- BLESSED VIRGIN MARY - MOTHER OF CHRIST, MOTHER OF THE CHURCH -
- CCC # 829 - "But while in the most Blessed Virgin the Church has already reached that perfection whereby she exists without spot or wrinkle, the faithful still strive to conquer sin and increase in holiness. And so they turn their eyes to Mary": in her, the Church is already the "all-holy." - CCC # 1172, 972 -
- CCC # 963 - Since the Virgin Mary's role in the mystery of Christ and the Spirit has been treated, it is fitting now to consider her place in the mystery of the Church. "The Virgin Mary... is acknowledged and honoured as being truly the Mother of Christ'... since she has by her charity joined in bringing about the birth of believers in the Church, who are members of its head." "Mary, Mother of Christ, Mother of the Church." - CCC # 484-507, 721-726 -
I. - MARY'S MOTHERHOOD WITH REGARD TO THE CHURCH -
Wholly united with her Son (Jesus Christ)... - CCC # 964 - Mary role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows from it. "This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ's virginal conception up to his death"; it is made manifest above all at the hour of his Passion: - CCC # 534 & 618 - Thus the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross. There she stood, in keeping with the divine plan, enduring with her only begotten Son the intensity of his suffering, joining herself with his sacrifice in her mother's heart, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this victim, born of her: to be given, by the same Christ Jesus dying on the cross, as a mother to his disciple, with this words: "Woman, behold your son." - CCC # 534, 618 -
- CCC # 965 - After her Son's Ascension, Mary "aided the beginning of the Church by her prayers." imploring the gift of the Spirit, who had already overshadowed her in the Annunciation."
... also in her Assumption - CCC # 966 - "Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death." The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son's Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians: In giving birth you kept your virginity; in your Dormition you did not leave the world. O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life. You conceived the living God and, by your prayers, will deliver our souls from death. - CCC # 491 -
... she is our Mother in the order of grace - CCC # 967 - By her complete adherence to the Father's will, to his Son's redemptive work, and to every prompting of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary is the Church's model of faith and charity. Thus she is a "preeminent and... wholly unique member of the Church"; indeed, she is the "exemplary realization" (typus) of the Church. - CCC # 2674, 507 -
- CCC # 968 - Her role in relation to the Church and to all humanity goes still further. "in wholly singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity/love in the Savior's work of restoring supernatural life of souls. For this reason she is a mother to us in the order of grace." - CCC # 494 -
- CCC # 969 - "this motherhood of Mary in the order of grace continues uninterruptedly from the consent which she loyally gave at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, until the eternal fulfilment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation... Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix." - CCC # 149, 501, 1370 -
- CCC # 970 - "Mary's function as mother of men in no way obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power. But the Blessed Virgin's salutary influence on men... flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on his mediation, depends entirely on it and draws all its power from it." "No creatures could ever be counted along with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer; but just as the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways both by his ministers and the faithful, and as the one goodness of God is radiated in different ways among his creatures, so also the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this one source." - CCC # 2008, 1545, 308 -
- CCC # 2673-2679 - II. DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN - CCC # 971 - "All generations will call me blessed": "The Church's devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship." The Church rightly honors "the Blessed Virgin with special devotion. From the most ancient times the Blessed Virgin has been honored with the title of 'Mother of God', to whose protection the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs... This very special devotion... differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and greatly fosters this adoration." The liturgical feasts dedicated to the Mother of God and Marian prayer, such as the rosary, an "epitome of the whole Gospel," express this devotion to the Virgin Mary. - CCC # 1172, 2678 -
III. MARY - ESCHATOLOGICAL ICON OF THE CHURCH - - CCC # 972 - After speaking of the Church, her origin, mission and destiny, we can find no better way to conclude than by looking to Mary. In her we contemplate what the Church already is in her mystery on her own 'pilgrimage of faith," and what she will be in the homeland at the end of her journey. There, "in the glory of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity," "in the communion of all the saints", the Church is awaited by the one she venerates as Mother of her Lord and as her own mother. "In the meantime the Mother of Jesus, in the glory which she possesses in body and soul in heaven, is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise she shines forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come, a sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim People of God. - CCC # 773, 824, 2853 -
- IN BRIEF - CCC # 973 - By pronouncing her "fiat" at the Annunciation and giving her consent to the Incarnation, Mary was already collaborating with the whole work her Son was to accomplish. She is mother wherever he is Saviour and head of the Mystical Body.
