Perfect Intellect and the Blessed Virgin Mary

Our family prayed the Rosary last night, and while meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries, I tried to ask God to help me develop certain qualities – ones that would help me be a better imitator of our Lord and His Blessed Mother.

I was meditating on the Agony in the Garden, and I thought about how I need to learn to submit to God’s Will in my life. I need to be less selfish – less of a control freak – and trust God. This is what Jesus did during His Agony; He submitted Himself to the Will and the Plan of the Father.

As I meditated more, I thought of His Blessed Mother’s submission to the Will of God. Her assent – her fiat – was perfect. Her will was in union with God’s. Submission was a pleasure for her, and this was helped by the fact that her soul did not carry the scars of Original Sin. For an explanation of this important doctrine of the Catholic Church (called the Immaculate Conception), Catholic Answers offers, in part, the following:

The Immaculate Conception

It’s important to understand what the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is and what it is not. Some people think the term refers to Christ’s conception in Mary’s womb without the intervention of a human father; but that is the Virgin Birth. Others think the Immaculate Conception means Mary was conceived “by the power of the Holy Spirit,” in the way Jesus was, but that, too, is incorrect. The Immaculate Conception means that Mary, whose conception was brought about the normal way, was conceived without original sin or its stain—that’s what “immaculate” means: without stain. The essence of original sin consists in the deprivation of sanctifying grace, and its stain is a corrupt nature. Mary was preserved from these defects by God’s grace; from the first instant of her existence she was in the state of sanctifying grace and was free from the corrupt nature original sin brings.

When discussing the Immaculate Conception, an implicit reference may be found in the angel’s greeting to Mary. The angel Gabriel said, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). The phrase “full of grace” is a translation of the Greek word kecharitomene. It therefore expresses a characteristic quality of Mary.

The traditional translation, “full of grace,” is better than the one found in many recent versions of the New Testament, which give something along the lines of “highly favored daughter.” Mary was indeed a highly favored daughter of God, but the Greek implies more than that (and it never mentions the word for “daughter”). The grace given to Mary is at once permanent and of a unique kind. Kecharitomene is a perfect passive participle of charitoo, meaning “to fill or endow with grace.” Since this term is in the perfect tense, it indicates that Mary was graced in the past but with continuing effects in the present. So, the grace Mary enjoyed was not a result of the angel’s visit. In fact, Catholics hold, it extended over the whole of her life, from conception onward. She was in a state of sanctifying grace from the first moment of her existence. …

(For the exact definition, broken down bit-by-bit with explanations, see the Catholic Encyclopedia at the New Advent site.)

Because Mary was conceived without Original Sin, she was in a better position to accept God’s Divine Will and to align her own desires with His. Instead of her judgement being clouded by the aftereffects of The Fall, she was able to remain without sin throughout her life.

Which led me to ponder further…

When Adam and Eve were created, they had an enlightened intellect. In other words, they had innate knowledge of God and His Will. They could freely choose to accept or reject this (and we all know how that ended up), but they knew full well what that Will was. It was the sin of Pride that led to the Fall, hence “Pride comes before the Fall.” But, make no mistake, they were smart enough to know what they were doing. Our intellects are not clear, they are not complete. Our intellects are like broken bones that are not quite healed properly. We are weak, our souls are weak, and our wills are weak. Anyone who thinks they are different is wrong, for even Saint Paul lamented that he was unable to avoid sinning (Romans 7:15).

But Mary – she was preserved from Original Sin, pre-emptively given the very Salvation that Christ Jesus would offer to us all. This is a basic belief that the Church has held since the earliest days of Christianity. Catholic Answers points to St. Irenaeus’ writings in the Second Century:

“Consequently, then, Mary the Virgin is found to be obedient, saying, ‘Behold, O Lord, your handmaid; be it done to me according to your word.’ Eve, however, was disobedient, and, when yet a virgin, she did not obey. Just as she, who was then still a virgin although she had Adam for a husband—for in paradise they were both naked but were not ashamed; for, having been created only a short time, they had no understanding of the procreation of children, and it was necessary that they first come to maturity before beginning to multiply—having become disobedient, was made the cause of death for herself and for the whole human race; so also Mary, betrothed to a man but nevertheless still a virgin, being obedient, was made the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race. . . . Thus, the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith” (Against Heresies 3:22:24 [A.D. 189]).

“The Lord then was manifestly coming to his own things, and was sustaining them by means of that creation that is supported by himself. He was making a recapitulation of that disobedience that had occurred in connection with a tree, through the obedience that was upon a tree [i.e., the cross]. Furthermore, the original deception was to be done away with—the deception by which that virgin Eve (who was already espoused to a man) was unhappily misled. That this was to be overturned was happily announced through means of the truth by the angel to the Virgin Mary (who was also [espoused] to a man). . . . So if Eve disobeyed God, yet Mary was persuaded to be obedient to God. In this way, the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so it is rescued by a virgin. Virginal disobedience has been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience. For in the same way, the sin of the first created man received amendment by the correction of the First-Begotten” (ibid., 5:19:1 [A.D. 189]).

So if the Blessed Virgin Mary was without sin – and without the broken-ness that comes from being born with Original Sin on one’s soul, does this mean that she, too, had a perfect intellect, as Eve did before the Fall?

If you know, please, point me towards some information on this. It’s fascinating to me that Mary might have had the same perfect intellect that our First Parents had!