Mary, Mother of God
Jan. 1, 2014
Collect
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Home, New Rochelle
“O God, through the fruitful virginity of
Blessed Mary you bestowed on the human race the grace of eternal salvation” (Collect).
Celebrating this solemnity with you last year,
brothers, I preached on the gospel, particularly on Mary’s reflecting in her
heart on all the wondrous events of this season. Today I offer you some reflections on these
mysteries from the perspective of the collect.
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| Madonna and Child with the Holy Spirit Church of Sta. Maria sopra Minerva, Rome |
The virgin mother is not the object of our
worship on this feast. The work of
salvation is God’s free gift to us—“grace.”
But by God’s design, as implied by Paul in his letter to the Galatians
(4:4-7), Mary plays a vital part in that grace’s coming to us. It comes to us “thru” her —quite literally,
we’d have to say, the Savior being born from her body and, presumably, carrying
her genes and no one else’s. Christ is
born from her mind, her heart, and her will, as well; when these faculties of
ours align with the Father’s designs, they’re life-giving, and her mind, heart,
and will were so aligned with God’s designs that they gave birth to the most
radical life in human history, “the author of life,” as the collect calls
Jesus.
We’ve always called Mary “the Virgin
Mother.” The collect speaks of her
“fruitful virginity,” which means essentially the same thing. One commentator remarks, “true virginity is
not merely physical integrity, but integrity of body and soul as well. . .
. Mary’s true virginity enabled her to
receive the Holy Spirit so fully that she became mother yet remained virgin.”[1]
The collect proceeds to beg the Father to allow
Mary to intercede for us. Commentators
on the revised Roman Missal have noted that the language of the collects is the
language of a royal court. We approach
God as a subject might approach his sovereign, with awe of the royal majesty,
humbly, aware of our unworthiness. Even
when we seek an intercessor, we’re cautious in our approach. We might think of Queen Esther’s approach to
King Ahasuerus when she goes to plead for the lives of her people.[2] So we pray that God will receive Mary as our
intercessor.
Not that we really doubt it. We’ve already highlighted God’s having
“bestowed on the human race the grace of eternal salvation.” Mary’s intercession can only reinforce what
the Father already wants to give. We’re
asking the Father to be mindful of his own design: that we should be saved thru this fruitful
virgin—whose fruit, we know, includes not only her biological Son Jesus but us
as well, because of our union with the crucified Jesus: on the cross Jesus gave us Mary as our mother
(John 19:26-27), and he gave us his own life thru the sacraments, symbolized by
the blood and water that gushed from his pierced side (John 19:34).
The prayer continues by reminding the Father
that “through her we were found worthy to receive the author of life.” The “author of life,” as already noted, is
Jesus. The human race receives him as
one of our own thru Mary’s fruitfulness, her cooperation with the divine
design. The prayer speaks of our being
“found worthy to receive” Christ. One
scholar of liturgical Latin points out that the text here doesn’t really refer
to our worthiness or our merit; rather, “it is a term of reverence which
implies the reception of a ‘free gift’ for which one depends entirely on the benign
favor of God.”[3] Our worthiness certainly isn’t innate; nor
does it come as a gift from Mary, tho we may speak of Christ as her gift to us
on account of her free cooperation with the Father. But we are “found worthy to receive Christ”
only because the Father chooses to “bestow on the human race the grace of
eternal salvation.” The Father extends
to us his “benign favor.” We hope Mary
will intercede for us that his “benign favor” continue—and that it may effect
in us a receptivity to his grace similar to her own receptivity: that our Lord Jesus Christ, “the author of
life,” may come to life in our hearts, our minds, and our wills.
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