Assumption of the Virgin

“ In fact, the Virgin remains calm and serene beside her enraged son, and reassures our heart also with her confidence. If she presents the Son of God to the world under a terrifying aspect, at the same time she presses him so tenderly against her breast, and her features, under the splendour of the divine radiance, shine with such purity that we feel the flame that purifies all passing within ourselves.49 The Virgin appears here like the dawning light. She advances from right to left, beautiful as the skies, light as the cloud that bears her. ”

“ O Most compassionate Jesus, I praise thee with the tuneful praise which thine own sweetest Heart gives forth, for the innocence of that most spotless virginity whereby thy peerless and ever-blessed Mother was a Virgin in her conception of thee, a Virgin when she brought thee forth, and ever remained a Virgin most inviolate after thy sacred birth; imitating thus thine own innocence, when in the early dawn thou wast seized and bound for the redemption of our captive race, and buffeted and smitten, and cruelly and piteously assailed with contumely and manifold reproach. ”

“ While life lasts, the virgin maid will lure the normal lover, common sense and cold facts notwithstanding. What the poet sang and the amorous swain coveted in those by-gone times of pomp and paganism, in the days of chivalry, and even in that dreary early Victorian era, will be sung and coveted centuries hence. Science, new discoveries, new theories, new ideals, new conditions, cannot oust human nature, our undeniable birthright. The sanctity and value of virginity are traditions ”

“ To the most holy and undivided Trinity, to the manhood of our crucified Lord Jesus Christ, to the fruitful virginity of the most blessed and glorious Mary, ever a virgin, to the entire assembly of the saints, be ascribed everlasting praise, honor, power, and glory, by every creature ”

“ That dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which her dream had come to strengthen, was a blow dealt by the Church to woman, both wife and mother. To decree that woman is only worthy of worship on condition that she be a virgin, to imagine that virgin to be herself born without sin, is not this an insult to Nature, the condemnation of life, the denial of womanhood, whose true greatness consists in perpetuating life? ”

“ I must call upon the Holy Spirit to express His meaning by my mouth and defend the virginity of the Blessed Mary. I must call upon the Lord Jesus to guard the sacred lodging of the womb in which He abode for ten months from all suspicion of sexual intercourse. And I must also entreat God the Father to show that the mother of His Son, who was a mother before she was a bride, continued a Virgin after her son was born. We have no desire to career over the fields of eloquence, we do not resort to the snares of the logicians or the thickets of Aristotle. ”

“ Wherefore what shall we say? is there any thought which a virgin of God may truly have, by reason of which she dare not to set herself before a faithful woman, not only a widow, but even married? I say not a reprobate virgin; for who knows not that an obedient woman is to be set before a disobedient virgin? ”

“ If the heart of the Virgin is adored under a supposition that it is the centre of the most pure and virtuous sentiments, why has there not been adoration of her head, which is supposed to be nourished with noble and elevated thoughts? Why not her womb, in which lay the Saviour of the world? ”

“ It is virginity which gives men wings to soar towards heaven." Celibacy raises the Apostle John above the Prince of the Apostles himself. At the funeral of the Virgin Mary, Peter gave John a palm branch, saying: "It becometh one who is celibate to bear the Virgin's palm." [776]
Throughout western Christendom the Virgin Mary—the Virgin par excellence—had been the object of zealous devout worship [777] ever since the twelfth century. The great cathedrals of northern France, dedicated to Our Lady, celebrated the feast of their patron saint on the day of the Assumption. ”

“ There is, therefore, no reason why the virgins of God be sad, because themselves also cannot, keeping their virginity, be mothers of the flesh. For Him alone could virginity give birth to with fitting propriety, Who in His Birth could have no peer. However, That Birth of the Holy Virgin is the ornament of all holy virgins; and themselves together with Mary are mothers of Christ, if they do the will of His Father. ”

“ There can be no doubt, that if so many virgins have consecrated their hearts and bodies to His Divine Majesty, by indissoluble vows, it was that they might imitate the example of the Most Holy Virgin. ”

