Theotokos: Mother and Intermediary

Outside of her Divine Son, to whom she cannot be compared in any way, Mary is the most eminent member of the human family.  So what is her relationship to her fellow humans?  She is of course not the “head” of the human race for that dignity belongs only to Jesus Christ, the “second Adam” who restored our lost innocence.  Mary gave birth to her own spiritual and supernatural Head, her own Savior, in the person of Christ.  As such, she also becomes the mother of the Mystical Body of Christ.

She is spiritually the mother not indeed of our Head, i.e., the Savior Himself, from whom rather she is spiritually born…but [the spiritual mother] of His members, i.e., ourselves, because she cooperated in love towards the birth of faithful [Christians] in the Church who are members of that Head; bodily she is truly the mother of that Head.  St. Augustine of Hippo

Mary can also be rightly called an intermediary between God and the world, though not in the same sense as her Divine Son.  Christ’s mediatorship is based on the hypostatic union of the two natures in one person.  The intermediary role of Mary depends entirely on her Divine Motherhood – through which she has a participated and secondary mediatorship deriving its essence and effectiveness solely and totally from the grace of Christ.  Mary’s role as intermediary is not an end in itself, but is merely a means to an end.  Christ is the One True Mediator between God and man.  Salvation is through Christ alone.  Mary always points to her Son – always directs us to Him reminding us to “Do whatever He tells you!” (John 2:5).

In the Fathers of the Church, Mary is often compared to the ladder that Jacob saw in his dream  (Gen 28:12 and following).  She is the ladder by which the Son of God descended to man, and by which man may ascend to her Heavenly Son.    From her was born Jesus, who is called the Christ (Matt 1:16).

Theotokos: The Dignity of the Mother of God

Jesus Christ is one Person.  In the one Person of Christ is two natures – human and divine.  This fact is termed the hypostatic union.  Each nature retains its own unique characteristics and properties.  The two natures are united in one subsistence and one Person.  They are joined in a moral or accidental manner.  The two natures are not comingled or co-mixed.  Nevertheless, the two natures are substantially united.

Mary’s Divine Motherhood may also be regarded from two points of view.  First, there is an objective dignity associated with her as the Mother of God.  Secondly as the Mother of God, Mary receives prerogatives and privileges proper to this very important role she fulfills.  All her special blessings and privileges arise out of her exalted role as the Mother of God.

In the next section of this blog, Mary’s dignity as the Mother of God and the graces attached to her Divine Motherhood will be explored.  First we will look at the objective dignity of her role in salvation history.

The unique dignity of Mary’s Divine Motherhood is expressed in three areas.  The Divine Motherhood confers on her a rank superior to any other creature.  It constitutes her as the very center of the hierarchy of rational creatures.  It makes her a connecting point, an intermediary of sorts, between God and His created universe.

As Mother of God, Mary is in a category all her own.  She ranks higher than all other creatures.

Mother of the Son

As Mother of the Word, Mary has a unique relationship with the Second Person of the Trinity.  As mentioned before, Christ is the true Son of the Eternal Father and His earthly mother.  The dignity of this relationship is beyond any other human experience and is thus beyond human words to adequately express.  The Fathers of the Church tried to express this by applying to Mary certain passages from the Psalms; wherein the beauty of the Ark of the Covenant, the Temple of Solomon, and the great City of Zion are applied to her.  The Ark of Noah, the Ark of the Covenant, the Golden Bowl in the Temple, etc. are all seen as types of Mary – realities from the Old Testament that point to or signify Mary’s role in salvation history.  As the Ark of the Covenant contained the presence and glory of God, so Mary’s womb contained the presence and glory of the Son of God – the God of the Universe condescended to dwell in the womb of the Virgin.

