CHAPTER VII
Mother, Most Chaste.
To be chaste is to be angelic. What is there more beautiful, more excellent than chastity which makes man pure?
Chastity represents in the world the glorious state of immortality. It requires no extraneous ornament, being its own most beautiful adornment. It makes us pleasing to God, unites us with Jesus Christ, combats the pernicious tendencies of the flesh, gives peace to the body, and, possessing in its essence unspeakable bliss, it renders all who enjoy it perfectly happy.
It is a shield to our eyes, it dissipates darkness and creates brightness. Chastity crucifies the flesh and elevates it heavenward. It fills the heart with delight and furnishes wings to the soul whereon it may soar to the throne of God.
It gives spiritual joy and overcomes chagrin; it moderates the violence of passion, weakens concupiscence and frees the soul from the agonizing assaults of flesh and blood.
We may apply to this great virtue the words of wisdom: "All gold, in comparison of her, is as a little sand; and silver in respect to her, shall be counted as clay" (Wisd. VII—9). And again: "Love her above health and beauty, and choose to have her instead of light: for her light cannot be put out" (Wisd. VII—10).
For she is more beautiful than the sun and above all the others of the stars: being compared with the light, she is found before it" (Wisd. VII—29).
Chastity ennobles and glorifies whoever possesses it. Are riches desired here? What is more precious than chastity?
She should be our closest companion in life, having the assurance that through her, we will come into the enjoyment of the greatest wealth. In our cares and sorrows, she will be our sweetest comfort. Through her, we shall win immortality and leave unto those who shall come after us a glorious and abiding memory.
In our home she shall be company to us and her discourse being void of all bitterness, she shall be a source of joy and gladness to us.
Unless God grant us the grace we cannot practice chastity. With humble and loving hearts we should seek it at His merciful hands.
"He that is mighty," may the chaste soul exclaim with Mary, "hath done great things to me" (Luke I—49). "He hath showed might in His arm" (Luke I—51). The beautiful pen pictures found in the Scriptures concerning Judas Machabees correspond admirably to whomsoever practices the virtue of chastity.
"He put on a breastplate as a giant, and girt his warlike armour about him in battles, and protected the camp with his sword. In his acts he was like a lion, and like a lion's whelp roaring for his prey. And he possessed the wicked and sought them out, and all the workers of iniquity were troubled; and salvation prospered in his hand. And he made Jacob glad with his works, and his memory is blessed forever" (Mach. I-III).
It was by his chastity that the youthful Joseph gave evidence of his great valor. His mantle is seized by the hand of the temptress, but his mind and heart remained free. He relinquishes his garment, but clings to his purity.
The Apostle St. Paul warns us to keep ourselves pure as we are the temple of God. If this can be said of us poor sinners, what can be said of Mary, the Immaculate, who carried God Himself in her chaste womb? "Know you not, that you are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?"
We are the temple. Not of man, but of God; we are a holy and not a profane temple- a temple wherein God loves to dwell, especially when it is adorned with chastity. "But if any man violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which yon are" (1 Cor. Ill—16-17).
Of all the children of men, Mary is the holiest. the fairest, the purest. There is none of God's creatures, whether in the heavens or on the earth, that approaches her beauty, her loveliness. She is His temple, undefiled, thrice holy; holy by her eminent sanctity and grace with which the Father endowed her; holy by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, Who chose her as His chaste spouse; holy in conceiving in her immaculate womb Jesus Christ, the beloved Son of the Father, and her own Divine Son.
Eternal holiness, infinite chastity, God the all perfect, chose her as His mother, the mother of Jesus, the infinite source of all grace.
'Twas midst the pure, white lilies of her virginal womb, that He took up His abode among men. She was all fair in His sight, and He rejoiced in the beauty of her chaste body and soul. Full of grace, she was pre-eminently holy and pure, and because of her chastity, He took of her immaculate flesh and blood, becoming her Son, without the least umbrage to her chastity, for she remains always a virgin, though the Mother Most Chaste of Jesus, the Son of God and the Redeemer of men.
CHAPTER VIII.
Mother Undefiled.
Man's life is a warfare here below, not merely for a time, but throughout its whole course. Against us are marshaled the powers of darkness, the seductions of a wicked world and the temptations of the flesh. While every man is born with the guilt of sin upon him, his soul is made as white as the purest fleece by the cleansing waters of holy baptism. From a child of wrath he becomes a child of God.
Through the efficacy of the regenerating waters of baptism, we are made pleasing in the sight of God, since there is no longer a stain upon us, hence our Lord said, "Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come to me: for the kingdom of Heaven is for such" (Matt. XIX—14).
But how short lived, for the most of men is the holy innocence of their childhood! Are we not told in holy scripture that he that saith he did no wrong hath not the truth in him?
Like the beautiful bright rays of the sun which are obscured by darkness, oftentimes by ominous clouds; or like the snowflakes that mantle the earth with a pure white vesture, which are quickly defiled by coming in contact with earth's corruption; or, again, like the pure sparkling waters, gurgling forth from the bowels of the earth, that are soon mudded in their course, is the life of man on his journey to his final goal.
The luscious fruits of orchard and vineyard, so fair to the eye of the gardener; the fields covered with promising grain crops, that glitter as gold in the sunlight, rejoicing the heart of the husbandman; the verdant valleys and rich green hillsides with herds of cattle browsing upon them, are all, at times, blighted, ruined in the twinkling of an eye, blasting the fond hopes of the tiller of the soil.
