catholicism 101 / part 18

Catholicism 101

(The outline of this series is taken from Father Vernon Staley’s book The Catholic
Religion.)

Church of the Holy Cross

July 20, 2008

Part 18

Christian Duty: Christian Belief: The Three Great Creeds: Concerning God:  Jesus Christ: The Incarnation:  The Blessed Virgin Mary

-      Jesus Christ is both God and man.

o  The Athanasian Creed puts it this way:

§ “For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the Substance of his Mother, born in the world; Perfect God and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting; Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the Father, as touching his Manhood.  Who although he be God and Man, yet he is not two, but one Christ; One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God; One altogether; not by confusion of Substance, but by unity of  Person.  For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and Man is one Christ…”

o   At the fourth General (or Ecumenical) Council held at Chalcedon (modern Turkey) in October of 451 AD, against the teaching of a monk named Eutyches, who taught that while Jesus was divine, he was not really fully human.  Following the teaching of Pope Leo I and St. Cyril of Alexandria, the Fathers of the council said this:

§ “We teach . . . one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, known in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”

o   The “two natures” of Christ are the divine and the human.  This is really just a fancy way of saying that Jesus is really God, and at the same time he is really a man.  Neither is qualified, and neither is an illusion.  He is fully and really God, and fully and really a man.

o   And as the Athanasian Creed says, the humanity of Christ comes from his
mother:  “…God, of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the Substance of his Mother, born in the world…”

§ This means that Jesus really was human.  He was born of a mother.  He had human DNA, and everything else that goes with being a human.  And
he got it all from his mother, Mary.

§ Thus, as the Archangel Gabriel says in the Gospel of Luke, there are two “agents” or actors in the Incarnation of God:  1) the Holy Spirit, and 2)
The Blessed Virgin Mary:

·   “And the angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God’… And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according t your word.’” (Luke 1.35, 38).

§ Scripture is silent about the birth and early life of St. Mary, although there is an ancient extra-canonical book known as the Protoevangelium of James (written about they year 150 AD) which says much about her early life and her parents.  Most likely, however, the Protoevangelium of James was a symbolic / theological work not meant to be taken literally (but we don’t know for sure).

§ We may, however, say with certainty that St. Mary was, in fact, born, that she had an early life, etc.  And we may say with reverent conviction (and the Church DOES say) that God did not pick her at random for so monumental a task.  Rather, like many of the key players in salvation history, she was chosen from the moment of her conception, and specially sanctified by God for this purpose.

·      This was also the case, according to Scripture, of the Prophet Jeremiah, and St. John the Baptist:

o   Jeremiah 1.5:  “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

o   Luke 1.15 (about St. John the Baptist): “for he will be great before the Lord, and he shall drink no wine nor strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb.”

o   Being elected by God and consecrated for a particular role in the narrative of salvation is something that the Lord does.  And the Church has ever held that this was the case with THE
key player in salvation history, the one from whose body God would give himself to us:  the Blessed Virgin.

o   Only by being so graced could she have played such a mysterious and high part in God’s plan.

§ And Gabriel bears witness to Mary’s being specially graced: he says that she is “kecaritwmenh” – in the Vulgate “gratia plena” – in English: “full of grace”.

§ The Church has explained the Gospel’s teaching about Mary being specially graced, saying that “her soul, in the first instant of its creation… was, by a special grace and privilege of God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, her Son and the Redeemer of the human race, preserved free from all stain of original sin” (Ineffabilis Deus – the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Pius IX on the Immaculate Conception).

§ On the Principle of Lex orandi, lex credendi, w find that this teaching is contained in germ within the Book of Common Prayer:

·     “Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin: Grant that we, being regenerate and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ…”  (The third Collect for Christmas Day).  Note the phrase “pure virgin”.

§ Concerning Mary’s perpetual virginity:

·   Consider St. Mary’s response to the Annunciation: she asks St. Gabriel, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?”

o   This is a poor translation (the King James was better).  In Greek it says: pws estai touto epei andra ou ginwskw.  “How shall this be since I am not knowing [present, active] man?”

§ This response doesn’t make much sense unless
Mary was a virgin and intended to remain a virgin (otherwise, there would have been no perplexity [“How shall this be…?”] – she would have expected it to have come about in the normal manner: through the conjugal embrace).

·   Father Staley says: “The Church has ever held that the mother of Jesus was a virgin both before and after the birth of Jesus.  St. Augustine speaks of her as ‘a virgin conceiving, a virgin bringing forth, a virgin dying.’  The title ‘ever-virgin’ is applied to her by St. Athanasius.  The words ‘And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son’ (St. Matt. 1.25), do not imply that she ceased to be a virgin after the birth of Jesus, or that there were other children born later.  They are intended simply to make it quite plain that Joseph was not the father of Mary’s child.  They guard Mary’s virginity up to the time of the birth of her first and only son.  The term ‘firstborn’ does not imply a second born. There were amongst the Jews certain rites performed in reference to the first son born into a fmaily’ and thus he was called ‘the firstborn’ whether there were other children or not (see Ex. 13.2; St. Luke 2.22, 23).  The brethren of our Lord, alluded to in the Gospels, were not the children of the Virgin Mother.  They are generally supposed either to have been children of Joseph by a previous marriage, or to have been the cousins of our Lord.  When we realize that God himself took flesh in Mary’s womb, it is inconceivable that other children should afterwards been born of her.”