the-glories-of-mary

GLORIES OP MARY. 305
God sanctifies a soul is its sanctification by its
own merits, as St. Thomas teaches,* so it is to
be believed that the blessed Virgin has been
thus sanctified. f
And if this privilege was
granted to the angels and to Adam, as the an
gelic Doctor says,!
much more should we believe
that it was granted to the divine mother, on
whom we cannot doubt that God, having
deigned to make her his mother, conferred
greater gifts than on all other creatures, as the
same Doctor teaches. From her he received
his human nature, hence before all others she
must have obtained from Christ the fulness of
grace ; for, being mother, as Father Suarez says,
she has a certain peculiar right to all the gifts
of her Son.J And as, by the hypostatic union,
Jesus must of right have the fulness of all
graces; thus by the divine maternity,
it was
meet that Jesus should confer on Mary, as a
natural debt, greater graces than those bestowed
on all the other saints and angels.
Thus, from the beginning of her life, Mary
knew God, and knew him so well, that no tongue,
as the angel declared to St. Bridget, shall
suffice to tell how the intellect of the holy Vir
gin clearly saw God in the first moment she
knew him.^f And even in that first moment of
* 3 p. q. 19, a. 3.
t Sanctificari per propium actum est perfectior modus. Ergo eredendum
est hoc modo fuisse sanctificatam Virginem. To. 2, in 3 p.
D. 4, 5, 8. 1 1 p. q. 63, a. 5, et q. 95, a. 2.
| Ex ea accepit humanam Naturam, et ideo prae caeteris majorem
deouit a Christo gratiae plenitudinem obtinere. 3 p. q. 27, a. 5.
I Unde fit ut smgulare jus habeat ad dona filii sui. T. 2, in 3, p.
D. 1,5,2, \ germ. Aug. c. 14.