“ But Christianity had an additional crown to bestow on womanhood, and, unlike Judaism, instead of leading up to this new perfection, it first reared its ideal, and then called upon all unborn generations to follow it as closely as might be. Thus the two systems, marriage and virginity, converged for one miraculous moment in the stainless person of the Blessed Virgin Mary; and since after that unique motherhood there could be no aspiring to become an earthly ancestor of the Promised One, a new relationship with God—that of Spouse—came to be the highest honor attainable by womanhood. ”

“ All people have regarded virginity as something sacred, and God has so honored it that he willed that his son be born of a virgin, fecundated, however, by the Holy Ghost. Still, it appears problematical whether the Virgin Mary, complete virgin that she was, did not have the same pleasure as those who are not virgins, when she received the divine annunciation. ”

“ Infinite glory be to thee, my Lady Virgin Mary, who didst humbly vow thy virginity to God, and, therefore, didst not care who espoused thee, because thou didst know, that he to whom thou didst first pledge thy faith, was more powerful and better than all. ”

“ What outfit of sanctity, what fulness and redundance of grace, what exuberance of merits must have been hers, on the supposition, which the fathers justify, that her Maker regarded them at all, and took them into account, when he condescended "not to abhor the Virgin's womb?" Is it surprising, then, that on the one hand she should be immaculate in her conception? or on the other that she should be exalted as a queen, with a crown of twelve stars? Men sometimes wonder that we call her mother of life, of mercy, of salvation ”

“ Even Christianity cannot refrain from correcting the Biblical genesis by the story of the Virgin, who, without human aid, brought into the world the noblest of men, according to the Christian conception. Where is the man who would attempt, without the aid of a woman, to bring a Virgin Mary into the world? ”

“ Come ye virgins to a virgin, come ye who conceive to her who conceived, ye who bear to one who bore, mothers to a mother, ye that suckle to one who suckled, young girls to the young girl. It is for this reason that the Virgin Mary has taken on her in our Lord Jesus Christ all these divisions of nature, that to all women who have recourse to her she may be a succor, and so restore the whole race of women who come to her, being the new Eve, by keeping virginity, as the new Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, recovers the whole race of men. ”

“ A Virgin averse to Matrimony, will needs be a Nun. She is dissuaded from it, and persuaded to moderate her Inclination in that Matter, and to do nothing against her Parents Consent, but rather to marry. That Virginity may be maintain'd in a conjugal Life. ”

“ How could the Blessed Virgin be preserved from sin by her Divine Son, before her Son was born? A. The Blessed Virgin could be preserved from sin by her Divine Son before He was born as man, for He always existed as God and foresaw His own future merits and the dignity of His Mother. ”

“ Whosoever knoweth the Lord heareth us; and every one who is not of God heareth not us. He who desires truly to keep sanctity heareth us; and the virgin who truly desires to keep virginity heareth us; but she who does not truly desire to keep virginity doth not hear us. ”

“ The fact is, that the direct tendency of the worship of the Virgin, as practically illustrated in the Church of Rome, is to make GOD himself an object of FEAR, and the VIRGIN an object of LOVE; to invest Him, who is the Father of mercy and God of all comfort, with awfulness, and majesty, and with the terrors of eternal justice, and in direct and striking contrast to array the Virgin mother with mercy and benignity, and compassionate tenderness. Christians cannot be too constantly and too carefully on their guard against doing this wrong to our heavenly Father. ”

“ Remember both of you that you are the parents of a consecrated virgin, and that your example will teach her more than your precepts. Flowers are quick to fade and a baleful wind soon withers the violet, the lily, and the crocus. Let her never appear in public unless accompanied by you. Let her never visit a church or a martyr’s shrine unless with her mother. Let no young man greet her with smiles; no dandy with curled hair pay compliments to her. If our little virgin goes to keep solemn eves and all-night vigils, let her not stir a hair’s breadth from her mother’s side. ”

