Friday, September 14, 2007

Ave Maria, Gratia Plena, Dominus Tecum


Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, "full of grace" through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception.
The "splendor of an entirely unique holiness" by which Mary is 'enriched from the first instant of her conception' comes wholly from Christ: she is 'redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son.'

The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person 'in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places' and chose her 'in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love.'

The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God "the All-Holy" (Panagia) and celebrate her as 'free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature.'
By the grace of God, Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long. - Catechism of the Catholic Church, 491-493

For more in depth reading about Mary I recommend a very a nice site put together by The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute, Dayton, Ohio

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Could you please tell me about the beautiful illustration - where did you find it and does it have a title? Who is the artist? Thank you.

Soutenus said...

It is beautiful, I agree. I found the image at this site:
http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/divinematernity.html

The page is maintained by The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute, Dayton, Ohio 45469-1390, and was created by Kris Sommers. It was last modified Monday, 06/18/2007 by Kris Sommers. I noticed that you can send any comments to Johann.Roten@udayton.edu.

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