The Humility of Mary Exalted

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."  And that other no less mysterious statement:  "His father and mother marveled at what was said about him."  This admiration presupposes a certain surprise, don't you think so, little Mother?

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, and if, in a sermon, we are obliged from beginning to end to exclaim and say:  Ah!  Ah!, we should grow tired!  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!

What the Blessed Virgin has more than we have is the privilege of not being able to sin, she was exempt from the stain of original sin; but on the other hand, she wasn't as fortunate as we are, since she didn't have a Blessed Virgin to love.  And this is one more sweetness for us and one less sweetness for her!

-Saint Therese of Lisieux