He sent his beloved Son to them: Mary and the Son sent by the Father

“Yet he had one beloved Son, and he sent him also to them as the last, saying, ‘They will revere my Son.'” (Mark 12:6)Misit filium suum: The parable of the homicidal vine-growers (from the *Nova Vulgata* Bible, Mark 12:1-12) is one of the most dramatic in the entire synoptic tradition. The owner of a vineyard sends successive servants, all of whom are mistreated or killed, and finally, “he sends his beloved son,” hoping they will respect him. The vine-growers murder him. Jesus tells this parable just days before his own Passion, making himself the central character: he is the “beloved son” sent by the Father, whom Israel’s leaders will reject and kill. The Mariology finds in this parable one of its most radical affirmations about Mary’s role: she who made possible the “sending” of the Eternal Son into the world, she is the one who opened the door of the “vineyard” of human history to the Son that the Father sent.I. Misit filium suum: The parable and its Christological perspectiveThe parable is based on the image of the vineyard, deeply rooted in Israel’s prophetic tradition: Isaiah 5:1-7 sings of the vineyard that the Lord planted with love and that bore wild grapes. Mark reprises this image, but with a Christological depth that Isaiah could not anticipate: the “owner of the vineyard” is the Father. The “vine-growers” are Israel’s religious leaders. The “servants” are the prophets. And the “beloved son” (huius agapētōs) is Jesus himself. The title “beloved son” echoes that of the Transfiguration (Mark 9:7) and the Baptism (Mark 1:11): it is the title by which the Father identifies Jesus as the unique Son, the beloved.The Father’s logic in the parable is paradoxical: after all the servants have been mistreated, he still sends his son. “Respect my son,” the Father’s hope is irrational from a human perspective, but it is the logic of love that does not give up. This Father’s hope is precisely what the Theology of the Incarnation affirms: God did not give up on humanity despite its continued rejection. The sending of the Son is the definitive act of a hope that transcends all human logic.The “ultimately” (novissimum) of the sending of the Son is central: after the prophets, after all of the history of the Covenant, the Father sends the Son as a definitive and unique gesture. The history of salvation has its own structure: from Creation to the Covenant, from the Covenant to the Prophets, from the Prophets to the Son. Mary is in this “ultimately”: she who conceived the Son in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4) is the point of inflection in the history where the Father’s “final” sending becomes a historical and concrete reality.The parable’s conclusion points to the Cross and the Resurrection: the vine-growers kill the son, but the Lord of the vineyard will make them pay for the rejected of the rejected.«The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone» (Mark 12:10, quoting Psalm 118:22), the parable ends with an inversion: the rejected Son becomes the ultimate foundation of the new vineyard. Mary, who was present at both the rejection (at the Cross) and the inversion (by the Resurrection), is the paramount witness to this paschal logic.

II. Misit filium suum: The Incarnation as the Father’s Mission

Misit filium suum: the verb *mittere*, «to send», is structural in Johannine theology (John 3:16-17; 5:36; 20:21) and is also present in Paul (Galatians 4:4: «God sent his Son, born of a woman»). The «sent» Son is not an external movement, like receiving an order from outside; it expresses the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son, which, in time, takes the form of «mission». The «sent» Son is not less Son; he acts as Son in loving obedience to the Father. *Misit filium suum* from the parable is the condensed formula of the Incarnation against the Trinitarian horizon.Mary is at the heart of this «mission». Galatians 4:4 is succinct: «God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law». «Born of a woman» is not a biographical detail; it is the condition of the mission: for the Son to be «sent» to the world in a real and effective way, for his mission to touch humanity from within, it is necessary that he be «born of a woman». Mary is the historical condition for the fulfillment of the mission entrusted by the Father to the Son.Patristic theology explored this point with great richness. Irenaeus of Lyon, in his dispute with Gnosticism, which denied the reality of Jesus’ flesh, insisted that the «mission of the Son» implies the «birth of Mary». Not an apparent birth, not a «adopted» flesh temporarily, but a real birth, which made the eternal Son a concrete man with a concrete mother, a concrete history, a concrete flesh that could be offered as a real sacrifice. Mary is the guarantee of the reality of the mission.The mariological consequence is direct: honoring Mary honors the Son’s mission. Denying Mary’s importance, as if the «birth of a woman» were an unnecessary detail, weakens the seriousness of the «mission» entrusted by the Father to the Son. The Father who sent the «beloved Son» wanted that Son to come as «the Son of Mary»: and this Father’s will is not peripheral but constitutive of the salvation plan.