- CCC # 974 - The Most Blessed Virgin Mary, when the course of her earthly life was completed, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven, where she already shares in the glory of her Son's Resurrection, anticipating the resurrection of all members of his Body.
- CCC # 975 - "We believe that the Holy Mother of God, the new Eve, Mother of the Church, continues in heaven to exercise her material role on behalf of the members of Christ," (Paul VI, CPG & 15)
***No mother whose son has won distinction for himself either in a profession or in the field of battle, believes that the respect paid her for being his mother detracts from the honour or dignity which is paid her son. Why? then, do some minds think that any reverence paid to the Mother of Jesus detracts from His Power and Divinity? We know the false rejoinder of those who say that Catholics "adore" Mary or make her a "goddess" but that is a lie. Since no reader of these pages would be guilty of such nonsense it shall be ignored.
Where does this coldness, forgetfulness and at the least indifference to the Blessed Mother start? From a failure to realize that her Son, Jesus, is the Eternal Son of God. The moment I put Our Divine Lord on the same level with Julius Caesar or Karl Max, with Buddha or Charles Darwin, that is, as mere man among men then, the thought of special reverence to His Mother as different from other mothers becomes positively repellent. Each famous man has his mother, too. Each person can say; "I have my mother and mine is as good or better than yours" That is why little is written of the mothers of any great men - because each mother was considered the best mother by her son. No one mother of a mortal is entitled to more love than any other mother. Therefore no sons and daughters should be required to single out someone else's mother as the Mother of mothers.
Our Lord described John the Baptist as "the greatest man ever born of woman". Suppose that a cult were started to honour his mother as superior to any other mother? Who among us would not rebel against it as excessive? Everything the critics would say of such exaggeration would be well taken for the simple reason that John the Baptist is only a man. If Our Lord is just another man or another ethical reformer or another sociologist then we share, even with the most bigoted the resentment against thinking that the Mother of Jesus is different from any other mother.
The Commandment says: 'Honour thy father and mother', its says nothing about honouring Gandhi's mother or Napoleon's father. But the Commandment to honour our father does not preclude adoring the Heavenly Father. If the Heavenly Father sends His Divine Son to this earth then the Commandment to honour our earthly mother does not preclude venerating the Mother of the Son of God.
If Mary were only the Mother of another man then she could not also be our mother because the ties of the flesh are too exclusive. Flesh allows only one mother. The step between one a mother and a stepmother is long and few there are who can make it. But Spirit allows another mother. Since Mary is the Mother of God then she can be the Mother of everyone whom Christ redeemed.
The key to understanding Mary is this: We do not start with Mary. We start with Christ, the Son of the Living God! The less we think of Him the less we think of her; the more we think of Him the more we think of her; the more we adore His Divinity the more we venerate her Motherhood; the less we adore His Divinity the less reason we have for respecting her. We could even resent hearing her name if we had become so perverse as not to believe in Christ the Son of God. Never will it be found that anyone who really loves Our Lady as a Divine Saviour dislikes Mary. Those who dislikes any devotion to Mary are those who deny His Divinity or who find fault with Our Lord because of what he says about Hell, Divorce and Judgment.
It is on account of Our Divine Lord that Mary receives special attention and not on account of herself. Left to herself, her motherhood would dissolve into humanity. But when seen in the light of His Divinity, she becomes unique. Our Lord is God Who became Man. Never before or since did Eternity become time in a woman nor did Omnipotence take on the bonds of flesh in a maid. It is her Son who makes Motherhood different.
A Catholic boy from a parochial school was telling a University professor who lived next door about the Blessed Mother. The professor scoffed at the boy, saying; 'But there is no difference between her and my mother'. The boy answered: 'That is what you say, but there's a heck of a lot of difference between the sons'.
