Mary and the Gospel of Jesus Christ
Why Mary Matters
Protestants often accuse the Catholic Church of turning Mary into an idol fashioned after some Roman myth. The accusation usually goes that Emperor Constantine promoted a new, unbiblical understanding of Mary and the saints to appease pagans who wanted a pantheon of gods and goddesses to worship. There is not a shred of historical evidence for this, but the charge of "Mariolatry" is widely held, so it must be answered.
The Catholic vision of Mary is never set up in opposition to Jesus Christ, her Son. The teachings about Mary uphold and defend the more important teachings about Christ. That is what this article sets out to show, because once you see Mary in this light, you will grow in appreciation of the Catholic theology of Mary. We should also note at the start that nothing we do can surpass the honor God gave Mary by making her the mother of the Messiah.
Before we look at how Marian devotion is not only a good thing but encouraged by the biblical witness, we should be clear about what we do not mean. Catholics do not believe that Mary is our savior, that Mary is equal to God, or that Mary is to be worshiped as if she were God. Catholics do not adore Mary, if adoration means giving to a creature what is owed to God alone. A painting or statue of Mary or another saint is a sacramental, not an idol, and its purpose is to turn our attention to heavenly realities and to how the saints lived the Gospel. As St. Paul said, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (1 Cor. 11:1). Every saint, Mary included, is a saint only through the one mediation of Jesus Christ, the God-man.
With that said, let us look at how the Marian doctrines uphold the orthodox doctrines about Jesus Christ. In the earliest history of the Church, debates arose about the nature of Christ and of the Trinity. The great councils worked out the definitions concerning our Lord's revelation of himself and of the inner life of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Against the Gnostics, the Church had to keep asserting the humanity of Christ. Against the Arians, the Church had to keep asserting his divinity. The Fathers of the first centuries understood that, according to Scripture, Mary held a unique role as Mother of the Redeemer.
We turn now to salvation history to understand her vocation. "When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law" (Gal. 4:4). God visited Israel to redeem them and to begin a new covenant. The new covenant, prophesied in Jeremiah 31, outshines the Mosaic covenant and the redemption from Egypt. God no longer works only through angels and messengers. As Ezekiel puts it, "Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out" (Ezek. 34:11). The Letter to the Hebrews develops this theme: the new covenant in the blood of Christ is an eternal covenant, greater than the blood of bulls and goats. Animal sacrifice in the old covenant symbolized the removal of sin, but Christ's blood truly takes away the sin of the world. A proper understanding of salvation history, then, is that the old covenant prepares God's people, and through them the world, for God to do something shockingly new.
Jesus is true man and true God, and his human lineage matters when we proclaim the Gospel. That lineage comes through Jesus' legal claim to the House of David by way of Joseph's marriage to Mary. As Joseph's betrothed, Mary belonged to the Davidic family, and the fruit of her womb is, in the eyes of the Law, the Son of David. Through Mary, then, Jesus is "descended from David according to the flesh," as St. Paul says (Rom. 1:3). In the Old Testament, because the kings had many wives, the queen of the Son of David was not his first or favorite wife but his mother, who was given the title Great Lady, or Queen Mother. If Jesus is the Son of David, then Mary is the Queen Mother in the new covenant Kingdom of God.
Joseph's legal standing passes to Jesus through his marriage to Mary, but Jesus' humanity came from her alone. Her body was his chosen vessel, set apart for this purpose in holiness, chastity, and sinlessness. The Gospels repudiate the sickness of Greco-Roman paganism, whose gods impregnated human women through lust, fornication, adultery, deceit, or rape. The infancy narratives are the opposite of paganism in this regard, and Mary stands in sharp contrast to those myths.
Mary Is the Anti-Pagan
Far from the myths of Greece, Rome, Egypt, or Babylon, Mary was invited by the angel into God's plan. It was a proposal, not an imposition. There was no carnality, no bodily lust, and no overriding irrationality of erotic desire. It was a dialogue between Mary and God through the angel Gabriel. Mary stands at the transition point between the Old and the New. The angel mediates God's message, as in the old covenant, but upon her acceptance the Spirit of the Lord overshadows her and the Word becomes flesh.
Mary was responding in faith, not in myth, and she knew at the Annunciation that she stood in a privileged position before God. Her dialogue with the angel reveals the rational and ordered love of God, who never loves at the expense of truth, goodness, and beauty. The humility of the Creator becoming a creature finds a home in the creature who calls herself a lowly handmaid as she gives her "Let it be done unto me" in total surrender to the Lord. Against pagan lust and sexual perversity stands the virtuous Mary and God's non-carnal invitation for her to become a virgin mother. This is the Catholic image of Mary. She is not a pagan idol but the antidote to paganism.
