Mother of God and our

Mother

by Father Mathurin of the Mother of God It is with great joy in our hearts that we are gathered here to celebrate the feast of the Divine Maternity of Mary, Mother of God and our Mother.

A little History

In the very first centuries of the Church, it was the custom to call the Blessed Virgin Mother of God and to invoke Her by that name. But also very early, the devil attacked this prerogative of the Blessed Virgin: the Divine Maternity, the most extraordinary favor that could be granted to a creature. The noteworthy privilege of being conceived without the stain of original sin was granted to Mary precisely because She was to become the Mother of God. Around the year 428, the heresiarch Nestorius was established by intrigue on the Patriarchal See of Constantinople. Nestorius advanced the theory that in Jesus Christ there were two persons: a human person and a divine person. According to him, it was the human person of Jesus who had incarnated and had suffered, whereas His divine person had remained in heaven. Now, the Faith teaches us that there are two natures in Jesus Christ – human nature and divine nature – but that they are in the one Person of the Son of God. The heresy of Nestorius concerning the Person of Jesus Christ likewise attacked the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in Her Divine Maternity. It was claimed that She was not the Mother of God; She was the Mother of only the human person of Jesus. The Church condemned this heresy: here are the circumstances surrounding that condemnation. One day, a priest under Nestorius openly professed that there were two persons in Jesus Christ. This erroneous sermon created a great division in the city of Constantinople. The Emperor and the upper class sided with Nestorius but the common people opposed the idea, for they realized that this teaching did not conform to Christian belief. The heretical propositions of Nestorius were then opposed by a number of holy people, notably Saint Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, who wrote several letters to refute the error. The situation worsened, and a Council was convoked at Ephesus. That was in 431. Along with Saint Cyril of Alexandria, this Council declared, “If anyone does not confess that the Emmanuel (Christ) is truly God and that, for this reason, the Blessed Virgin is truly the One who brought forth God – for She gave birth according to the flesh to the Incarnate Word issued from God – let him be anathema.” The general councils that followed have repeated and confirmed this doctrine.

Our Mother

We always feel slightly handicapped when we want to speak of the great attributes of Mary. Our reason can scarcely draw near to the great mysteries worked in Her. The most touching thing is to be able to say, in truth, “Mother of God and our Mother.” On the cross, Jesus gave us the Blessed Virgin as our Mother when He said to Saint John the Apostle, Behold your Mother, and to the Blessed Virgin, Behold Your son. 1 Mary is the Mother of Jesus Christ, who is the Head of the Mystical Body, and all Christians are members of that Body, 2 as Saint Paul says. Now, mothers give birth not only to the head, but to the whole body. Therefore, if the Blessed Virgin is the Mother of Jesus, Head of the Mystical Body, She is also the Mother of all the members of that Body. These are not simply stylistic devices, but a reality. We are truly children of Mary. She is our Mother. Hideous as I may be, and sometimes ungrateful as well, the Blessed Virgin is my Mother! She has the motherly attentions for me that She had for Jesus. She takes an interest in the fate of all Her children. We are not on the same footing as Jesus Christ, of course, but we are the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, heirs indeed of God and joint heirs with Christ, 3 as Saint Paul says. Therefore, on several accounts we are children of Mary. We have the Mother of God as our Mother: we must truly profit from this immense privilege to the maximum. Our Mother is all-powerful, She has a Mother’s power over God. We can ask Her for everything we need. She will intercede with Jesus for us: “My little Jesus, You are My Son, but I have other children too; and they are in so much trouble! It’s no joke; they have so many weaknesses!” Jesus knows all that, but when the supplication comes from His Mother’s lips, He cannot refuse to give His grace. My brothers and sisters, this truth should encourage us to have constant recourse to Mary. Do we really know how to profit from the power we have in our hands, wretched and imperfect as we may be? Entire books have been written on the devotion of the three Hail Marys. Many pages relate the miraculous conversion of rogues, thieves, wicked people who denied and blasphemed against God, deliberately trampled Him underfoot, and worse yet, led other souls into sin. Even so, the Blessed Virgin saved them. Why? Because following upon a promise made to their mother or to a friend, those wretches remained faithful to reciting three Hail Marys each day. If Mary has deigned to work wonders in consideration for a little devotional practice which was sometimes accomplished just to get it over with, imagine what She will do for Her children who really love Her and who, despite all their miseries, constantly have recourse to Her. What will She not do for such souls? What graces will She not shower upon them? You have to practice this recourse to Mary to experience its effects. Some people are afraid that devotion to Mary is harmful to the devotion we owe to Jesus. That is a misconception of Marian devotion. There is no rivalry in heaven. It is not like on earth: if someone becomes interested in a third person, we sometimes feel slighted, we tend to become jealous. In heaven it is just the opposite: the more the Blessed Virgin is honored and prayed to, the more Jesus Her Son is pleased. She is the Mediatrix of all grace, the One who intercedes for us with Her divine Son. Furthermore, it is the desire, the Will of Jesus Christ that we have recourse to Mary, for He has established Her as the Dispensatrix of His grace.