“ Then the high priest publicly announced that the virgins who were publicly settled in the temple, and had reached this time of life, should return home and get married, according to the custom of the nation and the ripeness of their years. The others readily obeyed this command; but Mary alone, the virgin of the Lord, answered that she could not do this, saying both that her parents had devoted her to the service of the Lord, and that, moreover, she herself had made to the Lord a vow of virginity, which she would never violate by any intercourse with man. ”

“ The religious sentiment of the age forbade the portrayal of any sign of decrepitude in the Virgin even at the hour of her death, and except for the substitution of the palm for the lily and the reversal of the usual places of the figures, the Virgin being placed on the left and the angel on the right, it would be difficult to distinguish the scene where the Virgin receives the news of her approaching death, from that in which her approaching motherhood is announced to her. ”

“ As Eve by the speech of an angel was seduced, so as to flee God, transgressing his word, so also Mary received the good tidings by means of the angel's speech, so as to bear God within her, being obedient to his word. And, though the one had disobeyed God, yet the other was drawn to obey God; that of the virgin Eve the virgin Mary might become the advocate. And, as by a virgin the human race had been bound to death, by a virgin it is saved, the balance being preserved, a virgin's disobedience by a virgin's obedience. ”

“ Rendel Harris, "of the Dogmatics of the early part of the second century agrees with the belief that at that period the Virginity of Mary was a part of the formulated Christian belief."* How could the belief in the Virgin-Birth have taken such undisputed possession of so many widely separated and independent Churches unless it had had Apostolic authority?+ What other explanation can be given for the fact? There is as complete a consensus of tradition as could reasonably be asked for. ”

“ No virgin, therefore, unless they be in everything as Christ, and as those “who are Christs,” [2] can be saved. For every virgin who is in God is holy in her body and in her spirit, and is constant in the service of her Lord, not turning away from it any whither, but waiting upon Him always in purity and holiness in the Spirit of God, being “solicitous how she may please her Lord,” [3] by living purely and without stain, and solicitous to be pleasing before Him in every thing. ”

“ Therefore, beloved virgins, brides and daughters of Christ, keep unspotted for Him your virginity, which is the guarding of the will from carnal taint in man or in woman who, like Christ and the Virgin, have never yielded to bodily passion. ”

“ It is worthy of remark, that while in the sixth century, and for a thousand years afterwards, the Virgin, in all devotional subjects, was associated in some visible manner with her divine Son, in this she appears without the Infant in her arms. The maternal character is set aside, and she stands alone, absolute in herself, and complete in her own perfections. ”

“ The angel Gabriel was sent to Mary the Virgin, who was espoused to Joseph.
Ant. Hail, Mary,* full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, Alleluia.
From Christmas until Candlemas
Ant. O wondrous union ! The Creator of mankind, taking a living body, vouchsafed to be born of a virgin, and becoming man, without man's concurrence, bestowed upon us His Godhead.
Ant. When Thou wert wondrously born * of a virgin, then were the Scriptures fulfilled: Thou earnest down like the rain upon the fleece, that Thou mightest save mankind. We praise Thee, our God. ”

“ Everywhere is modesty the companion of her singular virtues in the Virgin. This, without which virginity cannot exist, must be the inseparable companion of virginity. And so Mary did not go even to the temple without the guardianship of her modesty. ”

“ The cynic who sneers at our worship of Mary and, with satirical satisfaction, paints the Virgin as the corpulent mother of four or five boys, will laugh at an Altötting Virgin but grow silent and earnest before a Sistine Madonna! For here the divinity in which he does not wish to believe confronts him in the work of art and compels his reverence. ”

“ HOLY Scripture and the Fathers agree in the statement that the Blessed Virgin Mary made the vow of perpetual virginity. For when the Archangel Gabriel brought God's message to the immaculate spouse of St. Joseph, that she was to become the Mother of the Most High, she asked, "How shall this be done, because I know not man?" ”

“ For while, according to my vow, I never know man, how can I bring forth without the addition of man’s seed? To this the angel says: Think not, Mary, that thou shalt conceive in the manner of mankind: for without any intercourse with man, thou, a virgin, wilt conceive; thou, a virgin, wilt bring forth ”