Mary Is the Mother of God so That We Can Be Friends of Christ

The Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God

Detail, “Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures”, Henry Ossawa Tanner

Familiarity does not always breed contempt. More often, it just leaves us numb. Throughout our Christian lives, we have said or prayed the words Mother of God hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, of times. Each time we pray the Hail Mary, Mother of God passes our lips, and each time, chances are, we take it for granted. Do we know what we are saying? Do we believe it? Does it matter?

I’ve wondered what people like Cyril and Nestorius, who fought vigorously over this doctrine back in the 5th century, would think of us today, who hardly give it a second thought. It was no small thing to them, and it shouldn’t be for us. So, perhaps on this feast of Mary, the Mother of God, we can do our best to awaken ourselves again to the greatness of this mystery of our Christian faith and its meaning for our Christian lives.

Why has this doctrine gone stale? I’m willing to take some of the blame for why Mary’s motherhood has lost its edge. If you were to ask me, and people like me who enjoy theology, how Mary is the Mother of God, I would tell you that she is so because by the power of the Holy Spirit she conceived God the Son in her womb; and although she, a creature, could not have created his divinity, she is truly the mother of his humanity, which subsists, along with his divinity, in one person, Jesus, to whom she gave birth. In short, because Mary is the mother of Jesus, who is both God and man, we can, therefore, rightly say that Mary is the Mother of God.

While that answer is correct — and I checked the Catechism to be sure — it is, upon further review, incomplete. It states the how but not the why of Mary being the Mother of God. And without the why, we will become numb to the mystery, and the how will only matter to people like me, who like to spend their time thinking about it. There is more that we can — and should — say about Mary’s motherhood than merely explaining how it works theologically.

So, what should we do about it? I think that to get to the why, and rediscover this mystery’s grandeur, we need to dive more deeply into what it means for Mary to be mother.

If we believe that Mary is the Mother of God, then we must believe that her motherhood was more than a purely biological reality. We know that a woman is far more than just her female body, and a mother’s work does not stop after she’s given birth, but, as my own mother would be the first to confess, that is when it just begins. When we talk about how Mary is the Mother of God, however, we tend to refer only to her physical act of giving birth and neglect the real, equally important act of her mothering.

Jesus did not only inherit from Mary his DNA and human body, but — and what I think is truly wonderful about all this — she was also responsible for the particular way in which he, the Word made flesh, inhabited the flesh assumed. She is the mother both of the person of Jesus and, we might say, also of his personality. She gave him his humanity and also taught him how to live it. I don’t mean to suggest that Jesus was ever ignorant of who he was or what he was supposed to do. What I mean is that Mary taught him the particular style in which he carried out his mission as the Son of God and Savior of the world. How he taught, how he healed, how he encountered others, his habits and his demeanor, his passions and his humor, all must, in some way, have been shaped and formed by his mother.

Now, we’ve said more about the how but still haven’t gotten to the why. What’s Mary’s motivation? What does she have in mind for her Son? Well, why does any mother educate her child? What a mother pours into her child, she does for one reason: that they will love others and to be loved by them in return, and love between manifests itself as friendship. So, all that Mary does in mothering Jesus, she does for him to enter into a deep, intimate friendship with people and, ultimately, with us.

What a wonderful mystery to contemplate, to hold, with Mary, within our heart: that God emptied himself, entered into history, became human, and learned from a human how he should go about making friends with humans, so that he can make humans into God. Mary is the Mother of God, so that we can become friends of Christ. That’s the why.

Yesterday morning, Pope Benedict XVI died peacefully in Rome and went forth from this world, please God, to his eternal reward. His words, which live ever on my heart, have to my mind even more forcefully in these past days when contemplating the mystery of Christmas while praying for him to soon meet his Lord.  Pope Benedict began his first encyclical, on Christian love, Deus Caritas Est, with this memorable sentence, which became, in effect, the magna carta of his entire pontificate: Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. The event that gives new meaning to our life is that God became human in the person of Jesus Christ. Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Love bear, from then on, a human face and invites us into intimate friendship with himself. What Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI has taught me, above all else, is that the essence of the Christian life is friendship with Jesus Christ, in communion with his Church: friendship without condition or qualification, but friendship in the fullest, realest sense with the God who is love-in-the-flesh.

We may have heard that before. We may have heard that, stated in one way or another, thousands of times. And perhaps we have become numb to it. But we are not supposed to be numb to the truth that defines our existence. Our lives are not given to us without meaning or purpose. We were created for friendship with Jesus Christ, and friendship with himself is what he offers through the Church. The antidote to numbness is wonder. We must never cease to wonder at this most wonderful mystery. We must journey each day, in the intimacy of contemplative prayer with the shepherds unto Bethlehem, to see this incarnate love, wrapped in his mother’s mantle, renew and deepen our friendship with him, and return to our lives glorifying and praising God for what his friendship has allowed us to hear and see about who we are and why we exist.  

As we begin a new year, may we make friendship with Christ our top priority. For this friendship alone gives our life a new horizon and a decisive direction, and, without it, we are without hope and without purpose. And let us give thanks for Mary, the Mother of God, and may she lead us into friendship with her Son.

Pope Benedict XVI, pray for us.

Homily preached January 1, 2023 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.