Jan. 1, 2013, not only marks the beginning of a new year, but it is also, in the Roman Catholic Church, the Octave Day of Christmas on which the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, is observed. The role of Mary in the Lord’s plan of salvation draws together all of the foreshadowing events and passages from the Old Testament in which we see the ultimate validation of free will and the knot of Eve’s sin and disobedience loosed by Mary’s loving obedience. It is Mary, a daughter of the Old Covenant, who is not only the bearer of Christ in the Annunciation but Mary also “labors” in prayer in the Upper Room with the other disciples for the birth of the Church at Pentecost for the New Covenant believers will become her spiritual children. From her obedience at the Annunciation to the events of Christ’s passion she illustrates for us a model of Christian virtue, faith and obedience as she remained true to Christ and His word. It has been as Mary prophesied, filled with the Holy Spirit, “Yes, from now onwards all generations will call me blessed!”

Accordingly, it is with a degree of sorrow that on the eve of the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, that I read Mr. Hugh G. Sherrill’s column on Mary, published in the Dec. 28 edition of the Democrat, (read it here) which largely overlooks and ignores the copious biblical passages and early Church history establishing Mary’s immaculate conception, perpetual virginity, her assumption into Heaven and her status as the mother of God, mother of the Church and our mother. I can imagine Mr. Sherrill reading a history of the American Revolutionary War and concluding that George Washington was just “an absolutely normal person” and not the revered Father of our Country who was “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”


Immaculate Conception

Luke shares with us the angel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” [Luke 1:28] The phrase “full of grace” is a translation of the Greek word kecharitomene. Kecharitomene is a perfect passive participle of charitoo, meaning “to fill or endow with grace.” Since this term is in the perfect tense, it indicates that Mary was graced in the past but with continuing effects in the present. If the Holy Spirit was to overshadow Mary and the power of God conceive in her Jesus Christ [Luke 1:35], it is fitting for Mary to be without sin and holy to serve as a worthy vessel for an all-holy God. If God is Holiness itself, how could He dwell in an unholy vessel? How could the One who demands holiness from His people (Lev. 19:2) and particularly from the priests who minister before him (Ex. 28:6), dwell for nine months in an unholy woman?

Duns Scotus, a medieval theologian writing in the 13th century, asked: “Would the God of justice and mercy grant the first Eve, who he foreknew would betray him, a greater glory in her creation than he would give the second Eve, who he foreknew would be his handmaid forever?” Mary was conceived without sin through the anticipated merits and saving grace of her Son, Jesus Christ. By a special intervention of God, undertaken at the instant she was conceived, she was preserved from the stain of original sin and its consequences. She was therefore redeemed by the grace of Christ, but in a special way—by anticipation. Since Jesus, the Son of God, dwells in eternity, the merits and grace he achieved for all mankind on the Cross extend to redeem all men and creation to the very beginning and to the end of the ages.  

Even Martin Luther, considered the father of the Protestant Reformation, recognized the immaculate conception of Mary. Here is Martin Luther in his own words:

“It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin”

Martin Luther’s Sermon “On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God,” 1527.

Finally, we have the writings of the beloved Apostle John to explain to us the holy and venerable role of Mary in God’s plan of salvation. In the Old Testament, we have many passages that foreshadow the coming of Jesus Christ and His ministry. One of the most revered and holy items was the Ark of the Covenant which contained the Ten Commandments, the Word of God inscribed by the very finger of God; manna, the miracle bread sent by God to feed his people; and the priestly rod of Aaron. So holy was the Ark that those who were not called as priests to minister in the tabernacle were struck down and died by merely touching it. [2 Samuel 6:3-7]

Whatever made the Ark holy made Mary even holier. If the first ark contained the Word of God in stone, Mary’s body contained the Word of God enfleshed, incarnate. How do we know this?  In the Book of Revelation, John sees the sanctuary in heaven opening to reveal the ark of the covenant. [Revelation 11:19] This would have been incredible news to John’s readers in the first century for the ark had disappeared at the time of the Babylonian Exile when the prophet Jeremiah hid it in a cave for safekeeping. Indiana Jones notwithstanding, it has never been seen again. But John reveals for us the true ark that he sees in the sanctuary in heaven: “Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman, robed with the sun, standing on the moon, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. . . . The woman was delivered of a boy, the son who was to rule all the nations with an iron sceptre, and the child was taken straight up to God and to his throne.” [Revelation 12: 1, 5]

Perpetual Virginity

We know from Isaiah 7:14 that a Virgin would conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Immanuel (God with us), but many misinterpret the scriptures to conclude that although Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and became incarnate, Mary had other children. [Mark 6:3 and Matthew 12:46] For anyone who has even superficially studied the Hebrew language and customs of Jesus’ time, the use of the word “brother” is easily understood.  In ancient Hebrew culture, there was no word for cousin. To a Jew of Jesus’ time, one’s cousin was one’s brother.

Some have also cited a passage from Matthew 1:25 in which we read that Joseph “knew her not until she had borne a son” implying that the use of “until” means that Joseph “knew” Mary after  Jesus was born. This is a classic example of superficial and false biblical exegesis. St. Jerome in the 4th century attacked this argument by demonstrating that scripture often uses a fixed time to denote time without limitation as when God, through the words of the prophet says: “Even to old age I am He.” [Isaiah 46:4] Does this mean that the Lord will cease to be God when they have grown old? Or again, Jesus leaving His apostles tells them: “Lo, I am with you always to the close of the age.” [Matthew 28:20] Does this mean Jesus would forsake His disciples after the close of the age?

