Jesus says:
“God did not send his angel to say ‘Hail’ to Mary alone. God greets you, O dear children, with his attentions; God sends you his holy inspirations as angels; God brings you his blessings from morning to night and from night to morning. You are always surrounded by loving, far-sighted waves of God’s thought.
“How, then, do you fail to notice anything, or so little? How can you fail to live in justice and holiness? Because you have become impermeable to the influence of grace; because you are rendered refractory to love’s action by your will contrary to Goodness.
“Gabriel said to Mary, ‘Hail,’ and the sound of the angel’s voice brought a new wave of grace upon the woman already inundated with grace. The very intense light of her immaculate spirit touched the summit of luminosity because the responsiveness of Mary’s spirit was perfect.
“Humility, promptness, modesty, prayer - what excellence did the angel’s word fail to find so as to become the first spark of the fire of the Incarnation? Great was the gift of being preserved from original sin which the Eternal had made to the one chosen to be the first tabernacle of the Son’s Body. But how great was the responsiveness in Mary!
“If another creature had been given, I won’t say the secret gifts which only God knew He had given, but the evident ones, of which a person is aware - such as supreme intelligence, supernatural instructions, and inflamed contemplations, and I am speaking only of the moral and spiritual gifts - how could the creature fail to glory in so many gifts, at least at intervals?
“But, no, in Mary there was none of this. The more God raised Her towards his throne, the more gratitude, love, and humility increased in Her. The more God made Her understand that the divine hand was extended over Her as a protection against every deceit of evil, the more vigilance against evil increased in Her.
“Mary did not commit the error which brings down so many souls endowed with the capacity for perfection - that is, She never said, ‘I feel God is watching over me; I feel God has chosen me. I’ll let Him worry about defending me from the Enemy.’ No. Mary, though recognizing God’s work in Her, acted as if She were the most forsaken of creatures as regards spiritual gifts. From dawn to dusk, and even in her virginal sleep watched over by the angels, her soul remained vigilant.
“Don’t think temptation spared Mary. The Tempter did not spare Me; for two reasons he did not spare Her. Two reasons. The first: Mary was the one without stain, but still a creature; I was God. The second: it was more important for Lucifer to corrupt the womb of the woman who would bear the Christ than to attack Christ Himself.
“He, the Crafty One, knew that the Word would be made flesh, by a fusion of spirit to Spirit, in a womb wherein no sin was harbored. No sin, I repeat. If, from Eve on, he had led all women into temptation, he was sure he would never be defeated by the eternal Victor.
“One woman alone always resisted him: Mary. And One alone knows what an embroidery, what a filigree of seduction Lucifer spread out around Mary to shake and obfuscate her superangelical soul. That One who knows is God. And since certain secrets are too great for you, He will not tell them to you. From Mary’s splendor in Heaven you will grasp the grandeur of her soul. A grandeur obtained by her own will, and She wanted so much to be holy out of love for her God that it would have been extremely great even without supreme forms of assistance.
“The Angel, then, could quite rightly say, ‘Full of grace.’ Yes, full of grace. Grace was in Her; Grace - that is, God - and grace - that is, God’s gift, which She was able to bring to a thousandfold yield.
“That is what is needed, O children, to make heavenly things conceive the Christ in you: your adherence to grace, your gathering in of grace, your multiplying of grace, and your breathing in grace. The body, to live, must take in air and food. The soul, to live, must breathe in grace. Then it happens that the Light descends where it can become incarnate and the Christ is mystically born in you as He was really born in Mary.
“Hail Mary, full of grace. Look at Her, all of you, O Christians, so unlike the first Son of Mary. Look at Her, you women, above all, so unlike Her, and learn, and meditate on the fact that the road to evil with a thousand faces has been opened up by you with your carnality contrary to the life of grace in creatures, without which man becomes a demon and the world, a hell.”