That is the answer. It is because Our Lord is so different from other sons that we set His Mother apart from all mothers. Because He had an Eternal Generation in the bosom of the Father as the Son of God and a temporal generation in the womb of Mary as the Son of Man, His coming created a new set of relationships. She is not a private person; all other mothers are. We did not make her different; we found her different. We did not choose Mary; He did.
But why was there a Virgin Birth? Because Christ is the Son of God, we cannot be as indifferent to the circumstances of His Birth as we would be to the birth of the butcher or the baker. If Mary told the Apostles after Pentecost about His Virgin Birth, it must have made a difference; if the Apostles put it in their Creed and teaching, it must have made a difference. Once Christ is accepted as the Son of God, there is immediate interest not only in His prehistory which John describes in the Prologue of his Gospel but also in His history and particularly in His Birth.
Is the Virgin Birth fitting and becoming? The challenge to our faith in the Virgin Birth is not related by anyone (except in the Jewish Talmud) to sinfulness on Mary's part. The challenge concerns the physical possibility of a miraculous process of life. By keeping His Mother absolutely sinless, He has prevented the doubts that His divine paternity from being such that they would wound her heart, her womanly heart. It is impossible for us to imagine or feel, even to a slight degree, the vast ocean of love of Christ for His Mother. Yet if even we were faced with the problem of keeping the miasmic breath of scandal from our own mothers, what would we not do? And it is therefore hard to believe that the omnipotent Son of God would do all in His power to protect His Own Mother? With this in mind there are many conclusions apparent.
No great triumphant leader makes his entrance into the city over dust-covered roads, when he could come on a flower strewn avenue. Had Infinite Purity chosen any other port of entrance into humanity but that of human purity, it would have created a tremendous difficult - namely how could He be sinless if He was born of sin-laden humanity? If a brush dipped in black becomes black and if cloth takes on the colour of the dye, would not He in the eyes of the world have also partaken of the guilt in which all humanity shared? If He came to this earth through the wheat-field of moral weakness, He certainly would have some chaff hanging on the garment of His human nature.
Putting the problem in another way: How could God become man and yet be a sinless man and the Head of a new Humanity? First of all, He had to be a perfect man in order to act in our name to plead our defence and to pay our debt. If I am arrested for speeding, you cannot walk into the courtroom and say; 'Judge, forget it, I will take the blame'. If I am drowning, I cannot save anyone else who is drowning. Unless Our Lord is outside the sin-current of humanity, he cannot be Our Saviour, "If the blind lead the blind then both fall into pit", said Our Lord. If He was to be the new Adam, the new Head of Humanity, the Founder of a new corporation or Mystical Body of regenerated humanity, as Adam was the head of fallen humanity then He also had to be different from all other men. He had to be absolutely perfect, sinless, the Holy of Holies, all that God ever conceived man to be.
Such is the problem: How could God become man and yet be sinless man without original sin? How, in the language of Saint Paul, could He "be like unto us in all things save sin?" How could He be a man by being born of a Woman? He could be a sinless man by being born of a Virgin. The first statement is obvious that He is born of a woman then He shares in our humanity. But how would being born of a Virgin make Him free from original sin?
Now it must never be thought that the Incarnation would have been impossible without the Virgin Birth. Rash, indeed, would be the human mind to dictate to Almighty God the methods that He should use in coming to this earth. But once the Virgin Birth is revealed then it is proper for us to inquire into its fitness, as we are now doing. The Virgin Birth is important because of its bearing upon the solidarity of the human race in guilt. The human race became incorporated to the first Adam by being born of the flesh; incorporation to the new Adam, Christ is by being born of the spirit or through a Virgin Birth: Thanks to it, we see how Our Blessed Lord entered into the sinful race from the outside. Therefore, upon Him the curse did not rest, save as He freely bore it for those whom He redeemed by His Blood. Nowhere do the New Testament writers argue from the Virgin Birth to the Godhead of the Virgin-born. Rather do they argue from it His sinless humanity.
