THE DIVINE MOTHERHOOD BY DOM ANSCAR VONIER, OSB
Chapter III
THE MEASURE OF THE DIVINE MOTHERHOOD
The message of the Archangel Gabriel to Zacharias, the husband of Elizabeth, contains a full description of the character and career of the child that would be born of her : "For he shall be great before the Lord, and shall drink no wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. And he shall convert many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias: that he may turn the hearts of the fathers unto the children, and the incredulous to the wisdom of the just, to prepare unto the Lord a perfect people" (Luke i. 15 17).
The measure of the praise bestowed on the child to be born is also the measure of Elizabeth’s motherhood: she is to be truly the mother of one so great that his greatness surpasses all that has gone before in the spiritual history of Israel; Elizabeth is the mother of the Precursor, and her maternity stretches as far as the career of the Precursor. The parents of John shall have joy and gladness in the greatness of their son: for this is a universal law of human parenthood that the career of any man, however great, is a true glory for the father and mother of that man; human parenthood embraces the whole mortal career of the offspring.
The heavenly messenger entrusted by God with the task of announcing the glories of the two maternities, that of Elizabeth and that of Mary, keeps the same order on both occasions: he begins with the praise of the promised offspring, in order to show to what an extent the parents, privileged by God, are honoured ; he gives the measure of both motherhoods by describing the careers of the sons. So we have the wonderful message to Mary, the parallel of that other message delivered to John’s parent: "Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father, and he shall reign in the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end (Luke i. 30 33).
Elizabeth’s motherhood, already so important to our true understanding of the reality of the Incarnation , through its intimate association with Mary’s motherhood, does Christian theology a most valuable service by giving it, by way of a comparison, the measure of Mary’s motherhood. Mary is Mother to the extent of the description of her Son’s career given by Gabriel, just as Elizabeth’s motherhood embraces the life of the Precursor. John’s career, vast and exalted as it is, is of a definite character; Elizabeth is welcome to all its glories. The career of Jesus stretches beyond all bounds; it embraces eternity: "And of his kingdom there shall be no end." Mary’s motherhood stretches as far, is co- extensive with it. She is truly the Mother of One Whose kingdom has no termination. In virtue of that sweet parallelism between Mary’s motherhood and Elizabeth’s motherhood which God’s wisdom has inserted into the very origin of Christianity, we take Gabriel’s description of Christ’s character and mission for a measure whereby to estimate the extent of Mary’s maternity: Mary is from the very beginning the Mother of One Whose kingdom is eternal. So the divine motherhood of Mary is eternal, not temporal, in character. Gabriel’s description of the Child to be born of Mary contains, as in an angelic summary, the whole greatness of Jesus : He is the Son of God ; He is heir to all the promises of Israel ; He is immortal. To all that immensity of glory and greatness Mary is welcome, as the true Mother; she may rejoice in it all, she may take pride in it all, it is all part of her mother hood. She is to be the Mother of One Who is great: "He shall be great", as Elizabeth was to be the mother of a great one. Both mothers have that privilege. But when the Angel proceeds to develop the respective greatness of John and Jesus, from the sphere of finite things in the case of John he soars to the infinite in the case of Jesus, and Mary’s motherhood soars up with him.
Elizabeth’s motherhood does not go beyond John’s mortal career. The pure spirit of John, after the great prophet’s martyrdom at the hands of Herod, is not the son of Elizabeth. But the risen Christ is the Son of Mary, and the resurrection of Christ is part of Mary’s motherhood, part of all that was promised her when she was promised a Son Whose kingdom shall never have an end.
Mary’s divine motherhood then differs from all other motherhoods, that of Elizabeth not excepted, in this important characteristic that her maternity bears relation to One Who is eternal through the very principles of life that have their beginning in Mary’s womb. As Jesus could never be made to see corruption, "for neither was he left in hell, neither did his flesh see corruption" (Acts ii. 31) and this through the very laws of His divine being, Mary is Mother to Him uninterruptedly, as long as there is identity and continuance of the body which He took from her. His death, in virtue of the divine being that was in Him, never meant the least interruption of His personal existence, never meant the least breaking up of the elements of that bodily organism that had first been framed in Mary’s womb. No other mother can claim such continuance of the life she first gave and fostered. The death of Jesus on the Cross could be no interruption of that relationship of nature which existed between Mary and her divine Son from the hour of His conception by her. The resurrection in our Lord’s case is something more than the coming back to life of a dead man ; it meant for Him this other marvel, that His personal existence had never been suspended, in virtue of the Hypostatic Union; soul and body, though separated through death, were united in the one divine Person of the Word.
So it would not be enough for us to say that the resurrection gave back to Mary her Son; we ought to say that even in death Jesus was truly Mary’s Son, for since He was also the Son of the Most High, His Sonship, both with regard to His heavenly Father and His earthly Mother, could suffer no eclipse. The measure therefore of the divine motherhood is infinitude and eternity. Gabriel on the part of God promised Mary a Son of infinite excellency, Who would be called the Son of the Most High, and Who would have eternal duration of life; her motherhood then necessarily has all these characteristics.
