ANSWERING SOME QUESTIONS ON MARY
IBIYEMI VICTOR
INTRODUCTION
The debate on Mary’s role and importance in the Church has been an enduring issue in Christendom. It has been a tug of war between Catholics and other denominations on their arguments as to the status of Mary in the salvation history. However, the Catholics, strong in unity have asserted their unwavering and unflinching allegiance to Mary as the Mother of God. The purpose of this essay therefore is to showcase under different sections the reasons for giving Mary such honour in the Catholic Tradition of faith.
WHY WE HONOUR HER
Among the various characteristics which prove the Catholic Church to be one true Church of Christ (the four marks of the Church- One, Holy, Apostolic and Catholic), there is also a particular characteristic which is manifest based on the Holy Scripture and which is unique to Catholicism- the honour and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ.
This honour and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary the mother of Jesus Christ is one of the many things rejected by the Protestants. Their claim is that the honour and devotion given to Mary is not in the scripture and as such it is an offence to Jesus. They furthered their argument that the Catholics are wrong praying to Mary because there is only one mediator between God and Man- which is Jesus.
To begin our defense on why we honour Mary, it is good to put to mind the consideration of the similarities between the Fall of man and the Redemption of man. After the fall of Adam and Eve which marked the fall of man. “And the Lord God said to the serpent… I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed, she shall crush your head, and thou shall lie in with for her heel” (Gen: 3: 13-15). The question is: who is the woman and who is the seed of which the bible speaks?
In the Gospel of Luke, God did something fabulous that has never been done in the history of Israel. God sent his Angel to a virgin to deliver the message of the Incarnation of God. The point is how did the Angel greet Mary- the lowly virgin? “Hail Mary Full of Grace… the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women. (Lk. 1: 28) The angel who was sent by God honoured her. We must remember that angels don’t convey their message, they convey the message of he who sent them (that is why they are called angels), who are you therefore not to honour whom God honored?
Furthermore, when Mary went to visit Elizabeth, Elizabeth prophesied under the influence of the Holy Spirit of the worth of Mary, she said: “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of the womb. And whence is this to me that the Mother of my Lord should come to visit me? (Lk.1:43) Mary also under the influence of the Holy Spirit sang her magnificant and prophesied too that: “from now on, all generations shall call me blessed” (Lk. 1:48). Any generation that does not call Mary blessed is a cursed generation!
Form the above and from many unmentioned scriptural passages, it is evident why we honour Mary. We do not worship Mary; we are only giving her what is due just has God himself had honoured her.
MARY AS THEOTOKOS
Theotokos is a Greek title of Mary, which depicts Mary as the Mother of Jesus. Theotokos is a compound of two Greek words Theo, God, tokos, bearer. Literally, this translates as God-bearer or the one who gives birth to God. Jaroslav Pelikan- a historian translated it more precisely as “the one who gives birth to the one who is God”. Understanding this etymology prepares the way for the explanation of the mystery of the Motherhood of Mary.
The Mystery is this: How can a creature be the mother of her Creator? The puzzle of some Christians, those who refuses the divine motherhood of Mary, is in the fact that it is literally impossible for Mary to be the Mother of God, because, they believe God is the cause of all with neither origin nor source and is therefore without father and mother, or any relation expect for what is homoousian to Him (that is what is in Substance to Him).
On the contrary, most Christians believe God the Son is begotten of God the Father, “from all eternity” but is born “in time” of Mary. Theotokos thus refer to the incarnation, when the Second Person of the Holy Trinity took on human nature in addition to his pre-existing divine nature, this being made possible through the fiat of Mary.
The Council of Ephesus in 431AD decreed in opposition to those that denied Mary the title of Theotokos (the one who gives birth to God) and called her Christotokos (the one who gives birth to Christ) that Mary is Theotokos because her Son Jesus is one person who is both God and man, divine and human. Within the economy of salvation Mary’s identity, role and status as the mother of God is acknowledged as indispensable and is for this reason formally defined as official dogma.
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
The Immaculate Conception of Mary is a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. It is one of the controversial facts about our Lady which most non-Catholics have anchored on in their critique of the importance of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception teaches that Mary was conceived without any stain of original sin. This dogma states “that the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privileged granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin. She therefore needed no baptism which is given to cleanse us from original sin which we inherited from our first parents- ADAM and EVE.
Notice that the doctrine of Immaculate Conception of Mary was formally proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854 in Ineffabillis Deus. The defined dogma of the Immaculate Conception regards original sin only: the definition makes no declaration bout the Church’s belief that Blessed Virgin was sinless, in the sense of actual or personal sin. However, the Church also holds that Mary was also sinless personally, that she was “free from all sin, original or personal” and that is why she was greeted as full of grace when God sent the Angel Gabriel to visit Mary with his tidings.
Mary’s Immaculate Conception should not be confused with Mary’s Virginal Conception. The Immaculate Conception is about the birth of Mary, while Mary’s Virginal Conception is about the birth of Jesus- that Mary gave birth to Jesus as a virgin and she remained a virgin. This confusion is a dogmatic heresy that many are guilty of even the media. So, we must be careful to understand this very carefully before explaining it. Mary was conceived by Joachim and Anne who were devout Jews but were born with original sin. But Mary was given the privileged by God to be free from Sin and as such she was full of grace worthy to bear the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. The feast of Immaculate Conception is celebrated on December 8, nine months before the nativity of Mary.
