Page:Sermons for all the Sundays in the year.djvu/71

 to accept him for her Son. ”Filius, exolvens debitum petitiones tuas implet." (Orat. de Exitu Mar.) Hence, St. Methodius, martyr, used to say to Mary: ”Euge, euge, quæ debitorum habeas filium, Deo enim universi debemus, tibi autem ille debitor est." (Orat, Hyp. Dom.) Rejoice, rejoice, holy virgin; for thou hast for thy debtor that Son to whom we are all debtors; to thee he owes the human nature which he received from thee. 4. St. Gregory of Nicomedia encourages sinners by the assurance that, if they have recourse to the Virgin with a determination to amend their lives, she will save them by her intercession. Hence, turning to Mary, he exclaimed: "Thou hast insuperable strength, lest the multitude of our sins should overcome thy clemency." O mother of God, the sins of a Christian, however great they may be, cannot overcome thy mercy. “Nothing," adds the same saint, ”resists thy power; for the Creator regards thy glory as his own." Nothing is impossible to thee, says St. Peter Damian: thou canst raise even those who are in despair to hopes of salvation. ”Nihil tibi impossibile, quæ etiam desperates in spem salutis potes relevare." (Ser. i. de Nat. B.V.) 5. Richard of St. Lawrence remarks that, in announcing to the Virgin that God has chosen her for the mother of his Son, the Archangel Gabriel said to her: “Fear not, Mary; for thou hast found grace with God." (Luke i. 30.) From which words the same author concludes: ”Cupientes invenire gratiam, quæramus inventricem gratiæ." If we wish to recover lost grace, let us seek Mary, by whom this grace has been found. She never lost the divine grace; she always possessed it. If the angel declared that she had found grace, he meant that she had found it not for herself, but for us miserable sinners, who have lost it. Hence Cardinal Hugo exhorts us to go to Mary, and say to her: O blessed lady, property should be restored to those who lost it: the grace which thou hast found is not thine for thou hast never lost the grace of God but it is ours; we have lost it through our own fault: to us, then, thou oughtest to restore it. "Sinners, who by your sins have forfeited the divine grace, run to the Virgin, and