Q&A: Could you please explain Mary’s title of “Spouse of the Holy Spirit?” It would seem to me that a better understanding of this title would bring Charismatics closer to the Mother of God in their prayer meetings and personal lives.
Fr. James McMillan, SMM
Submitted by R.B., Alexandria, Va.
Spouse of the Holy Spirit?
There are some who object to applying the title, “Spouse of the Holy Spirit,” to the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the grounds that this implies some sort of equality between the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity and someone who is only a creature.
If the title is properly understood, however, the objection disappears. Its use has an honorable history in the Church, as we know from the writings of Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XII. And Pope John Paul II has used the title, “Spouse of the Holy Spirit,” on several occasions.
Mary’s Role in Cooperating with the Holy Spirit
St. Louis de Montfort often used it when referring to the Blessed Virgin. He thought it particularly appropriate because it brought out more clearly than other titles her role in cooperating with the Holy Spirit. “God the Holy Spirit,” he explains, “who does not produce any divine person, became fruitful through Mary whom he espoused. It was with her, in her and of her that he produced his masterpiece, God-made-man, and that he produces every day until the end of the world the members of the body of this adorable head. For this reason, the more he finds Mary, his dear and inseparable spouse, in a soul the more powerful and effective he becomes in producing Jesus Christ in that soul and that soul in Jesus Christ.”
Montfort’s understanding of Our Lady as Spouse of the Holy Spirit follows from St. Paul’s statement: “It is no longer I who live, it is Christ who lives in me.” And if it is Christ who lives in us, then He must be, as He was in His incarnation, the fruit of both the Holy Spirit and the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is the one Christ who was conceived in her and who lives in us.