ASSUMPTION OF MARY
The Assumption of Mary is regarded as the Principal feast of Mary; it is celebrated on the 15th of August. This feast has a double object: 1) the happy departure of Mary form this life; 2) the assumption of her body into heaven. This feast teaches that Mary was assumed after death both body and soul was taken into heaven. The earliest records of this fact about her Lady was found in the apocryphal treatise De Obitu S. Dominae bearing the name of St. John which belongs to the 4th – 5th Century. The fact is recounted by St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the council of Chalcedon (451), made known o the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostle, but that her tomb, when opened, upon the request of St. Thomas, was found empty, wherefrom the Apostle concluded that the body was taken up to heaven. Hence, the Roman Catholic Church teaches as Dogma that the Virgin Mary “having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. This doctrine was dogmatically and infallibly defined by pope Pius XII on November 1, 1950 in his Apostolic Constitution, Muniicentissimus Deus.
In his August 15, 2004, homily given at Lourdes, Pope John Paul II quoted John 14:3 as one of the scriptural bases for understanding the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. In this verse, Jesus tells his disciples at the Last Supper, “if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will receive you to myself; that where I am, you may be there also.” According to Catholic theology, Mary is the pledge of the fulfillment of Christ’s promise.
Another fact to buttress the doctrine of Assumption is to stress the privilege of Mary being the Mother of God. Since Jesus shared in Mary’s corporeal composition and Jesus when he died did not experience corruption. It is only granted by the grace of God, the Mother of God who was sinless would not experience any form of corruption because sin brings corruption and the wages of sin is death. (Gal. 6: 8-9).
APPARITIONS OF MARY
Mary as continued to strengthen the faith of Christians through her appearances and miracles. A Marian apparition is an event in which the Blessed Virgin Mary is believed to have supernaturally appeared to one or more people. They are often given names based on the towns in which they were reported, or on the sobriquet which was given to Mary on the occasion of the apparition.
In some apparitions such as Our Lady Lourdes or Our Lady of Fatima an actual vision is reported, fully resembling that of a person being present. In some of these reports the viewers (most times children do not initially report that they saw the Virgin Mary, but that they saw “a lady” (often but not always dressed in white) and had a conversation with her. In these cases the viewers report experiences that resemble the visual and verbal interaction with a person present at the site of the apparition.
According to the Catholic Doctrine, the era of public revelation ended with the death of the last living apostle. Therefore, a Marian apparition, if deemed genuine by Church authority is regarded as a private revelation that may emphasize some facet of the received public revelation for a specific purpose, but it can never add anything new to the deposit of faith. Meanwhile, the Holy See has officially confirmed the apparitions at Guadalupe, Saint-Etienne-le-Laus, Paris (Rue d Bac, Miraculous Medal), La Salette, Lourdes, Fatima, Portugal, Pontmain, Beauraing and Banneux. Apparitions of Mary are held to be evidence of her continuing active presence in the life of the church, through which she “cares for the brethren of her son who still journey on earth”.
Of all Marian apparitions, the best known are Lourdes and Fatima. Over sixty spontaneous healing, out of thousands reported at the Lourdes Spring, have been classified as “inexplicable” by the physicians of the Lourdes Bureau. The Three Secrets of Fatima received a great deal of attention in the Catholic Church and Secular press.
LITANY OF BLESSED VIRGIN MARY: HOW DID IT COME ABOUT?
The Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a Marian litany originally approved in 1587 by Pope Sixtus. It is also known as the litany of Loreto, for its first- known place of origin, the Shrine of our Lady of Loreto (Italy) where its usage was recorded as early as 1558. The litany contains many titles used formally and informally for the Virgin Mary and would often be recited as a call and response chant in a group setting.
About its origin, despite the fact that, from the seventeenth century onwards, the litany of Loreto has been the subject of endless panegyrics and ascetical writings, there is a great lack of documentary evidence concerning its origin, the growth and development of the litany into the forms under which we know it, and as it was for the first time definitely approved by the catholic church in the year 1587. Some writers declare that they know nothing of its origin and history: others, on the contrary, trace it back to the translation of the Holy House (1294); others, to Pope Sergius 1 (687); others, again, to Gregory the Great or to the fifth century; while others go as far back as the earliest ages of the Church, and even Apostolic times. However, historical criticism posits it to have been composed during the early years of the 16th century or the closing years of the 15th. During the years, the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary has taken some additions to the original Loreto’s text.
The Litany is majorly structured into six parts:
1. Mary’s Holiness
2. Mary the Mother
3. Mary the Virgin
4. Symbols of Mary
5. Mary the Helper
6. Mary the Queen
The litany portrays such immeasurable gifts and virtues bestowed on Mary by God; as such she becomes the mother of virtues truly full of grace. Reflection on the titles of the litany will unfold before us the grand picture of our heavenly mother, even though we know only little about her life. We will also come to see why Mary’s example, guidance and help is the need of the hour. When praying the Litany, we have to meditatively say those laudable attributes of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We must not only say, we must emulate her in these virtues.
CONCLUSION
Mary’s role in the economy of salvation is undisputable. For those who have not come in terms with that fact are ignorant of the promises of God towards this Woman of Virtues. She is the new Eve that trampled down Satan. Her Son won salvation and redemption for us by his death. How could some persons say she is just an envelope that drops its message and then becomes redundant? That can never be the tale of the wonders God worked for the whole universe in Mary. Her singular and total participation in the project of salvation is why we honour her and that is why she has been more favoured among all women. Any Generation that does not call her blessed must be an evil generation because the scriptures prophesied that all generations will call her blessed. Let us continue to sing the praises of Mary in the magnificent and in the Litany.
There is woman I love so much………………….her name is Mary.
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