July 26, 2011

• Mary, Mary, Quite Controversial (Part I)

  

  @pinktiger335 asked, “Why they don’t mention the Virgin Mary too much but we have so much faith in her? And a lil about her appearances… like the one she made in Mexico with Juan Diego.

  On a similar topic @DraculVanHelsing asked, “Also maybe a couple of posts on the Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church- the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption as I’m always being asked by my Protestant friends about those 2 doctrines.”

   

  It was when I was a student at the University of Northern Iowa that I was first called a “Marian worshipper,” and ever since then whenever I enter into an apologetics dialogue with another Christian or am “attacked” for being Catholic, the first stone flung against Catholicism is aimed right at poor Mary’s head. So I thought that as I go about offering my thoughts as they relate to your previously-asked questions, I would start with Mary since she tends to be, for some reason, so controversial. My goal is not to convince anyone of anything mind you, but merely to offer my thoughts and, where I can, the teaching of the Church for the benefit of those who did not know anything before and those who want to know a bit more. Oftentimes those same people who charge me with worshiping Mary are surprised when I tell them that, yes, I would be just as angry about someone worshiping Mary as they are because, in fact, Catholics do not worship Mary.

  To go about this I will try and address DraculVanHelsing’s questions as best I can and then talk about Mary’s role in the prayer and devotional life of the Church, followed by some of her better-known appearances at Guadalupe, Lourdes and Fatima in part II.

   

  The New Eve: the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary

  It is so fitting that I would at least start writing this post on the Feast of Joachim and Anne, traditionally believed to be the parents of Mary.

  What is the basic idea of this doctrine of the Immaculate Conception? Basically that Mary was conceived without Original Sin. Here’s a synopsis of the teaching straight from the Catechism:

  490: To become the mother of the Savior, Mary “was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.” The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of grace.” In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God’s grace.

  491: Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854: 

  “The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.”

  492: The “splendor of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son.” The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love.”

  493: The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia) and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature.” By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.

   

  The first charge often thrown at this teaching is that it isn’t found in Scripture and is therefore made up. However, a Scriptural basis for the Trinity is a bit fuzzy as well, so let us not jump the gun!

  We recall that when the archangel Gabriel appears to Mary and speaks to her on God’s behalf, he says, “Hail Mary, full of grace!” So we see right off that this Mary is considerably special, for the angel is not speaking his own message here, but God’s; through the angel, God Himself is saying, “Hail Mary, full of grace!” In the Greek the word for “full of grace” is kecharitomene which literally means “having been blessed” or “having been filled with grace,” implying that the angel is referring to something that has already taken place as opposed to something that is happening in that very same moment or will happen soon. Likewise the Church points out in this first paragraph that in order to give that complete “yes” to God’s will, she would need to be completely and perfectly in the grace of God; would a sinner be able to give the perfect, complete consent needed to conceive the very Word of God not only in her heart and mind, but in her very body?

  Let us continue on with the following general rule: when you are learning about something the Church teaches regarding Mary, realize that everything the Church believes, knows or teaches about Mary comes from what the Church believes, knows or teaches about Jesus Christ.

  Working on this presupposition, then, we can move on to the second paragraph which quotes Pope Pius IX’s proclamation. The importance of Mary’s unfallen nature is because of Christ’s sinlessness; remember that original sin–our fallen human nature–is an inherited condition! Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb as a single-cell, attached to the wall of her uterus and all that just as you and I did at one time; save for His miraculous conception everything else went as normal. The immaterial God took His flesh, His human nature from Mary; if she was “just a sinner like everyone else” as some Christians contend, then Jesus would inherit that sin from her as well. 

  “Not so fast!” they tell me, “for couldn’t Christ have been conceived immaculately? Why did it have to be her?” True, I suppose He could have conceived Himself immaculately and been born of a sinner without Himself being one, but realize a few things here. First in becoming human God subjected Himself to His own laws, including the commandment to honor one’s father and mother as well as loving another as you love yourself, etc. What better way to honor His mother than to save her from sin the moment she was conceived? After all, God is unique among all that He created His own mother; would not a loving God who was to take on flesh for the redemption of all people not start first with His mother? Notice, too, that the Church does not teach she was conceived free of sin because of anything she did or was about to do; she was saved by Jesus Christ just as we all are save for the fact she was saved in her first moment. Likewise if it is Jesus Christ that saves us from sin, then if He conceived Himself immaculately we would see Him basically saving Himself. Does this seem like something He would do considering He refused obstinately to do so when captured by the officials of Jerusalem and beaten, or when He refused to come down off of the Cross? I think not! But would Jesus save His own mother? I think so, and so have Christians for a very long time! And this is what paragraph three is getting at. 