To sum up: in order that Jesus Christ might be a descendant of Adam, he had to be born of a daughter of Adam. But the process of generation and birth of any individual is invisible. The only way to show that this process in the birth of Christ was miraculous was to have its invisible workings develop in a woman agreed by all to be incapable of having experienced the process - a virgin. Joseph, the just man, stood for all humanity when in his heart he questioned the fidelity of Mary. More than any other person he knew how cruel it was to place that doubt even in the face of the most incontrovertible evidence.
He witnessed to Mary's immaculate life and her amiability even before her Son was born. His doubt was settled by Heaven itself. Saint Joseph, more than any other human being on this earth had a right to know the circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus. And just as any husband is the prime witness of the fidelity of his wife, so, too, is Joseph in the case of Mary, his espoused; his testimony establishes for all men her virginity and the miraculous nature of the generation and birth of her Son.
As Reverend Joseph Tennant points out there is a type of this miraculous birth in the story of Abraham and Sarai. When they journeyed down to Egypt, Abraham asked Sarai to say that she was his sister rather than his wife, lest the Egyptians kill him. The Pharaoh took her into his household. How long she lived with the Egyptian king is not indicated but some space of time and the Pharaoh and his household were punished with a sickness because of it. He finally dismissed both Abraham and Sarai from his palace. There is no expression of divine wrath reported in this case. But after God had promised that Sarai would bear a son whose father would be Abraham, it was important that there be no doubt in Abraham's mind or in anybody else about the paternity of Sarai's son.
Some time after the promise, in Gerara, there was danger that the king Abimelech would take her into his harem. With shameful cowardice Abraham permitted it to be done. (He was punished for this when God ordered him to sacrifice Isaac) But God intervened immediately by appearing to Abimelech at night and threatening to wipe out his whole kingdom if he dared to touch Sarai. "And Abimelech forthwith rising up in the night....called for Abraham and said to him, 'What hast thou done to us?'" It was not enough merely to have protected Sarai. Abraham had to know from the lips of Abimelech himself that Sarai was untouched just as Joseph did in the case of Mary. And thus Isaac, the first of the "children of promise" - Galatians 4:28 - and of the miraculous seed of Abraham, was born.
Mary was not sinless because she was a virgin but the best sign of her sinlessness was her virginity. Just as the Gospels prove the humble humanity of Christ by naming among his ancestors Lamech, the boastful murderer, Abraham, the coward, Jacob, the liar, Judas, the adulterer, Ruth, the pagan, David, the murderer and adulterer and many idolatrous kings, showing that He was like to us in all things except sin, so, too, the same Gospels disassociate Mary from all sin in order to show her to be as much as possible, "in the image and likeness of God".
Mary was of the house of David but Christ's relationship to that line is not given through Mary but through Joseph, His foster father. And it had to be that the Mother of God was sinless in order that we might more easily believe that she had flung before the face of the world woman's greatest challenge to sin - the vow of virginity - and kept it and made it bear divine fruit.
We dot not believe that Jesus is God because He was born of a Virgin Mother, as the Apostles and Evangelists did not believe it for that reason alone. We believe in the Divinity of Christ because of the evidence of the Resurrection, the marvel of the Gospel portrait, the growth of the Church, the miracles and prophecies of Christ, the consonance of His doctrine with the aspirations of the human heart. The Virgin Birth is rather related to the manhood of Christ and His separateness from the sin that affected all men who are born of the union of man and woman. Far from treating the Virgin Birth as the dazzling mark of Divinity, the Te Deum regards it as Our Lord's sublime condescension to the lowly conditions of humanity:
When thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man: Thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb. The Virgin Birth is the safeguard of the sinless of the human nature which Our Blessed Lord assumed. The only salvation that is given to men on this earth is in the Name of Him Who as God Himself entered the ranks of sinful men. That no one should ever deny He was a man, He was born like the rest of men from the womb of a woman - a fact that so scandalized Marcion that he said: "A babe wrapped in swaddling clothes is not the kind of a God that I will adore".
