Home > Work > The World's First Love: Mary, Mother of God
1 " The mark of man is initiative, but the mark of woman is cooperation. Man talks about freedom; woman about sympathy, love, sacrifice. Man cooperates with nature; woman cooperates with God. Man was called to till the earth, to "rule over the earth"; woman to be the bearer of a life that comes from God. "
― Fulton J. Sheen , The World's First Love: Mary, Mother of God
2 " as the mother knows the needs better than the babe, so the Blessed Mother understands our cries and worries and knows them better than we know ourselves. "
3 " The Gospels did not start the Church; the Church started the Gospels. The Church did not come out of the Gospels; the Gospels came out of the Church. "
4 " She existed in the Divine Mind as an Eternal Thought before there were any mothers. She is the Mother of mothers—she is the world’s first love. "
5 " The Church was spread throughout the entire Roman Empire before a single book of the New Testament was written. "
6 " If it be true that the world has lost its respect for authority, it is only because it lost it first in the home. By a peculiar paradox, as the home loses its authority, the authority of the state becomes tyrannical. "
7 " A tiny architect works inside the human heart drawing sketches of the ideal love from the people it sees, from the books it reads, from its hopes and daydreams, in the fond hope that the eye may one day see the ideal and the hand touch it. Life becomes satisfying the moment the dream is seen walking, and the person appears as the incarnation of all that one loved. The "
8 " The melody of her life is played just as it was written. Mary was thought, conceived, and planned as the equal sign between ideal and history, thought and reality, hope and realization. "
9 " Our Lord was born not just of her flesh but also by her consent. "
10 " As the “no” of Eve proves that the creature was made by love and is therefore free, so thy Fiat proves that the Creature was made for love as well. "
11 " I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more. "
12 " The mystery of the Incarnation is very simply that of God’s asking a woman freely to give Him a human nature. "
13 " One will never find a professor who denies freedom of the will who does not also have something in his life for which he wishes to shake off responsibility. "
14 " As in Eden there took place the first espousals of man and woman, so, in her, there took place the first espousals of God and man, eternity and time, omnipotence and bonds. In "
15 " Real love uses freedom to attach itself unchangeably to another. "
16 " When Whistler was complimented on the portrait of his mother, he said, “You know how it is; one tries to make one’s Mummy just as nice as he can. "
17 " When Whistler was complimented on the portrait of his mother, he said, “You know how it is; one tries to make one’s Mummy just as nice as he can.” When God became Man, He too, I believe, would make His Mother as nice as He could—and that would make her a perfect Mother. "
18 " As Eden was the Paradise of Creation, Mary is the Paradise of the Incarnation, and in her as a Garden were celebrated the first nuptials of God and man. "
19 " He has mercy on those who fear Him, from generation to generation.” Fear is here understood as filial, that is, a shrinking from hurting one who is loved. Such is the fear a son has for a devoted father and the fear a Christian has of Christ. Fear is here related to love. "
20 " the modern world has rejected for the last three hundred years (after believing in it for the first sixteen hundred years), namely, the virgin birth of Jesus from His Mother, Mary, who is a virgin. "