Mary, Mother of God

See first: Mary.

It is objected against the Catholic faith on Mary either that it invents what Scripture is silent about, or that it turns away from Christ by a worship rendered to a creature. Yet every truth about Mary answers to Scripture, and all lead back to her Son, whose greatness they confess.

Mother of a person, not of a nature

It is objected that God, eternal and without beginning, can have no mother, and that Mary is only the mother of the man Jesus. But a mother does not bear a nature, she bears someone, a person, and the person Mary conceived and carried is the eternal Son made man. What belongs to one of his two natures is attributed to his person, under whatever name one designates him: one says that the Son of God was born and that he died, although to be born and to die belong to his flesh alone, because it is the same who acts in both natures. Scripture already speaks thus, saying that God acquired the Church “with his own blood.” Acts 20:28 Mary does not give her Son his divine being, but his flesh; she is Mother of God because the one she bears is God. To refuse her this title would separate in Jesus two subjects, the man born of Mary and a God who would remain foreign to him.

Saved more perfectly than all

It is objected that the Immaculate Conception is not read in Scripture, and that Mary herself calls God her Saviour. “And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” Luke 1:47 Yet the angel names her by a word that tells the fullness of grace. “Hail, full of grace.” Luke 1:28 Where English says “full of grace,” the Greek carries a single word, kecharitōmenē (κεχαριτωμένη), a grace already fully accomplished in her before she had done anything. Mary was indeed saved by Christ, and more perfectly than anyone: the other redeemed are raised after falling, she was kept from falling, by the merits of her Son applied beforehand at the instant of her conception. To preserve someone from the abyss is a higher deliverance than to draw him out of it; to call God her Saviour is to acknowledge what he did for her, not to confess a fault.

The brothers of Jesus and the word “until”

It is objected that the Gospels speak of the “brothers of Jesus,” and that a mother of several children could not be ever-virgin. In the language of the Bible, the word “brother” overflows the immediate family and covers all close kinship: the Greek word rendered “brother,” adelphos (ἀδελφός), extends to cousins. Matthew names among these “brothers” James and Joseph. “Are not his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Jude?” Matthew 13:55 Now these two have for mother another Mary, present at the Cross. “Mary the mother of James and Joseph.” Matthew 27:56 It is objected further that Joseph did not know Mary “until she had borne her son.” “he knew her not till she brought forth her first born son.” Matthew 1:25 But “until” sets a term to what precedes without affirming anything of what follows, and Scripture often speaks thus. It is said of Michal that she had no child “to the day of her death” 2 Samuel 6:23 though she had none afterward; and Christ promises to be with his disciples “even to the consummation of the world” Matthew 28:20 without ceasing to be so beyond. The text means only that the child is not Joseph’s. It is objected finally that he is called Mary’s “firstborn,” which would suppose brothers born later. But “firstborn” is a title of the Law, that of the eldest who opens the womb and is consecrated to God, whether or not he has younger siblings: “Sanctify unto me every firstborn that openeth the womb.” Exodus 13:2 The title tells the rank, not a line of descent; Luke gives it to Jesus on the very day of his birth, when no other child could yet have come. “And she brought forth her first born son.” Luke 2:7 The Cross confirms it: having brothers, Christ would not entrust his mother to a stranger disciple; in giving her to John, he shows she has no other son.

Raised because without sin

It is objected that the Assumption is not found in Scripture, and that the Church defined it only in 1950. Yet the decomposition of the body is a consequence of sin. “dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.” Genesis 3:19 Where sin has no hold, corruption has none either: preserved from all sin, Mary bore nothing that called for the rot of the tomb, and her body, which had given its flesh to Christ, was to be raised whole into glory. That the Church defined it late does not make it new: the definition gathers up what the faith held from the first centuries, which already celebrated Mary’s dormition and her elevation to her Son.

The honour that belongs to God alone

On prayer addressed to the saints and the one mediation of Christ, see The Communion of Saints and The Intercession of the Saints and Angels.