Posted on 12/16/2007 4:05:55 PM PST by NYer
God has a mother and she was chosen before the beginning of time.
This is an amazing belief, one that is sometimes mocked and often misunderstood, and misrepresented, sometimes even by Catholics. Yet this truth is at the heart of Advent and Christmas–as well as at the heart of the entire Christian Faith.
This belief is also captured in a short phrase in the Hail Mary: "Holy Mary, Mother of God." They are just five simple words, but words bursting with mystery and meaning. They tell us many things about Mary and about the Triune God and His loving plan of salvation for mankind, in which Mary has such a significant place.
Mary is holy. To be holy is to be set apart, to be pure, and to be filled with the life of God. The call to holiness, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, is summarized in Jesus' words: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt 5:48; CCC 2013). Mary's holiness comes from the same source as the holiness that fills all who are baptized and are in a state of race. But Mary's relationship with the Triune God is unique, as Luke makes evident in his description of Gabriel appearing to Mary:
And the angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God" (Lk 1:35)
Possessing perfect faith, itself a gift from God, Mary was overshadowed by God the Father, anointed by the Holy Spirit, and filled by the Son. She was chosen by God to bear the God-man, the One in whom the "whole fullness of deity" would dwell (CCC 484). Completely filled by God, she is completely holy. Chosen by God, she is saved. Called to share intimately and eternally in the life of her Son, she was, the Catechism explains, "redeemed from the moment of her conception" (CCC 49) and "preserved from the stain of original sin" (CCC 508).
The Pentateuch contains the account of how God chose a small, nondescript nomadic tribe, the Hebrews, to be His "holy people" for "His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth" (Deut 7:6). Many years later, in the fullness of time, God chose a young Jewish woman from a place of little consequence to be the Mother of God. This, in turn, would result in the birth of the Church, which Peter describes as a "chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession" (1 Pet 2:9).
Mary, faithful and holy, is chosen so that others can also be chosen and made holy, transformed by her Son into the sons and daughters of God and joined to the Body of Christ. Mary "is the Virgo fidelis, the faithful virgin, who was never anything but faithful," writes Fr. Jean Daniélou, "whose fidelity was the perfect answer to the fidelity of God; she was always entirely consecrated to the one true God."
It has been said many ways and in many places but bears repeating that "Mother of God" is the greatest and most sublime title that Mary can ever be given. It sums up all that she is, all that she does, and all that she desires. The title of Theotokos ("God-bearer", or "Mother of God"), far from being some late addition to Church teaching, is rooted in Scripture and the Advent story. The Catechism explains that Mary was "called in the Gospels 'the mother of Jesus'" and that she "is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her son, as 'the mother of my Lord'" (CCC 495).
Mary, the Mother of God, is also the first disciple of her Son, the God-man. She is also the New Eve, whose obedience and gift of her entire being overturns the sin and rebellion of the first Eve. Her Son is the New Adam, who comes to give everlasting, supernatural life and heal the mortal wound inflicted by the sin of the first Adam (cf. 1 Cor 15:45).
The lives and the love of the New Adam and the New Eve fill the season of Advent. Mary quietly and patiently calls all men to Bethlehem to see and worship the Christ Child. Jesus waits for mankind to recognize Him as Lord and Savior. But He doesn't just wait for us; He comes to us. But His coming awaits completion, both in our individual lives and in the life of the world. Which is why James, in today's epistle, writes, " Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. . . . . You too must be patient. Make your hearts firm,because the coming of the Lord is at hand" (Jas 5:7-10).
Fr. Daniélou explains beautifully this paradox of Advent, of Jesus having come already and yet coming still:
"We live always during Advent, we are always waiting for the Messiah to come. He has come, but is not yet fully manifest. He is not fully manifest in each of our souls; He is not fully manifest in mankind as a whole; that is to say, that just as Christ was born according to the flesh in Bethlehem of Judea so must He be born according to the spirit in each of our souls."
Although young, poor, and faced with incredible challenges, Mary waited patiently on the promises and the coming of her Lord and Son. The Catechism says that because Mary "gives us Jesus, her son, Mary is Mother of God and our mother; we can entrust all our cares and petitions to her: she prays for us as she prayed for herself: 'Let it be to me according to your word.' By entrusting ourselves to her prayer, we abandon ourselves to the will of God together with her: 'Thy will be done.'" (CCC 2677). That is indeed the perfect prayer, from the perfect woman and mother, for Advent: "Thy will be done."
God’s grace redeems the Virgin
The Church recently celebrated the great Feast of the Immaculate Conception, situated to draw Catholics more deeply into the mystery of God's grace, Mary's faith, and the plan of salvation. Although not formally defined as a doctrine of the Catholic Church until 1854 by Pope Pius IX, belief in Mary's sinlessness goes back to the earliest centuries of the Church and is rooted in Scripture, especially the first chapter of Luke's Gospel.
In the encyclical Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX formally stated the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception:
The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin. [135 Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus (1854); CCC 491]
Although the Eastern Orthodox recognize and celebrate Mary's sinlessness, many Protestants do not. Some, in fact, take great offense with this belief, insisting that it makes light of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, and that it implies that Mary is more than a creature, perhaps even equal to her Son.
