When I was a little one I pleased the most high - 3

It was not without reason that David said that the foundations of this city of God, that is, Mary, are planted above the summits of the mountains: The foundations thereof are in the holy mountains (Ps. lxxxvi. 1). Whereby we are to understand that Mary, in the very beginning of her life, was to be more perfect than the united perfections of the entire lives of the Saints could have made her. And the Prophet continues: The Lord loveth the gates of Sion above all the tabernacles of Jacob (Ps. lxxxvi. 2). And the same king David tells us why God thus loved her; it was because He was to become man in her virginal womb: A man is born in her (Ps. lxxxvi. 5). Hence it was becoming that God should give this Blessed Virgin, in the very moment that He created her, a grace corresponding to the dignity of Mother of God.

Isaias signified the same thing when he said that, in a time to come, a mountain of the house of the Lord (which was the Blessed Virgin) was to be prepared on the top of all other mountains; and that, in consequence, all nations would run to this mountain to receive the Divine mercies. And in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it (Is. ii. 2). St. Gregory, explaining this passage, says: "It is a mountain on the top of mountains; for the perfection of Mary is resplendent above that of all the Saints." And St. John Damascene, that it is a mountain in which God is well pleased to dwell (Ps. lxvii. 17). Therefore Mary was called a cypress, but a cypress of Mount Sion; she was called a cedar, but a cedar of Libanus; an olive-tree, but a fair olive-tree; beautiful, but beautiful as the sun; for as St. Peter Damian said: "As the light of the sun so greatly surpasses that of the stars, that in it they are no longer visible; it so overwhelms them that they are as if they were not; so does the great Virgin Mother surpass in sanctity the whole court of Heaven." So much so that St. Bernard beautifully remarks that the sanctity of Mary was so sublime that "no other Mother than Mary was becoming a God, and no other Son than God befitted Mary."