The Mother of God: Faith, Humility and the Obedience of Christ
MASS Salve Sancta parens
LESSON Eccles. 24. 23-31
GOSPEL St Luke 2: 43-51
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
My dear brethren, every time we recite the Hail Mary, we call the Blessed Virgin by a title so familiar that we may scarcely think about it: “Holy Mary, Mother of God.” Yet those four words contain a truth upon which our whole religion depends. They tell us that the child whom Mary carried in her womb, nursed in her arms and raised at Nazareth was none other than the eternal Son of God. The Church honours His Mother today because she wants us to recognise more clearly who her Son really is.
In the year 431, the bishops gathered at Ephesus to defend that truth against the teaching of Nestorius. He feared that calling Mary Mother of God suggested she had brought the Godhead into existence. But the Church taught nothing of the kind. The eternal Son has no beginning. Mary gave Him neither His divinity nor His existence as God. By the power of the Holy Ghost, He took from her the human nature in which He was born among us. Since a mother gives birth to a person, not merely to a nature, the woman who bore Jesus Christ is truly the Mother of God.
St Cyril of Alexandria recognised what was at stake. If Jesus were a human person merely joined to the divine Word, then the child in the manger and the eternal Son would not be one and the same Person. But the Gospel proclaims: “The Word was made flesh.” When Christ touched the leper, God the Son touched him with a human hand. When He wept at the tomb of Lazarus, God the Son shed human tears. When He died upon the Cross, God the Son suffered death according to His humanity. His divine nature could not suffer, but the Person who suffered for us was truly divine. This is the mystery of our Redemption.
Now consider the Gospel chosen for today’s feast. It does not recount the Annunciation, as we might expect. Instead, it takes us to Jerusalem, where Mary and Joseph have lost sight of the twelve-year-old Jesus. They search among their relatives and return anxiously to the city. After three days they find Him in the Temple. Their distress was genuine. Mary was full of grace, but she was no less a mother for that. She had cared for her Son since His birth and knew the responsibility entrusted to her. Her love was real, and so was her sorrow.
“Son, why hast thou done so to us?” she asks. “Behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.” Our Lord answers: “Did you not know, that I must be about my Father’s business?” Mary speaks of Joseph, who exercises a father’s genuine care; Jesus speaks of His Father in heaven. He is not rejecting Mary or Joseph. He is revealing His identity. The boy before them belongs eternally to the Father, even while He truly belongs to Mary as her Son. He is Son of God by eternal generation and Son of Mary by human birth: not two sons, but one Lord Jesus Christ.
Then St Luke tells us something remarkable: Mary and Joseph did not understand His words. Mary had received the angel’s message and consented to God’s will, but she had not been given complete knowledge of every purpose of Providence. She still had to walk by faith. Bethlehem did not remove the anxiety of Jerusalem, and neither would spare her Calvary. Her holiness lay not in having every question answered, but in remaining faithful to the God who had spoken.
That should comfort us when life is difficult to understand. Perhaps a prayer seems unanswered, a child has wandered from the faith, or illness has overturned plans we believed were good. We ask why, and no explanation comes. Mary teaches us neither to pretend that sorrow is painless nor to conclude that God has abandoned us. St Luke says that she “kept all these words in her heart.” She remembered, pondered and prayed. She let God’s word remain with her while its meaning unfolded.
There is a difference between hearing God’s word and keeping it. We can hear the Gospel at Mass and forget it before reaching home. We can say the Rosary while mentally rehearsing tomorrow’s worries. Mary shows us a better way. She does not demand an immediate answer to every question or insist that God’s word agree with her expectations. Sometimes in prayer we must stop speaking and ask what Christ has actually said to us, and whether we intend to obey.
St Leo the Great says that the Blessed Virgin conceived Christ in her mind before she conceived Him in her body. He is speaking of her faith: she believed God’s promise and freely consented to it. We cannot imitate the miraculous conception, but we can imitate that consent. Every time we say, “Thy will be done,” we should mean something more than that God may bless the plans we have already made. We should be ready for Him to ask us to change them.
And now comes one of the most astonishing statements in the Gospel: Jesus “went down with them, and came to Nazareth: and was subject to them.” St Bernard of Clairvaux, whose words are read in the Office of this feast, marvels at it. Who obeys, and whom does He obey? God obeys human beings. The Creator of Mary accepts her maternal authority and St Joseph’s guardianship. He who governs the stars lives beneath a roof, works with human hands and fulfils family duties. His humility is real. The divine Son truly obeys according to His human nature.
St Bernard turns this mystery upon our pride. Why do we resist correction so fiercely? Why are we wounded when our preferences are overlooked? Why must somebody else always make the first apology? We imagine holiness is chiefly a matter of extraordinary works, and meanwhile neglect the opportunities offered each day. Yet most of Our Lord’s earthly life was hidden at Nazareth. For us, too, sanctity may begin with care for an elderly relative, an unpleasant duty performed without complaint, or a generous answer when we are tired.
Mary’s greatness never excused her from ordinary duties. St Thomas Aquinas teaches that her dignity is unique because the Person to whom her motherhood relates is infinite. Yet she remained wholly a creature, dependent upon God’s grace. She called herself the handmaid of the Lord, and she lived as His handmaid. Genuine devotion to Our Lady should make us more humble and more obedient to her Son. Flowers, statues, hymns and Rosaries have their proper place; but if we praise His Mother while refusing what Christ asks of us, our devotion has failed to bear its proper fruit.
And that obedience was tested most severely beneath the Cross. The Mother who had once searched for her Son in Jerusalem stood beside Him when He was rejected by the world. She could not remove His suffering, but she did not abandon Him. Love sometimes means remaining faithfully present where there is no immediate remedy.
At Holy Communion, today’s mystery comes very near. The Church sings of the One whom the whole world cannot contain dwelling within the Virgin’s womb. That same divine Person gives Himself to us beneath the sacramental appearances. We do not share Mary’s unique maternity, but we can learn from the faith with which she received Him. We should approach the altar in the state of grace, with recollection and gratitude, willing to let Christ change us. We ought never to treat as ordinary the gift which even the angels adore.
So let us leave Mass with one resolution, simple enough to remember and serious enough to practise. Choose a word from today’s Gospel and keep it in your heart during the coming week. Perhaps Christ’s obedience at Nazareth calls you to fulfil a neglected duty. Perhaps Mary’s patient pondering calls you to entrust a family sorrow to God instead of tormenting yourself over what you cannot explain. Return to that word each day in prayer, and then do something because of it. Mary did not merely hear the Lord; she lived by what He said.
My dear brethren, the faithful at Ephesus rejoiced because the Church had defended the truth about their Saviour. We share their faith whenever we pray, “Holy Mary, Mother of God.” May we share something of Mary’s faith as well: a faith that trusts without understanding everything, a humility that obeys when obedience costs us, and a love that makes room for Christ. Then the title we say so often will become more than familiar words. It will draw us nearer to the Son whom Mary bore for the salvation of the world. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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