Mary's Fulness of Grace

Section 2: Mary’s Fulness of Grace

Ripalda¹ and Scheeben² refer to Mary’s Divine Motherhood as her immediate forma sanctificans. This view is based on a misapplied analogy with the Hypostatic Union and therefore untenable. But there can be no doubt that the dignity of Divine Motherhood imperatively postulates for its bearer the highest possible measure of interior grace and sanctification. For, though motherhood is merely a grace of vocation (gratia gratis data), its inherent dignity requires a corresponding worthiness on the part of the bearer. The mother of God could not have been a sinful woman. This reasoning finds strong support in Holy Scripture and Tradition.

1. The Dogmatic Argument

Both Holy Scripture and Tradition teach that the Mother of Jesus was “full of grace.”

a) The dogma of our Lady’s “plenitudo gratiae” is formally contained in the angelic salutation: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”³ In the original Greek this text is even more graphic: “χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη, ὁ Κύριος μετὰ σοῦ.” The emphasis is on the word κεχαριτωμένη, which is evidently intended to point out a predominant trait of the Virgin. That the salutation was quite extraordinary appears from the fact that Mary was “troubled” at the Angel’s words and “thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be.”⁴

In its primitive sense χαριτόω means I show grace or favor. God’s way of showing favor to a rational creature is to endow him or her with sanctifying grace. Cfr. Eph. I, 6: “τῆς χάριτος αὑτοῦ, ἐν ᾗ ἐχαρίτωσεν ἡμᾶς—of his grace, in which he hath graced us …” Hence κεχαριτωμένη means a woman full of grace,—endowed not merely with the extrinsic graces proper to her state of life, but with a full measure of sanctifying grace, which precedes the grace of vocation, strictly so called, by way of preparation and endowment. Mary was not yet de facto the Mother of God when the Angel addressed her as κεχαριτωμένη, for she had not yet given her consent. The phrase: “The Lord is with thee,” is not part of the salutation proper; it is a statement, couched in ordinary Scriptural terms, promising her the divine protection for some definite task or mission. But as divine motherhood is conditioned upon intrinsic purity and holiness, and presupposes in its bearer many actual graces, the phrase “Dominus tecum” in this connection manifestly has the same meaning as “gratia plena.”

Following the lead of certain Fathers, we may moreover apply to the Blessed Virgin Mary a large number of Old Testament texts which find their full application in no one else but her. For example, Prov. XXXI, 29: “Many daughters have gathered together riches: thou hast surpassed them all.” The enthusiastic description of the “Spouse” in the Canticle of Canticles can likewise be applied in its plenary sense only to the Mother of God.⁵

b) The Fathers delighted in unfolding the logical implications of the Angelic Salutation and in so doing measured the intrinsic graces of Mary by the standard of her sublime dignity as Mother of God.

St. Epiphanius says that she was “full of grace in every respect.”⁶ St. Athanasius, that she is called “full of grace, because, being filled with the Holy Ghost, she overflowed with all graces, and was overshadowed by the power of the Most High.”⁷ In an ancient homily wrongly ascribed to St. Gregory the Wonder-worker we read: “The most holy Virgin is truly the precious ark which received the whole treasure of sanctity.”⁸

Other Patristic texts are even more convincing. We refer the student especially to those which, in connexion with Ps. XLIV, 12,⁹ declare that Mary attracted the Son of the Heavenly King by her extraordinary beauty and holiness. It will suffice to quote St. Augustine, who says: “An abundance of grace was conferred on her, who merited to conceive and bear Him of whom we know that He was without sin.”¹⁰

Our Lady’s personal merit must not, however, be conceived as a meritum de condigno but merely de congruo. In the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, “The Blessed Virgin is said to have merited the privilege of bearing the Lord of all, not because it was through her merits that He became incarnate, but because, by the grace bestowed upon her she merited that measure of purity and holiness which fitted her to be the mother of God.”¹¹

c) The theological argument for our dogma is based partly on the self-evident truth that the grace bestowed upon any person is commensurate with his or her dignity or office, and partly on the consideration that the measure of interior graces with which our Lady was dowered must have corresponded to her triple relationship to the three Persons of the Divine Trinity.¹²

