This Sunday is the Solemnity (Holy
Day) of Mary, Mother of God, one of the more significant liturgical
celebrations in the Catholic calendar.
The confession of Mary as “Mother of God” presents a
stumbling block for some non-Catholic Christians, but curiously it never did
for me.
I think it was back in the Fall of 1992 when I was sitting in
a course in Ancient Church History at one of the best Calvinist seminaries in America. Our professor, a devout Dutch Calvinist (like
most of us students), was lecturing on the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus AD
431, the council that recognized Mary as “Theotokos,” “Mother of God” (or more
literally, “Bearer of God”). He began to
address the question, Can Calvinists confess Mary as “Mother of God”? He answered in the affirmative, granted that
one understood this not as a claim for Mary’s motherhood of divinity itself,
but in the sense that Mary was mother of Jesus, who is truly God. And that, of course, is precisely how the
Catholic Church understands the term.
So far from being a cause of division, the common confession
of Mary as “Mother of God” should unite all Christians, and distinguish
Christian orthodoxy from various confusions of it, such as Arianism (the denial
that Jesus was God) or Nestorianism (in which Mary mothers only the human
nature of Jesus but not his whole person).
Happy feast day to all!
A brief commentary on the Readings:
Two themes are present in the Readings: (1) the person of
Mary, and (2) the name of Jesus.
The Readings for this Sunday
remind me of the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, which I’ve had the
privilege of visiting a couple of times.
This beautiful church is built on a hillside and is easily visible from
much of the modern city of Nazareth. The
architect designed the dome of the basilica to look like a lighthouse,
symbolizing the light of Christ going out to all Nazareth and the rest of the
Galilee region, in keeping with the theme of last week’s Gospel, “Those walking
in darkness have seen a great light.”
The Readings for this Sunday
focus in part on the theme of joy, the joy that comes from recognizing Jesus
Christ as the light of the world, the ray of sunshine from God who shows us a different
way to live, a way that will lead to an eternal friendship with a God who loves
us as our Father. Jesus is the joy and
light that first was promised to the people of Israel long ago, but is now
available to the whole world, from Sweden to Swaziland.
Ever wonder if the Bible is really history? Catholic Productions has just rolled out my three-hour overview of this question. While we can't address every historical claim the Bible makes, I do point out many of the most significant historical and archeological finds that confirm key points of the Bible's narratives. From the unearthing of St. John's "Pools of Bethesda" (John 5) to the recovering of the "Taylor Prism" with the account of Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem (2 Kings 18-19), we come to see that the main biblical narrative is rooted in history in a way unlike the myths and sagas of other ancient peoples. Click here: http://bit.ly/2j7T3OR
The Christmas Solemnity has distinct readings for four separate
masses: Vigil, Midnight, Dawn, and
Day. There’s such a wealth of material
here to meditate on, that not everything can be covered. In fact, there is almost an entire biblical
theology in the sequence of readings of these four masses. In what follows, I am going to offer just a
few brief comments on the more salient points.
(I apologize that last week I was sick and unable to post on the Second Week of Advent.)
