Blue Madonna, Mary Mother of God
How must Mary have felt when she encountered the Angel Gabriel and was asked to allow the Holy Spirit to overshadow her and thus conceive the Christ Child? Saint Augustine in his Sermons says about Mary: “When the angel had spoken, she, filled with faith and conceiving Christ first in her mind before she did so in her womb, replied: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word’.” (Sermon 215) In another sermon on the Nativity, he makes the same contrast between Mary’s conceiving the Eternal Word in her mind through faith and conceiving him in her womb. It works better in Latin: Angelus nuntiat, Virgo audit, credit et concepit: Fides in mente, Christus in Ventre. (The Angel announces : the Virgin hears, believes and conceives: faith in her mind, Christ in her womb) Saint Augustine also makes the obvious link with us when he says: The mother carried him in her womb, but we do so in our heart – or mind, through faith, as she first did. Therefo...