Festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Mother of Our Lord, Mother of God
We pray:
Almighty God, You chose the Virgin Mary to be the mother of Your only Son. Grant that we, who are redeemed by His blood, may share with her in the glory of Your eternal kingdom; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
We meditate on the Scriptures:
Isaiah 61:7-11; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 1:39-55
The honor paid to Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus Christ our Lord and God, goes back to the earliest days of the Church. Indeed, it goes back further, for even before the birth of her Son, Mary prophesied, “From this time forth, all generations shall call me blessed.”
The New Testament records several incidents from the life of the Virgin: her betrothal to Joseph, the Annunciation by the angel Gabriel that she was to bear the Messiah, her Visitation to Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist, the Nativity of our Lord, the visits of the shepherds and the magi, the Presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple at the age of forty days, the flight into Egypt, the Passover visit to the Temple when Jesus was twelve, [Matthew 1:16,18-25; 2; Luke 1:26-56; 2]; the wedding at Cana in Galilee and the performance of her Son’s first miracle at her intercession [John 2:1-11], the occasions when observers said, “How can this man be special? We know his family!” [Matthew 13:54-56 = Mark 6:1-3 = Luke 4:22; also John 6:42], an occasion when she came with others to see him while he was preaching [Matthew 12:46-50 = Mark 3:31-35 = Luke 8:19-21], her presence at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus commends her to the care of the Beloved Disciple [John 19:25-27], and her presence with the apostles in the upper room after the Ascension, waiting for the promised Spirit [Acts 1:14]. She is thus seen to be present at most of the chief events of her Son’s life.
Besides Jesus himself, only two humans are mentioned by name in the Creeds. One is Pontius Pilate, Roman procurator of Judea from 26 to 36 Ad. That Jesus was crucified by order of Pontius Pilate pins down the date of his death within a few years, and certifies that we are not talking, like the worshippers of Tammuz or Adonis, about a personification or symbol of the annual death and resurrection of the crops. His death is an event in history, something that really happened. The other name is that of Mary. The Creeds say that Christ was “born of the virgin Mary.” That is to say, they assert on the one hand that he was truly and fully human, born of a woman and not descended from the skies like an angel. On the other hand, by telling us that his mother was a virgin they exclude the theory that he was simply an ordinary man who was so virtuous that he eventually, at his baptism, became filled with the Spirit of God. His virgin birth attests to the fact that he was always more than merely human, always one whose presence among us was in itself a miracle, from the first moment of his earthly existence. In Mary, Virgin and Mother, God gives us a sign that Jesus is both truly God and truly Man.
Little is known of the life of the Virgin Mary except insofar as it intersects with the life of her Son, and there is an appropriateness in this. The Scriptures record her words to the angel Gabriel, to her kinswoman Elizabeth, to her Son on two occasions. But the only recorded saying of hers to what may be called ordinary, run-of-the-mill hearers is her instruction to the servants at the wedding feast, to whom she says simply, indicating her Son, “Whatever he says to you, do it.”
This we may take to be the summation of her message to the world. If we listen to her, she will tell us, “Listen to Him. Listen to my Son. Do what He tells you.” When we see her, we see her pointing to her Son. If our regard for the Blessed Virgin does not have the immediate effect of turning our attention from her to the One whom she carried in her womb for nine months and suckled at her breast, to the Incarnate God, the Word made flesh, then we may be sure that it is not the kind of regard that she seeks. A right regard for her will always direct us to Him Who found in her His first earthly dwelling-place.
The day of the falling asleep of the God-bearer, Mary of Nazareth, the Blessed. This is the day I like to remind myself that cemetery is from the Greek kimiterion for sleeping place, and dormitory is from the Latin dormitorium for sleeping place. Our bodies will sleep there in a temporary death until Jesus calls us all to come forth bodily for the Final Judgement. Our souls already go forth to Glory or to Separation from God, while the lifeless bodies wait. The Judgement is a foregone conclusion at the death of the body and Jesus gathers the souls that are his into his bosom, he marks them, he writes their names in his list-of-righteous book, he paints them white as snow, he signs in blood documents of adoption, etc. His children have nothing to fear from the Final Judgement.
