In the first place, she is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin - something exceedingly great. For God's grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil.In the second place, God is with her, meaning that all she did or left undone is divine and an action of God in her. Moreover, God guarded and protected her from all that might be hurtful to her.
In the third place, she is blessed above all other women, not only because she gave birth without labor, pain, or injury to herself, not as Eve and all other women, but because by the Holy Spirit and without sin, she became fertile, conceived, and gave birth in a way granted to no other woman.
In the fourth place, her giving birth is blessed in that it was spared the curse upon all children of Eve who are conceived in sin and born to deserve death and damnation. Only the fruit of her body is blessed, and through this birth we all are blessed.
Furthermore, a prayer or wish is to be added - our prayer for all who speak evil of this Fruit and the Mother.
--Blessed Martin Luther, *Personal Prayer Book* AE 43:40
3 comments:
Old Martin's getting a little carried away there, especially on the first two points.
It was actually a point he was rather consistent on throughout his life. He did not hold to a dogma of immaculate conception, but he did hold to the opinion that Mary, though conceived with original sin, had been purged of actual sin through the grace of the Holy Spirit. In a sermon from, I think the mid 1520's, he speaks of her being an exact "middle" between us and our Lord: He conceived without original sin and devoid of actual sin; she conceived with original sin and devoid of actual sin; we conceived with original sin and not devoid of actual sin. It's a fascinating sermon, but I don't think it's made it into English yet. Piepkorn recounts how even at the end of his life he is still espousing this idea (WA 53, 640). I set out once to write a paper in Seminary showing how Luther came to rejoice in Mary as sinner; it ended up being an interesting wild goose-hunt. He never did believe that she was, except for in her bodily conception. What Piepkorn abominates is when these matters become dogma, instead of being theological opinions.
It certainly sounds like an interesting sermon. Fanciful, but interesting.
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