But the Church makes very clear that Mary's Immaculate Conception is a gift of God. After all, Mary was "redeemed from the moment of her conception," making it difficult for her redemption to be her own work. And Pope Pius IX's definition strongly states that the Immaculate Conception was "by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God" and by the work and merits of Mary's Son. Sadly, some Christians not only reject this truth, they even resort of saying that Mary "not special" or "not worthy of praise"–even though Mary, inspired by the Holy Spirit, declared that "from this time on all generations will count me blessed" (Lk 1:48).
John Cardinal Newman once noted that Catholic beliefs about Jesus and His Mother are intimately connected and cannot be torn apart from one another. "Catholics who have honoured the Mother, still worship the Son," he wrote, "while Protestants, who now have ceased to confess the Son, began . . . by scoffing at the Mother." It is a cautionary statement that all Christians, including Catholics, should take to heart during the Advent season.
“No more of an automaton than Eve, who was also created sinless.”
True, but Eve was not “preserved” sinless as the Latins would have it Panagia was.
R, your point, of course, is perfectly patristic. The Most Holy Theotokos is indeed the Second Eve. The IC adds nothing to what The Fathers taught in that regard.
“You know that’s not what I meant! :-P”
Good. Because any more of that and you were going to be sent off to your spiritual father for 10,000 metanoias! :)
K., Catholic theology doesn't claim that the Blessed Mother was incapable of sin. It was indeed "an exercise of her free will in responding to God" and a perfect response to His grace. She was preserved from some of the effects of original sin (concupiscence), making that perfect response easier for her than it is for us. But it was still her response, and there was nothing "automatic" about it.
OTOH, Our Lord is ontologically incapable of sin, because He is God and God cannot be the subject of the verb "to sin", more-or-less by definition.
Thanks!!! Just COMMON SENSE would dictate that the MOTHER of GOD HAD to be SINLESS! It boggles the mind that any reasoning person could think it could just be any old sinner. I hate that the Protestants diss the Saviour’s MOTHER like they do.
Thanks!!! Just COMMON SENSE would dictate that the MOTHER of GOD HAD to be SINLESS! It boggles the mind that any reasoning person could think it could just be any old sinner. I hate that the Protestants diss the Saviour’s MOTHER like they do.
ME TOO!! I’m Catholic....what are you???
I pray for you at Heaven’s Gate when you have to answer for your hard-headedness against His MOTHER.
Thick....it means all, BUT Mary were born with Original Sin and VERY capable of having the Morality of Britney Spears.
My sole rests squarely on Jesus Christ, and his sacrifice for all humanity. I thank you for your prayers, but his highly favored human birth mother has absolutely nothing to do with salvation of any person.
Steady now. It wasn’t that long ago that the doctrine was defined and there was a lot of discussion, centuries of discussion, before any settled agreement arose on the very problem many Protestants not unreasonably pose.
COMMON SENSE.
The pope has in several books, taken pains to advocate the need to go back to the fathers. He also has pointed out that the Judaism of Our Lord time was greatly affected by the Greek-Jew relationship, which was both antagonistic and symbriotic. Josephus is a great if flawed example of a Phrarisee who is hellenized but not. Modernist scholars came up with the idea that the Gospel were produced late in part because they were written in Greek. Since Paul wrote—so as we know exclusively in Greek, and since Acts recounts the squabbling between the Hebrew and the Greek Jews in the Jerusalem, and since all evidence shows that the whole of the Holy land was colonized, with rich Greeks and rich Jews holding estates in the land, why not just assume that the place was bicultural, and likewise the Church. Furthermore, given the proximity of Nazareth of a Greek City, there is no reason to deny emphatically that He spoke Greek, even though his mission was to “Hebrew-speakers.” especially since it is like that his family were among the colonizers from Judah?
Where? I haven't seen any of that stuff in a LONG time!
:-)) <- double chin
OMG!! You ARE joking.....right??? SHe’s the MOTHER of GOD!!! Full of GRACE means SINLESS.
Our Protestant brothers and sisters (for such they are even if they deny it -- or if, as some of us do, we deny it) love the Lord whom we love. They are rightly concerned in placing all their hope in the Salvation IHS wrought and in giving God all the glory.
It is not just their failing but ours as well that we have not made our blessed Mother's case as well or as persuasively as it might be made. It does not honor her -- or, to be practical, increase the chance that they will honor her as we would like -- if yell at them for not seeing the matter as we do.
For me, that God has chosen to share His love for us in so many wonderful ways increases my joy and the thanks I offer Him. A bad argument gets my dander up, as does gratuitously offensive language (unless the argument or language are mine, in which case they are not only understandable but ,of course, meritorious). But when a good, purposeful, devout person rejects what seems to me to be a wonderful and joyous gift of God to his children, when they miss, as it seems to me, such a wonderful instance of "Grace upon grace" or of "shaken down, pressed together, running over" I think the problem is how to be more persuasive, not more emphatic.
It's probably just my problem.
One of my favorite quotes:
“Never apologize for the Blessed Virgin Mary!” ~~Mother Angelica
Again, not tyring to persuade, but rather to clarify.
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