In the incarnation, God the Son initiates the process of the recreation of His own earlier and disordered creation by the method of clothing Himself with those very elements within it which had fallen into disarray. For the first time since the Fall of Man, a completely perfected unit of humanity is created in the world. This humanity is united substantially to the very Person of the Son of God.
What do all denials of the Virgin Birth testify? Generally to the subtle attempt to pull down the new order of humanity and the race of the second Adam into the unredeemed world of the old Adam. If a human father supplied the human nature of Christ, then Christ is not the new Adam. The Virgin Birth keeps the Divine initiative of Redemption to God Himself. If the initiation of the new order is given to man, then it is taken from God.
Without the Virgin Birth Our Lord would be entangled in a sinful humanity. With it He is Incarnate in humanity without its sin. By getting rid of the Virgin Birth one seeks to get rid of the Divine initiative within the race of the new Adam. The early heretics doubted the humanity of Our Lord and so they denied that He had a human mother. Modern agnostics doubt the true Divinity so they add a human father to His parentage.
There is never any danger that men will think too much of Mary, the danger is that they will think too little of Christ. Coldness toward Mary is a consequence of indifference to Christ. Any objections to calling her the "Mother of God" is fundamentally an objection to the Deity of Christ. The consecrated phrase "Theotokos", "Mother of God" has ever since been the touchstone of the Christian faith. It was not that the Church then had the intention of expanding Mariology; it was rather that it was concerned with Christological orthodoxy.
As John of Damascus said: "This name contain the whole mystery of the Incarnation". Once Christ is diminished, humanized, naturalized, there is no longer any use for the term "Mother of God". It implies a twofold generation of the Divine Word: one eternal in the bosom of the Father; the other temporal in the womb of Mary, Mary therefore did not bear a "mere man" but the "true God". No new person came into the world when Mary opened the portals of the flesh but the Eternal Son of God was made man. All that came into being was a new nature or a human nature to a Person Who existed from all eternity. It was the Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity Who became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Theanthropos, or God-man, and Theotokos, or Mother of God, go together and fall together.
It will be discovered that so-called Christians who think they believe in the Divinity of Christ but do not believe in Mary as the Mother of God, fall generally into four ancient heresies. They are Adoptionists who believe that Christ was a mere man but after birth was adopted by God as His Son. Or they are Nestorians who held that Mary gave birth to a man who had only a close union with Divinity. Or they are Eutychians who denied the human nature of Christ and hence made Mary merely an instrument in a theophany. Or they are Docetists, holding that Christ's nature was only a phantom or an appearance.Those who are offended at reverence paid Mary if they will analyse their thoughts will discover that they are holding a Docetist or some similar ancient error. Even if they profess the Divinity of Christ in His earthly existence, such people shrink from affirming that His Human Nature is glorified with Him at the right of the Father where He makes intercession for us. As some no longer think of Christ as God, so some no longer think of Christ as glorified Man. If He is no longer Man then Mary is no longer His Mother. But if He is still Man, the relation of Mary to Him extends beyond Bethlehem and Calvary even to His Mystical Body the Church. No one therefore who thinks logically about Christ can understand such a question as: "Why do you speak so often of His Mother?"
The Virgin Birth indeed, was a new type of generation. As our mind begets a thought without in any way destroying the mind so Mary begot the Word within herself without in anyway affecting her Virginity. There are various ways of generating: but the three principal ways are carnal, intellectual and Divine. The carnal is sexual whether it be in animals or in humans. Second is the generation of a thought within the mind. I take the idea of "fortitude". that thought or word (for it is a word even before I pronounce it) does not exist in the outside world. It has neither weight nor colour; nor longitude. Whence came it, then? It was begotten by the chaste generation of the mind.
This intellectual generation is really a feeble image of the spiritual order of the Eternal Generation of the Son by the Father. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God". God thinks a thought or a Word. But God does not think many thoughts or words. He thinks only one Word which reaches to the abyss of all that is known or can be known. That Word is the perfect image of Himself as the Thinker is called the Father as the principle of generation and the Word is called the Son as the term of generation.
