fails always to reach the depth of that mystery of Mary’s Child.  It was indeed centuries before the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit thought out and fully stated the meaning of this Child; it was centuries before it fully grasped the meaning of Mary herself in her relation to her divine Son:  and after all the centuries of Spirit-guided statement and saintly meditation it still remains that many fail to understand and to make energetic in life the fact of the Incarnation of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

And what was S. Mary’s own attitude toward the announcement of the Angel?  Her first instinctive word—­the word called out by her imperfect grasp of the meaning of the message of S. Gabriel, is:  How can this be seeing I know not a man?  Are we to infer from these words, as many have inferred, that in her secret thoughts S. Mary had resolved always to remain a virgin, that she had so offered herself to God in the virgin state?  Possibly when we remember that such was God’s will for her it is not going too far to assume that she had been prompted thus to meet and offer herself to the divine will.  Be that as it may there is an obvious and instantaneous assumption that the child-bearing which is predicted to her lies outside the normal and accustomed way of marriage.  She clearly does not think that the archangel’s words look to her approaching union with S. Joseph, even if the nominal nature of that marriage were not agreed upon.  It is clear that her instantaneous feeling is that as the message is supernatural in character, so will its fulfilment be, and the wondering how arises to her lips.

The answer to the how is that what is worked in her is by the power of the Holy Spirit:  “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee:  therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”

As so often in the dealing of God with us, that which is put forward as an explanation actually deepens the mystery.  It was no abatement of Mary’s wonder, nor did it really put away her how when she was told that the Holy Ghost should come upon her and that the child should be the Son of the Highest.  And yet this was the only answer to such a question that was possible.  Our questions may be met in two ways:  either by a detailed explanation, or by the answer that the only explanation is God—­that what we are concerned with is a direct working of God outside the accustomed order of nature and therefore outside the reach of our understanding.  Such acts have no doubt their laws, but they are not the laws in terms of which we are wont to think.