Mother of the Redeemer and of Redeemed Humanity

Mother of the Redeemer: Mary as the gateway of redeemed humanity

Mary is the Mother of the Redeemer and, for this reason, the mother of redeemed humanity. To understand Mary as Mother of the Redeemer requires situating her at the center of the plan of salvation: it is from her that Christ, the Redeemer, receives the humanity He will redeem.

According to what Peter says, “everyone is a slave of that which has overcome him” (2 Pet 2:19), man, overcome by the devil, is legally subject to him, and the devil has acquired rights of ownership over him. On the other hand, God, for whom justice is glory, did not wish to violate anyone’s rights, not even those of the devil. Thus God, despite the profound desire and the irresistible power that are proper to Him, does not impose Himself upon the devil, so as not to give the accuser grounds to accuse Him of injustice. Since the war did not take place between the devil and God, but between the devil and man, it is right that it be the vanquished man who obtains the victory. But in what way could man, made a slave, defeat the one who, after the fall, governs the whole world through death?

This victory could only be the work of God. “There was needed, therefore, the combined intervention of God and of man and the alliance, in a single person, of the two natures, so that the one might do battle and the other be capable of conquering. And this is what happens: God takes up the cause of man, because He is man. And man, without any sin, triumphs over sin, because He is God.”

Man alone could not prevail over the devil, and not even God alone could do so. Therefore, it is the “Word made flesh” that had the opportunity to fight and the capacity to conquer. We can thus understand why, as we mentioned, the flesh, that is, the human nature of Christ, became the strength and the power, the “armor” of God against the devil. In fact, if God had not assumed the flesh of man, how could He have died and annihilated “death through death“? If He had not had blood, how could He have “purified the sins of the world“? If He could not suffer, how could He have healed the wounds and restored the integrity of human nature?

Yet, on the other hand, if a human being had not voluntarily offered this flesh, how could God have obtained it, He who respects even the freedom of the powers of evil? In fact, throughout the whole time of the Old Testament, God asks for and awaits a decisive collaboration on man’s part. But no prophet and no saint had been able to offer it before the holy Virgin.

She, for the first time, helped God to accomplish the salvation of the world. She prepared it worthily and deliberately, providing the flesh through which He, the only Almighty, triumphed over death and the powers of darkness. Thus, through the flesh of Christ, human nature was set free from evil and from the slavery of death. From that moment on, every human being who shares in the human nature divinized by Christ participates in His life and resurrection. And if this holds for every human being, it certainly holds for Mary, the Mother of Christ.

In fact, there exists a mysterious communion between the flesh of Mary and that of her Son. The flesh of Christ is truly the flesh of His mother. That of Mary is, in a certain way, the divinized flesh of her Son. Mary is the first human being to be united in an utterly intimate and real way with Christ. She is truly christified, and this is why her body did not remain in the corruption of death but was raised to heaven through Christ, as the first fruit of the ascent into heaven of the bodies of all the saints.

Nevertheless, the mystery of Mary, the highest manifestation of man’s greatness, is intimately bound to the mystery of the Church. It is well known that the Church, like Christ, is the mystical nuptial union between God and His creation, the most intimate union, and without confusion, between the divine nature and the human nature. God by Himself, without the collaboration of man, could not have brought about this union. The Holy Spirit, down the centuries, throughout the whole of the Old Testament, guided and prepared humanity, counseling and sustaining the prophets and the saints, but He always acted from without, not personally, but through human persons, insofar as they made themselves available to Him. It was only in the blessed womb of the Holy Virgin that one of the members of the Most Holy Trinity came, made His dwelling, and therefore acted personally in history.

In the first place, when the two natures were separated, man lived in death and in slavery, while God was, in relation to creation, like a “homeless one” (àoikos). With the incarnation, the two natures were united. Man was divinized and God made His dwelling in history in the flesh of man. In the constitution of the Church, which is the mystical nuptial union of the two natures, Mary played the central role of preparing the bride for the wedding. In her person, she prepared, purified, and adorned human nature as was needed, and presented it fittingly to the heavenly Bridegroom. And He loved it and united it to Himself so that they became “one flesh” (Eph 5:31).

