By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 6
Every decent king has a court, and courts have courtiers. The saintly kings of the past, like St. Louis of France, St. Ferdinand of Castile, and St. Edward of England, had their courtiers, nobles who worked with them and for them as well.
Our royally divine King also has His court, as David had before him: a court of saints and angels in the Kingdom that is not of this world. Don’t we often refer to Heaven as the Heavenly Court?
To God alone, and only to Him, we pay the worship of adoration, because His excellence is infinite and is all His own. He is our Supreme King, and we are His servants. Although the saints are His courtiers, His dukes and barons, as it were, we do not adore them, because they are mere creatures possessing nothing, not even their own existence, except as God’s gift to them. Still we give them simple reverence and honor because they are the King’s friends, and, in honoring them, we honor the King who is the source of all their blessedness and heavenly nobility.
The Davidic Kingdom had a special throne for the Queen Mother, the Gabirah, as the Hebrews called her. To establish the throne of the Queen Mother was the very first act of King Solomon after his coronation. That is why it makes perfect sense that in the new Kingdom of God, the King Jesus Christ has Mary, His own Mother, as the highest and most glorious of all His creatures, as the Gabirah of the New Kingdom.
We pay her special homage as our heavenly Queen and the Mother of God; hence, all her dignity and other privileges, which we will consider in due course. Next after her, we revere her Spouse, St. Joseph, the head of the household at Nazareth, to whom God Himself was obedient in the person of Jesus.
A few Greek words for you: The worship we pay to God is technically known as latria — which means the supreme adoration owed to the Deity alone. That is why idolatry — idol-latria — the adoration of an idol as if it were a “god,” is a condemnable sin against the First Commandment. The veneration given to the saints and angels has nothing to do with latria, but is called dulia, which means veneration, great respect, high honor. The special veneration given to Our Blessed Lady is called hyperdulia (hyper, over, above; dulia, veneration). Thus hyperdulia is a veneration given to Mary alone, over and above all the other saints.
There is one kind of dulia in between Mary and the rest of the Heavenly Court: the one given to St. Joseph, because of his high place in the mystery of salvation: It is called protodulia (from proto, first, foremost; dulia, veneration). And why not? After all, if Jesus, God Incarnate, the King Redeemer Himself, obeyed Joseph’s commands in the carpenter shop, and if Mary, the Queen Mother, cooked his meals every day, then wasn’t he a very great, privileged man?
We have looked into the role of Jesus as King, Prophet, and Priest of the New Kingdom, which belongs to Him alone. Now let us look into the role of our Lady as the Gabirah, literally meaning “Great Lady,” and usually translated as “Queen Mother” in the English language. To this day the British monarchy keeps this title for the Mother of the King or Queen.
God gave Mary, the Gabirah of the new Davidic Kingdom, several privileges, and the greatest one was the Divine Maternity.
Mary is the Mother of Christ. But her Son, Jesus Christ, is God Incarnate; therefore, Mary is the Mother of God Incarnate. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure this out. As early as the year 431 the Church solemnly defined it at the Council of Ephesus.
There is no validity whatsoever in some Protestant objections that, since she did not give her Son His Divine Nature, she cannot be called the Mother of God. No woman gives her child all he has; no woman gives her child his spiritual soul — his soul is a direct gift from God, created at the moment of conception. She is, nonetheless, her child’s mother on that account.
In ordinary conception, the first living cell, which subsequently is multiplied many times, contains elements from both parents. Nobody ever says this to his mother: “You are only the mother of my body, not of my soul, because God created it, not you.” The idiot who would say that, besides insulting his mother, fails to understand that she did not create his body, either. To create means to produce something out of nothing. The only thing a human person can create out of nothing out is…nothing (pun intended). The mother nurtured his body and received his soul being created in her body, directly created by God. And she is his mother, anyway, in spite of his being an idiot.
Therefore, the body of a child comes from both parents, not the mother alone. But since Christ had no human father but was conceived miraculously through the power of the Holy Spirit, His body came from but one source, the pure flesh of His Virgin Queen Mother.
Mary is no less her Child’s Mother though His Soul and Divinity did not come from her. Other women are justly called mothers of their sons, and Mary is justly called the Mother of God. Mary is the Mother of God, and God Himself made her worthy to be His Mother. The Church never said she was the Mother of the Holy Trinity, but of the Second Person, God the Son, Jesus Christ.
He made her the second Eve, the Mother of the Living, the Mother of all those who were to be restored by her Son to the life of divine friendship. He has raised her to be the Queen of Heaven, the Gabirah of the Heavenly Court and Kingdom. He has given her a dignity incomparably higher than that of the highest of His angels.
To remove any gross misconceptions from anti-Catholic bigots, let us make this crystal clear: “Mother of God” does not mean eternally begetting God, let alone greater than God. “Mother of God” means simply “Mother of God the Son made man.” It does not mean Mother of God the Father, nor Mother of God the Holy Spirit.
The rejection by Protestants of the term “Mother of God” can only mean that they believe that 1) Jesus is not God, or 2) Mary is not His Mother, or 3) that Nestorianism was right to split Christ into two persons, and that Mary is the Mother of the human one.
More conservative Protestants would reject all three errors, and yet illogically resist the Catholic term. If Jesus is God, and Mary is His Mother, then she is the Mother of God. For this reason St. Elizabeth hailed her as “the Mother of my Lord” (Luke 1:43). Who is the “Lord” Elizabeth was talking about? God, and none other. To oppose the title of Mother of God to the Queen of Heaven, the Gabirah, is sheer bigotry, nothing else.
Next article: The Virgin Gabirah of the New Kingdom.
+ + +
(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.)
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress