By Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete
Only the one who is "like this child" can recognize grace. That is why the one younger than sin was the same one who is full of grace.
When Pope John Paul II visited Lourdes in 1983, he recalled Bernanos's reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary as "younger than sin."[1] The expression points to the Immaculate Conception of Mary; Lourdes was where Mary identified herself as "the Immaculate Conception."
Bernanos's explanation is found in The Diary of a Country Priest.[2] Bernanos speaks through M. le Cure de Torcy:
She is our Mother, the mother of all flesh, a new Eve. But she is also our daughter. The ancient world of sorrow, the world before the access of grace, cradled her to its very heart for many centuries, dimly awaiting a virgo genetrix. For centuries and centuries those ancient hands, so full of sin, cherished the wondrous girl-child whose name even was unknown. A little girl, the queen of the angels! And she's still a little girl, remember! . . . The simplicity of God, that terrible simplicity which damned the pride of the angels. Our Lady knew neither triumph nor miracle. Her Son preserved her from the least tip-touch of the savage wing of human glory. No one has ever lived, suffered, died in such simplicity, in such deep ignorance of her own dignity.... For she was born without sin—in what amazing isolation! A pool so clear, so pure, that even her own image—created only for the sacred joy of the Father—was not to be reflected. The Virgin was Innocence ....The eyes of Our Lady are the only real child-eyes that have ever been raised to our shame and sorrow . . . they are not indulgent for there is no indulgence without something of bitter experience—they are eyes of gentle pity, wondering sadness, and with something more in them, never yet known or expressed, something that makes her younger than sin [emphasis added], younger than the race from which she sprang, and though a Mother by grace, mother of all graces, our little youngest sister.
Mary belongs to the original state of human existence. I use the term "original state" as does John Paul II in his "Wednesday Catechesis on Human Love."[3] It designates the state of the human person as intended by the Creator, before the fall. "Original" is understood in an existential state, not according to linear historical time. It is a matter of archetypal experiences which we can "reconstruct" from the accounts in the Book of Genesis of the state before the fall (CHL, 12/12/79). These experiences are revealing of what a human person is in God's plan of creation. In spite of sin, they remain within us as a "distant echo" of what we are meant to be. Although born into a world enslaved to sin, Mary lived in the original state of human existence.[4] Her spiritual life was entirely filled with God's Spirit.
According to the teaching of the Church, the original state was one of "innocence," the innocence of humankind's childhood or youth. The present or historical condition of human existence is the fruit of what happened "later," that is, sin separated man from his child-like innocence. Mary is thus "younger than sin." Using these terms, redemption must be seen as the retrieval of childhood innocence. It is only those who "become like children [who can] enter the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 18:3). Only those who retrieve and sustain (by the power of grace) those experiences of "original innocence" can enter the kingdom. When asked about divorce, Jesus said that it was incompatible with "the beginning" of the human race, with the state of original innocence (Mk 10:6). It had been permitted by Moses because of the human "hardness of heart." His redeeming mission, however, would offer to man a new heart, one free from enslavement to sin, a youthful heart. In this article we shall examine what this youthful heart is like, guided by the study of original innocence by Pope John Paul II in his Wednesday Catechesis.
This article was taken from the Winter 1995 issue of "Communio: International Catholic Review". To subscribe write Communio, P.O. Box 4557, Washington, D.C. 20017
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