The Book of the Holy Rosary: Part I, Chapter III. Scripture Types of the First Joyful Mystery: Eve and Mary; Anna the Mother of Samuel
Here, certainly, there is a new prospect opened for the first time before Eve’s mind. And how does the case stand now? Who the Lord her God was who had given the command not to eat of the tree, she knew; and though in the presence of the serpent she affects to speak of His threat as only a perhaps, she also knew very well that it was much more than this. But who is the stranger who takes upon himself to insinuate in her presence that the threat of her God is an idle threat, to impute sinister motives as the reason of the command being given, and to assert that the path of progress to an increase of dignity and knowledge, lies in the transgression of the command? Eve does not know so much as who he is. Yet evidently here are extremely grave and serious questions at issue, and by her creation Eve is the associate of Adam. The very first condition of her being plainly requires that, as the associate of Adam, she should not even now, notwithstanding that she has gone so far, proceed to act in so grave a matter without first consulting him. But no; Eve has already entered the path of danger in her previous surrenders of her dignity in the presence of the stranger, and she now totally fails to recover herself. The fascination exercised by her visitor appears to have already obscured her conscience of the Lord her God, equally with the sense of her duty to Adam; and under the influence of this fascination she proceeds to fix her gaze on the fruit. This, as it was only natural to expect, appeared to be good to eat, fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold. All then that now remained was to put forth her hand and take possession of it, which she was not long in doing; and when she had brought Adam to join with her in eating of the fruit, then their joint sin was consummated.
Thus it was that, by one ill-advised step following close upon another, in the end Eve had completely surrendered herself into the power of the deceiver, and had suffered herself to be led by him, step by step, into her transgression. And thus, she who was created in dependence, and as the companion of another stronger than herself, through presuming to act by herself alone, ended in leading Adam himself into her sin, when even at the last, by having recourse to Adam’s guidance, she ought to have been able to have rescued herself from committing it.
But the deceiver’s triumph is not to be permanent. There was One to be born in due time who was to crush his head, whose very different example it is now time to compare with the conduct of Eve.
Mary is in her humble habitation in Nazareth, engaged in prayer, when the holy Archangel Gabriel, coming upon his mission from the throne of God, enters her chamber, and salutes her with the gracious salutation, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women!” Here are the very demonstrations of veneration and regard, spontaneously offered by a heavenly visitor, the hope of which Eve appeared to be so unwilling to imperil on the part of a very questionable stranger, that she is ashamed in his presence to own her subjection to her God. Mary, in place of being captivated or carried away with them, is rather troubled at his words, as expressive of far greater honour than any to which she has ever been wont to think herself entitled. And then, with admirable wariness and caution, she begins to consider within herself what such a salutation could mean. Hardly had the serpent spoken to Eve before she had begun to surrender her judgment to his; but Mary remains perfectly self-possessed in the presence of an archangel. Mary has been a pupil in the Temple, where she has been fed with wisdom from the Sacred Scriptures, and she has learned from thence that deceiving spirits are suffered to roam about the world equally with holy angels; and, besides, she would also be sure to know the inspired proverb, “Whoso believes quickly is light of heart, and shall come to grief” (Ecclus. xix. 4). She, therefore, observes a respectful silence, neither surrendering her judgment, for she is not secure against illusion, nor does she exhibit any disbelief, for she is a daughter of the house of David, and knows much too well the promises of God to her people and to her father’s house. For the present, then, she wisely suspends her judgment, neither accepting nor rejecting the salutation, but taking, in the meanwhile, the necessary time to consider within herself “what manner of salutation this might be.”
The holy archangel, perceiving Mary to be still revolving within herself what could be the meaning of his salutation, proceeds to unfold the further delivery of his message, “Fear not, Mary,” he says, for thou hast found favour with God. “Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bear a son, and thou shalt call His name Jesus; and God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever, and of His kingdom there shall be no end.” The prospect of becoming as one of the gods, knowing good and evil, without its being possible for her to have had any very clear idea of what this could precisely be, still exercised such a power of fascination over Eve’s mind, that neither the fear of offending God, nor the dread of incurring His threatened penalty of death, could stand in the way of her eagerness to obtain it. Let us, then, pause here for a moment, to contemplate some of the details of the unspeakably joyful prospect which Mary now perceived to be placed before her. There was not, as there must have been in Eve’s case, merely the confused and dazzled sense of something that was attractive; the prospect here was just as precise as it was marvellous. Mary was to become nothing less than the Queen-Mother of the King of her people, who was to sit on the throne of His father David, to reign in the house of Jacob for ever, and to possess a kingdom without limit or end. Had a prospect such as this burst upon a mind in no way prepared for it, with the suddenness, as it were, of a celestial vision, beyond all possibility of expectation or knowledge, it may be reasonably supposed that no mere human power of self-possession could have borne up under it. But this could not apply to our present case. For, in the prospect placed before Mary, it was not anything unheard of, but the one known and darling hope of every maiden of the house of Israel that was proposed to her acceptance. Mary is able to perceive, assuming her visitor to be in truth an angel from heaven, that she herself is the maiden to whom it is offered to become the mother of the Child in whom all the hopes of her own nation, and the expectation of all the nations of the earth, are to be fulfilled.
Shall she then at once consent? Had Eve been in Mary’s place, there could have been no room for any hesitation whatsoever; she, who made so little account of the divine command that stood in the way of her delusive prospect, may be easily supposed, more than likely, dismissing every other thought, to have at once embraced for herself the darling hope of all her people. But in Mary’s mind there are thoughts that outweigh even such a prospect as the one that is placed before her. While she was a pupil in the Temple, she had bound herself by the vow of perpetual virginity. Similarly circumstanced, Eve might still have persuaded herself that the archangel’s words bore with them the sufficient dispensation from her vow. Not so Mary. Her thoughts are, “I have bound myself by a vow to none other than the Lord Himself of the angels, and here is but the word of an angel.” Let us study her reply to the archangel, in which, perfectly unconquered by the indescribable attraction of the prospect, the memory of her vow appears as the one reigning thought. “How shall these things be,” says Mary, “seeing I know not man.” Whatever may become of the marvellous prospect, Mary’s one thought is “fidelity to her vow.”