THE DIVINE MOTHERHOOD BY DOM ANSCAR VONIER, OSB
Chapter IX
THE TWOFOLD BIRTH OF THE SON OF GOD
Birth is the only event in Christ’s career of which it can be said that it took place twice, once in eternity, and once in time. With no other circumstance in the history of the Son of God can we use this clear cut distinction as to the epoch or the duation, such as we attribute to the circumstance of birth; He was born twice over, in all correctness of language.
Suppose a man should run two races, with an interval of time between the two events; it would certainly be against all logic and all truth to say that it was only one race because it was the same person who ran twice. So it would be against all the laws of thought to say that Christ has only one birth, because the same Person, Christ, is born on both occasions.
The simile comes from St. Thomas himself (Summa q. 35, a. 2). The holy Doctor adds that there is vastly more reason for making one and the same Christ have two distinct births than to say of one and the same man that he ran two races when there was an interval of time between the two efforts; in Christ’s birth there is the distinction between time and eternity, not only between time and time as in the case of the runner. One of Christ’s births is only in eternity and can only be in eternity; the other birth is in time, in finite duration and can only be in finite duration. It is this radical distinction of epoch that makes birth with the Son of God a twofold event, a double splendour, a most blessed repetition of a joyful moment. With regard to birth, then, we say very truly that the one and the same Person, Christ, is born in eternity from the Father, and in time from Mary. Christ has manifestly two birthdays. The whole divine Person, the Son, is born from the Father; the whole divine Person, the Son, is born at Bethlehem from the Virgin.
The first birth of the Son of God is thus described in Psalm 109. "With thee is the principality in the day of thy strength: in the brightness of the saints: from the womb before the day-star I begot thee." The narrative of the second birth has gladdened the hearts of all Christian generations; it is the earliest supernatural impression which the Christian infant receives, and no scene has so captivated the imagination of millions as does Christ’s crib, with its angels and its shepherds. The words that are the counterpart of David s marvellous vision in the psalm of the eternal birth are nearly as few and as succinct as in that oracle, though they be a narrative, not a prophecy: "And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger" Luke ii. 7). The contrast between the two births of one and the same Son of God has been the theme of the preachers of all times As I am concerned exclusively with the theme of the divine motherhood, it is incumbent on me here to point out, not the external contrasts in the circumstances of the two births, but the similarity which is established between Mary and the Eternal Father through this, that Christ is as truly born from Mary as from the Eternal Father.
All created perfection is a ray from God’s own light; it is a resemblance of God. No higher metaphysical explanation can be given of the meaning of the universe than to say it is a resemblance of God, that its ultimate destiny is to represent Deity in a finite way. The generation of the Word, the birth of the Son from the Father would seem to belong too exclusively to God’s inner life to be communicable to the created universe, to have any resemblance in the realm of nature and grace. Mary is God’s resemblance in this adorable thing, the birth of the Son, the second Person of the Trinity. When we meditate on the Incarnation there is a mental danger against which we have to be on our guard : too easily we might suppose that there is no life-sequel in the Incarnation, that it is all a series of miracles, and that therefore no biological conclusions could be deduced from it with any certainty. So we might exaggerate the miraculous side of Christ’s birth from Mary, and thus unconsciously deprive Mary of the true glories of motherhood, making the blessed maternity into a mere instrument of God’s omnipotence. But if Catholic theology insists on anything, it insists on this point, that Mary is not a miraculous Mother to the Son of God, but a natural Mother. Sic igitur ex parte Matris nativitas ilia fuit naluralis, sed ex parte operationis Spiritus Sancti fuit miraculosa : unde Beata Virgo est vera et naturalis Mater Christi: "From the Mother s side Christ’s birth was a natural birth, but from the side of the Holy Ghost s working it was a miraculous birth ; therefore the Blessed Virgin is a true and natural Mother to Christ 41 (Summa 3, Q- 35. a - 3)- I thought it worth quoting the Latin text of St. Thomas in the enunciation of this most important truth that Mary’s motherhood is not a miraculous motherhood, but a natural one; it is miraculous only from the side of the active principle, the Holy Ghost; but Mary’s own motherhood, though started miraculously, developed naturally. The initial miracle, great as it was, did in no wise curtail the life-functions which naturally belong to a mother.
