From these two passages we gather St. Thomas’s teaching as to Mary’s prerogatives. 1. She possessed an almost infinite dignity from her closeness to God, in this surpassing the angels. 2. She ought, that is, she had the right, to receive the fullness of Divine grace beyond all other creatures. Since then it is the work of grace to purify the soul by imparting to it the Divine beauty, it follows necessarily that grace wrought absolute sinlessness in her soul, and created boundless holiness. In this dual capacity of closest union with God, and being the appointed instrument of Christ’s humanity, she surpassed the angels, who never knew sin: she had a kind of infinitude in merit which none of them ever could have. How then can such teaching of St. Thomas be reconciled with the idea that Mary had ever been sullied for an instant with original sin? Let the theory be once admitted that Mary had been so defiled, then his two principles given above fall to the ground; admit his principles, and the Immaculate Conception is the logical result. The holy Doctor was well aware of the grace bestowed on those pre-eminent saints, Jeremiah and John the Baptist, yet he does not hesitate to place Mary incomparably beyond them, and attributes their sanctification to her as well as to her son. She must then, logically speaking, have received a greater grace than cleansing after conception.
In his exposition of the “Hail Mary” he distinctly declares the doctrine. “Thirdly, she exceeds even the angels in purity: because the Blessed Virgin was not only pure in herself, but even procured purity for others. She was most clean from fault, because she incurred neither original, nor mortal, nor venial sin.”
In his “Commentary on the Epistle to Galatians,” III, lect. VI, the original text runs thus: “Of all women I have found none who was altogether exempt from sin, at least from original sin, or venial, except the most pure, and most worthy of all praise, the Virgin Mary”.
Again in his “Commentary on the Epistle to Romans”: “All men have sinned in Adam, excepting only the most Blessed Virgin, who contracted no stain of Original Sin”.
Please accept my apology to alluding that you might think Mary is lesser than Eve(I should have worded that better!) and thanks for the devotion.
BTW,The link you provided did not work.
It makes perfect sense to me that Mary would have original removed upon conception because she was to be the Mother of God and God being perfect could not join Himself and enter the world with anything less.
Please feel free to provide me with any other info regarding this.
I wish you a Blessed day
Christ is Risen!
“How then can such teaching of St. Thomas be reconciled with the idea that Mary had ever been sullied for an instant with original sin?”
Because, if we are to accept the consensus patrum, from which the Latin Church on occassion has indeed fallen away, there is no such thing as “original sin”. The Panagia of the Immaculate Conception does not respond to God’s uncreated grace in a perfect way; she simply “is” perfect, unlike all the rest of us; she is of an entirely different order of Creation who doesn’t respond to grace at all with no free will, who didn’t need a Savior; not really a human being at all and that, +SF, does violence to the Christology of The Church.
Let me ask you this, +SF. If Panagia was, from the very moment of her Conception, freed from the distortions of the sin of Adam (or, if you will, Original Sin), why did she sorrow, why did she die in the flesh? Or do you believe she never died in the flesh and will never die in the flesh? If you believe she never died in the flesh, was the Mother of our God not human? If she was not human, should she be worshipped instead of simply venerated; was she a goddess or a demi-goddess of some sort?
+SF, the simple point is that the Roman Church has dogmatized the Immaculate Conception because it had to so long as it sticks with the non-Patristic notion of Original Sin. Take away that idea, and there is simply no need for the dogma and absolutely no lessening of devotion to the Mother of God except perhaps for the hysteria caused by certain stains and half eaten cheese sandwiches.
“BTW,The link you provided did not work.”
I noticed that. I think the subscripts were wiped out by the line under the link. Go to the site and type Akathist into the little search box on the right.