It was a duty of honor, so to speak, for the Most Holy Trinity to endow the Deipara with a full, nay with a superabundant measure of interior grace. “The more closely one approaches a principle of any kind,” says St. Thomas, “the more one participates in the effect flowing from that principle… . Now Christ is the principle of grace; as God He is its author, as man its instrument… . But the Blessed Virgin Mary was nearest to Christ in His humanity, because He assumed His human nature from her. Consequently, she must have received from Him a greater fulness of grace than any one else.”¹³ This truth is emphasized in the dogmatic Bull “Ineffabilis Deus” of Pope Pius IX (Dec. 8th, 1854).¹⁴

2. Theological Aspects of the Dogma

We now proceed to consider the dogma from the specifically theological standpoint by studying (a) its scope and (b) its limitations.

a) The state of grace, generally speaking, culminates in sanctifying grace. Hence the fulness of grace enjoyed by the Blessed Virgin Mary must be conceived as a superabundance of interior holiness.

How is her sanctity to be measured in the concrete? In trying to estimate it at its proper worth, let us compare the Mother of God, first to her Divine Son, and secondly to the Angels and Saints.

Her sanctity was inferior to the created sanctity of Jesus in proportion as divine motherhood falls short of the prerogative of the Hypostatic Union. In comparing her sanctity to that of the Angels and Saints, we shall find it difficult to establish a definite line of demarcation. No doubt the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin, while vastly inferior to the created sanctity of Christ, surpasses that of the most glorious seraph and the greatest Saints.

The epithet “full of grace” has a different meaning as applied by Sacred Scripture (1) to our Lord Himself,¹⁵ (2) to St. Stephen,¹⁶ (3) to the Apostles,¹⁷ and (4) to our Blessed Lady. Though infinitely below the Godman, yet as Mother of God, Mary ranks high above her fellow creatures. Analogously, her plenitudo gratiae is intermediate between the fulness of grace peculiar to Christ and that of the holy Angels and Saints, far outranking the latter. Theologians are wont to describe it as “plenitudo summae abundantiae,” or “plenitudo redundantiae,” but they deny that it is actually infinite, since not even the created sanctity of our Lord Himself can be conceived as gratia actu infinita.¹⁸ To obtain some idea of the high degree of sanctifying grace peculiar to our Lady, we may assume with Suarez that it transcends by far the combined sanctity of all the Angels and Saints.¹⁹

What is true of sanctifying grace, must, mutatis mutandis, also be true of its supernatural effects, such as the theological virtues, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and the infused moral virtues, with the sole exception of contrition, which our Blessed Mother cannot have exercised because she was sinless.

b) The Schoolmen reduced the truths we have just set forth to a technical axiom, to wit: “Alii ad mensuram gratiam acceperunt, Maria autem gratiae plenitudinem.” Being liable to exaggeration, however, this axiom must be carefully circumscribed.

(α) First, the plenitudo gratiarum does not mean that all possible supernatural prerogatives are superadded to sanctifying grace and its concomitant privileges.

Those who are guilty of this exaggeration (we are sorry to see Terrien among their number) are compelled to attribute to Mary all the prerogatives enjoyed by our First Parents in Paradise, viz.: bodily immortality, impassibility, and an infused knowledge of all natural truths. This theory is refuted by the tribulations which our Blessed Lady suffered and by the fact that she died a natural death.

A seventeenth-century divine, Christopher Vega, asserted that the soul of our Lady enjoyed the beatific vision of God throughout life.²⁰ If this were true, the Blessed Virgin could not have acquired any earthly merits by faith, and Elizabeth would have been mistaken when she said to her: “Blessed art thou that hast believed.”²¹ At most we may adopt the pious, though unproved and unprovable opinion of Suarez,²² that Mary had a fleeting vision of the Blessed Trinity at the moment when she conceived, and again when she gave birth to her Divine Son.