All that glitters is not gold, and much, very much, of what there is in the world is like the fruit of the Dead Sea—that is, beautiful to behold, yet crumbles to dust at your touch. So it is with the lives of men. Some, like the fairest flowers, grow up exhaling the sweet fragrance of their virtues, when, in an evil hour, their sworn enemy, the foul spirit of darkness, steals into their hearts and robs them of their beauty. Others, like a gently flowing stream of crystallike water, move along serenely and gently until deflected from their natural course and are drawn into a polluted channel through the alluring, though treacherous, promises of a wicked world. While others still, like the giant tree of the forest, or the rosy fruit of the orchard, at whose heart the worm gnaweth until it decays and falls to the ground, are devoured by the worm within them, their own flesh and blood, to whose insidious temptations they fall ready victims.
Is there, then, no one to be found among the children of men whom God made to His own image and likeness, who has not fallen a prey to the wiles of the serpent, to the fascinations of a corrupt world, or to the trials of the flesh?
There is one, and only one, our own sweet, loving, humble Mother Mary, the Mother of our Saviour. Like the sweet, violet crouching beneath the hillside, hiding itself away, yet aromatizing its environments with its delicate perfume, do we find the handmaid of the Lord, hidden, away in a lowly valley, midst the hills of Judea, giving forth the most exquisite aroma of incomparable virtues, the humble Virgin of Nazareth, the Mother of God and our most sweet and loving mother undefiled.
It is of faith that at no time in all the course of her existence, from the very instant of her immaculate conception to the close of her most pure life, did the slightest defilement tarnish her immaculate soul or most chaste body, to mar their loveliness before Him Who is infinite sanctity, her Creator.
She is all fair, all beautiful, radiant as the morning rising, spotless as the sunbeam, white as the snowflake, without spot or stain, free from the blight that overtook man in the terrestrial paradise.
She is the spotless virgin of virgins, the Mother of Jesus, His Mother Undefiled.
CHAPTER IX.
Mother Untouched.
Imagine a cultivator of fruit trees, whose ambition is to possess a beautiful orchard of all kinds of fruit-growing trees, giving his time and attention to the ground to be selected, the trees to be planted therein, the fertilizers to be used, and to all the implements necessary for the work of properly tilling the land.
Having made the choice of a field he considers best suited for his purpose, he begins to put it in condition for the planting of the trees.
He plows and replows the soil, he fertilizes it well, harrows and rolls it and spaces it off. He looks after the work himself and sees that all is well done. He then proceeds to make choice of the fruit trees he desires to plant. He supervises their setting out in keeping with his fixed plan.
After some years of tireless care, cultivating and irrigating the orchard, pruning the trees in due season, he finds that his labors are about to be crowned with an abundant crop of the most delicate and savory fruit.
Day by day he goes into his orchard, examines the trees, the leaves, the maturing fruit and sees that all goes well.
His heart rejoices over the splendid prospect; his eyes feast on the beautiful picture his orchard presents. Soon, very soon, the rosy, the yellow, the pink, the white colored fruits of various kinds will be gathered in and his soul will overflow with gladness.
At last the day is appointed when he, with his employees, will begin to gather the fruit. The night preceding the day named, a violent wind storm passes over the section of the country wherein his orchard is located, bearing, as on wings, millions on millions of insects that settle upon every tree and fruit in his orchard.
On the morrow, when he and his laborers set about their work, they And every tree injured, every fruit tainted, save one lone tree with its fruit, that he had placed at the base of a high knoll, which sheltered it from the wind.
This was the only tree, and its luscious fruit the only fruit untouched by the pestiferous insects that swarmed upon all the others in the orchard. Though saddened at the blight that had come upon his work, the gardener was not broken in spirit, but from the tree that remained untouched and had escaped ruin he was able to replant a second orchard, without which his labors would have been entirely fruitless.
May we not liken to this husbandman and his work God and the work of His creation?
He made the heavens and the earth. He beautified the heavens with lights to divide the day and the night, to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.
In the firmament He placed a greater luminary to rule the day, and a lesser light and the stars He made to govern the night. They were all intended to dispel darkness and light up the world.
He had the earth to bring forth green herbs, fruit trees, and other trees of every kind. He planted a paradise of pleasure, and in it brought forth all manner of trees fair to behold and their fruit pleasant to eat of.
Seeing that all was done as He willed, He created man, forming him of the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face a living soul. To His own image and likeness did God make man, and placed him in the garden of delights with power to rule over His creation.
"Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat," saith the Lord God to man, "but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat. For in what day so ever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death" (Genesis 11—16-17).
But there came a day, a fatal day for man, when the spirit of darkness, the enemy of both God and man, entered the garden of paradise and by cunning speech led man to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, of which he had been forbidden to eat under the penalty of death.
In so doing, man lost his innocence and was forthwith driven from the paradise of pleasure. The earth was cursed in his disobedience, and with labor, and in the sweat of his face man must henceforth eat thereof all the days of his life.
Is Heaven, then, to be forever closed against him? Is the earth to be forever cursed in his work? Is there no one upon whom God can look complacently, no one who has not been touched by the blight caused by Adam's disobedience?
There is one who escaped and whom God finds free from that defilement. The humble Virgin Mary, ever virgin, blessed among women, and who, by a special predilection of God, was protected in her lowliness from the infection that came unto all the children of Adam, was the only one untouched by the withering wind of disobedience.
The archangel, prostrate before her in her humble Nazareth home, salutes her, "Hail full of grace, the Lord is with thee" (Luke I—28). 'Tis our Mother Mary, the fruit of whose chaste womb, Jesus, is to reopen Heaven, bring back blessing to earth and redemption and salvation to man.
Oh, spotless! Oh, ever blessed Virgin Mary! Oh, pure and immaculate Mother of our Redeemer, no stain is upon you. You are all fair in the sight of God. You are our sweet, our loving mother, untouched, even by original sin, from the first moment of your immaculate conception.
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