The foundation of my house is found in the ground, in Albemarle county. The foundation of my house is neither the ground nor Albemarle county.
IF I said (as I just did) the foundation of my house is found in the ground, and somebody said, "Are you saying your house's foundation is the ground?" you'd think he was being silly.
Yet if I say that this honorific statement is appropriate to Mary because Jesus was found in her - literally so for 9 months, give or take, I am asked to clarify that I do not think that she IN which the foundation is found is herself the foundation. And then, as like as not, i will be accused of rationalizing because I am saying something my accuser never thought of before, in his haste to condemn what he thinks is mariolatry..
It seems that despite the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, many non-Catholics balk at calling Mary the Theotokos -"Mother of God." What's quite understandable about that is that it is am amazing thing to say. The whole Incarnation, the whole work of Christ is more mind-boggling the more one thinks about it.
But, when a big wave comes in, some body surfers run for shore. Others rejoice to be lifted up and swept in by the big wave.
We rejoice to think that a mere creature, herself begotten in a bed, was deemed and made fit by Grace to be the new Ark of the New Covenant, the New Jerusalem in which God Himself was pleased to dwell, the New Dawn heralding the coming of the Light far greater than herself.... and so on.
We see how the beautiful can produce or lead to or 'announce' something even more beautiful, as the beautiful love between husband and wife produces (not without a critical assist from God) a new soul, a new candidate for redemption.
And it gives us delight, we think fitting delight, to find new ways to express this wonderful, generous, miraculous truth.
Because never in a birth about which people rejoice did a mother bring a head to birth without also presenting the body as well, so we think of Mary as our mother, because we comprise the Body of Which Jesus is the Head.
As I thank my wife for her part in producing our daughter, we thank Mary for her part in producing our Savior.
It is a great wave which seems to spend a long time at it's apex, so that we can enjoy for centuries the delight in the gift of God that His son would be one born of women
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Now, will you tell me that Jesus meant himself to be taken literally and exactly when He, born of woman, said no one born of woman was greater than John the Baptist?
I believe it was John’s position and privilege of representing The Messiah who was the fulfillment of the OT and the law, that made John greater than the prophets. And thus “..Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist:...” (Luke 7: 28).