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
This answer of Mary draws from the archangel a further unfolding of the divine plan in her regard. He says to her, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; therefore the Holy One that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” Mary, now satisfied as to her vow, to which she has given the signal proof of her inviolable fidelity, finds herself subjected to a new difficulty. The angel’s words announce to her nothing less than a stupendous miracle, of which, since the world began, there has been no known example. Can she believe this to be possible? Here we may see how opportunely Mary’s knowledge of the Holy Scripture comes to her aid. Her education in the Temple has happily prevented her being one of the class of persons to whom our Lord said, “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God” (Matt. xxii. 29). She remembers then that Isaias had prophesied the birth of Messias from a virgin (Isa. vii. 14), and that God had pledged Himself by His prophet Jeremias to do a new thing on the earth, that a “woman should compass a man” (Jer. xxxi. 22). When, therefore, the archangel proceeds to inform her, “Behold thy kinswoman Elizabeth hath herself conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month with her who is called barren; for there shall be no word impossible with God,” Mary, as a daughter of faithful Abraham, is quite prepared to believe. Yet to one so cautious and self-possessed, and at the same time so humble and retiring as Mary, there might still have been valid grounds on which rather to wish to decline the proffered honour of the public life of the Queen-Mother of the King of Israel; but so eminently pious and prudent a virgin as Mary would also not fail to say to herself, “If God, who is Almighty, has sent a holy archangel from His throne to be the bearer of such a message as this to one who is so lowly and humble as I am, this can only be because He has purposes of His own to accomplish through me, for which He has condescended to make choice of my humble person; who am I, therefore, that I can resist the choice and election of God?” So Mary answers the heavenly messenger, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”
How wonderful, then, is the difference between the two mothers, Eve and Mary! Eve, ashamed to make an open confession in the presence of a visitor of her subjection to the law of her God, yields an ear to the voice of a seducing spirit, and is led by him, step by step, into the breach of the divine law. Mary, glorying in her subjection to her vow of virginity, and not willing to accept even the words of an archangel sent from heaven as containing a release from it, obtains from God not only the full measure of the glorious prospect that has been proposed to her, but over and above, the singular and unexampled prerogative of uniting with the joys of her maternity the glory and grace of remaining a virgin. Eve, who for the sake of a delusive prospect of advancement tramples under foot the law of her God, not only discovers the particular prospect proposed to her to have been a cheat, but is compelled to forfeit the dignity she already had, and to become subject to death with all her children. Mary, esteeming her duty to God sovereign over every other thought, obtains God Himself for her son, and to be called “Blessed” by all generations.
“Peccatrix Eva sed Reparatrix Maria.”
2. Anna, the mother who obtained her son by prayer on the condition of giving him up to the service of God. As Mary’s special prerogative of virgin maternity is without a parallel upon earth, we are not to expect to find in the Old Covenant one who can be more than, in a remote and collateral degree, a figure of the glorious Virgin Mother of the New Covenant. In Anna, however, the mother who by earnest supplication obtained her son Samuel from God, and afterwards gave him up without reserve to the service of God, we have a beautiful figure of this remote and collateral kind.
The mother of the sons of Zebedee came to Christ with the prayer, “Lord, grant that my two sons may sit, the one at Thy right hand and the other at Thy left in Thy kingdom.” But the Son of Mary came into the world pledged to suffer humiliation and death for the benefit of others, and as He was also to be a perfect model of the deference and subjection which a son owes to his mother, it was necessary, in the counsels of God, that His mother should be one who would not in any way interpose her maternal authority to withdraw Him from the accomplishment of His death and passion, but one who should, on the contrary, conform her mind in all respects, as His mother, to the will of God, in obedience to which her Son became, as St Paul says, “obedient to death, even the death of the Cross;” and this, however much it might cost her affection as mother thus freely to surrender Him up to become the victim who was to take away the sins of the world. A mother who had the spirit of the mother of the sons of Zebedee was, therefore, most plainly in no way fitted to occupy Mary’s place; and thus incidentally a beautiful light is thrown by the figure of Anna on the character of Mary, which justifies the wisdom of the Holy Trinity in their choice of her. For when the time came for the sacrifice of her Son to be offered, Mary was found not only willing to surrender her only Son up to die for the sins of the world, but was not afraid even to stand by His Cross, and so to share in His passion, as He was dying upon it. Anna’s history occurs in the Holy Scripture as follows:—The divine promise of a Redeemer to be born of the seed of the woman, had caused all Hebrew women to be extremely desirous to be blessed with children; and as Anna was childless, in her affliction “she betook herself to prayer before the tabernacle in Silo.” And with her heart full of grief, and shedding many tears, she made a vow saying: “O Lord of Hosts, if Thou wilt look down on the affliction of Thy servant, and wilt be mindful of me, and not forget Thy handmaid, and wilt give to Thy servant a man child, I will give him to the Lord all his days, and no razor shall come upon his head. And it came to pass as she multiplied her prayers before the Lord, that Heli observed her mouth.
Now, Anna spoke in her heart, and only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard at all; Heli therefore thought her to be drunk, and said: How long wilt thou be drunk? Digest a little the wine of which thou hast taken too much. Anna, answering, said: Not so, my lord; for I am an exceedingly unhappy woman, and have drunk neither wine nor any strong drink; but I have poured out my soul before the Lord. Count not thy handmaid for one of the daughters of Belial, for out of the abundance of my sorrow and grief have I spoken till now. And Heli said: Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition, which thou hast asked of Him” (1 Kings i. 10, &c.)
Anna is thus the mother in the Mosaic Covenant who so pleased God by her piety and persevering trust in the efficacy of prayer addressed to Him, that she obtained from Him the gift of her son Samuel. And the Church sings of Mary, “Thou Sanctuary of the Holy Ghost, alone without an equal, thou hast pleased the Lord Jesus Christ.” And again, “Rejoice with me, all ye who love God; for even when but a little one I pleased the Most High, and gave forth from my womb the God-Man” (Office of the Circumcision). The Bull of Pope Pius IX. proclaiming the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary also says, “That the incarnation of the Eternal Word being decreed from all eternity, God, from the beginning and before the creation of the world, chose and appointed a mother for His only-begotten Son, from whom, being made flesh, He might be born in the blessed fulness of time; and on this mother He has vouchsafed to bestow so surpassing a love above all other creatures, as to be in the highest degree well pleased in her.”
How Anna fulfilled her vow of giving up her son to the service of God, we shall learn when we come to the type of the fourth joyful mystery, the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple.