That which is valid of the saints in general, holds in the highest measure of the Queen of all saints, Mary the Mother of God. The mystery of Mary’s divine Motherhood does not merely comprise the bare fact that the Word took flesh and blood, our human nature, in her womb. The Catholic is not content merely to repeat with gladness the words of the inspired woman in the Gospel: “Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the paps that gave thee suck.” He listens with a far deeper attention to our Lord’s answer: “Blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it” (Lk. xi, 28). Mary’s importance in the work of salvation does not lie chiefly in the purely bodily sphere, but in the sphere of morality and religion. It consists in this that Mary, so far as lay in her, gave the best of herself, even her whole being, to the service of God, and that, however infinitely small all human doing and suffering are in comparison with the Divine Perfection, she surrendered this infinitely small without limitation or stint to the visitation of Divine Grace, and so prepared herself to be the sublime instrument of the divine redemption. We know of martyrs.” But her faith was as strong as her humility. She ‘kept all these words,” which were spoken of her Son pondering them in her heart” (Lk. ii, 19, 51). And so she became the precious and pure source of the history of His infancy, the faithful evangelist: “Queen of Evangelists.” It was his mother’s faith that produced the miracle of Cana, the first manifestation of our Lord’s glory among men (Jn ii, l). And Mary was a blessed witness also of His last revelation of His glory, in the fiery tongues of Pentecost (Acts ii, 3). No apostle learnt the mystery of Jesus so fully and so profoundly, or preserved his experience so faithfully, as did the Queen of Apostles.” It is this radiant image of Mary, as portrayed by St. Luke and St. John, which our Lord had in mind when He directed the woman in the Gospel from the bodily motherhood of Mary to her spiritual sublimity: “Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.” (Lk. xi 28). This gives the scene its illuminating character and its importance in the history of our salvation. But all the sublimity of Mary’s moral personality, all the depth of her virginal devotion, and all the strength of her faith culminate in the word which she spoke to the angel: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy word.” These were no common, everyday words; no words such as fall from men in the changing circumstance and casual course of life. They were words out of the depths and recesses of a soul that was pure and noble beyond all earthly measure, words that were her being, her expression, her achievement. By them of a truth she consecrated her body to a “reasonable service” (cf Rom. xii, 1 ff.), and that is the source of her blessedness The “Blessed” with which our Lord corrects that woman’s praise, rings then like a conscious reference to the angel’s “Blessed” in the same Gospel. “Blessed art thou that hast believed that those things shall be accomplished that were spoken to thee by the Lord” (i, 45). The gladness of redeemed humanity resounds in those words of St. Elizabeth.