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Pius IX says: "The ineffable God... from the beginning and
from all eternity chose and ordained for His only-begotten Son a
mother from whom His Son took flesh, so as to be born in the blessed
fullness of time, and pursued her with such great love above all
creatures so as to find the greatest of delight in her. Wherefore,
far excelling all the angelic spirits and the saints, He so enriched
her with an abundance of all heavenly charismata drawn from the treasury
of His divine nature, that always absolutely free from all stain of
sin, and all beautiful and perfect as she is, He might present in her
a fullness of innocence and sanctity, greater than which, after God,
cannot at all be known and, after God, no one can be thought to
attain."[2487]
St. Thomas manifests the fitness of this privilege by this
principle: "In every genus the nearer a thing is to the principle,
the greater the part it has in the effect of that principle.... But
Christ is the principle of grace, authoritatively as to His
Godhead, instrumentally as to His humanity. But the Blessed
Virgin Mary was nearest to Christ in His humanity, because He
received His human nature from her. Therefore it was due to her to
receive a greater fullness of grace than others."[2488]
If this incipient fullness of grace in the Blessed Virgin is compared
with the final grace of men and angels before their entrance into
heaven, theologians commonly teach that this beginning of fullness
already surpassed the final grace of any man or angel whatever. This
is today considered certain and is expressed by Pius IX.[2489]
The reason is that grace is the effect of God's active love, which
makes us pleasing in His eyes, as His adopted sons. But the
Blessed Virgin from the first moment of her conception, destined to
be the Mother of God, was loved by Him more than any saint or angel
whatever. Therefore the Blessed Virgin received greater grace than
any of them. Moreover, this incipient fullness of grace was already a
worthy reparation, although remote, for divine motherhood, which
transcends the order of grace inasmuch as terminatively it belongs to
the hypostatic order.
In fact, the majority of theologians now teach as most probable, if
not certain, that this incipient fullness of grace in the Blessed
Virgin already transcended the final grace of all the saints and angels
taken together.
Pius IX evidently favors this view, for he says: "God pursued her
with such great love above all creatures, so as to find the greatest
delight in her. Wherefore, far above all the angelic spirits and the
saints, He so enriched her with grace..., and this fullness of
grace is, after God, the greatest conceivable."[2490]
But these expressions denote not only every one of the saints and
angels, but all of them taken together. In fact, a little farther on
in this papal bull, the Blessed Virgin is said to be "above all the
choirs of angels,"[2491] that is, all the angels taken
together.
This assertion is conceded by all concerning Mary as she is in
heaven, but the degree of glory in heaven corresponds to the degree of
merit at the moment of death, and this in the Blessed Virgin was in
proportion to her dignity as Mother of God, for which the incipient
fullness of grace already disposed her.
The theological proof of the aforesaid teaching, which is more
generally accepted, is this. A person that is loved more by God than
all creatures taken together, received greater grace. But God from
all eternity loved Mary more than all creatures taken together,
because He loved her as His future mother. Therefore He enriched
her with a greater fullness of grace. And He considered her as His
future mother from the first moment of her conception, in fact from all
eternity, when He predestined her to divine motherhood.
Moreover, if this incipient fullness of grace surpasses the final
grace of the highest saint or the highest angel, for this reason it
surpasses the grace of all the saints taken together, for grace does
not belong to the quantitative order, but to the qualitative order.
Thus the intelligence of an archangel surpasses the intelligence of all
angels inferior to him. The intellectual vigor of St. Thomas
exceeds that of all his commentators taken together. Likewise the
power of the king not only surpasses the power of his prime minister,
but of all his ministers taken together.
Hence the Blessed Virgin even in this life, without the cooperation
of the saints and angels, could obtain more by her prayers and merits
than all the saints and angels taken together could obtain without her.
The consequences of this beginning in the fullness of grace are that
all the infused virtues, and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost,
which are connected with charity, were from the beginning in Mary in a
proportionate degree.
Moreover, many theologians think that the Blessed Virgin more
probably received, through infused knowledge, the use of reason and of
free will from the first moment of her conception, for the purpose of
offering herself to God and for the purpose that this beginning in the
fullness of the graces of the virtues and gifts might produce fruit in
her. It is also probable that she was not afterward deprived of this
use of free will, because thus she would have become less perfect
through no fault of her own.[2492]
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