MORNING STAR AND
AURORA
The human race has existed here on earth about 6,000 years, but it is not
quite 2,000 years that heaven is open to man. What had closed it upon us? Sin.
And what has re-opened the heavenly paradise to us? The Precious Blood of our
dying Savior on the Cross. The fallen angels did not receive the promise of a
Redeemer and cannot avail them selves of the merits of the Precious Blood. They
are lost forever. We all deserved the same fate, but we poor mortals were
bought with a great price; Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible
things as gold or silver, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb
unspotted and undented, foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world,
but manifested in the last times for you. When God said to the serpent in the Garden
of Eden. I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her
seed, may we not conclude that He referred to the redeeming Blood of Jesus
assumed from the Immaculate Virgin Mary? And they overcame him by the blood of
the Lamb. Is not then the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary the
morning star, and the Precious Blood of her Divine Son the aurora, of a new
spiritual day? These are the two sweet recollections we love to entertain of
paradise lost, the memories of which shed a tender luster over this accursed
earth: the Virgin promised four thousand years before her birth, and the Lamb
slain from the beginning of the world; one is the hope of the elect, and the
other the salvation of the just. Fallen man must be restored to the image of God, and
for this purpose the Son of God emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,
being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. But in the
eternal wisdom of God it is decreed, that without the effusion of blood there
was to be no remission of sin, no restoration of man to the sonship of God.
Blood had been flowing over four thousand years at the express command of God
as an acceptable homage to the Deity as well as an act of thanks giving and
expiation, but only as a type of the Blood of the Lamb of God; for nothing will
The Precious Blood of Jesus flowing through His veins
while an infant in His Holy Mother s womb was derived from Mary. He lived with
her life. She furnished from her immaculate body the Precious Blood that Jesus
shed for us. How close must have been the union of Jesus and Mary! Can we
wonder at her surpassing holiness, when she not only carried her God within her
womb, but furnished the very Body with which His Humanity clothed itself. We
also find in this thought a fresh proof of Mary s unblemished purity. It is
repugnant to our reverence for the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity to
imagine Him dwelling in a womb that had ever been defiled with sin, and much
more to suppose that the Precious Blood that flowed in His veins and was the
price of our redemption did not come from a source as pure as God could make
it. We must also remember that Jesus Blood was wholly Mary's. It was not as in
the case of other children who have an earthly father. The Body of Jesus was
formed in Mary's womb by the operation of the Holy Ghost, and naturally Jesus
was altogether hers. In heaven, the Body that Jesus wears is still the Body
derived from Mary, and this union is now closer than ever. It is
an article of faith that the Blessed Virgin Mary gave to the Son of God that
most pure and Precious Blood which the Holy Ghost drew from her virginal veins
as from the original source of man s redemption. This body of the Mother of
God, in the order of nature, was purer than the rays of the sun, and in the
order of grace, purer than the blessed Spirits. I am, Mary can say of herself,
the mystic vine which produced the sweet and lovely grape from which that mysterious
wine of salvation was pressed, the Blood of the new and eternal Testament. As
the vine I have brought forth a pleasant odor; and my flowers are the fruit of
honor and riches). Eve offered us the fruit of death. But Thou O most holy
Mother, didst give us the fruit of eternal life. How can I thank Thee enough
for so sublime a gift? O my celestial Queen, how could I ever forget Thee? How
could I but love Thee? Forever and ever thou shalt be to me the mother of fair
love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope/ The Precious Blood of
Thy Son shall ever remind me that it was taken from thy blood; just as my
devotion to Thee shall ever increase my devotion to the price of my redemption.
What is dignity? We increase in dignity and lay claim to greater honor from
others in proportion as we approach the Deity. Now there can be no closer
proximity between two living beings than there exists between the person giving
and the person receiving that life. By her maternity as Mother of Christ, Mary
obtained the nearest proximity to God imaginable. Hence her divine maternity
procures for her a dignity beyond all comparison. In her relation to us, her
maternity partakes also of the nature of a sacrament, in as much as she gave
birth to the Author of the sacraments. These are called channels of grace, and
in a similar sense Mary is to us a canal of all graces. But why should it be
wrong in the eyes of our dissenting brethren, to obtain graces and favors
through Mary if it is not wrong to receive through Mary the author of all grace?
It is true, Jesus Christ is the only Mediator of merit, but there is yet a
mediation of intercession and thus we call Mary our mediatrix as the
dispensatrix of all graces. Let us go to our Redeemer with childlike
confidence, let us also bear in mind that we are approaching not simply God,
but the God-Man, Who loves His Mother and whom He has been pleased to make the
Mother of divine grace.
Aurora Latin for sunrise
Aurora Latin for sunrise
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