Mary the Mother of God

We as Catholics often get a lot of flak from certain other Christians for according far too much importance and respect to Mary. What they don’t seem to understand is that Mary always points the way to her son, Jesus Christ. Focusing on Mary is a helpful way to gain new insight into the mystery of Christ’s saving power in our lives. Every Marian feast, including the one that we celebrate today, points to an important aspect of our salvation in Jesus Christ. These feasts help us, like Mary, to “store up all these things and treasure them in our hearts.” I’d like to begin with a story that I believe will help us understand how today’s feast points to the mystery of our salvation in Jesus Christ.

In an adaptation of Oliver Goldsmiths comedy “She stoops to Conquer,” Princess Kate, falls in love with one of the servant boys, Marlow, who works in the castle of her father, the king. The problem is that Marlow is far too shy to be able to talk to women who are of a higher station in life than he is and so Princess Kate is at a loss as to how to make Marlow return her affections. Knowing that her high station in life as the daughter of a King would prevent any real communication between herself and Marlow, she resolves to disguise herself as a servant-girl in order to be able to win hir heart. Sure enough, when she disguises herself as a servant-girl, Marlow’s tongue is unloosened, and he is now at ease enough in her presence to be susceptible to her charms and falls in love with her. Once Princess Kate is sure of the constancy of his affections for her, she reveals her true identity as the daughter of the King, and after much protest from her family, she is allowed to get married to Marlow.

This adaptation of a 17th century English play might be used as something of a parable to understand the Incarnation. God knowing that God’s own transcendence could be more of a hindrance than a help in us humans developing an intimate relationship with God, decided to “stoop to conquer.” This is effectively what we are told in the great Christological hymn of the second chapter of Philippians: “Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, And being born in the likeness of people” (Phil 2:6). By becoming one of us, Jesus humbled himself and took on our own human form in order to elicit a response of love from us to the great love God has always had for us.

There is one very important way, however, that Goldsmith’s play does not capture the truth of the Incarnation. When Princess Kate took on the appearance of a maidservant, it was a mere pretense, it was simply an act, a piece of deception to facilitate Marlow’s falling in love with her. Once Marlow had fell in love with her, she could discard her disguise and reveal her true identity as the daughter of the King. In the early Church, as theologians tried to make sense of the Incarnation, certain Christian groups adopted an explanation that very much did see Jesus’ role in human history as something of a role-play. They maintained that God did not really “take on human flesh,” but rather simply had the appearance of being human. Having achieved its purpose after the resurrection, God could then simply discard Jesus’ humanity in much the same way as Princess Kate discarded her maidservant clothes. The Second Person of the Trinity, having discarded Jesus’ humanity like an outer-garment, could then reveal Christ’s true identity as God. Thankfully, such accounts of the Incarnation were ultimately rejected by mainstream Christianity and condemned as heresies, the most famous of which were Gnosticism and Docetism.

What does all of this have to do with our feast today? If Jesus only had the appearance of being human, if it was all an act, then Mary could not possibly have been the Mother of God. Even if Jesus Christ was granted to have been human in some form or another, and simply used by God for God’s purposes of salvation, certain theologians were unwilling to grant that Mary could have been any more than the mother of the humanity of Jesus. Ultimately this position was also rejected as heretical, the most famous of which was Nestorianism. The early Church took the bold position of attributing to Mary the title “Theotokos” or “God-bearer,” which then led to her being proclaimed as “Mother of God.” By proclaiming Mary as the “Mother of God” we are making a bold statement about what truly transpired at the Incarnation – that God did not simply come and “put-on” an over-garment of humanity that God could then later discard, but rather that God joined God’s very self in a very permanent and eternal way to the human race. This means that Mary truly bore God in her womb and gave birth to an infant boy that was every bit divine as much as he was human.

This position is vital for how we understand our salvation. In committing to save us, God has committed Godself in an irrevocable way to the human race. Unlike Princess Kate, who knew that she could always simply discard her maidservant’s clothes if her ruse did not pay off, with God there was no ruse, God went all in with Jesus Christ and wedded Godself in an everlasting way our human race. At the Incarnation, Mary became the mother of a new human race, one that had been elevated because of its union with God. It is this humanity that we are all invited to share in through baptism and faith in Mary’s son Jesus. God has taken an incredible risk with us for we are now responsible as Christians for the face of this new redeemed humanity. By the way we love one another and take care of the rest of creation that God has entrusted to us, we either disfigure or enhance the beauty of this redeemed humanity. If we learn like Mary to treasure the face of this redeemed humanity, we will certainly go in the direction of making Christ’s face more radiant as it shines through us, his body, the Church.

Questions for reflection

1. How does my devotion to Mary the Mother of God enhance my appreciation of the salvation we have all received through Christ?
2. When was the last time I saw the radiance of a redeemed humanity shining of the face of one of Christ’s least brothers and sisters?