Mary, Our Mother Sctn.:

The Flesh of Jesus is the Flesh of Mary

Also See: Jesus (Topic Page) | Blessed Virgin Mary (Topic Page)

"He offered for death the body which He had taken from Mary to atone for our sins."

"Moreover, one must remember that the Blood of Christ shed for our sake and those members in which He offers to His Father the wounds He received, the price of our liberty, are no other than the flesh and blood of the virgin, since the flesh of Jesus is the flesh of Mary, and however much it was exalted in the glory of His resurrection, nevertheless the nature of His flesh derived from Mary remained and still remains the same" (Pope Leo XIII, "Fidentem Piumque Animum", 1896 A.D.)

Also See: Annunciation / Incarnation [Pg.] | Mary's Maternity [Pg.] | Mary, the Mother of God | Some Reasons to Honor the Blessed Virgin Mary | Some Thoughts on the Blessed Virgin Mary

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Jesus & Mary

Also See: Jesus (Topic Page) | Blessed Virgin Mary (Topic Page)

"Of [Mary] was born Jesus who is called the Messiah." (Mt. 1:16)

"After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh." (Mt. 2:9-11)

"Without her we would no longer have Our Lord!" (Archbishop Fulton Sheen)

"The Virgin feeds the Creator - the Redeemer, who had become her Child. Divine Wisdom lay hid in childhood." (Bl. Peter the Venerable)

"That He greatly venerated His mother, we know from St. Luke, who tells us that He was subject unto His parents." (St. John Chrysostom, Doctor of the Church)

"Him, whom she had cherished in her bosom, she placed in a manger; now she beholds Him King over all in the glory of His Father." (St. Peter Damian, Doctor of the Church)

"If it is impossible to separate what God has united, it is also certain that you cannot find Jesus except with Mary and through Mary." (Pope St. Pius X)

"As God he produced Mary; as man he was produced by Mary. He himself was both father and son to his mother Mary." (Eleventh Council of Toledo, 675 A.D.)

"Joy! joy! the mother comes, and in her arms she brings the Light of all the world. The Christ, the King of kings; and in her heart the while all silently she sings." (Faber)

"Neither did He pass through the Virgin as through a channel, but was truly made flesh of her, and was truly nourished with her milk" (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Doctor of the Church, c. 350 A.D.)

"Him whom the heavens cannot contain, the womb of one woman bore. She ruled our Ruler; she carried Him in whom we are; she gave milk to our Bread." (St. Augustine, Doctor of the Church, 5th century A.D.)

"Mary is the way whereby He comes; it is from her virginal womb He issues, as the Bridegroom from the nuptial chamber. Let us endeavor, therefore, to go up to Jesus by Mary, for Jesus came down to us by her." (St. Bernard, Doctor of the Church)

"Jesus was the fruit of Mary, and as St. Elizabeth told her: 'Blessed art thou amongst woman, and blessed in the fruit of thy womb.' Whoever, therefore, desires the fruit must go to the tree; whoever desires Jesus must go to Mary; and whoever finds Mary will most certainly find Jesus." (St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church)

"Choose which you will most admire, the most beneficent condescension of the Son, or the sublime dignity of the Mother. On each side it is a subject of wonder and astonishment; that a God should obey a woman is a humility beyond example, and that a woman commands a God, is a preeminence without a rival." (St. Bernard, Doctor of the Church)

"When one reflects that with her alone did Jesus spend thirty years in that family union of Son and Mother, surely there is no doubt that through Mary the surest way of knowing Christ is opened to us... Nobody ever knew Christ so profoundly as she did, and nobody can ever be more competent as a guide and teacher of the knowledge of Christ." (Pope St. Pius X)

"The only begotten Son of God at all times paid to his most holy Mother the most evident marks of honor... He associated her with himself in each of his first two miracles - the miracle of grace when, at the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in the womb of Elizabeth; the miracle of nature when he turned water into wine at the marriage feast of Cana." (Pope Leo XIII)

"You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother; you cannot in common life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, our Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross." (Chesterton)

"We are told (Luke 2:7) that the Blessed Virgin herself 'wrapped up in swaddling clothes' the Child whom she had brought forth, 'and laid Him in a manger.'...Wherefore Jerome says (Adversus Helvidium iv): 'No midwife was there, no officious women interfered. She was both mother and midwife. With swaddling clothes, says he, she wrapped up the child, and laid Him in a manger.'" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church and "greatest theologian in the history of the Church")

"What marvel, if He went to that house to a marriage, Who came into this world to a marriage. For here He has His spouse whom He redeemed with His own blood, to whom He gave the pledge of the Spirit, and whom He united to Himself in the womb of the Virgin. For the Word is the Bridegroom, and human flesh the bride, and both together are one Son of God and Son of man. That womb of the Virgin Mary is His chamber, from which he went forth as a bridegroom." (St. Augustine, Doctor of the Church)

