Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. John Henry Newman, on Mary’s ‘Holiness and Perfection’)

“Who can estimate the holiness and perfection of her, who was chosen to be the Mother of Christ? If to him that hath, more is given, and holiness and Divine favour go together (and this we are expressly told), what must have been the transcendent purity of her, whom the Creator Spirit condescended to overshadow with His miraculous presence? What must have been her gifts, who was chosen to be the only near earthly relative of the Son of God, the only one whom He was bound by nature to revere and look up to; the one appointed to train and educate Him, to instruct Him day by day, as He grew in wisdom and in stature?”—English theologian St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890), “The Reverence Due to the Virgin Mary,” Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 2 (1835)

The image accompanying this post, The Immaculate Conception, an oil-on-canvas work, was created in 1767-68 by the Italian painter and printmaker Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770). It now hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid.