The World's First Love By FULTON J. SHEEN, PH.D., D.D. Agregé in Philosophy from the University of Louvain Auxiliary Bishop of New York National Director, World Mission Society for the Propagation of the Faith McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. New York - London - Toronto Copyright, 1952, by Fulton J. Sheen. Etext edited by Darrell Wright, 2009, from a text file at archive.org DEDICATED TO THE WOMAN I LOVE The Woman Whom even God dreamed of Before the world was made; The Woman of Whom I was born At cost of pain and labor at a Cross; The Woman Who, though no priest, Could yet on Calvary's Hill breathe: "This is my Body; This is my Blood" For none save her gave Him human life. The Woman Who guides my pen, Which falters so with words In telling of the Word. The Woman Who, in a world of Reds, Shows forth the blue of hope. Accept these dried grapes of thoughts From this poor author, who has no wine; And with Cana's magic and thy Son's Power Work a miracle and save a soul - Forgetting not my own. Contents PART I: THE WOMAN THE WORLD LOVES 1 Love Begins with a Dream 3 2 When Freedom and Love Were One: The Annunciation 14 3 The Song of the Woman: The Visitation 28 4 When Did Belief in the Virgin Birth Begin? 45 5 All Mothers Are Alike Save One 58 6 The Virgin Mother 75 7 The World's Happiest Marriage 86 8 Obedience and Love 96 9 The Marriage Feast at Cana 112 10 Love and Sorrow 121 11 The Assumption and the Modern World 132 PART II: THE WORLD THE WOMAN LOVES 12 Man and Woman 147 13 The Seven Laws of Love 160 14 Virginity and Love 167 15 Equity and Equality 175 16 The Madonna of the World 186 17 Mary and the Moslems 204 18 Roses and Prayers 210 19 The Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary 221 20 Misery of Soul and the Queen of Mercy 228 21 Mary and the Sword 243 22 The Woman and the Atom 275 PART I The Woman the World Loves CHAPTER 1 Love Begins with a Dream [3] Every person carries within his heart a blueprint of the one he loves. What seems to be "love at first sight" is actually the fulfillment of desire, the realization of a dream. Plato, sensing this, said that all knowledge is a recollection from a previous existence. This is not true, as he states it, but it is true if one understands it to mean that we already have an ideal in us, one which is made by our thinking, our habits, our experi- ences, and our desires. Otherwise, how would we know imme- diately, on seeing persons or things, that we loved them? Be- fore meeting certain people we already have a pattern and mould of what we like and what we do not like; certain per- sons fit into that pattern, others do not. When we hear music for the first time, we either like or dislike it. We judge it by the music we already have heard in our own hearts. Jittery minds, which cannot long repose in one object of thought or in continuity of an ideal, love music which is distracting, excited, and jittery. Calm minds like calm music: the heart has its own secret melody and one day, when the score is played, the heart answers: "This is it." So it is with love. A tiny architect works inside the human heart drawing sketches of the ideal love from the people it sees, [4] from the books it reads, from its hopes and daydreams, in the fond hope that the eye may one day see the ideal and the hand touch it. Life becomes satisfying the moment the dream is seen walking, and the person appears as the incarnation of all that one loved. The liking is instantaneous because, actually, it was there waiting for a long time. Some go through life without ever meeting what they call their ideal. This could be very disappointing, if the ideal never really existed. But the absolute ideal of every heart does exist, and it is God. All human love is an initiation into the Eternal. Some find the Ideal in substance without passing through the shadow. God, too, has within Himself blueprints of everything in the universe. As the architect has in his mind a plan of the house before the house is built, so God has in His Mind an arche- typal idea of every flower, bird, tree, springtime, and melody. There never was a brush touched to canvas nor a chisel to marble without some great pre-existing idea. So, too, every atom and every rose is a realization and concretion of an idea existing in the Mind of God from all eternity. All crea- tures below man correspond to the pattern God has in His Mind. A tree is truly a tree because it corresponds to God's idea of a tree. A rose is a rose, because it is God's idea of a rose wrapped up in chemicals and tints and life. But it is not so with persons. God has to have two pictures of us: one is what we are, and the other is what we ought to be. He has the model, and He has the reality: the blueprint and the edifice, the score of the music and the way we play it. God has to have these two pictures because in each and every one of us there is some disproportion and want of conformity be- tween the original plan and the way we have worked it out. The image is blurred; the print is faded. For one thing, our [5] personality is not complete in time; we need a renewed body. Then, too, our sins diminish our personality; our evil acts daub the canvas the Master Hand designed. Like unhatched eggs, some of us refuse to be warmed by the Divine Love which is so necessary for incubation to a higher level. We are in constant need of repairs; our free acts do not coincide with the law of our being; we fall short of all God wants us to be. St. Paul tells us that we were predestined, before the foundations of the world were laid, to become the sons of God. But some of us will not fulfill that hope. There is, actually, only one person in all humanity of whom God has one picture, and in whom there is a perfect conformity between what He wanted her to be and what she is, and that is His Own Mother. Most of us are a minus sign, in the sense that we do not fulfill the high hopes the Heavenly Father has for us. But Mary is the equal sign. The Ideal that God had of her, that she is, and in the flesh. The model and the copy are perfect; she is all that was foreseen, planned, and dreamed. The melody of her life is played, just as it was written. Mary was thought, conceived, and planned as the equal sign between ideal and history, thought and reality, hope and realization. That is why, through the centuries, Christian liturgy has applied to her the words of the Book of Proverbs. Because she is what God wanted us all to be, she speaks of herself as the Eternal blueprint in the Mind of God, the one whom God loved before she was a creature. She is even pictured as being with Him not only at creation, but before creation. She ex- isted in the Divine Mind as an Eternal Thought before there were any mothers. She is the Mother of mothers SHE is THE WORLD'S FIRST LOVE. [6] "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, be- fore He made anything, from the beginning. I was set up from eternity, and of old, before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived; neither had the fountains of waters as yet sprung out; the mountains with their huge bulk had not as yet been established: before the hills I was brought forth. He had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was present; when with a certain law and com- pass he enclosed the depths; when he established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters; when he com- passed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits; when he balanced the foundations of the earth; I was with him, forming all things, and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times, playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men. Now, therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, and that watcheth daily at my gates, and waiteth at the posts of my doors. He that shall find me shall find life and shall have salvation from the Lord." (Prov. 8:22-35) But God not only thought of her in eternity, He also had her in mind at the beginning of time. In the beginning of history, when the human race fell through the solicitation of a woman, God spoke to the Devil and said: "I will establish a feud between thee and the woman, between thy offspring and hers; she is to crush thy head, while thou dost lie in wait at her heels" (Gen.