Psalm 99
The LORD reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! The LORD is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name! Holy is he! The King in his might loves justice.You have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the LORD our God; worship at his footstool! Holy is he! Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called upon his name. They called to the LORD, and he answered them. In the pillar of the cloud he spoke to them; they kept his testimonies and the statute that he gave them. O LORD our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings. Exalt the LORD our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the LORD our God is holy!(ESV)
The Mother of God
Wednesday of Easter 6
12 May 2010
If Mary bore a Son who is God with us (Mt 1:23), then Mary is the Mother of God. If we deny that Mary is the mother of God, then we are denying either that Jesus is true God or that Jesus is true Man. In fact, the title "Mother of God" says more about Jesus than it does about Mary.
If Mary is not the Mother of GOD then Jesus is not God. If Mary is not the MOTHER of God, then Jesus is not a true man conceived of our flesh. If we reject what seems to be a deification of Mary, by calling her Mother of God, we will deny the true divinity of the incarnate Son of God or the true humanity of Mary's Son. Either rejection is a denial of the divine truth of the incarnation of the Word of God.
However, we suspect that all this talk about what kind of conception, incarnation, and birth Jesus experienced is at best quibbling over words of little significance, or at worst arguments about things that are downright hurtful to a quiet and simple faith. However, the Christian doctrine that Mary is the mother of God is not some ethereal truth disconnected from our need for salvation. It impinges directly on who the Son is and who He is for us.
If Christ the Word of God was not incarnate of Mary, then the one born of her would not have been true God, but a charlatan and a hoax, as doubters believe to this day. When we deny that Mary is the Mother of God, we are no better than those doubters and will receive their same recompense. If Mary is not the mother of Christ according to the flesh, then He did not bear our flesh, carry our sins, give our body up to death, raise our body, ascend bodily into heaven, nor prepare a place in heaven for us, his brothers. For if death came through a man, life also must come through a Man, a Man born of the Virgin Mary.
John of Damascus
"We proclaim the holy Virgin to be in strict truth the Mother of God. For inasmuch as He who was born of her was true God, she who bore the true God incarnate is the true mother of God. For we hold that God was born of her. This does not imply that the divinity of the Word received from her the beginning of its being, but means that God the Word Himself, who was begotten of the Father timelessly before the ages, and was with the Father and the Spirit without beginning and through eternity, took up His abode in these last days for the sake of our salvation in the Virgin's womb, and was without change made flesh and born of her. For the holy Virgin did not bear mere man but true God: and not mere God but God incarnate, who did not bring down His body from heaven, nor simply passed through the Virgin as channel, but received from her flesh of like essence to our own and subsisting in Himself.
"For if the body had come down from heaven and had not partaken of our nature, what would have been the use of His becoming man? For the purpose of God the Word becoming man was that the very same nature, which had sinned and fallen and become corrupted, should triumph over the deceiving tyrant and so be freed from corruption, just as the divine apostle puts it, 'For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. ' (1Cor 15:21). If the first is true the second must also be true"
Prayer
O Word made flesh, dwell among us that we might see Your glory, the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Amen.
For Anna Obert, who is gravely ill, that the Lord Jesus would attend her by His good Spirit
For Debbie Jeffers that God the Lord would grant her strength and healing
For all those who are not in the divine services of the church on a regular basis, that God the Holy Spirit would call them back to the hearing of the Word of God so that they would see the Only-begotten's glory
Art: GRUNEWALD, Matthias Resurrection 1515