True devotion

True devotion to Mary consists above all in the imitation of Her virtues. It is true that Mary was conceived without sin; consequently, the practice of virtue was easier for Her than it is for us. Nevertheless, She underwent situations that were incomparably painful, and Her acceptance of suffering proved to God the extent of Her love for Him. In spite of Her exemption from original sin, She maintained Her free will and could have not corresponded to the inspirations of God. If we love the Blessed Virgin, we must seek to discover Her qualities, Her profound sentiments, in order to imitate them. What did my good Mother do when She lived here on earth? How did She act? Very few passages in the Gospel speak of the Blessed Virgin: we must ponder them well, enter into them to discover our Mother. She kept all these things carefully in Her heart. 4 In today’s liturgy, the Church has us read the Gospel of the loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple. 5 We see Saint Joseph and the Blessed Virgin on their way back from Jerusalem to Nazareth, each one traveling in a different group, and each one thinking that Jesus was in the other’s company. After a day’s walk, Mary and Joseph realized that Jesus was not with them. For three days of endless anguish they sought their Jesus. The Mother of God did not know where Her Incarnate God, Her Son, could be! She looked for Her Treasure without knowing whether She would ever find Him again. The Blessed Virgin lived in great mystery, inexpressible sorrow. And good Saint Joseph must have also suffered terribly! At last the Mother of Sorrows entered the Temple and saw Her Jesus! My Son, why have You behaved this way with us? Your father and I have been seeking You in sorrow! From our standpoint, Jesus’ reply was not of a nature to put any balm on the wound: How is it that You sought Me? Did You not know that I must be about My Father’s business? And the Gospel concludes, saying, And they did not understand the word that He spoke to them. 6 Those are very strong words! The Blessed Virgin, who knew Her Son better than anyone ever knew Jesus, did not understand! Let us learn a concrete lesson from this episode, my brothers and sisters. The Blessed Virgin had boundless wisdom, She had never offended God; yet She had to undergo this trial without understanding. And we who are such limited creatures, we who offend God, would like to understand everything that happens in our life. As soon as painful things happen that we do not understand, we ask ourselves a whole host of questions: “Why this? Why that?” We start dissecting the contradiction that is making us suffer, the providential event that has crossed our path. Instead of remaining silent and humbly accepting suffering, we start to complain – and it can even go to the point of blasphemy. We want to understand everything, analyze everything. Why? Because the “me” was contradicted, and because we do not love God enough to accept what He offers us. We lose our peace of soul, sometimes for quite a while... My brothers and sisters, in these difficult situations, let us think of the Blessed Virgin, let us ask Her to give us Her dispositions of soul. It is not for nothing that this episode was narrated in the Gospel. The Blessed Virgin probably related it to Saint Luke so that he would write it down, wanting this example to serve as a lesson for us. It is almost as though the Blessed Virgin were saying to us, “You see? I am the Mother of God, and with all the great privileges God had granted Me, I did not understand. And why should you?” God does not want us to understand everything, He wants us to walk in faith like our Mother, who walked upon Her way in silence. This Gospel should be a subject of serious meditation, a deepening of awareness for us: everything that happens in our life is permitted by God, one way or another. We must accept it in silence: silence of the lips, and above all silence of the heart. 7 Why do we complain and murmur so much? Jesus says that sin comes from the heart. What comes out of our mouth is a feeble reflection of everything that is going on inside, because there are many contradictions that we do not willingly accept. I am truly grateful that the Church has presented this Gospel of the loss of the Child Jesus to us on the occasion of the feast of the Divine Maternity of Mary, as though this was the circumstance that most revealed the Mother of God to us. There are many revelations on the hidden life of the Blessed Virgin, but the example illustrated in this Gospel is stronger still. Mary is the One Jesus loves the most, He can refuse Her nothing; yet in His “escapade,” He treats Her in a way that seems harsh to us. As the Coredemptrix along with Her Son, She had many sufferings to bear. If we want to be saviours of souls, we too must accept suffering, without understanding. My brothers and sisters, let us encourage ourselves to practice recourse to Mary. She is prompt to grant us what we ask of Her. Let us implore the Blessed Virgin Mary on this day of Her Divine Maternity, the day in which She gives us such a great lesson of humility, to help us understand the necessity of the indispensable virtue of faith. May She obtain for us above all to live in humility. She will work miracles for us if we have recourse to Her in earnest. She holds Her Son, Almighty Power itself, in Her arms. She is the Mother of God and our Mother!