Vigils Reading – Memorial of the BVM

IN PRAISE OF THE

BLESSED VIRGIN MARY’S HUMILITY

From a sermon by St Bernard of Clairvaux

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Not everyone is a virgin, but there are still fewer who join humility to

virginity, as does Mary. So if you can do no more than admire Mary’s virginity,

try to imitate her humility and for you this will be enough.

But in Mary there is something else still more admirable [than humility

joined to her virginity]; her childbearing allied with her virginity. Never since

the world began has it been known for any woman to be at once a mother and a

virgin. If you just think whose mother she is surely you must be astounded at

such marvelous greatness. Who could ever admire this enough? To your way of

thinking, or rather, not yours but Truth’s, should she not be exalted above all the

choirs of angels, she who bore God the Son? Who else would dare, as Mary did,

to call ‘son’ the Lord and God of angels, and to say “son, why have you treated us

so?” Would any angel dare this? They already consider it a great favor to be

called, and to be, angels, when they are no more than spirits, as David suggests

when he says “He makes the spirits his angels.” Yet his was the same Majesty

whom they serve with awe and reverence that Mary, knowing herself the

mother, confidently called her son.

Nor did God disdain to be called what he had deigned to become. As the

Evangelist tells us a bit later, “he was obedient to them.” Who? God. To whom?

To men. God, I repeat, to whom the angels are subject, he whom the

principalities and the power obey, he was obedient to Mary. And not only to

Mary but to Joseph, too, for Mary’s sake. Marvel then at these two things: the

gracious kindness of the Son and the surpassing dignity of the mother. Choose

which you consider more wonderful. Just imagine!.. God does what a woman

says—unheard of humility. A woman outranks God — unparalleled sublimity. In

praise of the virgins we sing that “they follow the Lamb wherever he goes.” Of

what praise then do you consider her worthy, who preceded him?

Man, learn to obey! Earth, learn to be subject! Dust, I say, learn to submit

yourself! The Evangelist tells you that your Creator was obedient to them –

meaning to Mary and Joseph, of course. Blush for shame… God stoops down in

humility, and you exalt yourself? God is obedient to men, and you, anxious to lord

it over men, set yourself up as your own authority? God preserve me from ever

thinking such a thing! And if I should, may he be so kind as to rebuke me with that

answer he have to the apostle: “Get behind me, Satan! You do not know the things

of God.” Every time I seek to lord it over men, I am trying to get in front of my God

– and then, in all truth, I do not know the things of God. For it was said of him

that he was obedient to them.