Spiritual Motherhood
Is Mary’s Spiritual Maternity Fact or Fiction?
Fr. Daniel Lyons, SMM
HOW STRANGE Catholic devotion to the Blessed Virgin must appear to non-Catholics! With the Hail Mary funneled into our homes via radio, with the family rosary crusade firing our people to mass demonstrations of faith and love, with the story of Lourdes and Fatima made popular reading, non-Catholics cannot fail to be impressed by the affectionate attraction that Catholics feel towards Mary.
That attraction seems almost spontaneous. It almost seems as if the Holy Spirit had gifted us in Baptism with a supernatural instinct for Mary. She is destined by divine economy to safeguard and nurture the life of Jesus that came to us in our spiritual regeneration. And after all, if divine Providence has judged fitting to give a child a natural instinct for the mother of its physical life, we should expect at least the equivalent in our spiritual life. What is corporal life compared with the life of grace? What is this short human life when, placed in parallel with the eternal life of God that is ours by the infusion of grace? We have been made to feel an attraction for Our Lady because she is truly our mother.
Any one who fails to understand how Mary is truly mother of men in the real sense of the word could never answer the question that Christ once put to His Apostles: “Who do you say that I am?” To that, St. Peter had replied: ”Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
The Whole Christ
But what is the Christ? Jesus is not just an individual to whom the mission of redeeming the world was confided as an afterthought. Christ was born the Redeemer, the Savior. He is not only the Son of Mary and Joseph of Nazareth; He is, besides that, essentially the Head of the Mystical Body. By contrast, ambassadors are not born ambassadors, and popes are not born popes. Christ however, was predestined from all eternity as Savior. He was born Head of the Mystical Body.
There are like two parts in Christ’s humanity: his physical body which was born at Bethlehem, walked the roads of Palestine, suffered and died on The Cross, and His Mystical Body made up of Himself and of those who are incorporated to Him. We are essentially united to Him. Christ without us is incomplete, He is mutilated. He is a Head without a body. Suppress the divine nature from Christ, or His human nature and you deny the mystery of the Incarnation. Suppress the Mystical Body from Him and you deny the mystery of the Redemption.
Painting: Sistine Madonna: Italian Painter Raphael (1512)
One of the last Madonna painting by the artist Raphael.
”All the true children of God have God for their Father and Mary for their Mother.”
Mother of the Whole Christ
According to the divine plan of Redemption, Christ could not be without being Savior, Head of the Mystical Body, united to His members. Because of this mysterious and real union then Mary is our mother. She is Mother of Christ, Mother of Him as He is; Mother of God, because He is God, Mother of the Savior because He is essentially Savior, our mother also because we are His members, members of His Mystical Body. In becoming the Mother of Jesus, she becomes the mother of those indissolubly joined to Him, who make One With Him. In giving birth to the Head, she gives birth to the members. In giving life to the Redeemer, she gives life to the redeemed.
At the Incarnation she conceived in her virginal womb the flesh of Christ. From her was assumed the human nature that would he hypostatically united to the Word of God. Spiritually however she also conceived all of us, all those who would be spiritually or mystically united to Him, those whom He was born to save. We are not flesh of her flesh or blood of her blood. Nevertheless she is truly our mother because we are part of Christ, because in the sight of God the whole Christ is constituted by Jesus and His members. St. Louis De Montfort describes Mary’s spiritual motherhood in a language that anyone can understand. ”If Jesus Christ the Head of men is born in her, the predestinate, who are members of that Head ought also to be born in her. One and the same mother does not bring forth into the world, the Head without the members or the members without the Head; for this would be a monster of nature. So in like manner in the order of grace, the Head and the members are born of one and the same mother.” (TD, no. 32)
Our Mother
In other words, Mary is not “like” a mother to us; she is our mother. She has not given us bodily existence. Yet her maternity is real. We all recognize that there is more than physical existence in our life. We participate in the very life of God. Mary just as truly gives us that supernatural life as our mothers have given us natural life. A natural conclusion is that: ”All the true children of God have God for their Father and Mary for their Mother.” (TD. no. 30)
Because she is our mother she is concerned over us. As our spiritual mother her prime interest is the salvation of our soul. Her numerous apparitions testify to the fact that she is frankly worried about our welfare. Like any mother whose hair turns gray because of her son’s wayward life, Mary sits through her lonely vigils awaiting our return to the practice of truth and virtue from which we have strayed.
By the solemn proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption Pope Pius XII has focused all eyes upon Mary. May it, in the very words of his encyclical, stir up “in all the faithful a stronger piety towards our heavenly mother!” May it inspire us to listen to her maternal pleadings for our full conversion to God!