St. Alphonsus de’ Liguori held, and his opinion has found a recent defender in Fr. Terrien, that the Blessed Virgin enjoyed full consciousness and the use of reason from the moment of her conception. This assumption (which, by the way, dates back no farther than the fourteenth century), is utterly untenable. Not even the shred of an argument can be produced in its favor. St. Thomas expressly declares that Mary did not have the use of free-will while in her mother’s womb but that this was the unique privilege of Christ.²³

Equally untenable is the more recent assertion of Jeanjacquot²⁴ that the Blessed Virgin during her earthly life knew personally — as she now knows in Heaven — all those pious souls who in course of time would have recourse to her as the “Help of Christians.”

It is, however, perfectly consonant with her dignity as Deipara to hold that Mary possessed a deep and extensive supernatural knowledge in matters of faith,—so wide and profound in fact, that she deserves to be called “Seat of Wisdom.” Note, however, that, as applied to her in the liturgy, this epithet does not necessarily mean anything more than that our Lady is the bearer and mother of the increate Wisdom of the Logos, and that, consequently, we are not justified, on the strength of mere a-priori deductions, in ascribing to Mary in the wayfaring state an altogether singular knowledge of the divine mysteries and an infused familiarity with the wisdom of Sacred Scripture. The question she addressed to the Archangel Gabriel proves that she was unaware of the mystery of the Incarnation; for, as “the handmaid of the Lord” she makes an humble profession of faith. That her earthly life was one of faith, is evidenced also by the prophecy of Simeon²⁵ and by the reply she got from her twelve-year-old Son in the Temple, and which she believingly treasured in her heart.²⁶ To assume that she was versed in the natural sciences or that her “wisdom” equalled the “infused knowledge” of the Angels, is unwarranted. Unlike her Divine Son, the humble “handmaid of the Lord” was not skilled in profane knowledge, nor did her exalted mission necessitate any intellectual attainments beyond those which strictly belong to the supernatural order.

While Mary, especially after she had “conceived of the Holy Ghost,” undoubtedly enjoyed to an exalted degree the gift of contemplation, Scheeben exaggerates when he says that she lived in a continuous ecstasy uninterrupted even by sleep.²⁷ It is difficult to see the object of such mystical extravagances.

Did the plenitudo gratiae with which our Lady was endowed comprise such free and special graces as the power conferred by the Sacrament of Holy Orders? No; our Lord gave this and similar powers (spiritual jurisdiction, etc.), to St. Peter and the other Apostles, not to His mother. The same limitation applies to all other functions proper to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. However, there is nothing to prevent us from assuming that after the descent of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost day the Blessed Virgin Mary possessed the threefold gift of prophecy, tongues, and miracles in a measure corresponding to her eminent position in the primitive Church.²⁸

(β) The “fulness of grace” enjoyed by our Blessed Mother was not complete and perfect at the outset, but developed gradually, reaching its climax at the moment of her death.

Unlike her Divine Son,²⁹ Mary advanced in grace and virtue. Catholic theologians distinguish three stages in her spiritual development. The first of these comprises her infancy up to the time when she conceived our Divine Lord. The second coincides with the period from the conception of Christ to her death. The third is the term of her everlasting beatitude in Heaven.³⁰ It should be noted, however, that St. Thomas erred in representing the perfectio sanctificationis characteristic of the first stage as liberatio a culpa originali; it must be defined as praeservatio a culpa originali, as we shall demonstrate further on.

Some few theologians hold that Mary attained to perfection of grace at the end of the first stage, i.e., when she conceived her Divine Son. But this theory entails an inadmissible corollary, namely, that she received no increase of sanctifying grace after the Incarnation, neither ex opere operato, as during the descent of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost day, nor ex opere operantis, e.g., by the merits of her virtuous life. Who would admit such an incongruity? The honor of our Lady is not enhanced by untrue, unprovable, and questionable asseverations, no matter how well-intentioned the zeal of those who put them forth. She is so very great and holy that there is no need of exaggerating the graces with which she was endowed.

