The Seperation Between Satan and Mary

From Marie-Dominique Phillipe, O.P.'s, Mystery of Mary:

The devil never had any direct hold over Mary, over her soul, or over her body. Among Adam's descendants, she is the only pure creature that totally escapes him. He knows nothing whatsoever about this little child of men. She is a "closed garden," a divinely closed one. To him she is a mysterious enigma that puzzles and irritates him. Filled with dread, he guessed that she was his rival. The revelation of her divine motherhood was probable the very cause of his revolt. In his pride, he could not accept the fact that a pure creature could be the Mother of his God an thereby know an intimacy with God that he, Lucifer, will never know. Seeing this descendant of Eve escape him, he sense that she was the one that God had chosen as Queen of heaven and earth, of men and angels. Confronted with her he is forced to admit that he is alien, vanquished and powerless.

We must clearly understand the practical attitude of Satan with respect to the mystery of the Immaculate Conception in order to better comprehend the following words from Scripture: "Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem"; "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed" (Gen. 3:15). In His wisdom God allowed the devil, through original sin, to have a certain hold over Adam's descendants. In his pride, Satan considers this divine permission as a right. One of the practical consequences of pride in creatures is to immediately establish as a permanent right any permission granted on a temporary basis. Doesn't Satan present himself to Jesus in the wilderness as the "prince of this world," as the one who has the right to rule over the universe and to tyrannize men? Faced with this mystery of a descendant of Eve untouched by the hereditary flaw, instead of keeping quiet and admiring a special gesture of God's totally gratuitous mercy, he considers himself defrauded of his rights. This mysterious little child appears to him as a failure vis-a-vis his power as the "prince of this world." Refusing out of pride to admit that it is normal for God's mercy to act in perfect freedom, refusing to admit that His mercy is accountable to no one, he is angry inside and tries as much as possible to ignore the existence of this extraordinary creature, claiming that she is nothing. For this proud intellectual, the only real things that exist and have the right to exist among the realities that he respects and are within his particular competence are those he knows! But since he cannot absolutely deny the fact of this existence, he tries in every possible way to minimize this creature enveloped in God's prevenient mercy and to hold her up to ridicule. He always tries to make caricatures of her! This mystery is intolerable for his pride. It is too clearly the "sign" of a mercy which shows him God's absolute right over all creatures, even over this fallen human race. He himself, however intelligent he may be, has no rights but those received from God or depending God's permission. His days of domination over the earth are numbered; he is not the one who has fixed their duration.

Thus Mary is Satan's specific and personal enemy from the beginning, his indomitable enemy who totally escapes him, just when he considers himself to be master of the situation, master of the world. Thanks to this privilege, Mary is indeed completely separated from sin and from any complicity with evil and with the prince of this world.