Virgin and mother
THIS is the appellation proper to Mary, our Lady, the virgin mother of Christ, and because of that, she too is the Mother of God and our mother, “Mater Dei, mater nostra.”
She is not the mother of God in the sense that she begot God directly. No, that cannot be. No one is prior to God who is eternal, no beginning, no end.
She is mother of God in the sense that her son, Jesus Christ, though with two natures, human and divine, is a divine person, the Son of God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity.
It is from this angle that she can rightly be called, Mother of God. Though she only “contributed” to the humanity of Christ, the fact is that the child born of her is a divine person, is God. It is God, not she nor we, who made her the Mother of God.
This is, of course, a theological reasoning that surpasses human reason itself, but does not contradict it. It involves a reality so rich that our reason goes haywire, and simply has to admit its inadequacy so as to open itself to a higher, richer reality. We need to do this kind of adjustments in our thinking.
What challenges us more is that aside from being Mother of God, the maternity of Mary is achieved in the virginal way, with no intervention of any man. The Holy Spirit overshadowed her, and the Son of the Most High was conceived in her womb.
This was a privilege given to her which she accepted when she said “Fiat” (Be it done to me) after the archangel Gabriel told her she was going to be the Mother of the Son of God, and explained how it was going to be.
This is strictly a truth of faith, since if we approach this with our human reasoning and natural sciences, our only conclusion is that a man must have been involved.
St. Joseph, who acted as the husband, initially wanted to separate from her once he knew she was with child. But it was explained to him in a dream that the child was of the Spirit. He knew the conception was virginal. So, Mary was both a virgin and a mother.
Our difficulty does not end here. In a document written by Pope John Paul II entitled, Redemptoris mater (Mother of the Redeemer), we are practically told that all of us should also be both a virgin and a mother.
The reasoning goes like this: after saying that Mary is both virgin and mother, the Church also has to be like Mary, and therefore should also be a virgin and a mother. Since we comprise the Church with Jesus as head, then we should also be a virgin and a mother.
These are the words of the document: “As Virgin and Mother, Mary remains for the Church a ‘permanent model.’ It can therefore be said that especially under this aspect, namely as a model…Mary, present in the mystery of Christ, remains constantly present also in the mystery of the Church.
“For the Church too is ‘called mother and virgin,’ and these names have a profound biblical and theological justification.” (42)
The document then proceeds to describe how the Church, and as a consequence, each one of us, can be both a virgin and a mother like Mary—by accepting the word of God in fidelity, by having a spousal
mentality that leads us always think of the spouse, by being apostolically fruitful, etc.
What is clear here is that we need to expand our understanding of virginity and motherhood. We cannot get stuck in the level of the sexual, biological and hormonal, social and cultural.
We have to put in the very crucial element of the Christian faith. In short, to have a theological understanding of these aspects of our life, without rejecting the other human and natural considerations, which are actually basic.
This is capital since with the faith-deprived understanding of virginity and motherhood, keying them more on the sexual, biological and cultural aspects, the current debate and discussion about sexuality, gender, parenthood, etc. has gone twisted and has led to some absurd conclusions.
Like, people nowadays have a common belief that with present conditions, it is now impossible to be a virgin, and motherhood now suffers great depreciation with many women avoiding it by means of contraception and abortion.
These and other incomplete understanding of virginity and motherhood are due to an improper frame in which they are learned.
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)