3. The Name “Mary”

To derive the dogma etymologically from the name “Mary” is a rather difficult undertaking, as the root-meaning of the word remains doubtful.

The word “Mary” (מִרְיָם, Aramaic מַרְיָם, Septuagint Μαριάμ) is genuinely Hebraic. The first woman who bore it in Bible history is the sister of Moses. Lauth’s attempt to derive the word from the Egyptian has proved a failure. The Aramaic etymon signifies “Lady” (Domina, from מַר, Lord). According to the various Hebrew words that have been assigned as its root, the word may have any one of a variety of meanings. First, illuminatrix (φωτίζουσα from מָאוֹר, light-bearer). Then, the stubborn, refractory one (from מָרָה, to be stubborn). It is not likely that a father would give his new-born daughter either of these fantastic names. As regards the other proposed derivations, myrrh (myrrha, μύρρα; Heb. מֹר), which is both ancient and popular, will hardly be displaced by Bardenhewer’s³¹ more recent and rather prosaic interpretation of the corpulent one (from מָרָא, to fatten).³² Akin to this derivation is an older but nobler one, i.e., the strong, the tall. The final syllable iam is usually treated as the suffix characteristic of Hebrew adjectives and abstract nouns, though some interpret it substantively and explain Miriam to mean the bitter sea (mare amarum, πικρὰ θάλασσα, from מַר, bitter, and יָם, sea) or a drop of the sea, (stilla maris, from מַר, drop, and יָם, sea).³³ On purely linguistic grounds “Mary” may also be derived from Marjam, i.e., the bitter, or, figuratively, the sorrowful one (amara, afflicta).

Since the etymological derivation of the name is, and most likely will always remain doubtful, its typical and historic interpretation deserves all the more attention. “Mirjam [i.e., the sister of Moses as a type of the mother of God] was the Israelite; Mary — as the antithesis between herself and Eve shows — is the Christian. Mirjam was par excellence ‘she who had been healed’ [of leprosy] in the Old Testament, an earnest of God’s fidelity in keeping His promises; Mary is preeminently ‘she who has been redeemed,’ the token of salvation. As a member of the human race, a child of Adam, Mary, like the rest of us, had need of being redeemed. Had not our Lord in a most unique manner become her Redeemer, she too would have been overwhelmed by the bitter flood of original sin… . But as the old Testament Mirjam was preeminently the one who had been healed, so the New Testament Mary is preeminently the one who has been endowed with grace. It is for this reason that the Angel reassured her [Luke I, 30]: ‘Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace (χάριν) with God.’”³⁴

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Footnotes

1. De Ente Supernaturali, disp. 70. ↩

2. Dogmatik, Vol. III, § 276. ↩

3. Luke I, 28: “Ave gratia plena: Dominus tecum.” ↩

4. Luke I, 29. ↩

5. Cfr. Schaefer-Brossart, The Mother of Jesus in Holy Scripture, pp. 133 sqq.; Otto Bardenhewer, Maria Verkündigung, Freiburg 1905. ↩

6. Haer., 58, n. 24. ↩

7. Ep. ad Epictet. ↩

8. Migne, P. G., X, 1150. ↩

9. Ps. XLIV, 12: “The King shall greatly desire thy beauty.” ↩

10. De Natura et Gratia, c. 36: “Plus gratiae ei collatum est, quia eum concipere meruit et parere, quem scimus nullum habuisse peccatum.” ↩

11. Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 2, art. 11, ad 3: “Beata virgo dicitur meruisse portare Dominum omnium, non quia meruit ipsum incarnari, sed quia meruit ex gratia sibi data illum puritatis et sanctitatis gradum, ut congrue posset esse mater Dei.” ↩

