The Word was made flesh, Mary: Day 204

Last updated on: February 10, 2016 at 3:30 am by Pete Socks

The Word was made flesh, Mary: Day 204 2016-01-01T17:06:09-05:00 Pete Socks

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The Word was made flesh

In a lyrical, exquisitely beautiful portrayal of that moment when the Blessed Virgin conceived, Fr. Frederick Faber tells how, beyond all expectations, “the creature has added a fresh liberty to the Creator.”

That Mary should have any choice at all is a complete revelation of God in itself. How a creature so encompassed and cloistered in grace could have been free in any sense to do what was less pleasing to God is a mystery that no theology to be met with has ever yet satisfactorily explained. Nevertheless, the fact is beyond controversy. She has this choice, with the uttermost freedom in her election, in some most real sense of freedom. But who could doubt what the voice would be that would come up out of such abysses of grace as hers! There had not yet been on earth, nor in the angels’ world, an act of adoration so nearly worthy of God as that consent of hers, that conformity of her deep lowliness to the magnificent and transforming will of God. But another moment, and there will be an act of adoration greater far than that.

Now God is free. Mary has made him free. The creature has added a fresh liberty to the Creator. She has unchained the decrees, and made the sign, and in their procession, like mountainous waves of light, they broke over her in floods of golden splendor. The eternal Sea bathed the queenly creature all around, and the divine pleasure rolled above her in majestic peals of soft mysterious thunder. And a God-like shadow fell upon her for a moment, and Gabriel had disap- peared, and without shock, or sound, or so much as a tingling stillness, God in a created nature sat in his immensity within her bosom, and the eternal will was done, and creation was complete.

Far off a storm of jubilee swept far-flashing through the angelic world. But the mother heard not, heeded not. Her head sank upon her bosom, and her soul lay down in a silence that was like the peace of God. The Word was made flesh. —Fr. Frederick William Faber, Bethlehem

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
How is Mary’s conception itself “an act of adoration greater far” than her consent to become the Mother of God? Can we ever know in this life the depths of the mystery of “the Word made flesh”?

CLOSING PRAYER
From a hymn attributed to St. Ephraem: Today the One who founded and dwells in the heavens has made his abode on earth, so that man, the earth-bound, may find a new home in heaven.

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A Year with Mary

Father Frederick Faber

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