"Let us once more devoutly reverence the mystery of Mary's Immaculate Conception: our Emmanuel loves to see His Mother honored. After all, is it not for Him and for His sake that this bright star was prepared from all eternity, and created when the happy time fixed by the divine decree came? When we honor the Immaculate Conception of Mary, it is really to the divine mystery of the Incarnation that we are paying our just homage. Jesus and Mary cannot be separated, for Isaias tells us that she is the branch and He the Flower (Is 11:1)." (Dom Gueranger)

"When St. Elizabeth saw that the most blessed Virgin had come to visit her in her own house, not knowing how to thank her, and filled with humanity, she exclaimed: 'And whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should visit me?' But how could this be? we may ask. Did not St. Elizabeth already know that not only Mary, but also Jesus, had entered her house? Why then does she say the she is unworthy to receive the Mother, and not rather, that she is unworthy to receive the Son, who had come to visit her? Ah, yes, it was that the saint knew full when that when Mary comes she brings Jesus, and therefore it was sufficient to thank the Mother without naming the Son." (St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church)

"The Apostles had the advantage of only three years' teaching to prepare themselves for the establishment of His Kingdom, but the Blessed Mother had the advantage of thirty years. When one tries to imagine who much insight and inspiration would come from catching only a momentary glimpse of Wisdom Incarnate, one is appalled to think how much inspiration and wisdom Mary must have received from the years of communing with her Divine Son...If Our Blessed Lord after His Resurrection could so inspire the disciples of Emmaus in the interpretation of Scripture, then what must have been the thirty years' rehearsal of the Scriptures to His Mother, as explained to her how she was to be the new Eve, and how she was to share in His work of redemption beginning at Cana and ending at the Cross? Let those who think that the Church pays too much attention to Mary give heed to the fact that Our Blessed Lord Himself gave ten times as much of His life to her as He gave to His Apostles." (Archbishop Fulton Sheen)

"For can anyone fail to see that there is no surer or more direct road than by Mary for uniting all mankind in Christ and obtaining through Him the perfect adoption of sons, that we may be holy and immaculate in the sight of God? For if to Mary it was truly said: 'Blessed art thou who hast believed because in thee shall be fulfilled the things that have been told thee by the Lord' (Luke i., 45); or in other words, that she would conceive and bring forth the Son of God and if she did receive in her breast Him who is by nature Truth itself in order that 'He, generated in a new order and with a new nativity, though invisible in Himself, might become visible in our flesh' (St. Leo the Great, Ser. 2, De Nativ. Dom.): the Son of God made man, being the 'author and consummator of our faith'; it surely follows that His Mother most holy should be recognized as participating in the divine mysteries and as being in a manner the guardian of them, and that upon her as upon a foundation, the noblest after Christ, rises the edifice of the faith of all centuries. How think otherwise? Could not God have given us, in another way than through the Virgin the Redeemer of the human race and the Founder of the Faith? But, since Divine Providence has been pleased that we should have the Man-God through Mary, who conceived Him by the Holy Ghost and bore Him in her breast, it only remains for us to receive Christ from the hands of Mary. Hence whenever the Scriptures speak prophetically of the grace which was to appear among us, the Redeemer of mankind is almost invariably presented to us as united with His mother." (Pope St. Pius X, "Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum", 1904)

"This good Master did not disdain to shut Himself up in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, as a captive and as a loving slave, and later to be subject and obedient to her for thirty years. It is here, I repeat, that the human mind loses itself, when it seriously reflects on the conduct of the Incarnate Wisdom who willed to give Himself to men - not directly, though He might have done so, but through the Blessed Virgin. He did not will to come into the world at the age of a perfect man, independent of others, but like a poor little babe, dependent on the care and support of this holy Mother. He is that Infinite Wisdom who had a boundless desire to glorify God His Father and to save men; and yet He found no more perfect means, no shorter way to do it, than to submit Himself in all things to the Blessed Virgin, not only during the first eight, ten or fifteen years of His life, like other children, but for thirty years! He gave more glory to God His Father during all that time of submission to and dependence on our Blessed Lady than He would have given Him if He had employed those thirty years in working miracles, in preaching to the whole world and in converting all men - all of which He would have done, could He have thereby contributed more to God's glory. Oh, how highly we glorify God when, after the example of Jesus, we submit ourselves to Mary! Having, then, before our eyes an example so plain and so well known to the whole world, are we so senseless as to imagine that we can find a more perfect or a shorter means of glorifying God than that of submitting ourselves to Mary, after the example of her Son?" (St. Louis Marie de Montfort)

Also See: Annunciation / Incarnation [Pg.] | The Flesh of Jesus is the Flesh of Mary | Jesus and Mary / United | Mary / Knowledge and Love of Jesus | Mary, the Mother of God | Mary & The Passion and Death of Jesus | Praise of Mary | The Queenship of Mary | Powerful Intercession of Mary | Marian Facts | Marian Scriptural References | Some Reasons to Honor the Blessed Virgin Mary | Some Thoughts on the Blessed Virgin Mary

Note: Categories are subjective and may overlap. For more items related to this topic, please review all applicable categories. For more 'Reflections' and for Scripture topics, see links below.