  Finally in paragraph four the Church holds up the example of our ancient Eastern brethren, stating also that Mary not only began sinless, but ended sinless as well. This only makes sense given what we’ve previously discussed; had she fallen into sin later she would not have been able to give her perfect consent to the will of God at the Annunciation, and who could possibly sin with the Son of God in their very womb, in their home? And remember, too, that she was very much the mother of Christ in every sense of the word “mother;” she nursed Him, clothed Him, burped Him, bathed Him and, yes, taught Him right and wrong. Would you trust a sinner to teach the little Jesus right from wrong? And if you think that little Jesus just knew such things because He is the Son of God so we needn’t worry about it, then why would the Devil bother tempting Jesus in the desert? Just a thought…

   

  Besides all of this we must also remember that Mary’s Immaculate Conception is not all that much an aberration; after all, where not Adam and Eve conceived without original sin? Granted they were crafted by the very hand of God but remember that human beings, truly, were meant to be free of sin period. Mary is simply a human being as human beings were always meant to be; in fact there is an ancient, ancient tradition in which Jesus is seen as the New Adam (hinted at in 1 Cor. 15:45-49). Paired with this tradition is seeing Mary as the New Eve; for example Justin Martyr states around the year 155AD:

  “[Jesus] became man by the Virgin so that the course that was taken by disobedience in the beginning through the agency of the serpent might be also the very course by which it would be put down. Eve, a virgin and undefiled, conceived the word of the serpent and bore disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy when the angel Gabriel announced to her the glad tidings that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her, for which reason the Holy One being born of her is the Son of God. And she replied, “Be it done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38) (Dialogue with Trypho 100).

  Similarly St. Ambrose (a Doctor of the Church no less!) wrote in the fourth century:

  “See how the selfsame knots that were tied in condemnation are now undone, and how the old footprints are trodden again in the work of salvation: Adam was from the virgin earth, Christ from a virgin; Adam was made in the image of God, Christ is the image of God…; folly came from a woman, wisdom from a virgin; from the tree came death, from the Cross came life.”

   

   A Safe Assumption

  From here we can move on to the Doctrine of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven. Again the Catechism offers:

  966 ”Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death.”The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians:

  ‘In giving birth you kept your virginity; in your Dormition you did not leave the world, O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life. You conceived the living God and, by your prayers, will deliver our souls from death.’ (From the Byzantine Liturgy)

   

  What we see in this doctrine is the Church’s belief that Mary was taken, body and soul, into heaven without dying (or, as some of the Eastern traditions belief, she simply fell asleep). 

  Again the charge of not-being-in-the-Bible is levied, but we must recall that in Matthew 27:52-53 we read that after Christ was crucified many who were dead came back to life and wandered around Jerusalem (no, not a zombie invasion or anything), and in 2 Kings 2:11 we read that Elijah was caught up, body and soul, into heaven via a fiery chariot. Also it is important to note the link between the end of Revelations 11 and the beginning of 12 in which we read:

  “Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a violent hailstorm.” Then: “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child…She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod…”

  It is important to note that the chapter/verse feature of Scripture is a fairly recent convention, the New Testament in particular only really being solidly divided into chapters around the 13th century and divided into verses in the 16th. In the earliest centuries of Christianity–before the Bible was even assembled as we know it today–the Gospels, letters and Revelations of the New Testament were simply pages and pages of text. They were, after all, meant to be read aloud so what did it matter if things were divided into chapters? 

  When we read chapter 11 right into 12 without pause, we read: “Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a violent hailstorm. A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child…She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod…” Makes sense, doesn’t it? Consider this as well: is not Christ Himself the New Covenant?

  Think back to the Old Covenant and its signs. We remember the Ark that contained a jar of manna, the Ten Commandments and Aaron’s staff. Christ, however, is not merely a sign of the New Covenant but is the Covenant itself and is He not also the new manna, the bread come down from heaven? Is He not the Living Law of God, the Law fulfilled? Is He not the High Priest, the fulfillment of Aaron’s own priesthood? Christ is the fullness of all the signs of the Old Covenant, and what (or who) was the ark, the vessel that contained the signs of the promise? Mary, a pure and living vessel far more precious than gold! In John’s vision was seen Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant, praying for her children–all of us–as they were being persecuted by the beast. 

   

  We also, based on our earlier discussion regarding her origin as being sinless can see why early Christians could believe (besides being taught it by those who likely witnessed it) she would be assumed into heaven, for it is by our fallen human nature (“through Adam,” so to speak) that we come to die (1 Cor. 15:21-22, Romans 5:12-12. But if Mary did not inherit a fallen human nature but rather never knew sin period, she would not be subject to death at all. Given the Church’s belief in her Immaculate Conception, her belief also in Mary’s Assumption into heaven follows. Besides, there is no record in history or tradition of her grave, tomb or bones; one would think that if such things ever existed it would be a major site for pilgrimage, one that would rival St. Peter’s in Rome, St. James’ in Spain and others!

   

  In the upcoming part II I will offer thoughts on Mary’s place in the prayer and devotional life of the Church. I hope part I proves helpful for everyone!

  • 10:11 pm
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