the time when our Lord came forth from her sacred womb in the stable at Bethlehem.
Our Lord’s Life in the Womb
After the Annunciation, no one else knew that the Word had become flesh
What was it like for Mary to have God incarnate in her womb?
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