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Jesus and Mary / United

Also See: Jesus (Topic Page) | Blessed Virgin Mary (Topic Page)

"[Mary] was united with God by the most intimate of all bonds" (Pope Leo XIII)

"And that through the Virgin, and through her more than through any other means, we have offered us a way of reaching the knowledge of Jesus Christ, cannot be doubted when it is remembered that with her alone of all others Jesus was for thirty years united, as a son is usually united with a mother, in the closest ties of intimacy and domestic life. Who could better than His Mother have an open knowledge of the admirable mysteries of the birth and childhood of Christ, and above all of the mystery of the Incarnation, which is the beginning and the foundation of faith? Mary not only preserved and meditated on the events of Bethlehem and the facts which took place in Jerusalem in the Temple of the Lord, but sharing as she did the thoughts and the secret wishes of Christ she may be said to have lived the very life of her Son. Hence nobody ever knew Christ so profoundly as she did, and nobody can ever be more competent as a guide and teacher of the knowledge of Christ." (Pope St. Pius X, "Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum", 1904 A.D.)

"Could not God have given us, in another way than through the Virgin the Redeemer of the human race and the Founder of the Faith? But, since Divine Providence has been pleased that we should have the Man-God through Mary, who conceived Him by the Holy Ghost and bore Him in her breast, it only remains for us to receive Christ from the hands of Mary. Hence whenever the Scriptures speak prophetically of the grace which was to appear among us, the Redeemer of mankind is almost invariably presented to us as united with His mother. The Lamb that is to rule the world will be sent - but He will be sent from the rock of the desert; the flower will blossom, but it will blossom from the root of Jesse. Adam, the father of mankind, looked to Mary crushing the serpent's head [that is, Satan], and he dried the tears that the malediction had brought into his eyes. Noe thought of her when shut up in the ark of safety, and Abraham when prevented from the slaying of his son; Jacob at the sight of the ladder on which angels ascended and descended; Moses amazed at the sight of the bush which burned but was not consumed; David escorting the arc of God with dancing and psalmody; Elias as he looked at the little cloud that rose out of the sea. In fine, after Christ, we find in Mary the end of the law and the fulfillment of the figures and oracles." (Pope St. Pius X, "Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum", 1904 A.D.)

Also See: Annunciation / Incarnation [Pg.] | Mary, the Mother of God | The Flesh of Jesus is the Flesh of Mary | Jesus & Mary | The Assumption of Mary [Pg.] | The Queenship of Mary | Marian Facts | Marian Scriptural References | Some Reasons to Honor the Blessed Virgin Mary | Some Thoughts on the Blessed Virgin Mary

Note: Categories are subjective and may overlap. For more items related to this topic, please review all applicable categories. For more 'Reflections' and for Scripture topics, see links below.

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Mary / Knowledge and Love of Jesus

Also See: Blessed Virgin Mary (Topic Page) | Jesus (Topic Page)

"[W]ho will not see that we have with good reason claimed for Mary that - as the constant companion of Jesus from the house at Nazareth to the height of Calvary, as beyond all others initiated to the secrets of his Heart, and as the distributor, by right of her Motherhood, of the treasures of His merits, - she is, for all these reasons, a most sure and efficacious assistance to us for arriving at the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ." (Pope St. Pius X, "Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum", 1904 A.D.)

"And that through the Virgin, and through her more than through any other means, we have offered us a way of reaching the knowledge of Jesus Christ, cannot be doubted when it is remembered that with her alone of all others Jesus was for thirty years united, as a son is usually united with a mother, in the closest ties of intimacy and domestic life. Who could better than His Mother have an open knowledge of the admirable mysteries of the birth and childhood of Christ, and above all of the mystery of the Incarnation, which is the beginning and the foundation of faith? Mary not only preserved and meditated on the events of Bethlehem and the facts which took place in Jerusalem in the Temple of the Lord, but sharing as she did the thoughts and the secret wishes of Christ she may be said to have lived the very life of her Son. Hence nobody ever knew Christ so profoundly as she did, and nobody can ever be more competent as a guide and teacher of the knowledge of Christ." (Pope St. Pius X, "Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum", 1904 A.D.)

Also See: Jesus & Mary | Jesus and Mary / United | We Should Imitate Mary / Mary is Our Model

Note: Categories are subjective and may overlap. For more items related to this topic, please review all applicable categories. For more 'Reflections' and for Scripture topics, see links below.

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