The Third Day of Mary's Preparation to Be Mother of the LORD

"The right arm of the Most High, which threw open the doors of the Divinity to most holy Mary, continued to enrich and adorn at the expense of his infinite attributes this most pure spirit and virginal body which He had chosen as his tabernacle, as his temple, and as the holy city of his habitation.  And the heavenly Lady, engulfed in this vastness of the Divinity, winged her flight day by day farther away from earthly things, and transformed Herself more and more into a heavenly being, discovering ever new sacraments in the Most High.  For as He is the infinite Object of desire, although the appetite is satiated with that which is received, always more remains to be desired and understood.  Not all the hierarchies of the angels, nor all men together, have attained such preferment in blessings, mysteries and sacraments as this Princess attained, especially as regards those due to Her as Mother of the Creator.

"On the third day of preparation at which I have now arrived, having again been prepared as on the first day, the Divinity manifested Itself anew in abstractive vision.  Too slow and inadequate are our powers for understanding the increase of the gifts and graces, which the Most High then lavished on heavenly Mary; and at this juncture I am at a loss for words to explain even the least portion of what I perceived.  I can only express myself by saying, that the divine wisdom and power proceeded in a manner worthy of Her, who was to be the Mother of the Word, so as to ensure, as far as is possible for a creature, that likeness and proportion, which was due to the divine Persons.  Whoever has even a faint understanding of the distance which lies between the two extremes, the infinite God and the limited human creature, can comprehend so much the better, what is necessary to bring them together and establish a proportion.

"More and more the Queen of heaven reflected his infinite attributes and virtues; more and more brilliantly shone forth her beauty under the touch of the pencil of the divine Wisdom and under the colors and lights added to it from on high.  On this day She was informed of the works of creation as they happened on the third day.  She learned when and how the waters, which were beneath the firmament, flowed together in one place (Genesis 1:9), disclosing the dry land, which the Lord called earth, while He called the waters the sea.  She learned in what way the earth brought forth the fresh herbs, and all plants and fructiferous trees with their seeds, each one according to its kind.  She was taught and She comprehended the greatness of the sea, its depth and its divisions, its correspondence with the streams and the fountains, that take their rise from it and flow back into it; the different plants and herbs, the flowers, trees, roots, fruits and seeds; She perceived how all and each one of them serve for the use of man.  All this our Queen understood and penetrated with the keenest insight more clearly, distinctly and comprehensibly than Adam or Solomon.  In comparison with Her all those skilled in medicine in the world would appear but ignorant even after the most thorough studies and largest experience.  The most holy Mary knew all that was hidden from sight, as Wisdom says (Wisdom 7:21); and just as She learned it without any fiction, She also communicates it without envy.  Whatever Solomon says there in the book of Wisdom was realized in Her with comparable and eminent perfection."

--Mary of Agreda, The Mystical City of God: The Incarnation, trans. Fiscar Marison (1912), bk. I, chapter III, paragraphs 27-29, pp. 40-42.