Mary, Mother of God
One
Mother of God
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Stated simply: Mary is the Mother of Jesus. Jesus is God. He is one divine Person. Mary is the mother of that Person in human flesh. Therefore, Mary is the Mother of God. January 1st is also the eighth day after the birth of Jesus. As Luke tells us, “When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus…” (Luke 2:21)
On this day, the Child born at Christmas is publicly identified. He receives His name, Jesus, which means “Yahweh saves.” His identity is no longer hidden in the manger. It is declared: He is God.
So the Church does something exact and deliberate. On the very day Jesus receives His name, she proclaims who He truly is: God Himself. And because He is God, born of Mary, we call her Mother of God.
If the child born of Mary is not God, then Christmas has no real meaning. If He is God, then that truth should affect everything in our lives. It should call us to live in an entirely new way.
Two
Mother in the Order of Grace
Not only is Mary the Mother of God, she is also our Mother. The Catechism teaches, “Jesus is Mary’s only son, but her spiritual motherhood extends to all men whom indeed he came to save… the faithful, in whose generation and formation she cooperates with a mother’s love.” (CCC 501)
Vatican II states even more precisely, “In a wholly singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope, and burning charity in the work of the Savior in restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reason she is a mother to us in the order of grace.” (Lumen Gentium 61)
This is a real claim, not a metaphor. The Church is saying that Mary’s motherhood extends to us. But this raises a serious question. Mary is a human person. Grace is participation in the life of God. Grace comes from the Holy Spirit. How can she cooperate in our birth as sons and daughters of God? How can she contribute to forming Jesus in us? So how can Mary be our Mother in the order of grace?
Three
The Maternal Love of the Holy Spirit
How can Mary be our Mother in the order of grace? The short answer is that the Holy Spirit carries out a maternal mission to form Jesus in us, and the Spirit carries out this maternal mission through Mary.
In Luke 7:35, Jesus says, “Wisdom is justified by her children.” Jesus speaks of Wisdom in explicitly maternal terms. The Book of Wisdom tells us that Wisdom is the Holy Spirit. So Jesus is speaking of the Holy Spirit in feminine and maternal language. Then in John 3:3-5, Jesus tells us we must be born from water and the Spirit, from Baptism and the Spirit. The person you are born of is your parent. At Baptism, which parent is the Holy Spirit? The Spirit can’t be the Father. Therefore, in the rebirth described in John 3, the Holy Spirit acts maternally. The Spirit generates life in us, the Spirit forms Christ within us, and the Spirit acts as a mother in the order of grace.
Four
Mary as our Mother
The Church teaches that the Holy Spirit acts as a mother at two events: the Annunciation and Pentecost. To conceive and form Jesus in the womb of Mary, to conceive and form Jesus in the souls of Christians, and the Holy Spirit carries out his maternal mission through Mary. At the Annunciation and Nativity, the Spirit overshadowed Mary, acting as a Mother to give Mary the capacity to conceive Jesus in her womb. Mary gave birth to Jesus at Bethlehem. At Calvary, Jesus breathed out the Spirit over Mary at the foot of the Cross. The Holy Spirit acted as a Mother, enabling Mary to become the Spiritual Mother of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. Jesus proclaimed this truth when He declared to the Beloved Disciple, “Behold, your mother.” Then the Holy Spirit and Mary gave birth to the Church at Pentecost.
So, we have two mothers, the Holy Spirit and Mary, one divine and one human, working together to give birth to Christ and Christians. In his letter on Mary, Redemptoris Mater, Mother of the Redeemer (1987), Pope St. John Paul II writes, “There is a unique correspondence between the moment of the Incarnation of the Word and the moment of the birth of the Church. The person who links these two moments is Mary: Mary at Nazareth and Mary in the Upper Room at Jerusalem. In both cases her (Mary’s) discreet yet essential presence indicates the path of "birth from the Holy Spirit." Redemptoris Mater 24
Who gives birth to Christians? The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit acts as a mother. Through whom? Through Mary. The Annunciation and Pentecost reveal that the Holy Spirit acts as a mother through Mary to form Christ in her womb, and then Christ in the souls of believers. And that is how Mary is our Mother in the order of grace.
Five
In Mary, we see the face of the Spirit
It can be hard to have a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit under the symbols of wind, fire, water, a dove. How, then, can we move from impersonal images to a living relationship with the Holy Spirit? John Paul said Jesus wanted the Holy Spirit to be linked to a Mother’s face, His mother’s.
December 9th, 1998, John Paul II said, “From the Cross the Savior wished to pour out upon humanity rivers of living water, that is, the abundance of the Holy Spirit. But he wanted this outpouring of grace to be linked to a mother’s face, his Mother’s.”
A few sentences later, he drew the practical conclusion, “Calvary reveals the close and enduring link between the gift of the Holy Spirit and the gift of Mary as mother…The link between the gift of the Holy Spirit and the motherhood of Mary emerges again at Pentecost, when she awaited with the disciples for the coming of the Holy Spirit…therefore, as the bond with Mary grows deeper, so the action of the Spirit in the life of the Church grows more fruitful.”
The Face of Mary shows us the Holy Spirit. Mary reveals the Holy Spirit to us. She is the perfect human expression of the Spirit. So the more we turn to Mary, the more the Holy Spirit may form Jesus in us.