est object among creatures of God's favor,
affection, and complacency. He admires in her those wonderful effects of
the divine liberality, those magnificent gifts and graces, those exalted
virtues, which have placed the very foundation of her spiritual edifice
on the holy mountains,[2] in a degree of perfection surpassing that of
all pure creatures. He admires that perfect gratitude with which she
always received God's grace, and her perfect fidelity in corresponding
with it, and advancing in sanctity by the help thereof, with a
solicitude answerable to her love and gratitude for the preservation and
increase of so inestimable a treasure. _Full of grace_. The first
encomium which St. John gives us of the glory of the Word made flesh is,
that he was _full of grace and truth_.[3] God forbid that we should say
that Mary was full of grace in the same manner as her Son; for he is the
very source and origin of it, _from whose fulness all_ the saints, Mary
not excepted, _have received_[4] whatever degree they possess of grace
and sanctity. St. Luke assures us also, that St. Stephen was full of
grace and the Holy Ghost,[5] but it was a fulness in regard to a less
capacity, and in relation to a lower function. Moreover, to St. Stephen
and other saints, who have received large portions of heavenly grace, we
may say, in those other words of the angel, _You have found favor with
God_; but those very favors, though very great in themselves, were not
to be compared with that which from all eternity was reserved for Mary.
God made the saints the object of his gratuitous election, and he
qualified them with his graces to be the messengers of his Son, the
preachers and witnesses of his gospel; but Mary, was his choice, and was
furnished with his graces to bear the most illustrious, {656} the most
exalted title of honor that heaven could bestow on a pure creature to
conceive of her proper substance the divine Word made man. If then the
grace of God so raises a person in worth and merit, that there is not
any prince on earth who deserves to be compared with a soul that is
dignified with the lowest degree of sanctifying grace; what shall we say
or think of Mary, in whom the fulness of grace was only a preparation to
her maternity? What shall we think of ourselves, (but in an opposite
light,) who wilfully expose this greatest of all treasures on so many
occasions to be lost, whereas we ought wilfully to forego and renounce
all the advantages