FROM MARY MAGNIFYING GOD. BY WILLIAM HUMPHREY, OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE OBLATES OF ST. CHARLES. AD 1873
In the first moment of her human existence, she made a magnificent act of divine faith, another of divine hope, and a third of divine charity. Her whole soul adored its Maker with an unparalleled and peerless act of adoration. Her words in after days but gave expression to what she did in the dawn of her existence. 'Magnificat anima mea Dominum' —'My soul doth magnify the Lord.'
Yes; she truly magnified the Lord. Never before, by angel or by child of Adam, had their common Lord been so adequately magnified as by the unborn Mary, Never before had He been magnified by so grand, so glorious, so perfect, so peerless a creature; and never before by so grand, so glorious, so perfect, and so peerless an act of adoration.
All the adoration of the angels, and all the adoration's of men for centuries of years, were not in their united sum equal to that one, that first adoration of the Immaculate Mary.
Practically, as well as speculatively, Mary recognised and acknowledged the Triune God, in the moment other creation, to be the Lord and her Lord!—to have a right of sovereignty and dominion over her, of property and possession in her.
What this implies and includes, I reserve till I speak of her humility, the solid, deep-laid foundation of all her greatness. Suffice it to say now, that she perfectly and adequately realised her end, the final cause of her existence, the reason of her being—to know, to love, and to serve her Maker. And in the freedom of her will, by the aid of-her grace, she made a purpose and resolution then, which endured throughout the entire term of her mortal sojourn, and increased and intensified with the passing days of the years of her life on earth— to perfect herself by that knowledge and that love, and, thus perfected, to magnify her Maker by that service.
Therefore it is, in virtue of that perseverance even until death, that she is now exalted far above principalities and powers, that she is crowned with glory and honour, and seated on the Second Throne, next to the King, and at the King's Eight Hand. There enthroned in royalty above the subject angels, she leads and presents to God the Magnificat of the sons of men; of all who, by grace, have become her children, and can say with her in spirit and in truth, 'My soul doth magnify the Lord. '
