Tea at Trianon: Immaculate Mary

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Immaculate Mary

From The Integrated Catholic Life:

It is very simple. Before He was conceived in Mary and born in Bethlehem, He existed from all eternity as God—the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He chose His mother—it is as simple as that. But don’t forget, she chose Him also.

But doesn’t that make her unlike every other person? How did she have a choice if He made her that way?

She definitely had a choice. When the angel appeared to her and told her of God’s plan for her, all of creation in a sense, and certainly all of the heavenly hosts, waited with breath held for her answer. She could have said no, but she said yes. We call that her fiat. Adam and Eve also had a choice. They were not forced to say no… they chose freely. Their temptation was not so that they would choose sin, but so that their choice of God would be free. Where Eve said no, Mary said yes. Both existed without Original Sin at their moment of decision. No difference! (Read more.)