This Tuesday 8th September, we celebrate the Birthday of Our Lady, exactly nine months after the Feast of her Immaculate Conception on 8th December. With her Immaculate Conception, the first light of our redemption began to break through the darkness. With her birth, the light was brought even nearer to the world, because the woman conceived without original sin and now in the world, was to be the Mother of the Redeemer. From all eternity, God knew He would redeem us by His Son, and from all eternity, He had chosen the woman who would give Him His human nature. That woman was Mary.

There are some extraordinary parallels between Eve and Mary. Eve was a virgin and so was Mary. Eve listened to the voice of the serpent, a fallen angel (Genesis 3), whereas Mary listened to the voice of the Angel Gabriel. Eve distrusted God’s word and disobeyed, whereas Mary believed God’s word and obeyed. Eve’s disobedience set in motion the Fall, whereby sin and death entered the world, whereas Mary’s obedience became the means through which the Author of Life Himself would enter the world. As St Jerome (ca 342-420) famously put it, “Death through Eve, life though Mary.” And for these reasons, the Fathers of the Church called Mary the “New Eve.”

It is also notable that St John Henry Newman (1801-90), who visited our church here in Loughborough in 1845, calls this teaching of Mary as the New Eve a rudimentary teaching that goes back to the earliest writings of the Church Fathers. The New Eve, he argues, could not be inferior to the First. If the First Eve was without stain of sin from the beginning of her existence (the original sin had not yet been committed), then Mary, the Second Eve, must also have been without it from the beginning of her existence. Therefore, he concludes, she was conceived immaculate.

So Eve cooperated in the fall of man, and Mary cooperated in the redemption of man, when through her consenting to be the Mother of the Redeemer at the Annunciation, she uttered those words upon which the salvation of the entire human race hung: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). And here we see the complete opposite of Satan. He cried, “Non serviam – I will not serve.” Satan is full of pride: “I will have it my way”, whereas Mary is full of humility: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” And maybe that’s the lesson we need to learn from this Feast; the struggle for holiness is ultimately the struggle between my will and God’s Will.

So let us ask Our Lady the New Eve, to obtain for us something of her humility, her obedience and her complete trust in God. And may she teach us to say, especially when it is difficult, “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”                       

Fr Paul Gillham, IC