Mary: Our Mother in the Order of Grace (pg.2)

    Tradition has it that Mary pledged herself to God as a perpetual virgin as a child of twelve years.  Some Protestants object that the gospel of Matthew (1:25) says of St. Joseph that he had no marital relations with her "until" she had born Jesus, but as St. Jerome explains, this usage of the word "until" was common among the Hebrews and denotes only what is done, without any regard for the future.  For example, in Isaiah 46:4, God says, "I am till you grow old."  Who would thereby infer that God will then cease to be?  A good Baptist friend of mine says that everyone knows that Mary had other children after Jesus, but the word "brethren" in Aramaic (the language of the Hebrews after the Babylonian exile) refers to "cousins" as a general term, since there is no word for "brothers" in their language.  Thus Lot is referred to as the "brother" of Abraham in one reference in Genesis, when, in fact, he was his nephew.  But what of James the younger (Less), Joses (Joseph) and Jude, mentioned in Scripture as "brethren" of the Lord?  St. Jerome, the greatest Scripture scholar in the West and translator of the Greek Bible into Latin by 415 A.D. (the Vulgate), wrote, "Suppose that the Brethren of the Lord were Joseph's by another wife?"  But we understand the "brethren of the Lord" to be not the sons of Joseph, but cousins of the Savior, the sons of Mary of Clopas, his mother's sister.  Mary of Clopas, is mentioned in John 19:25 as being at the foot of the Cross with Mary.  St. Augustine wrote:

   It is written [quoting Ez 44:2]: 'This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it.  Because the Lord God of Israel hath entered it . . .' What means this closed gate in the house of the Lord, except that Mary is ever to be inviolate?  What does it mean that 'no man shall pass through it,' save Joseph shall not know her?  And what is this--'The Lord alone enters in and goeth out by it.' except that the Holy Ghost shall impregnate her, and that the Lord of Angels shall be born of her?  And what means this--'It shall be shut for evermore,' but Mary is a Virgin before His birth, a Virgin in His birth, and a Virgin after His birth."

   If Mary had other children, there would be absolutely no reason to think Jesus was any different from those siblings in His origin, i.e., that He was God the Son become man. Thus the perpetual virginity safeguards the miraculous birth, which, in turn, safeguards His special conception, which manifests His eternal pre-existence.

   The Church calls Mary "Mother of God" or Theotokos in Greek, a title formerly granted to Our Lady at the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D.  She is Mother of God because the son she bore is both man and the Son of God. 

The Fathers of the Eastern Church (Orthodox), who shared the same tradition with the Catholic Church until they split in 1054 A.D., refer to Mary as "the All-Holy" (Panagia) and the Church believes she "remained free of every personal sin her whole life long" by the grace of God.  The Saints have testified to Mary's place.  St. Peter Canisius says she alone has the same Son of God as the Father.  St. Irenaeus, whose famous 3d century work "Against Heresy" marks him as a defender of the faith, wrote:

   "Being obedient she became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.  Hence not a few of the early Fathers gladly assert . . . 'The knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary unloosed by her faith.'"

    The Fathers had a saying, "Death through Eve, life through Mary" and referred to Mary as the "second Eve."  Jesus himself, was referred to as the second Adam, by St. Paul, and thus, Mary's cooperation with the grace of God is an essential step in our salvation.  Just as Eve's sin had singular effect upon mankind, so does Mary's cooperation with grace.  St. Bonaventure said that "all the angels in Heaven cry out incessantly to her: 'Holy, holy, holy Mary, Mother of God and Virgin' and that they proclaim the angelic greeting of Ave Marie millions of times per day begging to be honored by one of her commands.  St. Augustine assures us that even St. Michael, the prince of the heavenly court, anxiously honors and serves her. St. Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe in the sixth century, said, "Mary is the ladder of Heaven; for by her God descended from Heaven into the world, that by her men might ascend from earth to Heaven."

   The Church, acting with the authority of the Holy Spirit, canonizes some of the faithful whose heroic virtue and fidelity to God's grace allow them to be declared Saints, models and intercessors for the faithful.  As St. Paul tells us in the beautiful letter to the Ephesians, the Church is "holy" and "glorious," without stain or wrinkle, and as the Catechism points out, we the faithful still strive to conquer sin and achieve holiness, without which we cannot see God (Heb 12:14).  So we can turn to Mary, the first Christian, in whom the Church is already "all-holy."  Mary's pilgrimage of faith on earth allowed her to prevail upon her divine Son, to perform the first miracle at the feast of Cana and ultimately led her to the foot of the Cross on Calvary, where she continued "her maternal cooperation with the Savior's whole mission through her actions and sufferings."  Pope John Paul II in his encyclical, "Mother of the Redeemer," tells us that on Calvary, below the bleeding figure of her Son on the Cross, Mary "underwent a singular transformation, becoming ever more imbued with 'burning charity,' towards all those to whom Christ's mission was directed. . . In Mary's case, we have a special and exceptional mediation [subordinate to Christ's], based upon her 'fullness of grace,' which was expressed in her complete willingness to be the 'handmaid of the Lord.'"  Jesus prepared her to be our Mother in the order of grace.  Hence His pained words on the Cross were not just uttered for John, but for all, when He said, "Behold your mother."  As Pope John Paul II notes, "Mary who had from the beginning given herself without reserve to the person and work of her Son, could not but pour out upon the Church from the very beginning, her maternal self-giving."