Therefore, if the Word was able to assume human nature, it was because Mary offered it to Him as was due. This is what the Fathers of the Church mean when they write that Mary prepared a “house“, a human “dwelling” for God. Before Mary, God was, in relation to creation, “a king without a city“, as Cabasilas writes. But how can a king exist without a city? And, on the other hand, how can a city exist without a king? Thus Mary became the ambassador of the city of man before the king of heaven. And not only the ambassador, but also the way. Thanks to her and through her, God came and took possession of creation justly and freely, without violence, and thus the kingdom of the Church shone forth.

This explains the central role of the Virgin Mary in the fulfillment of God’s plan for the salvation of the world and in the constitution of the Church. And it also makes us understand the central role of man in the unfolding of the mystery of his own salvation. It is clear that, because man had to cooperate freely and vigorously in the accomplishment of salvation, the Christian must cooperate freely and vigorously in order to make effective for himself the salvation accomplished once and for all in Christ.

Jean-Paul Sartre speaks of a salvation given to man by God as alms. He refuses, in line with the atheist humanists, to accept it, because such a salvation, he says, is not worthy of man; it is alienation. But what we have said shows that nothing is further from true Christian doctrine than this conception of salvation. If it is true that, for the thought of the Fathers of the Church, salvation is truly a gift of God, it is also true that, from man’s point of view, salvation is won.

God gives everything, but leaves to man the possibility, indeed, more than that, He urges him, to do everything. God is not the master, but the friend of man (philanthropos): “I no longer call you servants, you are my friends” (Jn 15:15). This profound respect of God for man, which constitutes the true greatness of man and which, like all things of God, knows no limits, will be highlighted still further in the course of our journey.

Let us consider the principal Mariological dogma, that of Ephesus, which declares Mary to be “She who gave birth to God” (Theotókos, in Latin Deipara). It is known that heretics, beginning with Nestorius, argue that the Virgin is “She who gave birth to Christ” (Christotókos), or she who gave birth to the man (anthropotókos), conceived in Mary and to whom the Word was subsequently united. The Orthodox, however, firmly insisted on the term “She who gave birth to God” (Theotókos), for it is only through this bold term that we obtain the adequate expression of the fact that in Christ two complete and perfect natures, that of God and that of man, are intimately united and inseparable, while at the same time without confusion.

If the Virgin did not truly give birth to God, if God merely “dwelt” in her, if He simply “used” her, then the Word did not truly assume man in his totality, is no longer a “perfect man” and, consequently, cannot save man. In truth, the Theotókos, from the dogmatic point of view, has become the anchor of our salvation, the guarantee and the pledge of our true relationship with Christ, the guarantee of the real and perfect humanity of the incarnate Word.

But what is the meaning of this expression for anthropology, which is fundamental both for Christology and for Mariology?

Concisely, we will give a single but decisive line of interpretation. The Bible teaches that God created the world so that it might be united to Him, that is, for the Church, the body of His eternal Son. In other words, the world was created with a view to Christ. “Through Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible; all things were created through Him and for Him” (Col 1:16). Maximus the Confessor, Gregory Palamas, Nicodemus the Hagiorite, and a long and venerable line of Fathers speak of the mystery of Christ as the ultimate end of creation and see in Jesus Christ the beginning and the fulfillment, the alpha and the omega of all things.

Man, created on the seventh day as the crown and the consciousness of creation, recapitulates the whole world in his person. He is, according to Maximus, a “microcosm” or, according to Gregory of Nazianzus, “a little world that contains the great one“. Moreover, man was created free and, as a fundamental anthropological doctrine, “in the image of God“. This means, given that, according to Paul, the image of the invisible God is the Logos (Col 1:15), that man created “in the image” is created in order to strive toward the image, so as to be united hypostatically to the Logos and also to become, by grace, the image of God in the natural image of the Father. In other words, the purpose of man is to become a theandric being, God-man. Basil says, in fact, that man is a being “who has received the command to become God“.