Daughter of the Father

Mary’s Divine Motherhood also entails a unique relation to the First Person of the Trinity.  Mary can claim one and the same Son with God the Father – obviously not in the sense of any divine nature – Mary is a creature and not divine.  But in the human sense, Mary is the mother of the Son of God.  This relationship with the Father is often referred to as Mary’s daughterhood.  It is the theological counterpoint to her motherhood.  It is a prerogative unique to Mary resulting in a special kind of adoption.  God the Father cannot but look upon the mother of His Divine Son with some special pleasure.  She is His adopted daughter who excels all His other adopted children by right of primogeniture.  From this prerogative arise Mary’s titles of “Lady” and “Queen”

Spouse of the Holy Spirit

Christ was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.  There was no cooperation by a human male in this.  The Holy Offspring was truly indeed the Son of God.  In saying “Let it be done to me according to thy word”, Mary freely willingly cooperated in the Incarnation.  In this capacity, she has been called the Spouse of the Holy Spirit.

Thus, Mary is the Mother of the Divine Logos, the daughter of God the Father, and spouse of the Holy Spirit.  What an ineffable mystery.  What a tremendous honor.  What awesome dignity.

The Son endows with infinity the goodness of His mother; if the fruit is infinitely good, the tree too must in a sense possess infinite goodness.    Albert the Great

From the fact that she is the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin has a certain infinite dignity, derived from the infinite Good who is God, and on this account there cannot be anything better, just as there cannot be anything better than God.   Thomas Aquinas

But Mary’s profound dignity must not and cannot be separated from her character as God’s obedient daughter.  Mary submitted totally to the will of God as expressed to her by the angel.  Her whole life was “yes” to the will of God and the mission of her Son.  Without this character, the dignity of her Divine Motherhood would remain in a sense imperfect.  It was for this reason that our Blessed Lord answered the woman who exclaimed; “Blessed is the womb that bore thee,” by saying; “Yea, rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.”   (Luke 10:27 and following)

Theotokos: In Relationship to Christ

The two natures of Christ mean that we can speak of a two-fold sonship of Christ.  As the Son of God, He is eternally generated, begotten, of the Father.  As Son of Mary, He underwent a temporal birth from the Virgin’s womb.   Although having two natures, Christ is One Person.  The Divine Son of God is identically the same as the Human Son of Mary.  The Eternal Word is one and the same as the tiny infant given birth by Mary in Bethlehem.  As such, Mary then truly is the Mother of God.   There are not two Sons of God.  There is only one Son of God.  Jesus, the son of Mary, is the one and same only begotten Son of God.

A question remains about the true nature of Mary’s relation to Christ, the Son of God.  Is this merely a logical relation or is this a real mother – son relation?  The human Jesus’ relationship with His human mother is no doubt as real as any mother-son relationship.  Christ’s relation as a man to His mother Mary then is as real as Mary’s relation to her Son. 

 

But as the Eternal Son of God, Christ’s relation to His human mother is purely logical.  As a self-existing, absolutely independent Being, God cannot stand in any real relation to a creature.  God is really the Lord of His creatures despite the fact that His dominion over them is no real relation.  He is called Lord in a real sense, because of the real power which He exercises.  Similarly Christ is in a real sense the Son of the Virgin because of His real birth from her.

Jesus Christ: True God and True Man

Jesus Christ is true God and true man.  He is not part God and part man.  He is not the result of a confusion or mixture of the divine and human.  Jesus Christ was truly a man in all respects while remaining truly God in all His Divine Nature.

Christ is Son of God by nature and not by adoption.  The Son of God is begotten not made and is of the same substance as the Father.  The Word united to himself in His person the flesh animated by a rational soul and became truly a man.  Christ’s humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God who assumed humanity and made it His own from His conception.  This is why Mary is called the Mother of God.

The Council of Chalcedon in 451 further clarified the truth of Christ.

Following the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity; "like us in all things but sin". He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to his humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation. the distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis.

Everything in Christ’s human nature is to be attributed to his Divine person as its proper subject, not only His miracles but also His sufferings and even His death.  Jesus is inseparably true God and true man.  He is truly the Son of God who without ceasing to be God and Lord became a man and our brother.

Christ assumed, not absorbed, human nature in the Incarnation.  Christ has a human soul with its operations of intellect and will and of His human body.  Christ’s human nature belongs as His own to the divine person of the Son of God who assumed it.  Everything that Chris is and does in this nature derives from one of the Trinity.  The Son of God worked with human hands, thought with a human mind, acted with a human will, and loved with a human heart.  Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly become one of us, like us in all things except sin. 

