We are going now to keep very close to Mary. She is passing all these precious days in communion with her Son and He is teaching her what conformity to Himself means. But she has Him not for herself alone but for all those for whom He has made Himself incarnate and has come to die. The time passed within that "Gate of Heaven" was the first stage of His earthly journey and He was there for me, for my learning. He was already my Model. Let me go, then, to-day to the "Gate of Heaven," go to Mary and ask to be allowed to study some of those heavenly lessons which were so dear to her heart. _Janua coeli, ora pro nobis._ "Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any who implored thy help or sought thy intercession were left unaided. Inspired with this confidence I fly unto thee.... O, Mother of the Word Incarnate despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me." POINT I. THE HUMILITY OF JESUS. We cannot contemplate this stage of Our Lord's life without being struck first of all by the humility and self-abasement of it, by the way in which in some sense He _annihilated_ Himself that He might do His Father's Will. St. Paul says: "He emptied Himself ... being made in the likeness of men" (Phil. II. 7). He stripped Himself, robbed Himself of all that He possessed: _Semetipsum exinanivit_. We know that Mary, His created Home, was chaste and pure, that no breath of sin had ever touched her, that the Holy Spirit Himself had overshadowed her and had undertaken the preparation and the adornment of the earthly Tabernacle of the Word; but pure and holy though she was, Mary was only a creature and He was the Creator. He was God and she was one of the human race. His place was on the highest throne of Heaven and yet "He abhorred not the Virgin's womb" but there lived hidden from the sight of all, like any other infant and yet wholly unlike, because He had full possession of His faculties and intelligence. In the manger He will be _seen_, and so will be loved, pitied and worshipped; there will be many consolations which will go far to lessen and soften His humiliations, but _here_, He is alone, hidden; His very existence not even suspected. He has annihilated Himself, made Himself nothing. He could have taken our nature, had He so wished, without all these humiliations; why then did He despise not the Virgin's womb? Because this is to be His principle all through His life, He will love "unto the end." He will leave nothing undone that He could possibly do. He came to do His Father's Will and He will do it thoroughly. He will bear all the humiliations because He wants to be my Model and to teach me that there is only one way of learning humility. POINT II. THE HUMILITY OF MARY.