   After Jesus ascended to Heaven, her maternal mediation continued and we see her in the upper room with the Apostles praying for the coming of the Holy Spirit, in a spiritual and mystical sense, praying to her spouse.  Mary, no doubt, played a role in the theological sophistication of John's gospel, since she lived with him for some time at Ephesus.  [It is worth noting that Christ entrusted her to John's care which would not have been the case if he had other earthly brothers, which Jewish law required to assume this responsibility].  The Church expresses its faith in her unceasingly love for us by referring to her as Mediatrix of grace, again pointing us to Christ, by whose merits it is made possible.  As the Catechism notes:

   "No creature 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 by 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 manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this one source."

   In 1950 Pope Pius XII [who by the way should also be remembered for his opposition to Nazism in World War II, saving thousands of Jews from extermination] issued the dogma on Mary's Assumption, stating, "The Immaculate Mother of God, Mary Ever-Virgin, after her life on earth, was assumed, body and soul, into heavenly glory."  Mary did experience death, not because she needed too because she was free from the consequences of original sin, including death, but rather, according to St. Francis de Sales, a great defender of the faith during the Reformation, because of her wish to be more conformed to her Son who died for all--hence, a death for love.  She was thus united with Him and in expectation of His second coming, she will return with Him, as Pope John writes, in the maternal role of mediatrix of mercy, "when all those who belong to Christ, 'shall be made alive,' when 'the last enemy to be destroyed is death'" (1 Cor 15:26). 

Belief in Mary's Assumption comes from the early Church, where we see for example, in the "Books of Divine Names," attributed to St. Denis the Aeropagite, who records an account of the a said Hierotheus, who claimed that all the apostles had been divinely alerted to the impending death of Mary and rushed to be with her, only St. Thomas failing to arrive in time.  She was buried, but when St. Thomas arrived, he asked to see Her body, but when the tomb was opened they found only burial shroud and flowers.  The bodies of Apostles and Martyrs who shed their blood for Christ have been preserved and venerated in the Church from the beginning of Christianity.  The remains of St. Peter and Paul are preserved in Rome, but no Christian city or center has ever claimed to possess a bone or any other remain of the Blessed Virgin, which would have been of far greater value and no skeptic has ever found her body, though many have searched for it.  Scripture records that Old Testament saint Enoch, "walked with God; and he was not, for God took him" (Gen 5:24) and notes of Elijah, that he was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot (2 Chr 2:1-13).  Some also believe this was the case for Moses since he appeared at the Transfiguration of Christ with Elijah. [In modern times a number of Saints bodies have been found incorrupt, like St. Therese of Liseux, for example, even after a century].  As Australian theologian Robert Haddad wrote, "The Immaculate Conception, fromed by the Holy Spirit, and which formed the Body of Christ, would not be allowed to see corruption."  Mary's Assumption has been described as "a singular participation in her Son's Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians (Catechism, para 966).

   Detractors of our Blessed Mother often misunderstand Luke 11:27-28, which notes that a "woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him [Jesus], 'Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!'  But he said, 'Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!'"  This was not a "put down" or belittling of his mother, but rather a commendation because Mary's greatness lies in her hearing the word of God and doing it."  Let me close by recommending what will be of great profit for your study, namely, Genesis 3:15, the Proto-Evangelium or first gospel, which prophesies the crushing of the head of Satan by the seed of the woman, Mary.  This is fulfilled in Jesus.  The second is Revelation 12, which after ending the previous chapter by a mention of the long missing ark of the Covenant, speaks of the "woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars . . . "  This is the Lady that the Church refers to as the Queen of  Heaven, whose queenly reign is not one of power and pomp, but rather one of humility and total self-giving.  This is not a defined dogma of the Church,  but there is a Biblical foundation for it and many references to it in the early Church Father's writings.  These two passages hold much of the mystery of our faith.  Remember not to approach them with an "either-or" attitude but rather with a "both-and" approach.  The symbolism and prophetic imagery of Revelation 12 refers to Mary, then the Church, now to Mary the Mother of believers and image of the Church.  It carries a double signification, which the early Church Fathers frequently attached to Scriptures. 

In his 1987 encyclical Redemptoris Mater, Pope John Paul II writes, "Thanks to his special bond, linking the Mother of Christ with the Church, there is further clarified the mystery of that "woman" who from the first chapters of Genesis until the Book of Revelation, accompanies the revelation of God's salvific plan for humanity.  For Mary, present in the Church as the mother of the Redeemer, takes part as a mother in that 'monumental struggle against the powers of darkness' which continues throughout human history.  And by ecclesiastical identification as the "woman clothed with the sun" (Rev 12:1), it can be said that in the Most Holy Virgin the Church has already reached the perfection whereby she exists without spot or wrinkle'" (Eph 5:27). Much more has and could be said of Our Lady, but suffice to end with the thought that she is indeed our mother in the order of grace.  Thanks be to God!                    

Return to Home Page

Take me to Questions and Answers