By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 8
St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, in his celebrated book True Devotion to Mary, explains that our Lady is not only the Mother of Christ, the Mother of God Incarnate, but she is also the spiritual Mother of All Christians, of all those who are baptized into the Church founded by her Son.
He explains that Jesus is the Head of the Church, His Mystical Body, and we are the members. Now, a mother does not give birth to a child having only a head and not a body, as it would be a monstrosity of nature. So, since our Lady gave birth to the Head of the Mystical Body, physically, she gives birth to all the members of that same Mystical Body, spiritually.
Besides, as Jesus is the firstborn of God (Col. 1:15) and our Brother, we have the same Father, God, and the same Mother, Mary. When we are baptized, we are reborn, and belong to the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church. Hence our Lady has been called Mater Ecclesiae, Mother of the Church.
Consequence: If you do not have Mary as your mother, you do not have God as your Father. Period.
Our Lady became the Mother of Christ and our Mother when she pronounced her fiat, her assent to the Angel Gabriel’s salutation. That was the very beginning of the life of God Incarnate. Thirty-three years later, Jesus gave her to St. John as his Mother, in the midst of the sorrows of Calvary. He said to her from the cross: “Woman, behold thy son,” and to St. John: “Behold thy Mother.” Through St. John, these words were addressed to all the elect. Mary became in the fullest and most perfect sense our Mother.
In 1964, Pope Paul VI declared that “Mary Most Holy is the Mother of the Church, that is, of the entire Christian people, both faithful and pastors” (discourse, November 21, 1964). That means that the evangelicals and Protestants of all sorts are also children of Mary, whether they accept that or not.
Paul VI concluded by saying that the Blessed Virgin Mary “now continues to fulfill from Heaven her maternal function by which she cooperates in the birth and development of divine life in the individual souls of redeemed men.”
Here we come to the point where non-Catholic Christians protest: The teaching of the Catholic Church on the mediation of our Lady. She is called the Mediatrix of all Graces, because she is the Mother of the Redeemer who, by His Blood, has purchased all the graces that have been given, or shall be given, to man since the Fall. The flesh and blood that Christ used for our salvation came from Mary alone, since Jesus’ Father is a pure Spirit.
St. Louis de Montfort, once again, explains that God could have given Jesus to the world directly from His divine hands, like making another Adam from the earth. But He did not. He gave Jesus to Mary, who nurtured and kept him for thirty years, reserving only three years to the rest of mankind, the billions and billions of people who existed from then and would exist in the future. If you were to place Mary and the rest of mankind on a two-plate scale to see which side was more loved by God, Mary’s plate would be heavier.
St. Louis also reminds us that Jesus performed His first public miracle in Cana by the intercession of our Lady (“And the Mother of Jesus was there” — John 2:1) and delivered His last public message in her presence as well (“Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His Mother” — John 19:25). So St. Louis concludes that He began His work of Redemption work with her and will continue it with her as well, since she is the channel that brought Him to us.
I can see a non-Catholic Christian protesting and saying that “Paul says in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned, and therefore Mary sinned as well and needed redemption.”
The answer is quite simple: If he is speaking of personal sin, St. Paul was not referring to absolutely everyone — certainly he meant to exclude Christ, as well as innocent children and people who are mentally handicapped and those murdered by abortion. They have not sinned. The Blessed Mother is simply another exception.
However, his meaning is, as the full sentence shows, that all the members of the fallen human race are in need of the redemption achieved by Christ. And this applies to Mary too, of course, since her being redeemed by anticipation was among the great things that God had for her, as she proclaimed in her Magnificat, when she said: “My spirit rejoices in God my savior, because He has regarded the humility of His handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. Because He that is mighty, hath done great things to me; and holy is His name” (Luke 1:45-55).
Another common objection against the Great Lady of the Davidic Kingdom is that “Mary cannot be ever-virgin, since the New Testament speaks of the ‘brothers of Jesus’ (e.g. Matt. 12:46) and ‘His sisters’ (for example, Mark 6:3).”
The answer is also classic: First of all, let us remember that ignorance is the source of many evils. Among the Jews, “brother” could mean blood-brother, brother-in-law, cousin, second cousin, relative, or even close friend. In some countries of Africa and Asia today, the word “brother” is used in the same broad sense. Besides, neither Hebrew nor Aramaic, the Jewish languages used by Christ, had a particular word for “cousin.”
More: To this day, in the French language the word “parents” means both “parents” and also “relatives”; in Italian, the word nipote means both “nephew” and “grandson.” No language is perfect, having words for everything.
In St. Matthew’s Gospel, James and Joseph are called “brothers” of Jesus (13:55), but are the sons of a follower of Christ (27:56) whom St. Matthew calls “the other Mary” (28:1), the wife of Cleophas (John 19:25).
Besides, common sense shows that if Christ had blood brothers, other sons of Mary, there would have been no need to entrust His Mother to St. John, his cousin. He would have left her to his brothers, but there were none.
In the early Church a heretic called Helvidius denied the perpetual virginity of our Lady, but he was refuted in chapter and in verse by one of the greatest Bible scholars in history, St. Jerome, who translated the whole Bible from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into Latin, making the famous Vulgate version, the official Bible of the Church of Jesus Christ (about AD 380).
Next article: The Redemption, part 1.
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(Raymond de Souza, KM, is available to speak at Catholic events anywhere in the free world in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Please email SacredHeartMedia@Outlook.com or visit www.RaymonddeSouza.com or phone 507-450-4196 in the United States.)
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