Icon: St. Ann with Mary in her arm

As a rose blossoms in the light of the sun, so Mary opened her heart to the rays of divine love. From her conception in the womb or St. Ann, the deep recesses of her being were free from the sin of the world which disfigures man's relationship with God and the rest of creation.

"Mary did not have the sense of self that is usual in human psychology. She did not have an 'ego' as psychologists speak of it. Her consciousness was stabilized art a deeper level by the Holy Spirit, prior to the origin of the ego. This gave her what we might call a mystical consciousness, ...." (Thomas Philippe, O.P., Mystical Rose, Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., Huntington, IN, 1995, p. 25)

Mary was full of grace meaning full of God's love. She loved God intuitively and immediately without any concepts or representations. She also received instructions in the Jewish faith. Mary was poor in spirit, that is, she had no need to amass treasures in the form of images, memories, representations and ideas in her consciousness where one can be king and master or his/her possessions. Her spirit was silent, given to contemplation amid the daily chores of life. She lived a life of self-surrender to God which we can best express by quoting Ps 131:2

"Like a weaned child on his mother's lap,
so is my soul within me."

Like all of us, Mary loved and responded to the beauties of creation but in a different way. She had a purified sense of the beautiful. She enjoyed the beauty of a rose but did not hold on to it in her imagination so as to prolong this earthly joy, nor would she crave the eternal endurance of a rose -- her heart rested simply in the love which the beauty of the rose signified. Unlike St. Augustine, Mary would have never said, "Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!"

Mary's Virginal Love