Vigils Reading – Mary, Mother of God

The Eleventh Homily in Praise of God’s Holy Mother1
by Ogier of Locedio

Let all who desire to come to our Emmanuel, the Word of the Most High Father who became flesh and dwelled among us, bind themselves to the Virgin who bore him with bonds of utter love. She is the gate of heaven, the doorway to Paradise. She is the way to life, the straight path to eternal glory. All who yearn for the supreme happiness that is Christ will obtain it, if so long as they live they burn with love for his most holy mother with all their being.

For when nine months had run their course, our divine Virgin, who conceived of the Holy Spirit, gave birth to our Redeemer…O marvel, O wonder! It is God who gives life, and God to whom human life is given! Mary gives birth to him who from nothing made all that is. The Virgin, without the aid of a man, gives birth to God and man.

What came to pass? The Word became flesh and dwelled among us. The Only-begotten of God the Father became the first-born of the Virgin Mary…Oh what amazing honor – but oh, what a loving and unheard-of emptying! He who is before all time takes his place in time; he who created everything is born of a woman. Immensity becomes brief, the lofty is made lowly, the Maker something made, the Creator a creature. In being born of a mother, he became a creature who is the eternal Creator, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

…He was born in a stable – of you, blessed glory of maidens, Mary – because there was no house of cedar, no bed of ivory, where you might give birth to our Creator and Redeemer. Thus like an exiled pilgrim, you gave birth to the Lord of the world in a stranger’s home, and like a pauper’s wife wrapped, not in silks but in coarse swaddling, and laid him in a manger: the child from the moment of whose birth you worshipped as your Lord and God. O fortunate stable, O blessed manger, in which Christ is born and the God of all is laid! There the angels served as midwife; there millions upon millions of angels rejoiced. In the stable the child began to whimper; in heaven a multitude of the heavenly host sang out…The angels rejoice, but Mary quakes to have become the Mother of God. The angels rejoice in solemn dance before Christ, before whom his mother stands in dread and awe…She bears the Bearer, she nurses the Nurse and feeds the Feeder, not only of herself, but of all in whom there breathes the breath of life.

…What sanctity was yours we can only imagine, when, created and fashioned in the image of God, your flesh so pleased your Creator that from it he should fashion himself a mantle of praise and a breastplate of victory, and that through it he should triumph over the author of death and ransom humankind. Blessed is your womb, from which our Valiant One fashioned himself a sword to slay the foe of our salvation, and free his people from perpetual bondage!…Virgin most blessed, you bore him in heart and in womb. You bore him in your arms, you nursed him at your sacred breasts, held him in the embrace of your love. You bent to kiss him as often as you wished. Oh bliss beyond reckoning: Jesus himself you held in your power to do with however you thought best! He was completely yours: he was your Son!

1 Ogier of Locedio. Ogier of Locedio: Homilies. CF 70. Trans. D. Martin Jenni. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications,2006. 136-141.