While truly God, Christ, the eternal Son, also assumed a rational, human soul.  His human soul is endowed with a true human knowledge.  As such, this human knowledge could not in itself be unlimited.  It was exercised in the historical conditions of his existence in space and time.  The Son of God grew in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.  Christ would even have to inquire for Himself about what one in the human condition can learn only from experience.

Christ’s human knowledge expressed the divine life of His person.  His human nature by virtue of its union with the Word knew and revealed in itself everything that pertains to God.  The Son of God made man has intimate and immediate knowledge of His Father.  The Son in His human knowledge showed the divine penetration He had into the secret thoughts of human hearts.  Christ in His human knowledge had a fullness of understanding of the eternal plans He had come to reveal.

As true God and true man, Christ possesses two wills and two natural operations – divine and human.  These are not opposed to each other but cooperate such that Christ willed humanly in complete obedience to His Father all that He had decided divinely with the Father and Holy Spirit for our salvation.  His human will submits to His divine and almighty will.

In assuming a true humanity, Christ’s body was finite.  The individual characteristics of Christ’s body express the divine person of God’s Son.  The Son has made the features of his human body His own.  This is the source of the use of Icons and images of Jesus among the faithful in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian traditions.

Jesus Christ knew and loved throughout His earthly life.  He loved with a human heart with a love with which He continually loves the eternal Father and all humans without exception.  Through Him and His love, we are lifted into the very Heart of the Father in the Holy Spirit.  Christ fully assumed our humanity so that we may fully share in His Divine Life.

Summary of the Cathechism of the Catholic Church paragraphs 464 - 478

The Doctrine of the Trinity

The Trinity is One God.  We do not believe in three Gods, but one God in three persons.  The divine persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; do not share the one divinity among themselves but each divine person is God whole, entire, and complete.

The divine persons are really distinct from one another.  God is one but not solitary.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not simply names designating modalities or operations of the one God.  They are really distinct from one another.  The Son is not the Father.  The Father is not the Son.  The Spirit is not the Son or the Father.  They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin.  The Father eternally generates the Son who is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father through the Son.  The divine Unity is Triune.

The divine persons are relative to one another.  Because it does not divide the divine unity, the real distinction of the persons from one another resides solely in the relationships which relate them to one another.  The names of the Persons contain this relational existence:  the Father is related to the Son, the Son to the Father, and the Holy Spirit to both.  While three person in view of these relations, there is only one nature or substance in God.  Everything in the Trinity is one.  There is no opposition of relationship, no division of nature.  The Father is wholly in the Son and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Son is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Holy Spirit;  the Holy Spirit is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Son.

God is love.  The Father completely pours Himself into the Son.   The Son completely reciprocates and pours Himself into the Father.  The Love between them is the Holy Spirit.  God freely wills to communicate the glory of this Trinitarian life to creation especially humans.  This plan of love was conceived by the Father before the foundations of the world, in His beloved Son.  This plan is a grace given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, stemming immediately from Trinitarian love.  It unfolds in the work of creation, the whole of salvation history after the fall, and the missions of the Son and Spirit which are continued in the mission of the Church.

All the acts and works of God, termed the divine economy, are the common work of the three Divine Persons.  The Trinity has only nature.  The Trinity also has only one operation.  There are not three principles of creation, three creators, but only only one principle, one creator.  However each Divine Person performs the common work according to His unique personal property.  There is one God and Father from whom all things are, and one Lord Jesus Christ through whom all things are, and one Holy Spirit in whom all things are.  The divine mission of the Son’s Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit display the properties of the Divine Persons.

The entire divine economy reveals what is proper to the Divine Persons, and their one Divine Nature.  The whole of the Christian life is a communion with each of the Divine Persons without in any way dividing or separating the One Divine Nature.  Every person who glorifies the Father does so through the Son in the Holy Spirit.  Every person who follows Christ does so because the Father draws him and the Spirit moves him.

The ultimate end of the entire divine economy is the entry of each of us into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity, to have a full share in the Divine Family.  But even in this earthly life we are called to be a dwelling for the Most Holy Trinity.  If a man loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home with him.  John 14:23

Summary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraphs 253 – 260.