Vigils Reading – Memorial BVM

THE BLESSING GIVEN TO MARY

By Paschasius Radbertus7

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The nature and the greatness of the blessed and glorious ever-virgin Mary

is divinely declared by the Angel, when he says, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is

with you. Blessed are you among women”. For surely it was fitting that the

Virgin should be enriched by gifts so great as to make her full of grace, who in

her turn was to give such gifts! For Mary has given glory to heaven, and to the

earth she has given the Lord. She has poured out peace upon the world, brought

faith to nations, put an end to vice, given law to life, and discipline to conduct.

Truly she is “full of grace,” because grace comes to others by measure, but

on Mary it poured itself out all at once in all its fullness. Truly, “full of grace”,

for even though, as we believe, grace was in the holy patriarchs and prophets, it

was not yet in its fullness. But, in Mary? Hers was the whole fullness of that

grace which is in Christ, though in a different manner than it was in him. And

this is why the angel says, “Blessed are you among women,” that is to say, more

blessed than all other women. Thus, whatever curse had been incurred through

Eve was wholly taken away through the blessing given to Mary.

It was in praise of Mary, as it were, that Solomon says in the Song of

Songs, “Come, my dove, my immaculate one! For see, the winter is past, the

rains are over and gone”. And then he says, “Come from Lebanon, come and

be crowned!”. Not without reason is Mary bidden to come from Lebanon, for

“Lebanon” means “shining whiteness.” Mary was dazzling white with her many

virtues and merits, and, by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, she became whiter than

snow itself, showing in all things the simplicity of the dove. For everything about

Mary is wholly the work of purity and simplicity, wholly grace and truth, wholly

mercy and that justice which has looked down from heaven. She is, then,

immaculate, because corruption has had no part in her. She has encompassed

a man in her womb, as the holy Jeremiah testifies, and received him from no

other person. “The Lord,” he says, “has made a new thing upon the earth, and

a woman shall encompass a man”.

Truly this was a new thing, an act of power new in a surpassing degree,

when God, whom the world cannot contain nor man see and live, entered the

guest chamber of Mary’s womb in such a way as not to know confinement within

her body, was so borne that the whole God was within her, came forth in such a

way that, as Ezekiel prophesied, the door remained closed.

This is why the same Song of Songs sings of her, “An enclosed garden, a

fountain sealed, your plants are a paradise”. Truly a garden of delights,

planted with all kinds of flowers and filled with the perfumes of all virtues; so

enclosed as to have known no violation, no corruption by deceit or wile; a

fountain sealed, therefore, with the seal of the whole Trinity.

7 Ps.-Jerome, Ep. 9.5, 9 (PL 30.126-127, 131-132). Translation by the Cistercian Lectionary Project (1968), 10*-ll*.15