God willed that there be another kind of generation which would be neither wholly intellectual nor wholly carnal but which in the order of flesh would reflect His eternal generation in time. God willed to take on a human nature like our own through a Virgin while conserving the Virginity of His Mother and showing precisely that He is the Word of God. As our mind does not alter or destroy itself in the begetting of a thought so neither does the Virginal Body of Our Blessed Mother go through any alteration in begetting Him as the Son of God made man. The Word of God willed that His generation in the order of the flesh and in time be elevated with as close a resemblance as possible to His Heavenly generation.
Christ is a Mediator between God and humanity; Mary is the Mediatrix between Christ and us. Our Lord is a Mediator between God and man. A Mediator is like a bridge which unites two opposite banks of a river except that here the bridge is between Heaven and earth. As you cannot touch the ceiling without a stepladder acting as a mediator so sinful man could not in justice reach God except by One Who mediated and was both God and Man. As Man, He could act in our name, take on our sins; as one of us, He redeems us on the Cross and gives us new life in His Resurrection. But as God, His Words, miracles, and death have an infinite value and therefore He restores more than we lost. God became man without ceasing to be either God or man and therefore is our Mediator, Our Saviour, Our Divine Lord.
As we study His Divine Life, seeing Him as the first refugee persecuted by a cruel government working as a carpenter, teaching and redeeming, we know that it all began when He took on our human nature and became man. If He had never taken on our human flesh we would never have heard His Sermon on the Mount nor have seen Him forgive those who dug His Hands and Feet with nails on the Cross. But the Woman gave our Lord His human nature. He asked her to give Him a human life - to give Him hands with which to bless children, feet with which to go in search of stray sheep, eyes with which to weeps over dead friends and a body with which to suffer - that He might give us a rebirth in freedom and love.
It was through her that He became the bridge between the Divine and the human. If we take her away then either God does not become man or He that is born of her is a man and not God. Without her we would no longer have Our Lord! If we have a box in which we keep our money, we know that one thing we must always give attention to is the key; we never think that the key is the money. Our Blessed Mother is like the key. Without her, we can never get to Our Lord because He came through her. She is not to be compared to Our Lord, for she is a creature and He is a Creator. But if we lose her we cannot get to Him. That is why we pay so much attention to her; without her we could never understand how that bridge was built between Heaven and earth.
It may be objected: "our Lord is enough for me. I have no need for her". But He needed her whether we do or not. And what is more important, Our Blessed Lord gave us His Mother as our Mother. On that Friday men call Good, when He was unfurled upon the Cross as the banner of salvation. He looked down to the two most precious creatures He had on earth: His Mother and His beloved disciple, John. The night before, at the Last Supper, He had made His last Will and Testament giving us that which on dying no man was ever able to give, namely, Himself in the Holy Eucharist. Thus He would be with us as He said: "All days unto the consummation of the world". Now in the darkening shadows of Calvary, He adds a codicil to His Will. There beneath the Cross, not prostrate as the Gospel notes, "stood" His Mother. As a Son, He thought of His Mother: "Behold thy mother".
At last we see illumined the Gospel's description of His Birth, namely, Mary "brought forth her first born and laid him in a manger". Her first born. Saint Paul calls Him the "first born of all creatures". Does that mean that she was to have other children? Most certainly! But not according to the flesh, for Jesus was Her only Son. But she was to have other children by the spirit. Of these John is the first, born at the foot of the Cross, maybe Peter is the second, James, the third, and all of us the millionth and millionth of children. She gave birth in joy to Christ Who redeemed us, then she gave birth in sorrow to us whom Christ redeemed!. Not by a mere figure of speech, not by a metaphor but in virtue of Baptism did we become children of Mary and brothers of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Just as we do not shrink from the thought of God giving us His Father so that we can pray: "Our Mother". Thus the Fall of Man is undone through another Tree, the Cross; Adam through another Adam, Christ; and Eve through the new Eve, Mary.
