A Commentary and Reflection on the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. The Liturgical Sense of the Scriptures Podcast, by Catholic Author and Theologian David L. Gray. READINGS: Numbers 6:22-27, Galatians 4:4-7, Luke 2:16-21.
Through the Liturgy, we are Born Again through the Womb of Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church
The Catholic Church’s dogmatic teaching that the Blessed Mother Mary truly is the Mother of God, the Theotokos requires a faithful assent to this Divine truth: That the Virgin Mary truly is the mother; mother in every natural way to Christ Jesus; the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word that became flesh – flesh through her flesh; meaning that through her womb and DNA, the Blessed Mother truly contributed to the formation the human nature of Him who is the only begotten and beloved Son of God and is consubstantial with His Father. The Second Person of the Holy Trinity is truly related to the Blessed Mother in blood and lineage. Christ Jesus in every way is the son of Mary and in every way the Son of the Eternal Father Almighty without confusion or conflict.
This reality is affirmed in the sacred Tradition of the Church. In the Apostles Creed, which professes that the Son of God was “born of the Virgin Mary,” the declaration against Nestorius, former Archbishop of Constantinople, at the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D., which stated, “If anyone does not confess that the Emmanuel (Christ) in truth is God and that on this account the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God – since according to the flesh she brought forth the Word of God made flesh – let him be anathema.” That is, anyone who teaches that Mary is not truly the Mother of God because from her, Jesus only took His human nature, but not His divine nature, is guilty of the heresy of Nestorius. For, who Mary gave birth to was fully God and fully Man; therefore, she is the Mother of God, the Theotokos. In other words, it is a lie that the Virgin gave birth to a human boy, who became God at some later date.
This reality is affirmed in sacred Scripture: in Isaiah 7:14, which is repeated in Luke 1:31, “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and His name shall be called Emmanuel;” in Luke 1:43 where Elizabeth calls Mary, “the Mother of my Lord;” throughout the Gospel of Matthew where she is referred to as “His Mother;” at the Incarnation event in Luke 1:35 where the Angel Gabriel announced, “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God;” in John 2:1, where it is said, “. . . the mother of Jesus was there,” and in the Second Reading at Mass today from Galatians 4:4-7, saying, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law.”
Therefore, as the Mother of God, the Blessed Mother persists in a dignity far above every other human, angel, and all other created things. For this, all generations will call her blessed, and no human has ever been closer to God than Mary, who carried the Second Person of the Holy Trinity in her womb and gave birth to Him, and dressed Him, and nursed Him and raised him in the world. For this, she is the mother of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and the glorious icon of worthy reception of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ Jesus.
Now, because Mary is the Mother of the body of Christ, it then follows that she is also the Mother of all those who have been adopted into the Body of Christ. Therefore, included in the dignity of the Blessed Mother is that she is the only woman born of the flesh whose life is intimately connected by necessity to the life of the Church; that is, the ecclesiology of our Catholic Church. For this reason, Saint Augustine said, being that the Virgin Mary is truly the Mother of God and of the redeemer, she is “clearly the mother of the members of Christ . . . since she has by her charity joined in bringing about the birth of believers in the Church, who are members of its head.” (Cf. CCC 964 502 LG 53; cf. St. Augustine, De virg. 6:PL 40,399.” To this, Pope Saint Paul VI bestowed upon our Mother the title “Mary, Mother of Christ, Mother of the Church.”
Now, let us continue to press this divine reality into the liturgy itself because if Mary is the Mother of the Church, our speech about the liturgy would be incomplete if we did not speak about how much the liturgy sings of her motherhood and how she participates in forming us through the liturgy, just as she participated in forming Christ Jesus in her womb. Allow me to press this even further. As Christ Jesus was formed in the womb of Mary and, therefore, took on her lineage and chromosomes and many of his natural features, so too does the liturgy form us to be physical representatives of the Blessed Mother in the world so that when the world sees us, they can recognize our Mother and our Father.
I have spoken on numerous occasions in this series about what being formed in the liturgy looks like the rhythm of standing, sitting, kneeling, praying, and confessing and standing, sitting, kneeling, praying, and confessing, and again . . . Yet, if we were to speak of this formation as we would of what takes place in the womb of a woman during the birthing process, in particular the womb of Mary, we could say that this rhythm of formation is just the process of being born again in the world and that the food our Mother is feeding us is truly our daily bread; the food that she has prepared for us is her Son, and the procession to receive Him is a type of umbilical cord that only sin can cut, and in being dismissed from the liturgy – the Ite, Missa est is us being pushed out of the womb and into the world to be who God has created and formed us to be. The beauty in being dismissed from the liturgy, which is the womb of Mary, Mother of the Church, is that we get to return to that womb again, and in her be formed again as babes, and being fed again that divine nourishment, so that we might be born again, and again, and again in Christ, so that we might be made holy and be a service to Him.
This is just one way how the readings at Mass this Sunday connect to the liturgy and how the liturgy is forming us how to live our lives in the world. Be in the world what you have received through the liturgy.
