Mary: The Woman God Dreamed Of

Bishop Fulton Sheen begins this beautiful meditation by explaining that all love begins as a dream before it becomes a reality. Applying this to the divine, he presents the Blessed Virgin Mary as God's eternal "dream," a masterpiece conceived in the mind of God before the mountains were formed or the seas were made. This first Immaculate Conception, he teaches, was God's perfect idea of the "New Eve," a "flesh-girt Paradise" that would be a worthy dwelling for His Son. God yearned for this perfect creature, and from all eternity, He planned her unique role in salvation history.

The address then transitions from Mary as a divine dream to Mary as a mother in reality. This begins at the Annunciation, when the eternal dream takes on flesh. Bishop Sheen traces her maternal journey through the finding of the child Jesus in the Temple, where she begins to understand the sorrowful path of His divine mission, a mission that separates Him from a purely earthly family. Her role culminates at the Wedding Feast of Cana, where she gives her final and most important words recorded in Scripture: "Whatever he says to you, do it." This command establishes her as the perfect intercessor who always points humanity back to the will of her Son.

Finally, Bishop Sheen reveals Mary's most profound identity as the spouse of Christ and the mother of the Church, a role consummated at the foot of the Cross. Here, in a "poor exchange," Christ the Bridegroom gives His mother to John, and through him, to all humanity. On what St. Augustine called the "marriage bed of the cross," the nuptial union of the New Adam and the New Eve gives birth to the Church, their spiritual progeny. Mary is no longer just the mother of Christ, but the universal Mother of all the spiritually living, whose purpose is to form and nurture the members of her Son's Mystical Body.