When the Lord came unto His own, and bore in His own person the nature which He had created - becoming obedient even unto the Tree, and doing away with the disobedience which had taken of a tree, thus atoning for the transgression whereby Eve, as yet a virgin spouse, had wickedly transgressed - the. message of the Gospel truth was fitly brought by an Angel to the espoused Virgin, Mary. And just as the one was seduced by the words of an angel, and, having broken the commandment of God, fled from His face, so the other, from the message of an Angel, learnt the good tidings that, observant of His word, she should become the Mother of God. And as the one was induced to flee from God, so the other was persuaded to be obedient to God, that the maiden Mary might become the Advocate of the maiden Eve. As by one maiden the human race was bound with the bonds of death, so by one other was it again unbound: against a maiden's disobedience in one scale of the balance-a Maiden's obedience was cast into the other as counterpoise.
- Saint Irenaeus
- from The May-Book of the Breviary, by Father John Fitzpatrick