It ought not to be difficult then to see how birth of one and the same Person, the Son, brings Mary near unto God, makes her the most perfect resemblance of God’s internal life. The Son, the second Person of the Trinity, came forth naturally, through birth, from the Father. The birth of God takes Mary out of the ordinary plane of sanctity and gives her a place no other creature can share. It is as true to say that God is born of the Virgin as to say that God is born of God.
We do say of course that Mary is Mother to the Son of God not through the divine portion of that Person, but through the human nature in that Person; divinity was not formed from Mary’s most pure blood, but only humanity. This distinction, however, in no wise does away with the greater truth that Mary is truly a God-bearer, not a man-bearer. Theologians give an easy simile to enable us to understand this. In each human being the soul comes directly from God, whilst the body owes its origin to the factors of parental generation ; but who will ever say that a mother is a mother, not to her boy, but merely to the body of the boy? To the whole person she is mother. So likewise in the Incarnation. Of Mary a Child was born Who is the Son of God, born of God in all eternity.
Moreover, the human nature which owes its nature to Mary’s most pure blood is not a simple human nature ; it is a deified human nature, united hypostatically with the Eternal Word, just as the ordinary human body that is built up in a mother s womb is not an organism merely, but an organism penetrated through and through by the presence of an immortal spirit, the rational soul.
As we saw in a previous chapter, Mary was giving of her life to an Organism in Which there was the clear vision of God, in virtue of the very laws of life belonging intrinsically to that adorable Organism, because It lived and existed through divine existence, the existence of the Word. When shall we grasp the great truth that Christ’s human portion was raised up to the plane of the infinite through Hypostatic Union? If we were to confine our attention exclusively to the human nature of Christ in Mary’s Childbirth we should still be in presence of a Mother who bore an infinitely Holy Thing. But Mary is the Mother of the whole Person of Christ, and from the highest summits of Heaven to the farthest ends of the universe the mystery of God’s birth is found to exist only in two forms, in the Eternal Father and in Mary.
The solemn announcement of Christmas Day, in the Roman Martyrology, may fitly be quoted here :
Anno imperil Octaviani Augusti quadragesimo secundo, toto or be in pace composite, sexta mundi aetate, lesus Christus aeternus Deus, aeternusque Patris Filius, mundum volens adventu suo piissimo consecrare, de Spiritu Sancto conceptus, novemque post conceptionem decursis mensibus in Bethlehem ludae nascitur ex Maria Virgine factus Homo:
"The forty-second year of the rule of Octavianus Augustus, whilst the whole universe was enjoying peace, the sixth age of the world, Jesus Christ, the Eternal God and Son of the Eternal Father, in order that He might sanctify the world through His merciful coming, having been conceived from the Holy Ghost, and nine months having passed since His conception, is born in Bethlehem of Juda from Mary the Virgin, being made man." Unless we give to Christ’s second birth an infinite spiritual significance we shall never be able to understand the language of the Church in her Christmas Liturgy. If the first birth, the eternal birth, is the source of all life, so is the second birth, the birth from Mary. Ho die nobis de coelo pax vera descendit; hodie per to turn
mundum melliflui facti sunt coeli; hodie illuxit nobis dies redemptions novae, reparations antiquae, felicitatis aeternae: "To-day true peace came down to us from heaven; to-day all over the world the heavens shed honey; to-day there shone for us the day of the new redemption, of the long-expected restoration, of the eternal happiness."
Such words as these make up the Christmas Liturgy of the Catholic Church, and show very clearly how Christ’s second birth is, in the mind of the Church, an event of infinite splendour, of endless vitality; very often the words applicable to the first birth are applied by the Liturgy to the second birth, as the two births, though such distinct acts, have a common characteristic of spiritual immensity. But the centre of all this glory is the Virgin Mother whose womb brought forth Him to Whom the Eternal Father says: "From the womb before the day-star I begot thee" (Psalm 109, 3).
We may fitly conclude this chapter with the collect of Christmas Day with its clear enunciation as to the spiritual power contained in Christ’s second birth, the birth from Mary: Concede, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus , ut nos Unigeniti tui nova per carnem nativitas liberet, quos sub peccati iugo vetusta servitus tenet.
