Today, we celebrate the wonderful solemnity of Mary, the
Mother of God on the first day of the new year of 2012. And it is quite a treat for us to celebrate
this special day on a Sunday, which doesn’t happen very often in our Church’s
liturgical calendar. In today's Gospel, we hear how the shepherds
visit Mary and Jesus in the manger, how Mary pondered all that she heard from
the shepherds in her heart. Through this reading, we see a very human side of
Mary. However, as we celebrate Mary in a
special way today, we might ask ourselves a question about something we as
Catholics might take for granted: Why do
we call Mary the “Mother of God”? Even though this title does not come directly
from the Scriptures, it was commonly used to describe Mary long before it was
defined as a dogma of our Catholic faith at the Council of Ephesus in the year
431.
There was considerable debate in the early Church about the
nature of Christ, about whether he was both fully human and fully divine. At the center of this discussion was a title
ascribed to Mary, because since the early third century, some followers of
Jesus gave Mary the title of “Theotokos,” or God-bearer. I was very fortunate
for having had an entire course in the seminary on the Virgin Mary, taught by
Father Marcello Neri, a Sacred Heart priest from Italy. He emphasized again and again that any title
given to Mary is not given to just glorify her or to tell us only something
about her, but Mary and her titles ultimately point us to Jesus, her Son, and
tell us something about him or about our redemption & salvation that comes
through him.
So, why is it important for us to call Mary “the Mother of
God,” rather than to simply refer to her as the Mother of Jesus? In an important way, the Church insists on
the title “Mother of God” for Mary so as to not to divide or separate Jesus’
divinity from his humanity; the Church does not want to give the impression
that divinity & humanity are two separate & independent parts of
Jesus. By referring to Mary as the
Mother of God, the Church confirms that Jesus is one person that is fully human
and fully divine.
Just as we refuse to separate the humanity of Jesus from his
divinity, we lay the foundation that we refuse to separate Jesus from the body
of the Church, for as the Church, we are truly the Body of Christ. The divine work of Jesus is an integral and
essential part of the human work of the Church; the two cannot be
separated. Jesus shares his divine life
with the members of his Church, as he also shares in our human lives. In the Church, Jesus lives and works, as we
as members of the Church live & work in Jesus. As we give Mary the title “Mother of God,” it
helps us to understand the mystery that we are proclaiming when we say that as
the Church we are the body of Christ. And as we receive the Eucharist today, as
the priest & the Eucharistic ministers distribute the host and pronounce
that this is the Body of Christ, we not only declare the host as the body of
Christ, but we also declare that the person receiving the Eucharist is the body
of Christ as a member of Christ’s Church.
When we think of it in these terms, what a profound theological
statement we make each time we gather around the Lord’s Table to celebrate the
Eucharist to receive the Body of Christ as the Body of Christ.
Mary is the Mother of God, she is our mother, and she is the
mother of the Church. As our mother, as
our intercessor, as the first disciple, Mary brings us ever closer to her
Son. As we honor Mary today as the Mother
of God, we honor her son, we honor the way God is working in her.
No comments:
Post a Comment