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The following text is by St-Eudes (St. Jean Eudes 1601 – 1680), a French Roman Catholic priest. He taught about the mystical unity of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and wrote: You must never separate what God has so perfectly united. So closely are Jesus and Mary bound up with each other that whoever beholds Jesus sees Mary; whoever loves Jesus, loves Mary; whoever has devotion to Jesus, has devotion to Mary.
Who is this Lord whom the Blessed Virgin magnifies? It is He who is the Lord of lords, the sovereign and universal Lord of heaven and earth. This Lord is the Eternal Father; this Lord is the Son; this Lord is the Holy Spirit-three divine Persons who are but one God and one Lord, having but one single essence, power, wisdom, goodness and majesty.
The most pure Virgin praises and magnifies the eternal Father for having associated her with His divine paternity by making her the mother of the very Son whose Father He is.
She magnifies the Son of God for having deigned to choose her to be His Mother and Himself to be her true Son.
She magnifies the Holy Spirit for having willed to accomplish in her the greatest of His works; that is, the adorable mystery of the Incarnation.
She magnifies the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit for the infinite graces which They have granted to her and intend to bestow on all mankind.
Here is another joy of the Queen of Heaven which is indicated in these words: “My soul hath rejoiced . . . ” a joy which surpasses all the others. Several holy Fathers and important Doctors write that this Virgin Mother, being ecstatically elevated to God at the moment of the Incarnation of her Son within her, was filled with the same inconceivable joys which are possessed by all the blessed in heaven, and that she was rapt to the third heaven, where she had the happiness of seeing God clearly face to face.
In proof of this, these holy writers advance the indisputable maxim that all the privileges with which the Son of God has honored His other saints were also bestowed by Him upon His divine Mother. Now St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, St. Basil, St. Anselm, St. Thomas and a number of others do not hesitate to assert that St. Paul, while he was still on earth, saw the essence of God when he was transported to the third heaven.
Who can doubt, then, that the Mother of Our Saviour, who always lived in the most perfect innocence and who alone loved God more than all the other saints combined, enjoyed this same favor, not only on one Occasion but on several, particularly at the happy moment of the conception of her Son?
This is the opinion of St. Bernard, Albert the Great, St. Antoninus and many others. “0 blessed Mary,” exclaims the holy Abbot Rupert, “it was then that a deluge of joy, a furnace of love and a torrent of heavenly delights burst upon thee, wholly absorbed and inebriated thee, and made thee experience what no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard and no human heart has ever understood.”
“It is a great thing,” says St. Antoninus, “to have created heaven and earth out of nothing. It is a great thing to have brought manna down from heaven in order to nourish the Chosen People in the desert for forty years. All the miracles that our Saviour performed in Judea, giving sight to the blind, driving out devils from the bodies of those who were possessed, curing the sick, restoring the dead to life, arc great and marvelous things. But the mystery of the Incarnation, which the infinite power of God wrought in the Blessed Virgin, incomparably surpasses all these other things. It is what prompts her to say, ‘He that is mighty hath done great things! “
“Here arc the great things,” says St. Thomas of Villanova, “that God wrought in the most holy Virgin. He elevated her to such a high degree of grandeur that all the eyes of men and angels cannot scan that eminence. He transformed this granddaughter of Adam into the Mother of her own Creator, the Lady of the world, the Queen of heaven and the Empress of all creatures. A new prodigy appeared in the world, to the great wonderment of heaven and earth: a God-Man, a Man-God; God become man, and man united with God. Prodigy of prodigies, miracle of miracles, after which there remains nothing on earth worthy to be admired!”
Having magnified God for the infinite favors bestowed upon her and having made this admirable prophecy, “All generations shall call me blessed,” which includes a world of wonders which the Almighty has wrought and will continue to accomplish for all time and eternity to render this Virgin Mother glorious and venerable throughout the universe, she makes yet another prophecy that vibrates with rich comfort for all mankind, particularly for those who fear God.
In it our peerless Mary affirms to us that the mercy of God extends from generation to generation to all those who fear Him: “And his mercy is from generation unto generation, to them that fear him.”
What is this mercy? “It is our most bountiful Saviour,” explains St. Augustine. The eternal Father is called the Father of Mercy, because He is the Father of the Word Incarnate who is uncreated mercy itself. It is this mercy which the royal prophet David begged God, in the name of the whole human race, to send into the world through the mystery of the Incarnation, when he prayed:
Show us, 0 Lord, Thy mercy, and grant us Thy salvation.
The Word Incarnate is all love and charity; therefore He must be all mercy. God is naturally and essentially all merciful, says St. Jerome, and always ready to save by His clemency those whom He cannot save according to His justice. But we are so wretched and so inimical to ourselves that when mercy is offered to us for our salvation, we turn our backs on it in scorn.
Three elements are necessary for mercy: the first is that it takes pity on the miseries of others, for he is merciful who bears in his heart, through compassion, the miseries of the wretched; the second, that it possess the greatest will to help the outcast in their miseries; the third, that it pass from thought and will into effect.
Now our most benign Redeemer became man that He might manifest His great mercy. First of all, having become man and assumed a body and a heart capable of suffering and sorrow, like ours, Our Lord was so filled with pity at the sight of our troubles and rendered so sad by carrying them in His Heart that no words can express his suffering because on one hand, He bore an infinite love for us, like the very best father for his children, and on the other hand He kept constantly before His eyes all the misfortunes of body and spirit, all the anguish, tribulations, martyrdoms and torments which all His children would have to endure until the end of the world.
His most tender and loving Heart would have caused Him countless deaths had not His love, stronger than death itself, preserved His human life so that He might sacrifice it on the cross for our sake.
God upset the thrones of kings and the pulpits of philosophers; He conferred the first empire of the world to a poor fisherman, whom He elevated to such eminent power and glory that rulers and magnates considered it a great honor to kiss the dust of his sepulchre and the feet of his successors.
What is all that, if not the fulfilment of this prophecy of the Blessed Virgin, “He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the lowly and humble”. The fulfillment of this prophecy has appeared manifestly in past centuries, and will continue to appear more and more in the ages to come, until the end of the world.
Did not our divine Saviour deliver mankind from the bondage of the demons who before His Incarnation had subjected the world to their cruel tyranny? Did he not banish the rebellious angels from heaven and the fallen man from paradise? And did He not restore mankind, after he had humbled himself through penance to the grace of His Creator? Did He not banish the godless Diocletian from his imperial throne to replace him with the pious Constantine? Did He not drive out the arrogant Eugene and give the throne of his empire to the humble Theodosius?
Mother of the Son, as Spouse of the Holy Ghost, as the Temple of the most Holy Trinity, as Queen of angels and men, as the Mother of Christians, and as Empress of the Universe. It also means that this most holy Heart is the source of all the graces that accompany the privileges bestowed on her, of the holy use she made of those graces, and of all the sanctity of her thoughts, words, works, sufferings and of the other mysteries of her life. It means, finally, that her Heart is the source of the eminent virtues she practised on earth, of her perfect exercise of the faculties and powers of her soul and of her body, and of the glory and felicity she now enjoys in heaven.