Before the coming of the Messiah, Our Lady imagined how He would be like

‘The other day I read in a book by St. John Eudes that filled me with enthusiasm. Seldom has a reading filled me with so much enthusiasm, and I have spent the last few days in the perfume of this enthusiasm.

(Saint John Eudes – 1601-1680)

‘Saint John Eudes recalls that in the beginning there were the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity, but not the human nature of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

‘Our Lady ardently desired the Messiah to come soon and so she studied some books to see what he would be like. But she had the spirit of the Eternal Father to such a degree that even before the Messiah was born She imagined how He would be. Therefore, before Our Lord Jesus Christ existed She imagined Him. The moment She conceived Him through her intelligence and love and desired to be a slave of his Mother, at that very moment the Archangel Saint Gabriel invited her to be precisely that.

‘Then Saint John Eudes explains that She was Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ twice: first, because She conceived, through her intelligence and love, what He would be like; and second because She begot Him.

‘She idealized what Jesus was by reading about Him in the Scripture.’ [1]

‘In the universe of saints in the Church, I believe it was St. Augustine who more especially received from God the gift of insinuating this vision.[2]

‘The world of possibles exceeds the reach of our sights, except on one point: the fact that our sight is penetrating enough to realize there is something beyond what it sees.

‘And then the person surrenders: “Tu solus Sanctus, tu solus Dominus, tu solus Altissimus: For Thou alone art holy. Thou alone art the Lord. Thou alone art the most high.[3]

‘And we say: plus ultra! My Lord, more, more, more!’[4]

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Taken from informal lectures of Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira, without the author’s final revision.

[1] 9-12-1974.

[2] See We All Have Been Mere Possibles, in the Illustrative Texts of this chapter.

[3] Gloria, from the Ordinary of the Mass.

[4] 9-3-1976.