A double posting today, but this commentary on the Blessed Virgin Mary by Ste. Therese of Lisieux is way too good to not share. Again it is coming from the good folks at Daily Gospel Online.
“How I would have loved to be a priest in order to preach about the Blessed Virgin! One sermon would be sufficient to say everything I think about this subject.
“I’d first make people understand how little is known by us about her life. We shouldn’t say unlikely things or things we don’t know anything about! For example, that when she was very little, at the age of three, the Blessed Virgin went up to the Temple to offer herself to God, burning with sentiments of love and extraordinary fervor. While perhaps she went there very simply out of obedience to her parents… For a sermon on the Blessed Virgin to please me and do me any good, I must see her real life, not her imagined life. I’m sure that her real life was very simple. They show her to us as unapproachable, but they should present her as imitable, bringing out her virtues, saying that she lived by faith just like ourselves, giving proofs of this from the Gospel, where we read: “And they did not understand the words which He spoke to them” (Lk 2,50). And that other no less mysterious statement: “His father and mother marveled at what was said about him” (Lk 2,33). This admiration presupposes a certain surprise, don’t you think so?
“We know very well that the Blessed Virgin is Queen of heaven and earth, but she is more Mother than Queen; and we should not say, on account of her prerogatives, that she surpasses all the saints in glory just as the sun at its rising makes the stars disappear from sight. My God! How strange that would be! A mother who makes her children’s glory vanish! I myself think just the contrary. I believe she’ll increase the splendor of the elect very much. It’s good to speak about her prerogatives, but we should not stop at this… Who knows whether some soul would not reach the point of feeling a certain estrangement from a creature so superior and would not say: “If things are such, it’s better to go and shine as well as one is able in some little corner.”
