By Leon Bent –
From all eternity Mary was chosen to be the Mother of the Word Incarnate. It is unthinkable that such a mother should have been defiled by sin for even a moment.
We are in the Christmas season and once again, the global media is flooded with vehemently-written stories that dismiss or ridicule the virginity of Mary, Mother of Jesus. While various theologians have grappled with the issue over the centuries, the fact that Christianity has thrived beyond 2000 A.D., testifies to the fact that, the issue of the Virginity of Mary cannot just be wished away. This is more so from the fact that, for billions of mainline Christians, who confess their faith in the Apostles Creed, the virgin birth is indisputable.
The Protestant Reformation caused a difficulty to Marian devotion. Roman Catholic Mariology was under attack as being sacrilegious and superstitious. Protestant leaders like Martin Luther and John Calvin, while personally adhering to Marian beliefs like the virgin birth and sinlessness, considered Catholic veneration of Mary as competition to the divine role of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, many Protestant streams and New Age ‘churches’ have heaped inconceivable ridicule on the ‘white-as-snow’ and ‘spotless virgin’, Mary.
The Immaculate
In teaching that Mary was conceived immaculate, the Catholic Church asserts that, from the very moment of her conception, the Blessed Virgin Mary was free from all stain of original sin. This simply means that from the beginning, she was in a state of grace, sharing in God’s own life, and that she was free from the sinful inclinations which have beset human nature after the fall. This is a dogmatic truth!
There are two passages in Scripture which point us to this truth. We look first at Genesis 3.15, in which we see the parallel between Mary and Eve of which the early Church Fathers already spoke: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” The Jews saw this passage as referring to the struggle between Christ and Satan, and so the Church sees in “the woman” a prophetic foreshadowing of the Virgin Mary (Vatican II, Lumen gentium, n. 55).
If there is to be complete enmity between the woman and the serpent, then she never should have been in any way subject to him even briefly. This implies an Immaculate Conception. We can also reason from the text of Lk 1:28, in which the angel calls her “full of grace”. If Mary was “full of grace,” it seems that she had been conceived, immaculate.
Pope Pius IX made the declaration of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, 1854. The essential definition was: “We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful” (Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus).
Karl Rahner has written on the implications of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception: “Mary is someone who has been redeemed radically….Mary is…the highest and most profound instance of the realization of salvation….”
He explains why this is the case: The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, therefore, consists simply in her having possessed the divine life of grace from the beginning of her existence, a life of grace that was given her (without her meriting it), by God’s enabling grace. It is divine grace that precedes human decision, so that, through this grace-filled beginning of her life, she might become the mother of the Redeemer in the manner God had intended her to be for his own Son. For that reason, she was enveloped from the beginning of her life in the redemptive and saving love of God.
The Virginal Conception
The great biblical scholar, Raymond Brown, asserts: Traditionally Mary’s virginity has been described as “ante partum” (before birth), “inpartu” (during childbirth without breaking the hymen and/or a birth without pain) and “post partum” (after the birth of Jesus).
Now, this gold nugget! The Virginal Conception is “a sign of the presence and work of the Spirit!” In commemorating the 1854 definition of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI attests: “Before all, the ‘woman’ of the apocalypse is Mary herself.” The 12th chapter of the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) describes the glorification and persecution of “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”
“She appears ‘clothed in sunlight,’ that is, clothed in God,” observed the Pope. “The Virgin Mary is, in fact, completely surrounded by the light of God and lives in God ….The ‘Immaculate One’ reflects with all her personhood the light of the ‘sun’ which is God.”
“Besides representing Our Lady, this sign personifies the Church, the Christian community of all times,” the Pontiff continued.
And, this final flourish! The theological significance of Mary’s virginity would seem to lie in her total self- giving to God and in her total fruitfulness as a result of that self-giving.
The Last word: “’O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you.”
Leon Bent is an ex-Seminarian and studied the Liberal Arts and Humanities, and Philosophy, from St. Pius X College, Mumbai. He holds Masters Degree in English Literature and Aesthetics. He has published three Books and have 20 on the anvil. He has two extensively “Researched” Volumes to his name: Hail Full of Grace and Matrimony: The Thousand Faces of Love. He won The Examiner, Silver Pen Award, 2000 for writing on Social Issues, the clincher being a Researched Article on Gypsies in India, published in an issue of the (worldwide circulation) Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection, New Delhi. On April, 28, 2018, Leon received the Cardinal Ivan Dias Award for a research paper in Mariology.
Indian Catholic Matters relies on donations in carrying out its Mission to offer inspirational content for free. Your support will indeed go a long way in keeping it that way.
[give_form id=”12111″ show_title=”true” show_content=”below” display_style=”button”]
One comment
Comments are closed.