MOTHER MOST ADMIRABLE

(1) MARY, you are the Mother Most Admirable because God the Father has done great things for you. From all eternity He chose you to be the Mother of His Son. He spoke of you to our first parents immediately after the fall, when He cursed the serpent: "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel" (Gen. 3,15). God announced you four thousand years before your birth, and pointed to you as the one who, through your Son, would destroy the power of the devil.

How admirable also was your entrance into this world! In order to give a worthy Mother to His Son, it was His will that the law of nature, according to which the descendants of Adam are all conceived in sin, should have no effect upon you, and that you should remain perfectly free from the stain of original sin. You were holy and full of grace in the very first moment of your life.

The great miracle of the Incarnation was wrought when the heavenly Father sent the Archangel Gabriel to greet you: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women" (Luke 1,28). Another miracle took place when you entered the house of your cousin Elizabeth. Enlightened by the Holy Spirit she recognized you as the Mother of her Lord; and the infant leaped for joy in her womb.

(2) MARY, God the Son has done great things for you. The Second Person of the most Holy Trinity, the Divine Word, chose you for His own Mother and merited for you all the graces that were necessary to make you worthy of the highest dignity ever bestowed upon a creature. Though a mortal being, you brought forth Him who is immortal and eternal; though a creature you are the Mother of your Creator. What greater miracle could be worked than that of a God confining Himself within the womb of a virgin?

And how wonderfully is all this done! You become the Mother of God without ceasing to be a virgin: a Mother because you conceived and brought forth the Son of God, and a virgin because at the conception and birth of the Son of God you preserved your virginal purity as inviolate as if you had never conceived.

(3) MARY, God the Holy Spirit has done great things for you. As "the Finger of God's right hand", He has formed in you and out of you the human nature of the eternal Word, and also formed you into the most perfect image of your Son. Through grace He took possession of you, adorned you with spiritual beauty, made you His holy temple, and by His indwelling prepared you to be a worthy sanctuary for the Son of God. You were in possession of the highest fullness of all the divine and moral virtues as well as of His seven Gifts. All this wonderful adornment, all your natural and supernatural privileges and riches, were the gifts of the Holy Spirit to you, His Immaculate Spouse.

God glorified you by miracles not only in your life, but also after your death. Never has there been a century in which numberless miracles have not been worked. At Lourdes and Fatima and at many other shrines you obtained sight for the blind, hearing for the deaf, speech for the dumb, the use of their limbs for the lame, and help for the afflicted.

Mother Most Admirable, I thank God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for all the wonderful things They have done for you, which make you a Mother Most Admirable to all your children. Teach me to have recourse to you in every need. The miracles which you worked for others you will work for me because you love me as your child just as you loved your other children for whom you have done wonderful things. If, however, I should not receive what I ask, I know I shall not have invoked you in vain; you will surely obtain for me something of far more benefit to my soul. My most earnest petition is that you make my soul pleasing to God, as yours always was, that I may deserve to admire you in heaven eternally as I have always admired you on earth.

Moved by the pleading of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in answer to whose prayers Jesus Christ, Your Son, wrought the first of His miracles, give us the grace, O Lord God, to prepare a clean heart for the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Your Son, so as to deserve to sit down to the everlasting banquet of eternity. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen. (Feast of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, Nov. 27)