Some Saints attesting to Mary being conceived without sin to be a worthy vessel of the Son of God
2 min • Digitized on February 13, 2022
From The Glories of Mary, page 347
By St. Alphonsus Liguori
St. Ambrose says: Not from earth, but from heaven, Christ selected this vessel through which he should descend, and consecrated the temple of modesty.* The saint alludes to the words of St. Paul: “The first man was of the earth, earthy: the second man from heaven, heavenly.”*
St. Ambrose calls the divine mother: A celestial vessel: not that Mary was other than earthly in her nature, as heretics have sometimes fancied, but celestial through grace, for she was superior to the angels of heaven in sanctity and purity, as it was meet she should be, when a King of glory was to dwell in her womb; as John the Baptist revealed to St. Bridget: “It was befitting the King of glory to remain in no vessel but one purer and more select than all angels and men;”* to which we may add what the eternal Father himself said to the same saint: “Mary was a clean and an unclean vessel. Clean because she was wholly fair, but unclean because she was born of sinners; although she was conceived without sin, that my Son should be born without sin.”*
And these last words are worthy of note, that Mary was conceived without sin, so that the divine Son might be conceived without sin. Not that Jesus Christ could be capable of contracting sin, but that he might not suffer the opprobrium of having a mother infected with sin, and a slave of the devil.