Mary, Mother of God and our Mother

You are she who unties us from the power of Satan. And she who can do more with mire than with silver; And the sin which kills us, You kill with petitions to God.

(Nicolás Núñez, “The Virgin Mother”)

For being the Mother of God, Mary is also Our Mother.

Very beautifully it said by St. John of the Cross in his Prayer of a Soul Taken with Love “and the Mother of God…is mine,…because Christ is mine….”

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 When Nestorius, in the year 241, began to spread false doctrine that Mary could not be the Mother of God, the bishops meet together in the city of Ephesus, where, according to tradition, the Most Holy Virgin spent her last years, and they declared solemnly the dogma: “The Virgin Mary is truly the Mother of God, because her Son, Christ, is God”.

How much confidence and profound joy ought to fill our hearts in considering this truth of our faith!

God created the Most Pure Virgin and without stain because He wanted to make her his Mother, but this same Mother who He wanted for himself, He also wanted her for us, because she is intimately associated to the plan of salvation.

We see Mary, as the Mother of the Word Incarnate, Jesus, God made Man.  How many anxieties of this Mother for this Divine Son!  How many sufferings, and how many profound joys they will have lived in the humble house of Nazareth!  But these anxieties, these joys, and these sufferings, the Mother of God continues living, this time with each one of us.  This divine maternity that began in the moment of the Incarnation, is prolonged, so to speak, to this day, and Mary continues watching and caring, no longer for the Divine Son as she did in Nazareth, but for the sinful and weak children, that for being such, are especially in need of Her.  We can imagine with great foundation, the Virgin, in heaven, who never rests, not even for an instant…is attentive to the tears of some, to the joys of others, to the sorrows and needs of everyone…. And because she is the Mother of God, as such makes worthy their rights, and as other Weddings at Cana, she asks to this Son, who is rich with gifts, almighty, and very good, that He may generously extend His graces over these brothers and sisters, so little and weak, that although they are worthless, they are also heirs of heaven.

For this, the Church teaches us that on this first day of the year, we honor the one whom God wanted to make His Mother and Our Mother.

It is just that we do it, because if we are their true children, we ought to follow the counsels of Saint Louis Maria to the true devotees of the Virgin, which can be listed like this:

  1. To honor her as the worthy Mother of God, with the worship of hyperdulia; this is to say, to esteem her and honor her above all the other Saints, as the masterpiece of grace, and the first after Jesus Christ, true God and true Man;
  2. To meditate her virtues, her privileges, and her actions;
  3. To contemplate her grandeurs;
  4. To make to her acts of love, of praise, and of gratitude;
  5. To invoke her cordially;
  6. To offer ourselves to her, and unite ourselves with her;
  7. To do all our actions with the view of pleasing her;
  8. To begin, to continue, and to finish all our actions by her, in her, and with her, in order that we may do them by Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ, with Jesus Christ, and for Jesus Christ our Last End.

We honor our Celestial Mother and we ask her to be our guide and also our confident and refuge in this year which begins.

We repeat with Saint John Damascene: “Having confidence in you, Oh Mother of God, I shall be saved; being under your protection, I shall fear nothing; with your succor, I shall give battle to my enemies and put them to flight; for devotion to you is an arm of salvation, which God gives to those whom it is His will to save.”

 

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