Mary, Most Like God
One
The Way God Made Us
To those in the secular world, other religions, or even within Christianity, Catholics seem crazy, but it’s not for the reason that you might think. People might point to different areas of the faith that they find fault with: Mary, our relationship with the saints, the Priesthood, and Papacy. But no matter the explanation, these people all actually have the same problem with the Catholic Church, even if they don’t realize that it stems from the same root. That is one simple concern: they think that Catholics are placing human beings on the level of God. But it’s actually the reverse, and it’s actually the thing that makes the Catholic Church different from any other religion, even different from Protestantism. It’s that God Himself is calling us to be like Him, to act like Him, to work with Him. We are not putting ourselves on the same level as God; God is. It is God who stoops down, places His life in us, and then raises us up to His level so that we can truly be and live as sons and daughters of God.
Going back to the beginning of the Church, saints like Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (460) have so powerfully stated, “God became man so that man might become God.”
That this is a central Catholic truth was acknowledged and rejected by Martin Luther. Karl Barth, widely regarded as the most important Protestant theologian of the 20th century, summed up this position against the Catholic Church when he wrote, “Protestantism cannot allow human cooperation in God’s revelation and reconciliation since these are exclusively God’s work.” The idea of angels and saints and people on earth sharing in the being of God and his work Barth says “Precisely is the ground, the basic outlook of the entire Roman Catholic system down to its every detail. This act is the basic act of its doctrine of grace, of the Sacraments, of the Church, of Scripture and tradition, of the Roman primacy and the infallibility of the Pope, and above all of its Marian doctrine.” Furthermore, he states: “Precisely in the doctrine and devotion to Mary there resides par excellence the heresy of the Roman Catholic Church…the human creature collaborates in his salvation, on the basis of a prevenient grace, consequently Mary constitutes also very exactly the principle, the prototype and sum of the Church itself.”
The series we are beginning now will help you to understand this exact line of confusion as it pertains to Mary, the Mass, the Papacy, the Angels, and Confession, and much, much more.
Two
Accepting what God has done for Mary
St. John Paul II said that in Mary we see the face of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the more we turn to Mary, the more powerfully the Holy Spirit works in our lives. We may have difficulty accepting this about Mary because we have a hard time accepting God’s plan for us. This is one reason Mary is so important. Because we see in her what God wants to do in us.
God has raised Mary to such a staggering height, but many cannot accept what God has done for her because they blur the distinction between God and what He has done for Mary. So let’s begin by setting boundaries that we may preserve the infinite difference between God and Mary and the rest of humanity.
God is the Father Almighty, the source of all that is, of all things visible and invisible. He is eternal, infinite, unchangeable, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-Good. Neither Mary nor we possess these divine attributes on our own. All that being true, God raised Mary’s being and activity to participate in a created way in what belongs to God. He did that so she would have the great joy of being the Mother of God and our Spiritual Mother.
That is why Mary rejoices in the Magnificat, proclaiming, “The Almighty has done great things for me. Holy is His name.”
Three
The great things God has done for Mary
The great things God has done for Mary began with her Immaculate Conception. When God created the world, He gave His Spirit to Adam and Eve. They rejected that gift, and creation fell into sin.
God begins to heal the broken world by giving the Holy Spirit to Mary. The Angel Gabriel announced this when he came to her, saying, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.”
The phrase “full of grace” comes from the Greek kecharitōmenē, meaning that from the first moment of her existence, Mary was perfectly filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enabled her to share in God’s divine being so that she could share in his activity.
Mary does not become God. She does not become the fourth person in God. However, by perfectly filling Mary with the Holy Spirit at her Immaculate Conception, God raised Mary to participate in the divine life, or as St. Peter writes, to become “a partaker of the divine nature.” But in a way like no other, for God makes Mary the perfect human expression of the Holy Spirit.
Four
Coexistence and Cooperation
Once Mary shares in the life of God, she can then take part in the activity of God. To cooperate presupposes a kind of co-existence, that is, sharing in the level of life necessary to work together. To cooperate with the three divine Persons, Mary must first be raised to share in the divine life.
This gift is given to her at the Immaculate Conception. It is there that her co-existence with God begins. Her cooperation with God begins later, at the Annunciation. At her Immaculate Conception, Mary is elevated so that she can cooperate with God. At the Annunciation, she freely consents to that cooperation. God the Father eternally generates the Son on the divine level; Mary generates the Son on the human level. God the Son redeems the world; Mary cooperates with Him as Co-Redemptrix. God the Holy Spirit brings forth Christ, the Church, and new Christians; Mary cooperates with the Spirit as His visible sign and becomes Mother of the Church.
Mary participates in the life of God so that she can humanly cooperate in the divine activity.
Five
What does Mary tell us about ourselves?
God’s plan for us is far greater than we usually imagine. God is not like a king who gives a beggar a morsel from his table, leaving him unchanged. God is the kind of King who raises us up to His own level, making us His children, bringing us into His household, into the very life of the Trinity.
His plan is that we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) and “co-workers” with Him (1 Corinthians 3:9).
When we were baptized, God placed His Spirit in our souls so that we could share in His being and His activity.
Our being, like Mary’s, has been elevated to a supernatural level. By Baptism we have become sons and daughters of God. With God’s grace, with His life dwelling in our soul, we co-exist with God, which means we can cooperate with God. We get to do what God does. We can know the truth at the heart of God. We can desire as God desires, love as God loves, and become His co-workers in the salvation of the world.
We get to live like God does, yet remain fully human. We get to help save the world through prayer, sacrifice, and love.
All this happened in Mary because she said yes to God. And it may happen in us if we learn to say “Yes” to God.