But how could this be accomplished?

Nicholas Cabasilas writes in this regard that God created human nature with the purpose of finding a mother in it at the moment when He would decide to become incarnate.

And how could man overcome the infinite ontological distance between himself and God and be united to God, if God Himself had not assumed him?

And how could God assume him effectively without an intimate, “carnal”, bond with him?

Here we touch deeply upon the inspired, and consequently truly inexhaustible, dogma of the Theotókos. We have already seen that the Holy Virgin was not an isolated and accidental case in relation to the chosen people, Israel. From the point of view we are considering here, likewise, we can understand that, in a certain way, she is not even an exceptional case within humanity in general. Her virginal conception, exceptional and extraordinary, was nevertheless the pure and simple fulfillment of the purpose for which human nature was created “from the beginning“. In the person of Mary, truly and really “Deipara“, it is therefore human nature that reveals itself as “Deipara“, Theotókos!

In the dialogue between Christians and non-Christians, the consequences of this fact can prove unexpectedly useful. Over the centuries, many non-Christians have asserted that man could become God. Yet none of them dared to say that man could give birth to God in human history, as the Fathers of the Church dared to say!

No error is more daring than the truth. And no condemnation of atheistic humanism is more radical than this fundamental Orthodox doctrine, which sees in human nature a true and real “Deipara“.

This doctrine can shed new light and lead to a broader understanding of the title “Son of Man“, which Christ attributed to Himself several times. It can also help us to understand better the Pauline doctrine of the “new man“. According to Paul, every human being must “die” and “be reborn“. But the new birth takes place “in Christ“, that is, the new man is a “christified” man, a theandric being, God-man…

Conclusion

The analysis we have carried out shows why the Holy Virgin Mary has so central a role in the dogma, liturgy, and devotion of the Church. Mary played a central role in the divine economy. She corrected Eve: she was able to show man as he was created, in all his original beauty and splendor. A simple and pure human being, immersed in the situation that arose because of original sin, yet capable of fulfilling the purpose for which man was created “from the beginning”, that is, of becoming the way by which God, the Word, would enter into His own world as God-man in the history of men and, in this way, would save, that is, divinize, human beings.
This same analysis shows that the two great objections of non-Christians to Christianity are neither justified nor sustainable. For Christians, God is in no way a “sadistic father”. He is in no way an “alienation of man”. On the contrary, God, hidden in all things and in all historical events, needs man, the only one who can reveal Him. This is the heresy of anthropocentric humanism.

Nevertheless, in all heresies there is always some element of truth that Orthodox theology must discern and adopt. What is true, though deformed, is precisely God’s profound respect for man. God respects man to the point of remaining inactive, in relation to man and to creation, which depends on man, so as not to violate his freedom.

In reality, God remained hidden until the moment when a human being, the Holy Virgin, was able and consented to give Him her flesh, like a garment that would make Him truly visible and accessible to men. The “fullness of time”, that is, the moment that God awaited and prepared from the “beginning” in order to manifest Himself fully to men, to the angels, and to all creation, and to assume in His person human nature and thus to give men the possibility of becoming theandric beings, “true” and “perfect” men (Col 1:28), this central moment in history came with the Holy Virgin. Directed in her whole being toward God, the humble daughter of Nazareth, nourished by the divine life, revealed in her conception both God and man, thus becoming the solid foundation of a true and healthy humanism, a theocentric humanism.

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

To deepen your reflection on Mary, Mother of the Redeemer and of redeemed humanity, consult the Encyclical Redemptoris Mater of Pope John Paul II.

In sum, Mother of the Redeemer is a title that says who Mary is and what she does for redeemed humanity. To deepen one’s understanding of Mary, Mother of the Redeemer, is to open oneself to her maternal mediation in the order of grace. Read more in Redemptoris Mater.

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