The scriptural passages show that Mary remained ever virgin after the birth of Jesus:

Ezekiel 44:1-3 – Then he brought me back the way of the gate of the outward sanctuary which looketh toward the east; and it was shut. Then said the LORD unto me; This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the LORD, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut.

Song of Songs 4:12 – “A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.” Early Christians interpreted these two passages as signifying that the womb of the Virgin Mary is “shut” and “sealed” by God, not to be “opened” in natural childbirth. They said that Christ passed through her shut womb using the same divine power with which He later appeared to His disciples in a room where the doors were shut (St. John 20:19).

The early Church leaders and writers who were far closer to the Apostles and the teachings of the Lord clearly understood the perpetual virginity of Mary:

Believe in the Son of God, the Word before all the ages, who was…in these last days, for your sake, made Son of Man, born of the Virgin Mary in an indescribable and stainless way,-for there is no stain where God is and whence salvation comes…” (St. Gregory of Nazianz, Oration on Holy Baptism, 40:45; 381 AD)

“According to the condition of the body (Jesus) was in the womb, He nursed at His mother’s breast, He lay in the manger, but superior to that condition, the Virgin conceived and the Virgin bore, so that you might believe that He was God who restored nature, though He was man who, in accord with nature, was born of a human being.” (St. Ambrose of Milan, Mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation, 6:54; 382 AD)

The Patristic evidence from the early Church age is overwhelming. The birth of Christ, like His conception, was supernatural, not “unnatural.” Only modern, primarily secular writers, deny the perpetual virginity and integrity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Assumption of Mary

There are several passages from the Bible that reveal to us that those of obedient and loving faith were assumed or brought directly into Heaven. In the Book of Genesis, we learn that Enoch, a descendant of Adam, “walked with God, then was no more, because God took him.” [Genesis 5:24] Similarly, at the end of his time as a prophet of the Lord, Elijah was suddenly separated from his successor Elisha by a chariot of fire and horses and taken up into Heaven in a whirlwind. [2 Kings 2:11]

The belief in the Assumption of Mary flows logically from a belief in her Immaculate Conception. If Mary was preserved from sin by the free gift of God, she would not be bound to experience the consequences of sin–death–in the same way we do.

In the Psalms, King David, as a type or foreshadowing of Jesus Christ who would usher in the Kingdom of God, prophetically says of Jesus: “The Queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold.” [Psalm 45:9] This is the woman “robed with the sun” and as St. John of Damascus tells us after calling Christ the new Solomon that “it was fitting that the Mother of God would take up her residence in the Royal and Heavenly City of her son.”

Mother of God

From our reading of scripture, consideration of Mary’s Immaculate Conception and perpetual virginity, we grow in understanding of Mary’s special role as the Mother of God, the Mother of the Church and our Mother. On the altar of the Cross our Lord gave His Mother to the Apostle John and through him to the whole Church. When Scripture tells us from that hour the disciple took her into his home [John 19:27] our understanding is that John became not only the representative of the Church but also a representative of the whole human race. Therefore, the Virgin Mary becomes mankind’s spiritual mother calling all men, as she did the servants at the wedding in the Gospel of John 2:5, to do whatever He tells you. The wedding at Cana was the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and it was also the beginning of Mary’s role as intercessor for the human family.

Luke records in his Gospel the recognition by Elizabeth that Mary is the mother of God: “How is it that I am honored with a visit from the mother of my Lord?” [Luke 1:43]

Mary prayed in union with the Apostles and disciples in the Upper Room as the followers of Jesus the Messiah, in obedience to Jesus’ command, prayed nine days for the coming of the Holy Spirit on the 10th day the Holy Spirit came in fire to possess the New Covenant universal Church [Acts 1:13-14]. The book of Acts of Apostles records that the leaders of the infant Church along with the entire faith community were persevering in prayer with Mary the Mother of Jesus, and so the Church has done ever since.

If Adam named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all those who live [Genesis 3:20] how much more then is Mary the Mother of the Church and all Christians baptized into the Body of Christ as her “offspring.” [Revelation 12:17] Mary’s continuing role in Salvation History is that of the Mother of the King of Kings, in Hebrew the gebira or Queen Mother, a title given to the mothers of the Kings of Judah. The mothers of the Kings of Judah were persons of great prestige and power who sat at the right hand of their sons and who were regarded with reverence by his subjects [1 Kings 2:19; Jeremiah 13:18].

Mary’s Role in God’s Plan of Salvation

Eve was the daughter of the first covenant. Mary is the daughter of the New Covenant. Eve was disobedient to the Word of God. Mary was obedient to the Word of God. Eve listened to the  fallen angel Lucifer. Mary listened to the angel Gabriel sent by God resulting in the offer of the gift of salvation and eternal life to the entire human race. Eve was the mother of all living who would die in their sins. Mary is “mother of all who truly live” when, at the cross, Jesus gave His mother to the Church as the Mother of all who come to receive Jesus as Savior and Lord and therefore receive the gift of eternal life.

Mary said “Do whatever he [Jesus] tells you to do.” (Jn:2:3) She is the first person in history to say this about Jesus. Surely it is a holy, sinless, faithful and incredible mother who would obediently follow the Word of God and impart her only son on the path to the Cross.