By JOHN YOUNG
The expression Mary Ever Virgin means more than the statement that she never had sexual intercourse. It means also, as the Church expresses it, that she remained a virgin during the birth of Jesus, in the sense that her body remained unimpaired.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man” (n. 499).
This is official Church teaching, but one which many Catholics don’t know. And it goes beyond what conservative Protestants believe. They agree with Catholics that the conception of Jesus was miraculous in that He had no human father, but they usually don’t believe in a miraculous birth, nor do they agree with the Catholic teaching that Mary and Joseph never had sexual relations. They regard the brothers and sisters of Jesus referred to in the Gospels as literally His brothers and sisters, with Mary and Joseph their parents.
The “brothers and sisters of Jesus” were in fact His cousins; those terms had a wider meaning than they have in English. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “They are close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression” (n. 500).
Incidentally, a conservative Protestant clergyman put this argument to me for the virginal conception of Christ: the heretical claim that He had a human father implies the contradiction that He had two fathers: a Divine Father and a human father.
But that argument is not a valid one, because the (false) claim that He had a father in His humanity doesn’t conflict with having a Divine Father in His Divinity.
So, the clergyman’s conclusion was right (Jesus had no human father) but his reason was wrong.
The fitness of Mary suffering no pain or injury to her body in giving birth to Jesus should become evident if we recall that she is the second Eve. It is because of original sin that pain accompanies the giving of birth, as indicated in the Book of Genesis (3:16). But Mary was free of original sin from the first moment of her conception.
A further consideration is the truth that virginity or celibacy chosen for the love of God is an even higher state of life than marriage. Therefore, it was fitting that the most perfect human person should be both married and a virgin.
Some Catholics find it hard to accept the doctrine that celibacy chosen through love of God is a more perfect state than marriage and don’t realize that it is an infallible teaching of the Church. But it was solemnly defined by the Council of Trent as a dogma of Divine Faith, as Pope Pius XII points out in his encyclical Sacra Virginitas, n. 32. It is taught also by Vatican II in the Decree on the Training of Priests, n. 10.
Of course, God the Son didn’t look around the world in search of a woman who was fit to be His mother in His human nature. He chose her beforehand and gave her all the perfections necessary for that exalted role. She was full of grace from the moment of her conception, she never committed the slightest venial sin, and her supernatural endowments raised her above even the highest angel.
When he defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception Pius IX said that from the first instant Mary was loved by God more than all creatures and that He gave her more graces than all the angels and saints.
That is because of the unique privileges God endowed her with. By nature, she was lower than the angels, but by her supernatural endowments she is above all the angels. So, she has the title Queen of Angels.
By nature, human beings are less than the angels, for we are a compound of spirit and matter, whereas they are pure spirits with an intellect and will far more powerful than ours. But supernaturally it is possible for a human being to be higher than some of the angels, for he may have more sanctifying grace than some angels; and in Mary’s case we have a human person more exalted than any angel.
How much did Mary know of her uniqueness? We don’t know exactly because we are not told how much was revealed to her, but she must have realized that she was sinless and that this was not the case with people in general. She probably knew that she was uniquely holy.
Her cousin Elizabeth’s greeting to her, “Blessed are you among women,” had a significance for her that most of us overlook, because she thoroughly knew the Old Testament whereas most of us don’t. Two women had been praised in those words: Judith and Jael: Judith by saving her people by cutting off the head of their enemy Holofernes (Judith 13:8), and Jael by driving a tent peg through the skull of their enemy Sisera (Judges 4:21).
Mary must have wondered what she would be asked to do! But she would have recalled the words of God in the Book of Genesis that the seed of the woman would crush the head of Satan.
The angels are pure spirits and therefore, in their nature, are far superior to us. But God became man; He did not become an angel, and it was fitting that His Mother should be the highest of creatures.
Mary, in the words of Wordsworth, is “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”
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