I am not digresssing. Here is the question: did Jesus come when his mother Mary died and take her soul to heaven just like he does with all his children. Of course he did. And then, did he pass by three days later and scoop up her body, her flesh-and-blood physical body from her tomb and take it bodily to heaven with him in the way his body went to heaven and similarly to the way the Bible says that Enoch and Eljah went bodily to heaven??? Cause some Christian people have been saying things like that since the 4th century (but oddly not a minute earlier) about the idea of special handling for Mary’s body at her death.
Well, wouldn’t that be a nice thing if he had? Wasn’t it thrilling and a true testament of God’s love for Elijah when he sent the fiery chariot to carry him over Jordan? It was. We get a tingle in our bowels just singing about it. So why not Mary too?
So tell us God, why not Mary too? We search your Word and no fiery chariot there for Mary the ever-blessed mother of Jesus. What we do find is horrible deaths where the bodies are left to rot. If Mary managed merely a peaceful death and interment in a tomb, she did better than most of those who featured in Jesus life.
But, here’s probably the deeper reason so many of us are cautious about Mary, what would her funeral sermon be like? If you were a new pastor at her parish and all you knew about her at her death was what is recorded in the Bible, would you be certain of her faith? Since the beginning of Jesus ministry, Mary had been a bit bossy, and then she was there regularly, and then the Apostles took care of her for a long time. I’d say it’s likely she was ok, but do we have any word from Mary that she understood Jesus ministry or the preaching of the Apostles? She certainly knew her son was the Son of God, and she must have told Luke and Matthew about the Christmas events, we think, or someone.
We’d love to have a conversation with Mary before she died, if we’d have to bury her, to confirm her faith, because the Bible alone is so reticent in covering her. So often, she was the Lady who sat silently in the back of the room while it all happened, what did she make of it? What did any of the silent women make of it?
The Gnostics are happy to tell us, but the Bible speaks through the men and tells us all we need to know and warns us not to make up what we itch to know.
If we weren’t dealing with God, he might be more open to doing it our way.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, might have finally understood the ministry of Jesus as implied in Acts 1:14, where she was devoting herself to prayer with all others in the room. That was the last mention of her in the New Testament.
@Joanne
This post starts with the understanding that believers in The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven (The Assumption) also believe that that assumption occured following her death. Well, I’ve read that the Orthodox do, but what about Roman Catholics?
Pope Pius XII’s encyclical of Nov. 1, 1950 only goes so far as to say that Mary, “having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” It makes no reference to her prior death. Might it be that she was awake when the assumption occurred, or was sleeping then? I understand that Rome has never specified whether The Assumption occurred prior to, or after, Mary’s death.
The so-called “Assumption of Mary” is a pious legend, with no foundation in Scripture. When Rome made it dogma is again demonstrated how it is willing to assert non-Biblical teachings.
@ptmccain
As the kids say, Pastor, “Right on!” As I posted elsewhere, even the RC theologian, Hans Kueng, referred to the dogma of The Assumption as “the great assumption”.
However, where did Luther end up in his thinking on the doctrine of The Immaculate Conception of Mary? Some say there is evidence that, at different times, he both affirmed and denied it.
In 1527, only two years prior to publishing the Small Catechism, he said in his sermon, “On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God”:
“It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from orginal sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin.”
Perhaps, this statement is only an example of the continuing “Marian piety” prevalent in early Lutheranism, because nothing to this effect appears in his catechisms, or in Melancthon’s AC or Apology to it, or in any of the subsequent Lutheran Confessions contained in the BOC.
As Luther said (above): “It is a sweet and pious belief….”