Meditate on the Incarnation through the nine months of Our Lord in Mary’s womb.
The Grace of Our Lady Through the Incarnation
One great divine reason for the immense addition of graces and spiritual gifts which we believe to have been bestowed upon our Blessed Lady immediately after the Incarnation must be found in the new position in which she was placed to Our Lord as His mother. This relation included a great variety of duties and opportunities.
There is one most important element in this new position which should not be left unmentioned from the very first. The change which had taken place in the world was infinite in its intrinsic wonderfulness, and also in the duties which it imposed on the whole of creation. God had become a creature. The material universe had now in its midst its Lord and Sovereign, not as He had always been in every part of the world which He had made, but in a new mode of existence, and that a human mode.
He had made Himself an Infant. He was still and could never fail to be the Lord and God of all, but He was now present among His creatures as one of them. He had thrown Himself upon them, leaving the throne and the glory and the majesty and the endless worship of heaven behind Him. He made Himself dependent on them for the homage and honor due to Him.
Mary’s Unique Understanding of the Incarnation
Mary understood what had taken place, as no one else could understand the condescension of God. She knew His worth and rights, as no one among the highest seraphs knew them. She knew what was the blessing of His presence and what the dues to His majesty.
But He was her own. No ordinary presence, even as of the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle was that in which He dwelt in her. He had taken His Flesh and His Blood from her substance. He lived by her life. He was sustained in His human existence by her.
She was nearer to Him than the priest who offers Him on the altar, nearer to him than the angels who kneel in adoration wherever He is to be found; Flesh of her flesh, Bone of her bone. She alone knew of Him. She alone was to discharge the duties of the whole visible creation in honor of Him, thanking Him, adoring Him, praising Him, loving Him for His condescension.
The Hidden Life of the Divine Infant
It will certainly help us to understand the immense grace required for a position of this kind to consider a little what that life was of Our Lord which began at the moment of the Incarnation and continued uninterruptedly for the nine months which had to pass before the first Christmas Day.
It is a part of what we term in general the Holy Infancy which has a kingdom of its own in Christian devotion, like the devotion to the Babe of Bethlehem, or to the many years of the Hidden Life at Nazareth. It contains both these, for it is the Babe of Bethlehem Who is dwelling in the womb of Mary.
And never was He nearly so much hidden, even in the quietest years of His life at Nazareth, as during these nine months. It is clear that each part of this great devotion has its own features and characteristics. It is also clear that this phase of it could have been practiced by no one from the beginning but our Blessed Lady herself, though at a point of time which is not directly discernible, it must have spread to St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, St. John Baptist, St. Zachary.
Jesus in the Womb
God might have become man without going through all the ordinary stages of human existence, including the first stage of all, the nine months in the womb of a mother. But He did not choose to be different from us in this respect, and the consequence of His condescension is that we have to contemplate the theological truths which are involved therein.
We cannot imagine that this chain of wonderful and beautiful truths was unknown to our Blessed Lady and to St. Joseph, and to the other saints mentioned above, in the order of time in which it pleased God that it should become known. It is natural to think that the homage due to God Who had made Himself a creature was entrusted to them, and that it was not to be delayed until the humble birth at Bethlehem.
A very short survey of this great field of contemplation, as we may suppose it to have been laid open to Mary and to others after her, must be enough for us here.
The history begins with the fiat of Mary. At that moment, our theology teaches us that by the action of the Holy Ghost, a part of her most pure blood was formed into the perfect Body which was to be that of Our Lord, and that at the same time, God created the human soul which was to dwell in that Body. Mary received, at the same time, a marvelous increase of grace and knowledge, corresponding, as it were, to her elevation at that moment to be the Mother of God. Here is enough for angels and saints to feed on in endless contemplation.
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This article is taken from a chapter in Devotion to Our Lord in the Womb by Fr. Henry James Coleridge, SJ which is available from TAN Books.