III. Misit filium suum: Mary and the «Vineyard» of the New Testament

In the context of Misit filium suum, John 15:1 declares: «I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower». The vineyard image used by Mark in the parable of the vine-growers reappears in John’s Gospel, but this time Jesus is the very vine.Maria, who is simultaneously the «*daughter of Israel*» (the vine of the Old Testament in typological sense) and the «*Mother of the Church*» (who grows from the vine that is Christ), occupies a unique place in the history of this «*vine*». The «*sent his Son*» of the Father finds in Mary the historical soil where the sent Son can bear fruit. Mariology identified in Mary the «*most fruitful branch*» of the true vine that is Christ: she who «*bore fruit*» in a primordial sense, the Fruit of the Incarnation, is the model of all spiritual fertility that the vine produces. The «*vinedressers*» of the parable who reject the Son are the opposite of Mary: where they deny the mission, she embraces it. Where they expel the Son from the vine, she introduces him into the vine of human history.The typology of the «*garden*» runs throughout Scripture: from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of the Resurrection (John 20:15, Mary Magdalene thinks Jesus is the «*gardener*»). Mary, who is associated with the «*closed garden*» of Song of Songs (4:12), is the «*vine*» that the Lord cultivated with special care from the time of her Immaculate Conception. The parable of the murderous vinedressers ends with the certainty that the Lord of the vine will reclaim his vine and entrust it to others, and Mary, who was never a «*murderous vinedresser*» but always a «*faithful servant*», is the model of the new community that will receive the vine after the rejection of the first stewards.The ecclesial dimension of this figure is important: the Church that received the vine after the rejection of the first managers is the «*new vine*» that the Lord plants from the resurrected Son. Mary, as the Mother of the Church, is at the heart of this new planting: she who generated the Son who is the «*true vine*» is also the Mother of the branches that grow on that vine. The parable of the murderous vinedressers points, in its conclusion, to the «*new creation*» where the Lord’s vine finally produces the fruit he always expected.IV. Misit filium suum: the Father’s hope and Mary’s faithMisit filium suum: «*Respect my Son*», this hope of the Father in the parable is confirmed, paradoxically, not by the great ones of Israel, but by Mary’s faith. She who said «*fiat*» to the angel’s announcement was the first to «*respect*» the sent Son by the Father, not with the external respect of one who fulfills a duty, but with total love who recognizes in the Son’s mission the expression of God’s deepest will. In the «*misit filium suum*» of the parable, Mary is the only one who truly «*respected*» the sent Son.Mary’s faith, which liturgical and theological traditions have always associated with Abraham’s faith as the two great acts of faith in the history of salvation, is precisely this «*respecting the sent Son*». Abraham believed in the promise and was justified (Romans 4:3). Mary believed in the announcement and generated the fulfillment of the promise (Luke 1:45). In both cases, it is faith that «*receives*» the sent Son by the Father and opens the historical space where the mission can be fulfilled.The Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) is, from this perspective, the song of one who «*respected*» the sent Son by the Father and saw him as the fulfillment of all of Israel’s history. Mary who proclaims «*the Mighty One has done great things for me*» is not only describing what happened to her, but interpreting the mission of the Son theologically. This mission is not a new and arbitrary innovation, but the fulfillment of what God promised «*to Abraham and his descendants forever*» (Luke 1:55).Christian devotion to Mary, in this logic, has a fundamentally Christological dimension: venerating Mary is recognizing that the «*beloved Son sent by the Father*» came into the world through her, that the mission the Father entrusted to the Son found in her its point of entry. Honoring Mary is honoring the logic of the Father’s love who «*waited*» for humanity to respect his Son, and saw that hope fulfilled in a exemplary way in a daughter of Israel named Mary of Nazareth.Mary, who received with total faith the beloved Son sent by the Father, is the first and most perfect fulfillment of the Father’s hope: the creature who honored the Son and opened the doors of human history to divine mission.

References

• Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus Haereses, III, 22 (2nd century).
• John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, nos. 12-14 (1987).
• Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, no. 56 (1964).
• R. Pesch, Das Markusevangelium, vol. II (1977).
• A. Serra, Maria e la Parola di Dio (1984).