Mary Mother of God

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary as the Holy Mother of God, and the New Year as well.  Why is it that we Catholics insist that Mary is the Mother of God?  We do so for three reasons.

1)   We protect the Divinity of Christ

2)    We protect our own nature in and that we are raised up to the Divine nature of God

3)  Because we understand that all our relationships, with both the Church militant and the   Church triumphant are familial.

There are some Christians who shy away from calling Mary the Mother of God or any other title since they think it may impede on Christ or become false worship.  This is not the case or at least as is it needs to be understood.  There are even Catholic who have a hard time with Marian feasts and dogmas for whatever reasons, hopefully I can shed some light on the subject so that we can see that this dogma, “Mary as God’s Mother,” is both reasonable and correct.

All of us agree that Jesus is also God; He has two natures, human and divine.  Both natures are always at work and no one nature supersedes or diminishes the other, both work harmoniously.  Scripture is quite clear, for instance in the Gospel of John it says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” (Jn 1:1)  Later in John it says, “Before Abraham came to be, I AM.” (Jn. 8:58)  Clearly the Gospel of John indicates that Jesus is Divine as do all the Gospels, especially in Jesus’ miracles.  Never once does He ask for help when He performs a miracle and in those miracles He also shows that He is Lord of nature, i.e. walks on water, raises the dead, etc.

If Jesus is Divine and the 2^nd person of the Trinity then He must have always been the 2^nd person of the Trinity even while in the womb of Mary, therefore Mary is the Mother of God.  St. Leo provided a nice little argument from logic proving that the title of Mary as Mother of God is indeed reasonable and logical.  Leo claimed:

If A is the Mother of B

And if B is C

Then A is also the Mother of C

Mary is the Mother of Jesus

Jesus is God

Therefore, Mary is the Mother of God

This is logic 101.

We also have Mary referred to in Scripture, at least implicity as the Mother of God when Mary visits Elizabeth.  Upon Mary’s arrival Elizabeth says to Mary, “And how does this happen to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk. 1:43)  The Jews would never say God’s name out of reverence, the name Yahweh was sacred so they substituted with Adonai, in Greek Adonai is translated as Kyrios, and in English both are translated as Lord.  Another way the passage can read is as, “And how does this happen to me, that the Mother of my God (Yahweh) should come to me.”

It is not just Mary’s title that we protect; again, we protect the Divinity of Christ, for if one claims that Mary is not the Mother of God ones begins to run into major difficulties explaining the personhood of Christ as regards His Divine nature.  We also run into problems of who we are.  Since God became man, God has lifted our nature towards Divinity, we become gods.  The Eastern Churches have a theological concept somewhat lost in the west which is called Theosis, meaning that when we receive saving grace we are becoming what Jesus is, namely divine.  So that there is no misunderstanding, we are not God, though we grow into what He is, i.e. Divine.  St. Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”  In another place we read, “He has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the Divine nature.”  And from the great Church father St. Athanasius who defended the Divinity of Christ at the Council of Nicea from his work “On the Incarnation” says, “God became man so that men might become gods.” (Migne,Patrologia Graeca, 25, 192 B De incarnatione Verbi, 54) 

You can see the intimacy that God has with humankind.  It is one in which He becomes one of us, but also that He resides in us in the most intimate of ways, He mingles His nature with ours.  Mary, His mother shared that in the most intimate of ways, for the Lord’s heart rested in her very womb, hence the new Ark of the Covenant.  And yet, Mary like Jesus does not keep these things for herself, but shares them with us.  She shares her very motherhood with us.  From the Cross Jesus says to Mary, “Behold your son.”  And to his disciple John He says, “Behold your mother.”  C.f. John 19:26-27.  Mary embraces us as a mother, even from the Cross while her own Son is dying.  She does so because she understands that all of us are loved by God and have the Divine spark, but more importantly she loves us, as a dear mother who holds her children close.

Mary is therefore rightly called the Mother of God, not just as another title for herself, but so that we may be able to understand who Jesus is, as well as understanding who we are, all of us are children of God.  It is each day that we become more and more like God for just as God rested in Mary He desires to rest in us and He will in just a few moments when we celebrate the Eucharist.  Therefore, this New Year let us remember that when we receive the Eucharist, we become Jesus’ mother, father, sister and brother, we are becoming like gods.