“Every soul who has believed both conceives and generates the Word of God and recognizes His works. Let the soul of Mary be in each one of you to magnify the Lord.” St. Ambrose of Milan (4th century, Doctor of the Church)

“What would we say that the ark was if not holy Mary, since the ark carried within it the tables of the covenant, while Mary bore the Master of the same covenant?” St. Maximus of Turin (4^th-5^th centuries)

“If you marvel that God was born while Mary’s womb remained closed and sealed with her virgin purity, marvel also that though the door of the sepulchre was closed and sealed, He returned to the upper room, and when the doors were locked came in to His disciples.” St. Amadeus of Lausanne (12^th century)

“The Virgin in a wonderful way, before all the other saints, is the Temple of God.” St. Thomas Aquinas (13^th century, Doctor of the Church)

“The Queen of heaven is the mast and sail on the little boat of our soul, and leads it pleasantly with her mercy, showing the safe way, and the shortness of the journey, that it may speedily come into port.” St. Humilitas (13^th-14^th centuries)

“Above all, consider how love draws all the pains, all the torments, troubles, sufferings, sorrows, and wounds, the passion, cross, and death itself of our Redeemer into the heart of His most sacred Mother. Alas, the same nails that crucified the body of that divine Child also crucified the soul of His Mother. The same thorns that pierced His head pierced through the soul of that all-sweet Mother. She felt the same miseries as her Son by commiseration, the same dolors by condolence, the same passion by compassion. In brief, the deadly sword that transpierced the body of that most beloved Son pierced through the heart of that most loving Mother.” St. Francis de Sales (16^th-17^th centuries, Doctor of the Church)

“Wondrous to relate, this divine Wisdom chose to leave the bosom of His Father and enter the womb of a Virgin and there repose amid the lilies of her purity. Desiring to give Himself to her by becoming man in her, He sent the Archangel Gabriel to greet her on His behalf and to declare to her that she had won His heart and that He would become man in her if she gave her consent…Notwithstanding her desire to be lowly, Mary wholeheartedly gave the angel that priceless consent which the Blessed Trinity, all the angels, and the whole world awaited for so many centuries.” St. Louis de Montfort (17th-18^th centuries)

“Consider the devotion, the tenderness, the love which Mary felt at seeing in her arms and on her breast the Lord of the world, the Son of the Eternal Father, Who had deigned even to become her Son, choosing her from amongst all women to be His Mother. Mary, now holding Him to her bosom, adores Him as God, kissing His feet as her king, and then His face as her Son.” St. Alphonsus Liguouri (17^th-18^th centuries, Doctor of the Church)

“’Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word’…This fiat is Mary’s consent to the divine plan of redemption; this fiat is like the echo of the fiat of creation; but it is a new world, an infinitely higher world, a world of grace that God Himself creates after this consent.” Bl. Columba Marmion (19^th-20^th centuries)

“He begins detaching Himself from His Mother, seemingly alienating His affections with growing unconcern – only to reveal at the very end that what He was doing was introducing her through sorrow to a new and deeper dimension of love. There are two great periods in the relations of Jesus and Mary, the first extending from the Crib to Cana, and the second, from Cana to the Cross. In the first, she is the Mother of Jesus; in the second, she begins to be the Mother of all whom Jesus would redeem – in other words, to become the Mother of men.” Ven. Fulton Sheen (19th-20^th centuries)

“In that Paradise of Creation there were celebrated the first nuptials of man and woman. But man willed not to have blessings, except according to his lower nature. Not only did he lose his happiness; he even wounded his own mind and will. Then God planned the remaking or redeeming of man. But before doing so, He would make another Garden. This new one would be not of earth but of flesh; it would be a Garden over whose portals the name of sin would never be written – a Garden in which there would grow no weeds of rebellion to choke the growth of the flowers of grace …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. The closer one gets to fire, the greater the heat; the closer one is to God, the greater the purity. But since no one was ever closer to God than the woman whose human portals He threw open to walk this earth, then no one could have been more pure than she.” Ven. Fulton Sheen