THE DIVINE MOTHERHOOD BY DOM ANSCAR VONIER, OSB
Chapter IV
"HE SHALL BE GREAT" (Luke i. 32).
Both in the case of John and of Jesus the first promise made by the Archangel Gabriel to the respective parents is the future greatness of the offspring. Of John the Angel says that "he shall be great before the Lord". With Jesus the announcement is, of course, vastly more categorical, and the greatness that is foretold is an absolute greatness of person, as He shall be called the Son of the Most High, a thing infinitely above being great before the Lord: "He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Most High . Mary’s divine maternity embraces the whole great Christ Whose name is above all other names.
When we read in the Acts of the Apostles that the disciples of Christ were assembled in the expectation of the Holy Ghost, with "Mary the Mother of Jesus" (Acts i. 14), we may give the phrase its full literal meaning, Mary being then as truly the Mother of Jesus Who had ascended into heaven and Who was to send the Spirit of Love, as she was the Mother of Jesus at the wedding-feast at Cana in Galilee. She knew then that she was the Mother of One Who was great beyond all comparison. But the quality first enunciated by the Angel Gabriel as being the essential feature of her Son, was the one to be revealed last. The divine motherhood appeals to us chiefly in connection with Christ’s littleness. Whenever human art has at tempted the glorious subject of the divine mother hood, it has taken that motherhood at its first period, when the Son of Mary was not great yet, but little. But no artist has ever been capable, or ever will be capable, of giving to us fully the peculiar look of love and hope with which the divine Mother gazed at her Infant Son as the message of Gabriel kept ringing in her ears: "He shall be great. This message ought to permeate all Christian art in its treatment of the Mother and Child. Mary holds in her arms One Who shall be great; nothing will ever prevent His becoming great; she is sure of it, though she may be in doubt as to many things that will constitute His final greatness. She holds up that sweet Child of hers, so helpless, so tiny, and she speaks to us the words of the heavenly messenger: "He shall be great". Nothing appeals so directly to human motherhood as the hope of some greatness for the helpless little child of in articulate speech, Mary’s joy was complete ; it was not a mere hope, it was a divine assurance.
In all our thoughts on the divine maternity we ought to keep constantly before our minds the words with which Gabriel opens the description of the future Son of Mary. Forgetfulness of that great announcement "He shall be great" might lead to certain naturalism in our devotion to the Mother and the Infant.
Between Mary and the Child there is more than the sweet affection between a beautiful mother and her first-born. There is the faith as vivid as the natural love of a mother can be in the child’s incomparable greatness which is to be revealed some day.
Love for the Madonna, artistic presentment of the Madonna, which do not contain and express that feature of the Mother’s faith in the Child’s greatness, fall short of the true Christian view of the divine maternity.
The Catholic love of the Mother of God is essentially a great thing; divine maternity is a master-piece of God’s wisdom, to give pleasure to the keenest and greatest intellect. It is a source of spiritual power ; it is the foundation of an immense hope ; it breeds a love that is strong as death. The divine maternity is a thing full of majesty, and the whole creation stands in awe before the overpowering glory of the blessed vision, the Mother with the Child. Catholic art, in its purer and stronger aspects, has almost neglected the element of natural tenderness between Mother and Child in the case of Mary and the Divine Infant, in order to give full expression to that faith that was in the Mother of Jesus, from the first day, that her Child should be great, that He was great even when reposing on His Mother’s breast.
