Holy Mary, Mother of God: A Dogmatic-Liturgical Analysis

Holy Mary, Mother of God: The Dogma of Ephesus and the Life of the Church

Holy Mary, Mother of God is the foundation of all Mariology. Defined at Ephesus (431) against Nestorianism, the title Holy Mary, Mother of God affirms the personal unity of Christ and exalts Mary as the true Theotokos of the Church.

Holy Mary, Mother of God: A Dogmatic-Liturgical Analysis

On this third day of the novena we enter into the wondrous mystery: God the Father sends God the Son to redeem those who were under the dominion of the Law. And all this comes about when Jesus is born of a woman. The center of the contemplation of the life of the praying Church: Jesus, ineffable Sacrament of the Father, is born of a woman and offers Himself to those who hear the Word, and so He saves.

The expression born of a woman is the oldest reference to Our Lady in chronological terms. The Son of God was born, like all of us, of a woman, in frailty, in the weakness of every man who is born, but He does not take on one element: sin.

But why the Incarnation? In this way the slaves who were born under the law are redeemed. How? Through the Cross. But before Easter, the Father sends the Son, who is born of a woman, under the law that makes us slaves, and who leads us to freedom through sonship. Thus we can all stand before God without fear, in communion with the Son of the Father and of Mary: Jesus Christ.

And what about us? When we celebrate, we are the memory of the woman, because in listening to the Word we become contemplatives.

In the Gospel, the shepherds came to adore Jesus. The angels made the announcement, the shepherds went to the place indicated and found the Holy Family. After that: they glorified and praised God for all they had seen and heard.

And Mary, knowing that the Son is God, knowing that He was recognized as God made man, keeps these things in her heart. Mary inquires into the words and gestures of Jesus. The wonder, the amazement, even the awe before the Mother are the object of Meditation.

Let us think for a moment about what it means to meditate.

To gather the various signs collected along the way, the words that broke God’s silence, the events that marked the life of the Son, in the hope of finding a way to decipher the meaning of it all.

This is what Paul did in the first reading. This is what Mary does twice in Saint Luke (Lk 1:19, 51). Yet in the case of the Virgin there is something more: everything happens from within her. These are not external events read by third parties. She is God’s protagonist in history. The Daughter of the Father meditates on the meaning of the mysteries of Christ. She is the guardian of a memory, that of the People who seek the Wisdom of God, who seek knowledge, understanding, interiority, spirituality. 

And where can it be found?

In what takes place in every Word and every Event of her Son Jesus. 

The God-with-us of the second day of the Novena continues to be the Sign which, by the work of the Holy Spirit, becomes flesh in Mary’s womb, is attained in the fullness of time in Mary’s womb, and there was Mary: the bridge from the law to grace, from slavery to freedom, and later from death to life through the Assumption.

To deepen the dogmatic-liturgical analysis of the title “Mother of God”, consult John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris Mater, entirely devoted to Mary, Mother of the Redeemer, and to the theological meaning of her divine motherhood.

Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian Theology, Marian apparitions, and the Postgraduate Program in Mariology.

Holy Mary, Mother of God remains the dogmatic and liturgical key to Marian faith. To celebrate Holy Mary, Mother of God is to enter into the mystery of the Incarnation and to contemplate the divine motherhood that illuminates the whole Church. Read more about the Theotokos in Redemptoris Mater.