Q&A: I cannot understand how Our Lady merits to be the Mother of God. I always thought it was a free gift. But last Easter our choir sang a hymn “Regina Caeli” which says that Mary merited to bear Jesus. Can you explain?
Father J. Patrick Gaffney, SMM
Mary, Mother of God
The best thing to do is to “distinguish” (as scholastic theology does) i.e., “If by merit you mean so-and-so, yes; if by merit you mean such-and-such, no.”
There is no way that Our Lady could have merited, in any sense of the term, God’s plan to redeem us through the Incarnation of the Word. There is no way that Our Lady could have merited in any sense of the term God’s eternal choice of her to be the Mother of God.
When we speak of Mary meriting the Divine Motherhood, we are then not talking about God’s plan itself, but the carrying out of the plan, the execution of the plan. Big difference! And in the execution of the plan, Mary cooperated so fully with the graces God gratuitously lavished upon her, that we can call her “worthy Mother of God.”
There is a certain, what’s the word? – “fittingness” – that this extraordinarily Holy Lady, so actively and responsibly open to the Holy Spirit, be the Mother of the Lord. It is only in this broad sense that we can speak of “meriting” to be the Mother of God
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