And this is the Son of Mary. Is she not the Mother of our Lord, personally his Mother? Can any one be a mother and not be mother of a person? Is he not personally her son? What a dignity! What a mysterious and wonderful eminence, to be mother of the divine person of the Son of God made man. No wonder that we honor her; although we know full well that all she has of dignity and sanctity she has by no power of her own, but by gift of God, and that she is purely a human being. Those who do not honor Mary fail to appreciate the majesty of Christ; fail to understand the doctrine of the Incarnation; fail to grasp the immensity of the divine love in God becoming man. No wonder, then, that God should have saved her from the taint of Adam's sin, should have preserved her a spotless virgin, should have saved her pure body from the grave's filth by the Assumption into heaven. The Angel Gabriel tells us what Mary is: "Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and thou shalt bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High. ... The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, and therefore the Holy (One) that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." {372} Now, brethren, to be a mother is to hold an office. It is to exercise by divine right the highest powers committed to a human being. What wonderful rights a mother possesses! An affectionate allegiance is due her from her son: an obedience instinctive, sacred, supreme; a reverential and hearty loyalty which arouses the noblest emotions in the hardest heart and gives birth to heroic deeds even in men of the weakest natures. A mother is entitled to her son's love by the most sacred of all obligations. Well, just think of it: our Blessed Lord was, and is yet, bound to his Mother by that imperative divine law; he was, and is yet, subject to the sweetest and, for a noble nature, the most resistless impulse to do his Mother's will and to make her happy. He owes her love, obedience, reverence, friendship, support, companionship, sympathy. And he that doth all things well, would he not do his whole duty as Son, would he not be a model Son? Would he not grant her lightest wish while he lived with her on earth, will he not gladly do so now in heaven? Hence our Lord Jesus Christ spent nearly his whole life in his Mother's immediate company, consenting to postpone for her sake his Father's work of publishing his divinity and preaching his Gospel. Hence he worked his first miracle at her request at the wedding of Cana. Hence he inspired her to prophecy that all generations would call her blessed. Hence, too, our Lord has instilled into every Christian heart some little glow of his own deep filial love for her.