21 November 2009

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary


In preparing for today's Mass, I was particularly struck by the words of St Augustine:

St Augustine says “The blessed Mary certainly did the Father’s will, and so it was for her a greater thing to have been Christ’s disciple than to have been his mother, and she was more blessed in her discipleship than in her motherhood. Hers was the happiness of first hearing in her womb him whom she would obey as her master.”

St Augustine is commenting on the words of Christ: “Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.” Hence, says Augustine, “Mary heard God’s truth in her mind, a nobler thing than carrying his body in her womb. The truth and the body were both Christ: he was kept in Mary’s mind insofar as he is truth; he was carried in her womb insofar as he is man; but what is kept in the mind is of a higher order than what is carried in the womb.”

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