12. V. supra, Section 1. ↩

13. Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 27, art. 5: “Quanto aliquid magis appropinquat principio in aliquo genere, tanto magis participat effectum illius principii… . Christus autem est principium gratiae, secundum divinitatem quidem auctoritative, secundum humanitatem vero instrumentaliter… . Beata autem virgo Maria propinquissima Christo fuit secundum humanitatem, quia ex ea accepit humanam naturam. Et ideo prae ceteris maiorem debuit a Christo gratiae plenitudinem obtinere.” ↩

14. An almost complete translation of this Bull will be found in the Marquess of Bute’s English edition of the Roman Breviary, Office for the Octave of the Immaculate Conception. See also The Little Book of the Immac. Conception, Dublin 1913. ↩

15. Cfr. John I, 14: πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας. ↩

16. Acts VI, 8: πλήρης χάριτος. ↩

17. Cfr. Acts II, 4: ἐπλήσθησαν πάντες πνεύματος ἁγίου. ↩

18. Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Christology, pp. 230 sqq. ↩

19. Suarez, De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 18, sect. 4, n. 8: “Si mente concipiamus ex multitudine gratiarum sanctorum (et angelorum) omnium unam intentissimam gratiam consurgere, non adaequaret intensionem gratiae Virginis.” ↩

20. Theologia Mariana, Lugduni 1653. ↩

21. Luke I, 45. ↩

22. De Myst. Vitae Christi, disp. 19, sect. 4, n. 2. ↩

23. Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 27, art. 3: “Non statim habuit usum liberi arbitrii adhuc in ventre matris existens; hoc enim est speciale privilegium Christi.” This view was defended by Gerson and Muratori. ↩

24. Simples Explications sur la Coopération de la S. Vierge à l’Œuvre de la Rédemption, Paris 1875. ↩

25. Luke II, 29 sqq. ↩

26. Luke II, 49 sqq. ↩

27. Scheeben, Dogmatik, Vol. III, § 278. ↩

28. St. Thomas denies that she possessed the gift of working miracles: “Miraculorum autem usus ei non competebat, dum viveret, quia tunc temporis confirmanda erat doctrina Christi miraculis. Et ideo soli Christo et eius discipulis, qui erant baiuli doctrinae Christi, conveniebat miracula facere. Propter quod etiam de Ioanne Baptista dicitur quod ‘signum fecit nullum’ (Io. X, 41), ut scil. omnes Christo intenderent. Usum autem prophetiae habuit [B. Virgo], ut patet in Cantico quod fecit: ‘Magnificat anima mea Dominum,’ etc. (Luc. I, 47).” (Summa Theol., 3a, qu. 27, art. 5, ad 3.) ↩

29. Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, Christology, pp. 236 sqq. ↩

30. Cfr. St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, 3a, qu. 27, art. 5, ad 2: “Et similiter in beata virgine est triplex perfectio gratiae: prima quidem quasi dispositiva, per quam reddebatur idonea ut esset mater Christi, et haec fuit perfectio sanctificationis. Secunda autem perfectio gratiae fuit in beata virgine ex praesentia Filii Dei in eius utero incarnati. Tertia autem est perfectio finis, quam habet in gloria.” ↩

31. Cfr. Otto Bardenhewer, Der Name Maria, Freiburg 1895. ↩

32. Corpulency is said to be an attribute of beauty in the Orient. ↩

33. The popular title “Stella maris” (star of the sea) is a corrupted reading of stilla maris. It goes back to the time of St. Jerome. For further information see Knabenbauer, Comment. in Matth., Vol. I, pp. 43 sqq., Paris 1892; Bucceroni, Commentarii, 4th ed., pp. 80 sqq.; Bardenhewer, Der Name Maria. Geschichte der Deutung desselben, Freiburg 1895; Minocchi, Il Nome di Maria, Florence 1897. ↩

34. Al. Schaefer, Die Gottesmutter in der Hl. Schrift, pp. 142 sqq., 2nd ed., Münster 1900. English tr. by Bishop Brossart, p. 149. ↩