Mary Is the Anti-Gnostic
The Gnostic heretics hated the doctrine of the Incarnation. They wanted a Platonic religion of pure spirituality. "Gnostic" is a catch-all term for diverse groups with an array of beliefs, but they shared a hatred of the physical, material, fleshly parts of existence. They would not accept Christ's conception, birth, growth, suffering, torture, death, and resurrection, because they did not want the body. They also rejected Holy Communion, precisely because the Church Fathers taught with Scripture that it was the body and blood of Christ. That was too material, too embodied, and too incarnational for the Gnostics.
Just as Mary's dialogue with the angel stands in sharp contrast to lustful pagan gods, Mary's motherhood refutes Gnosticism. Our Lord is made of real flesh and blood and bone, because he had a real mother, miraculous though his conception and birth were.
It was through Mary's fiat (Latin for "let it be done") that God became man. It was from her flesh that the flesh of the Word was formed. His "body of flesh" (Col. 1:22), which was offered "once for all" on the cross (Heb. 7:27; 9:12; 9:26; 10:10) and rose triumphantly from the grave, came from Mary alone by the work of the Holy Spirit. Her DNA was written into her firstborn Son. His flesh is offered for the life of the world, his flesh is the Bread of Life, and her fiat cooperated with God's Word to bring that flesh to us.
Mary Is the Model Disciple of Christ
In the dialogue with the angel, Mary gives the right and faithful answer. She said "Yes" without hesitation, in spite of tremendous difficulties and seeming impossibilities, because it was God's word to her. She is the fulfillment of Eve. Where Eve fell into prideful disobedience, Mary responded in humble obedience, and she kept that posture throughout her Son's life. She takes on the role of Daughter Zion, the maiden who embodies Israel's hope for redemption by God.
If we let anti-Catholic and anti-Marian biases overwhelm us, we miss the most important truth about Mary in the Gospels: she was the first disciple of Jesus Christ. She was the first one of us to say "Yes." She was the first to respond to the good news proclaimed by the angel, that God would save his people from their sins.
As the first disciple, Mary was present throughout his whole life. She alone was a living Temple, and her womb was the Holy of Holies for nine months. She was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, a term that recalls the Ark of the Covenant, which held the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, the jar of manna, and Aaron's rod that budded (Heb. 9:4). Mary had Christ with her for thirty years of his hidden life, of which the Gospels give us only brief glimpses. She followed Jesus in his ministry, stood at the foot of the cross, and received the Holy Spirit with the Apostles at Pentecost.
"How Can This Be?"
Mary's question to the angel, "How can this be, since I do not know man?" (Luke 1:34, rendered literally), is a curious question for a bride. She is betrothed to Joseph, and every woman knows the answer: she will have a child with her husband. That is the way of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Samuel, Elijah, and all of Israel's priests, prophets, and kings. Yet her question reveals much underneath.
The infancy narratives in Luke and Matthew are doing three things. First, they show Mary's role as mother of the Lord's anointed in the line of miraculous conceptions and divine interventions in salvation history: Sarah, Rebekah, Hannah, and now Elizabeth. Second, they contrast the conceptions of John and Jesus in the wombs of Elizabeth and Mary, natural conception against supernatural conception and doubt against faithful obedience. Third, they highlight the uniqueness of Christ's conception, in which there is no earthly father, only the "overshadowing" of the Holy Spirit.
I have heard preachers say that Mary doubted just as Zechariah did, but this is not true. Mary is not punished, and her question is answered. Her question is not the same as Zechariah's doubt, because it points to something already under way in Mary's life, which is her dedicated virginity.
"How can this be, since I do not know man?" is not a naive question from an innocent maiden. She knows how babies are made. Her question is legitimate, and not a sign of doubt, only if she had made a vow of virginity to the Lord. The angel would surely know of the vow she intends to keep, which makes her dedicated virginity the source of her perplexity rather than any lack of belief in his message. She is dedicated to the Lord body and soul, so she asks how this can be when she does "not know man" and has no intention of knowing man, even her betrothed.
This is the beauty of the Gospels and of the new covenant fulfilling the old. Jeremiah says that "the LORD has created a new thing on the earth" (Jer. 31:22). The newness cannot be so radical that it bears no relation to the old covenant, yet it is still a surprising act of divine revelation. This is the pattern of biblical typology. God builds on his history with his people, so that the Gospel story has elements that are familiar from the old covenant. At the same time, the old covenant types show us how radically new the Gospel is at its core. God speaks to us definitively in his Word made flesh. He no longer speaks only through men and women, because he himself visits his people.
Mary's contrast with the heroines of the Old Testament, who longed to bear a firstborn son, supplies this newness. Think of Hannah, Sarah, and Rachel. Their miraculous births answered their prayers and desires. It was not so with Mary. She is never shown begging God to intervene so that she and Joseph could conceive. Mary stands in the line of the holy mothers of the old covenant, which is the familiar part, and she also stands in contrast to them, which is the new.