Misit ad eos filium suum dilectum: Mary and the Son Sent by the Father

Adhuc ergo unum habens filium dilectum, misit illum quoque ad eos novissimum, dicens: Reverebuntur filium meum.
Mk 12:6

Misit filium suum: the parable of the murderous vinedressers (Mk 12:1-12) is one of the most dramatic in the whole synoptic tradition: the owner of a vineyard sends successive servants, all of them mistreated or killed, and finally he “sends them his beloved son,” hoping that they will respect him. The vinedressers kill him. Jesus tells this parable a few days before His own Passion, making Himself the central character: He is the “beloved son” sent by the Father, whom those responsible in Israel will reject and kill. Mariology finds in this parable one of its most radical affirmations about Mary’s role: she who made possible the “being sent” of the eternal Son into the world, she is the one who opened the door of the “vineyard” of human history to the Son whom the Father sent.

I. Misit filium suum: The Parable and Its Christological Horizon

The parable is based on the image of the vineyard, deeply rooted in Israel’s prophetic tradition: Is 5:1-7 sings of the vineyard that the Lord planted with love and that yielded wild grapes. Mark takes up this image again, but with a Christological density that Isaiah could not anticipate: the “owner of the vineyard” is the Father. The “vinedressers” are the religious leaders of Israel. The “servants” are the prophets. And the “beloved son” (huion agapēton) is Jesus Himself. The title “beloved son” echoes that of the Transfiguration (Mk 9:7) and of the Baptism (Mk 1:11): it is the title by which the Father identifies Jesus as the only Son, the favored one.

The Father’s logic in the parable is paradoxical: after all the servants have been mistreated, He still sends the son. “They will respect my son”: the Father’s hope is irrational from the human point of view, but it is the logic of a love that does not give up. This hope of the Father 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 surpasses all human logic.

The “last of all” (novissimum) of the sending of the Son is central: after the prophets, after the whole history of the Covenant, the Father sends the Son as a definitive and unrepeatable 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 stands within this “novissimum”: she who conceived the Son in the fullness of time (Gal 4:4) is the turning point of history where the “last” sending of the Father becomes concrete historical reality.

The outcome of the parable points to the Cross and to the Resurrection: the vinedressers kill the son, but the Lord of the vineyard will make those who rejected him the rejected ones. “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (Mk 12:10, citing Ps 118:22); the parable ends with a reversal: the rejected Son becomes the definitive foundation of the new vineyard. Mary, who was present in this rejection (beside the Cross) and in the reversal (through the Resurrection), is the witness par excellence of 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 (Jn 3:16-17; 5:36; 20:21) and is also present in Paul (Gal 4:4: “God sent His Son, born of a woman”). The “being sent” of the Son is not an external movement, like someone who receives an order from outside: it is the expression of the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son, which in time takes the form of “mission.” The “sent” Son is no less Son; He is the Son who acts as such in loving obedience to the Father. The “misit filium suum” of the parable is the condensed formula of the Incarnation within the Trinitarian horizon.

Mary stands at the heart of this “mission.” Gal 4:4 is lapidary: “God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law.” The “born of a woman” is not a biographical detail; it is the condition of the mission: for the Son to be “sent” into 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 that the Father entrusted to the Son.

Patristic theology explored this point with great fruitfulness. Irenaeus of Lyons, in his polemic with Gnosticism, which denied the reality of Jesus’ flesh, insisted that the “mission of the Son” implies the “birth from Mary.” Not an apparent birth, not a flesh “adopted” in passing, 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 in real sacrifice. Mary is the guarantee of the reality of the mission.

The Mariological consequence is direct: to honor Mary is to honor the mission of the Son. To deny Mary’s importance, as if being “born of a woman” were a dispensable detail, amounts to weakening the seriousness of the “mission” that the Father entrusted to the Son. The Father who sent the “beloved son” willed that this son should come as “son of Mary”: and this will of the Father is not peripheral but constitutive of the plan of salvation.

III. Misit filium suum: Mary and the “Vineyard” of the New Testament

Within the horizon of Misit filium suum, Jn 15:1 declares: “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser.” The image of the vineyard that Mark uses in the parable of the vinedressers reappears in the Gospel of John, this time with Jesus as the vine itself. Mary, who is at once the “daughter of Israel” (the vineyard of the Old Testament in a typological sense) and the “Mother of the Church” (which grows from the vine that is Christ), occupies a unique place in the history of this “vineyard.” The Father’s “misit filium suum” finds in Mary the historical soil where the Son who is sent can bear fruit.

Mariology has 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 the spiritual fruitfulness that the vineyard produces. The “vinedressers” of the parable who reject the son are the opposite of Mary: where they deny the mission, she welcomes it. Where they cast the son out of the vineyard, she brings Him into the vineyard of human history.

The typology of the “Garden” runs through the whole of Scripture: from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of the Resurrection (Jn 20:15, where Mary Magdalene thinks that Jesus is the “gardener”). Mary, who is associated with the “enclosed garden” of the Song of Songs (Song 4:12), is the “vineyard” that the Lord cultivated with particular care from the Immaculate Conception. The parable of the murderous vinedressers ends with the certainty that the Lord of the vineyard will take back His vineyard 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 vineyard after the rejection by the first ones.

The ecclesial dimension of this figure is important: the Church that received the vineyard after the rejection by the first stewards is the “new vineyard” that the Lord plants from the risen Son. Mary, as Mother of the Church, stands at the heart of this new planting: she who bore 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 vineyard at last produces the fruit He always awaited.

IV. Misit filium suum: The Father’s Hope and Mary’s Faith

Misit filium suum: “They will 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 Son sent by the Father, not with the outward respect of one who fulfills an obligation, but with the total love of one 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 Son who was sent.

Mary’s faith, which the liturgy and theology have always associated with Abraham’s faith as the two great acts of faith in the history of salvation, is precisely this “respecting of the Son who is sent.” Abraham believed the promise and was justified (Rom 4:3). Mary believed the announcement and bore the fulfillment of the promise (Lk 1:45). In both cases, it is faith that “receives” the Son sent by the Father and that opens the historical space where the mission can be fulfilled.

The Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55) is, from this perspective, the canticle of one who “respected” the Son sent by the Father and saw in Him the fulfillment of the whole history of Israel. Mary, who proclaims “the Almighty has done great things for me,” is not merely describing what happened to her; she is theologically interpreting the Son’s mission: this mission is not an arbitrary novelty, but the fulfillment of what God promised “to Abraham and to his descendants forever” (Lk 1:55).

Christian devotion to Mary has, in this logic, a fundamentally Christological dimension: to venerate Mary is to recognize 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. To honor Mary is to honor the logic of the Father’s love, which “hoped” that humanity would respect His Son, and which saw that hope fulfilled, in an 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 “respected” the Son and opened the doors of human history to the divine mission.

References

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