THE DIVINE MOTHERHOOD BY DOM ANSCAR VONIER, OSB
Chapter VIII
THE BLESSED FRUIT OF MARY’S WOMB.
Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth was the cause of one of the greatest miracles in the purely spiritual realm of things, the sanctification of John the Baptist in his mother s womb. "For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy" (Luke i. 44). Christian tradition holds that the soul of John at that moment received sanctifying grace, Mary’s sweet voice being like the sacramental instrument of the supernatural transformation. But the source of the grace that came to the soul of John was the ever blessed Fruit hidden in Mary’s bosom. Mary brought into Elizabeth s house the personal fulness of all grace in the Blessed Thing that was still part of her own maiden life.
It would be an imperfect treatment of our dear subject, the divine motherhood, if we neglected to consider the teachings of Catholic theology concerning the bodily and spiritual conditions of the blessed Fruit of Mary’s womb, of the Holy Thing that sanctified the soul of John, and made the infant leap for joy in the mother s womb. We could never understand fully the spirit of the Magnificat unless we remembered what was the Life that was throbbing within Mary’s life when she spoke her immortal Canticle.
Here we may leave the text of St. Luke s Gospel and take for our guide St. Thomas Aquinas, the great theologian of the Incarnation; in the third part of his Summa, in the 33 d and 34th Questions, the holy Doctor treats of the state of the Proles, the divine embryo, in Mary’s womb, and its perfections.
There are two main principles which ought to govern all our thinking when, with Elizabeth, so many times each day we bless Mary in the Fruit of her womb, in the recitation of the Hail Mary.
The first principle is this: there was not the minutest fraction of time in which the new Thing made of Mary’s blood was not God.
The second principle, which is a logical sequel of the first, is thus formulated by St. Thomas, in Summa q. 34, a. i: "In the mystery of the Incarnation we have to pay more attention to the descent of divine fulness into human nature than to the ascent of human nature . . . into God."
I do not say that the two principles just enunciated stand at the head of the treatise on those matters in the Summa; but an analysis of all St. Thomas says makes it clear that the twofold
axiom is really the heart of all his doctrine on our Lady s wonderful secret.
In virtue of the first principle, which is strict Catholic faith, we have to admit that, whatever may
be the generative process with other human beings, in the case of Christ’s conception there never was anything but a clearly defined human embryo, with an immortal soul. It is against the very laws of the Incarnation to suppose that at any moment, however brief, the new Life that stirred within Mary’s life was not the life of a bodily organism animated with a rational, immortal soul. The presence of the immortal, the intellectual human soul, from the very start, is indispensable to the Hypostatic Union; the divine Person took flesh by means of the immortal human soul, not vice versa; for, says St. Thomas, in Summa q. 6, a. i: "The human body is not fit for the Hypostatic Union except through its relationship with the rational soul". This rational soul, again, had full intellectual activity, perfect use of all its specifically spiritual power; it had freedom of will, freedom of choice, a clear vision of all things intellectual. It was the intellect of full maturity and the will of perfect manhood.
Here our second principle helps us to extend this subject still further, being, as already said, a logical sequel of the first principle. The blessed Fruit of Mary’s womb had then all the fulness of grace, the full power of meriting eternal life for those that were to be redeemed; beatific vision was at that first moment as complete in that soul, as it ever was after, even on the Resurrection morning. Christ was perfect comprehensor, i. e. One Who had the clear beatific vision of God in the very first instant of His being conceived" (Summa q. 34, a. 4). If Heaven ever abode within a creature, Mary was that abode during the nine months of her pregnancy.
There is a distinct tendency amongst writers on the mystery of the Incarnation in our days to make the Redeemer of mankind subject to that idolized idea of modern thinkers, the ascent from the lower life to the higher life. Whatever may be the merits of such a philosophy, it is distinctly repugnant to those who grasp the mystery of the Incarnation more completely, to associate this way of thinking with the Fruit of Mary’s womb. There we have not a struggle heavenwards, but we have Heaven opened, and the plenitude of grace coming out of it descending towards man.
Therefore our theology starts with infinite fulness of grace, light and power in the Holy Thing that rests in Mary’s virginal bosom. Christian sanctity, in its vaster aspect, is not a struggle from poverty to possession, but it is an immense, infinite possession from the very start, from the womb of God’s Mother, from the most indivisible point of inception; the second act in the drama of sanctity, the properly human act, is that "of his fulness we all have received, and grace for grace" (John i. 1 6).
To bear in her bosom a Being of such spiritual magnitude is truly for a woman to be the Mother of God. The most inalienable of all the motherly functions, that of giving of her own lifeblood to build up the growing organism of the Man-Child within her, was indeed for Mary divine motherhood, because she was building up the body of One Who was God, not unconsciously, in a state of dormancy, as it were, but in the full splendour of the saints, in splendoribus sanctorum.
Coming now to the strictly bodily condition of the blessed Fruit of Mary’s womb, we have to admit, of course, that Christ’s sense life was not developed till He reached maturity after His birth. Consequently such mental life as depended on developed sense life had to await the natural maturity of time, as with all other human beings. What we say about the completeness of the intellectual life of the soul of Christ in the womb of Mary in no wise does away with the reality of the embryonic state.
Here, however, St. Thomas seems to make a concession to grace at the expense of the ordinary course of embryonic nature; he thinks that from the very first the divine Person in Mary’s womb may have had what he calls the sense of touch. I quote his words from the Summa q. 29, a. 2:
"As Christ in the first instant of His conception had a rational soul, His body being then already formed and organic, there is much more reason to say that in the same instant He may have possessed the operation of the sense of touch."
I must ask leave of my readers not to exact more from me on this subject. The Church, in her Liturgy, has found the very words which become the mystery. She apostrophises Mary thus: "O Virgin of virgins, how will this be, because no one was ever like thee before, and no one will ever be like thee afterwards?" Mary is made to reply: "Daughters of Jerusalem, why do you wonder at me? The Thing you see is a divine mystery." Virgo virginum, quomodo fiet istud, quia nec priniam similem visa es nec habere sequentem?r Filia lerusalem, quid me admiramini? Divinum est mysterium hoc, quod cernitis. (Officium Exspectationis Partus B. M. V.)
