Vigils Reading – Memorial of the BVM

THE NATURE OF MARY’S MATERNITY

From “The Divine Motherhood” by Anscar Vonier7

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Let us always bear in mind the great truth that the Blessed Virgin’s

maternity was a most natural maternity in the sense that she fully responded to

it, was not overwhelmed by it, that there was no separation between her and her

offspring; Christ came from her as her own dear child, the fruit of her own

blessed womb. I am right, therefore, in asserting that Mary’s maternal function

in the conception of Christ was raised to an incredibly high plane of vitality so

as to make her maternity not only an instrumental, but a natural maternity. If

Mary’s mission had been merely to minister the human element to the Word

when he became flesh, her maternity would have been just instrumental; it

would have existed only to serve a higher purpose. But Mary’s role is more than

that; she is permanently the Mother of God; her maternity is not a transient

ministration, but an abiding dignity that makes her share with God the Father,

in literal truth, the parenthood of Jesus Christ.

A threefold hypothesis may make this point clearer still. We can think of

a woman being made a mother by the direct productive act of God; in that case

the offspring of that mother would not be divine, but human. Then there can be

the conception in a woman’s womb of a divine person, as happened in the

incarnation, but the woman being merely instrumental to the production of the

body; in such a case it would be divine maternity in the most restricted

physiological sense. Thirdly, there is the glorious possibility of perfect divine

maternity with all the graces and privileges, with all the rights and splendors, of

one who shares to the full, with God the Father, the parenthood of the God

Incarnate. Such is Mary’s maternity; such is the meaning of Elizabeth’s

salutation, or rather the salutation of the Holy Spirit through the mouth of

Elizabeth, when full of the divine Spirit she cried with a loud voice: Blessed are

you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And whence is this

to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?

Elizabeth was the first creature to call Mary “the Mother of God”; she gave

us the grandest title of our Lady: “Mother of God.” The archangel, indeed, had

said as much, but only by implication; Elizabeth, the happiest of human

mothers, has the privilege of having spoken for the first time the words “Mother

of God.” When, moreover, in the same breath she calls blessed the Mother and

the fruit of her womb, bestowing the same encomium on the two lives which

were not yet disjoined, she gives us an additional reason for saying that Mary’s

maternity had been raised to the divine plane of dignity and perfection, where

one and the same blessedness holds mother and offspring wrapped in a

matchless sanctity.

7 pp. 345-346; reprinted in Meditations on the Sunday Gospels: Year A; introduced and edited by John E. Rotelle, Hyde

Park, NY: New City Press, 1995, pp. 28-29.15