Born of the Virgin Mary: this is a true statement not only of Christ but of every Christian, although in a lesser way. Every man is born of woman in the flesh as a member of the race of Adam. He is also born of the Woman in the Spirit if he is of the redeemed race of Christ. As she formed Jesus in her body so she forms Jesus in our souls. In this one Woman are Virginity and Motherhood united as if God willed to show us that both are necessary for the world. Things separated in other creatures are united in her. The Mother is the protector of the Virgin and the Virgin is also the inspiration of motherhood.
One cannot go to a statue of a mother holding a babe, hack away the mother and expect to have the babe. Touch her and you spoil Him. All other world religion are lost in myth and legend except Christianity. Christ is cut off from all gods of paganism because He is tied to woman and to history. "Born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate". Coventry Patmore rightly calls Mary: "Our only Saviour from an abstract Christ". It is easier to understand the meek and humble heart of Christ by looking at His Mother. She holds all the great Truths of Christianity together as a piece of wood holds a kite. Children wrap the string of a kite around a stick and release the string as the kite climbs to the heavens. Mary is like that piece of wood. Around her we wrap all the precious strings of the great Truths of our holy Faith-for example the Incarnation, the Eucharist, the Church. No matter how far we get above the earth as the kite may, we always have need of Mary to hold the doctrines of the Creed together. If we threw away the stick we would no longer have the kite; if we threw away Mary we would never have Our Lord. He would be lost in the Heavens like our runaway kite and that would be terrible, indeed, for us on earth.
Mary does not prevent our honouring Our Lord. Nothing is more cruel than to say that she takes souls away from Christ. That could mean that Our Lord chose a mother who is selfish, He Who is Love Itself. If she kept us from her Son we would disown her! But is not she who is the Mother of Jesus, good enough for us sinners? We would never have had Our Divine Lord if He had not chosen her.
We pray to the Heavenly Father, "Give us this day our daily bread". Though we ask God for our daily bread we do not hate the farmer nor the baker who help prepare it. Neither does the mother who gives the bread to her child dispense with the Heavenly Provider. If the only charge Our Lord has against us on judgment day is that we loved His Mother then we shall be very happy!
As our love does not start with Mary so neither does it stop with Mary. Mary is a window through which our humanity first catches a glimpse of Divinity on earth. Or perhaps she is more like a magnifying glass that intensifies our love of her Son and makes our prayers more bright and burning.
God, Who made the sun also made the moon. The moon does not take away from the brilliance of the sun. The moon would be only a burnt-out cinder floating in the immensity of space were it not for the sun. All its light is reflected from the sun. The Blessed Mother reflects her Divine Son; without Him, she is nothing. With Him, she is the Mother of Men. On dark nights we are grateful for the moon; when we see it shining we know there must be a sun. So in this dark night of the world when men turn their backs on Him Who is the Light of the World we look to Mary to guide their feet while we await the sunrise.
***BY VENERABLE / ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN (1895 to 1979)
- WELCOME TO SACRED SCRIPTURE / WORD OF GOD / HOLY BIBLE READER'S COMMUNITY -
Wishing you, 'Happy Reading', and may God, the Father, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ, fills your heart, mind, thoughts, and grants you: The Holy Spirit, that is, Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, Fear of the Lord, and also His fruits of the Holy Spirit, that is, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Trustfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. Amen! God blessing be upon you!
Why do you call Me, "Lord, Lord" and not do what I say?' "Everyone who comes to Me and listens to My words and acts on them - I will show you what he/she is like. He/She is like a man/woman who when he/she built his/her house dug, deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built. But the one who listens and does nothing is like the man/woman who built his/her house on soil, with no foundations: as soon as the river bore down on it, it collapsed; and what a ruin that house became!" - Luke 6:46-49 -
If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ Jesus, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each separate part to work according to it function. So the body grows until it has built itself up, in love." - Ephesians 4:15-16 -
I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now. But when the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself, but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come. He/She will glorify me, since all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said: all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine." - John 16:12-15 -
Your generous contribution and support is profoundly cherish. I sincerely pray that: God blessing be upon you, always. Amen! Bank transfer: Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah - Public Bank Berhad account no. 4076577113 - Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
