Mary, Mother of God
Mary is the first among saints, benedicta in mulieribus, as one specially chosen by God and as one who offered back a most obedient Yes. Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum, do unto me according to your word: this is a perfect summary of the primal Christian posture towards God. Yet we should never allow our devotion to Mary to overshadow Mary’s own devotion to the Lord, nor should we allow that Mary’s supreme saintliness be separated from the fact of her willing submission to Christ. That is to say, all true Mariology must resolve into Christology.
Calling Mary the mother of God is not in the first place even about Mary, and certainly not about the heights of her glory. It is rather about the glory of God’s own self-humiliation, that He would deign even to be born of the flesh, in a manger in Bethlehem. Mary herself is glorious inasmuch as she is, full of the grace of obedience, a reflection of God’s humility. Christ is the kenotic mold, Mary the first imprint. For the Church, Mary is thus an image of the way we also need to humble ourselves in order to receive Christ into ourselves, and to give thanks for that most glorious gift. (So Mary, in receiving Christ and in the Magnificat, is also our original eucharistic model.)
8 December 2007 |
tags: Christology, Mariology
![[RSS for this post]](/images/feed-icon-14x14.png){kind=icon}
I might also say it this way: good Mariology, like the stories of all the saints, should only be a variation on the main theme of Christ. If ever the story of a saint becomes its own melody, rather than an elaboration that shows the beauty of the theme ever more clearly, it has become the song of an idol.
In all this, I’m just thinking through the true importance and proper constraints of a good Mariology.
Hey Brian,
Thanks for following through with your promise to post! I don’t have a problem with what you have written, of course. It’s the kind of thing I would say to a Protestant when explaining the historical development of Marian doctrines; that they were simply outgrowths of Christological reflections.
That said, I am wondering about the limits of this way of thinking. It seems to me that some people, in an effort to emphasize the centrality of Christ (which is a good thing, of course) might come to the point where they reduce to nothing the actual person who is the saint. This, it seems to me, is the argument against venerating saints: this person is nothing without Christ, so why pay attention to him or her? They are nothing except for the fact that they reflect the image of Christ, and therefore, why venerate them?
It seems to me that we need to affirm that a saint is a person who has been deified by the grace of God alone without steamrolling over the actual human person who is the saint. I guess this comes down to the question of free will: when Mary said “be it done unto me…”, did she say that freely?
It seems to me that we have to say a number of things at once. We have to affirm that a saint is a saint only through of Christ’s grace, and only because he or she reflects the image of Christ. At the same time, we do not want to make it sound like Christ is occupying an empty vessel. This person is worthy of veneration because she had heroic virtue, she freely submitted to God, she said “yes.” Christ does not overwhelm the saint in such a way that he or she is no longer a unique and free individual.
Therefore, I wonder if it is fair to say that it really is the individual that we venerate, certainly recognizing Christ in them, but not reducing them to clear windowpanes? Perhaps you agree with this, or perhaps not? I am not exactly sure how to negotiate all this, since I do want to remain entirely Christocentric. All I’m trying to say is that I agree that we should not see Mariology apart from Christology, but at the same time, I believe that it is the actual person who is Mary that is to be most highly honored of all the creatures.
Ha, perhaps you wish I never found your blog!
Happy second week of Advent!
Actually, rereading what you actually wrote, I think we may be in agreement. You didn’t say anything to suggest that the actual person of Mary is not important…I have just had this question in the back of my mind for a little while (to what extent is it the person him or herself that is worthy of veneration?) and it looks like I imposed the question on your post. Nevertheless, I think it’s an interesting enough question to consider!
I think we do agree, Rick, that Christocentrism should never lead to the total erasure of the individual disciple. And as I’m sure you agree, the free individuality of Mary is in no way compromised by her being a harmony on Christ’s melody rather than a melody in and of herself. On the contrary, her free and total obedience is precisely the reason she is the most beautiful harmony of all.
So here’s the point: we must indeed take care not to efface the real disciple in our zeal to keep Christ central. I’ll have no part in an argument against the veneration of the saints in general. But we must take care to venerate them as disciples. Mary herself is glorious in her free acceptance of God’s Word, as a humble receiver of divine grace. But this is also the reason that I can’t accept any talk about Mary as a fountain or source of grace, and (should I admit this, the day after her feast?) why I myself think it important to venerate Mary as benedictissima quoque in peccatoribus, most blessed also among sinners.
And no I don’t wish you’d never found my blog! We should have conversations like this every day.
I don’t see the connection between Mary’s receipt of divine grace and the necessity of putting her among sinners. Presumably even if the human race had never sinned, we would all still have a total need for grace. As far as I can tell, there is nothing in the concept of disciple that requires one to first be a sinner, either.
You may, of course, think that Mary falls under the category of “sinner” for other reasons. But that categorization is not, I don’t think, connected to her dependence on grace.
No, clearly not. If Mary was exempt from original sin from birth, it was of course entirely due to divine grace. I meant that it was connected to venerating Mary only as a disciple, or under the usual category of disciple, without any special qualification that elevates her beforehand to a humanity of a substantively different kind. In any case, it’s probably best to strike that comment of mine from the record. What I gave was my theological intuition, but that’s not a conversation I’m familiar enough with quite to decide.