The following is from Saint Anselm’s Discourses:
“God created every creature and Mary gave birth to God; God, who had created everything made himself a creature of Mary, and recreated thus all that he had created. And while he had created everything from nothing, after its fall, he did not want to restore it without Mary. God, then, is the father of all creation, Mary the mother of recreation. God is father of the foundation of the world, Mary the mother of its reparation, since God had generated him through whom all had been made, and Mary gave birth to him who works the salvation of all these things. God generated him without whom absolutely nothing exists, and Mary gave birth to him without whom nothing is good.”
As Saint Anselm is want to do often, his language is a bit dense, but I think the above is good for thought and meditation. It certainly speaks of the unique dignity of Mary, our Mother, and lends support to our Catholic belief of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, which we celebrate today. By God’s singular gift to Mary alone, by the merits of his Son’s death and resurrrection, Mary was preserved from all sin from the moment of her conception. She too was redeemed by her Son even from the moment of her conception.
Just as God wanted to “recreate” all that he had made with Mary’s fiat, so too, perhaps, God wanted to recreate humankind in some small way with the conception of each of us in our mother’s womb. Such dignity have our mothers! Let us also remember them this day.
