Today, as at the beginning of every calendar year, the Church gives glory to God in honor of His Blessed Mother for her role in the salvation of the world. Mary is truly the Mother of God: Jesus is fully the Son of God and the Son of Mary; Mary is not mother only of his humanity, but of the whole person of Christ, who is at once and always fully God and fully man, from the moment of His conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary. This dogma of our Faith in Mary’s motherhood of the whole Christ ensures and protects the most foundational element of our salvation: the union of God and man that took place in the incarnation of the Son of God. In Christ, God united our human nature to His own divine nature, which alone renders possible the salvation of the human race. He is like us in all things, save sin, and He became like us in all things because had he not taken on entirely the nature of humanity and united it mysteriously to the nature of divinity, we could never have been healed entirely, never have been redeemed completely; and to remain unredeemed in any part of our nature is the same as to have never been redeemed at all. Because the son of God truly became man in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the sons and daughters of men can now become the sons and daughters of God in Christ. The eternal destiny of our lives depends entirely upon this foundational mystery of Jesus Christ. The Council of Chalcedon reiterated and explicitly defined the authentic Catholic faith regarding the Incarnation in 451, stating:
“Following the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity; "like us in all things but sin". He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to his humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God. We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person and one hypostasis” (Cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 467).
Now, I realize all of this sounds very cerebral and perhaps not very practical, but it is important for us as Christians to try our best to wrap our minds around the mysteries of our Faith. Precisely at the very moment when Mary became the mother of God, God became a brother to man, and this is a mystery we will never comprehend, but like Mary we should never cease “keeping these things and pondering them in our hearts” (cf. Luke 2:19). In a very real way, we are saved by mysteries; mysteries constitute the very core of our salvation. The perennial temptation in the face of mystery is either to ignore it, to deny it, to diminish it, to confuse it, or to ridicule it, precisely because it excels our limited human capacity for understanding. But the way a faithful Christian should approach mystery is by embracing it in faith, by diving into it in hope, and pondering it always in our hearts with love. This is what Mary teaches us today and always. Because she is the Mother of God in Christ, she is also the mother of all who call Christ a brother – she is the mother of each one of us, not in a metaphorical way, but in a true and mysterious way. Just as she bore Christ into this life, she bears each one of us into eternal life as the New Eve, the mother of all the living who are now alive in Christ.
I don’t know that we will ever be able to fathom just how much we owe our Blessed Mother for having enough faith to accept the invitation of God to become the mother of His Son. Without her, the incarnation would not have happened – or, at least, we don’t know how it could have happened without her “yes” in which she offered to God her own human nature, which she gave to her son on behalf of the whole human race. The best show of gratitude would be to look to her as Mother and Teacher in the ways of faith, since Jesus gave her to us His last gift before dying, to learn from her and to imitate her love for Jesus in all things. She was never “no” but always “yes” to the will of God and the ways of her Son. If we let Mary be our mother – for our mother she truly is – and live every day under her care and guidance, she will lead us ever-nearer her Son, never ceasing to encourage and teach us in the ways of grace, so that we can become the saints God has created us and redeemed us to be. May God bless you in the week and year ahead, and may Mother Mary lead you deeper into the Sacred and Merciful Heart of Jesus. I remain,
Affectionately yours in Christ,
Fr. Hess
