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Many learned Theologians say that a soul that possesses a habit of virtue, as long as it corresponds faithfully to the actual grace which it receives from God, always produces an act equal in intensity to the habit it possesses; so much so that it acquires each time a new and double merit, equal to the sum of all the merits previously acquired.
The wicked have said to God: Depart from us! (Job xxi. 14). When a man consents to mortal sin he says to God: “Go out from my soul, O Lord, and make room for Satan!” Our Blessed Lord complained to St. Bridget, saying: “I am like a monarch banished from his dominions, and on my throne is placed the vilest of plunderers!”
The Cross began to torture Jesus Christ before He was nailed upon it; for after He was condemned by Pilate, the Cross on which He was to die was given Him to carry to Calvary, and, without refusing, He took it upon His shoulders. Speaking of this, St. Augustine writes: “If we regard the wickedness of His tormentors, the insult was great; if we regard the love of Jesus, the mystery is great; for in carrying the Cross, our Captain then lifted up the Standard under which His followers upon this earth must be enrolled and fight, in order to be made His companions in the kingdom of Heaven.”
Consider it well and say to thyself: I have a soul and if I lose it, all is lost! I have a soul, and if I were to gain the whole world and in the end lose that soul, what would the gaining of the world profit me then? For where are now the dignities, the pleasures, the luxuries of all those great ones of the world whose bodies are mouldering in the dust, and whose souls are a prey to the fires of hell? My salvation is, therefore, of the highest importance to me, for eternal happiness is at stake.
The Cross began to torture Jesus Christ before He was nailed upon it; for after He was condemned by Pilate, the Cross on which He was to die was given Him to carry to Calvary, and, without refusing, He took it upon His shoulders. Speaking of this, St. Augustine writes: “If we regard the wickedness of His tormentors, the insult was great; if we regard the love of Jesus, the mystery is great; for in carrying the Cross, our Captain then lifted up the Standard under which His followers upon this earth must be enrolled and fight, in order to be made His companions in the kingdom of Heaven.”
If Holy Mary, then, as the already destined Mother of our common Redeemer, received from the very beginning the office of Mediatress of all men, and consequently even of the Saints, it was also requisite from the very beginning she should have a grace exceeding that of all the Saints for whom she was to intercede. I will explain myself more clearly.
You have not come into this world for the sake of enjoyment, to grow rich and powerful; to eat, to drink, to sleep like irrational animals, but solely to love your God and work out your eternal salvation. And is this the object I have had hitherto in view?
It was not without reason that David said that the foundations of this city of God, that is, Mary, are planted above the summits of the mountains: The foundations thereof are in the holy mountains (Ps. lxxxvi. 1). Whereby we are to understand that Mary, in the very beginning of her life, was to be more perfect than the united perfections of the entire lives of the Saints could have made her. And the Prophet continues: The Lord loveth the gates of Sion above all the tabernacles of Jacob (Ps. lxxxvi. 2). And the same king David tells us why God thus loved her; it was because He was to become man in her virginal womb: A man is born in her (Ps. lxxxvi. 5). Hence it was becoming that God should give this Blessed Virgin, in the very moment that He created her, a grace corresponding to the dignity of Mother of God.
Other children are born into this world, not only deprived of grace and reason, but infected with sin and children of wrath, condemned to misery and death; but holy Mary came into this world a babe, it is true, in age, but great in merit and virtue. She was sanctified in her Mother’s womb above all Saints and Angels, and was born a Saint, and a great Saint.
St. Thomas says that Mary was called full of grace, not on the part of grace itself, for she had it not in the highest possible degree, since even the habitual grace of Jesus Christ (according to the same holy Doctor) was not such that the absolute power of God could not have made it greater, although it was a grace sufficient for the end for which His humanity was ordained by Divine Wisdom, that is, for its union with the Person of the Eternal Word. Although Divine power could make something greater and better than the habitual grace of Christ, it could not fit it for anything greater than the personal union with the only-begotten Son of the Father, and to which union that measure of grace sufficiently corresponds, according to the limit placed by Divine Wisdom.