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Homily: Mary, Mother of God
– Cycle A
This past year, we celebrated the Year
of Faith in which we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the
convening of the Second Vatican Council.
For most of us, the Second Vatican Council represents all that we know
about ecumenical councils. As such, it
would be easy for us to think that the great Church councils were all peaceful
affairs in which bishops and other Church leaders get together to decide on
major directions that the Church should be taking to continue to spread the
Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.
Vatican II, however, is an anomaly
among the great Church councils. For the
most part, ecumenical councils have been the result of some serious conflict
that has arisen in the Church; and these usually centered on the definition of
some doctrine that was being disputed and was causing a split within the Church
(and this is especially true within the first centuries of the Church). When bishops came together to debate these
disputed doctrines, it was usually a pretty heated affair. For example, legend has it that at the First
Council of Nicea in 325, our beloved Saint Nicolas, bishop of Myrna in
modern-day Turkey, reportedly punched his fellow bishop Arius for his persistent
denial that Jesus is “one in being” (that is, “consubstantial”) with God the
Father. (Kind of makes you think a bit differently
about “jolly ol’ Saint Nick”, doesn’t it?)
In 431, in the city of Ephesus, an
ecumenical council was held to resolve a similarly contentious issue. This time the antagonist was Nestorius,
bishop of Constantinople, and Saint Cyril of Alexandria was his main
opponent. Although no punches were
reportedly thrown, a hotly contested debate was held disputing Nestorius’
contention that it was heretical to call Mary the “Mother of God”. Since God is eternal (without beginning or
end), Nestorius argued, to say that God has a mother is contradictory: because
for someone to have a mother indicates that there was some sort of birth, or
beginning, to that person’s life, which with God simply cannot be. Thus, Mary should be called Christotokos, or mother of Jesus Christ (i.e. the mother of Jesus’ manhood),
Nestorius argued, but that she should not be called Theotokos, that is, the mother
of God.
St. Cyril and his backers knew that
this couldn’t be true, because they knew that for Jesus to be able to
accomplish his saving work for us he had to be both fully human and fully
divine and that there could be no separation or “compartmentalization” of the
two. He also knew that in the hearts of
the faithful (i.e. the whole Church for the past four centuries) Mary had been
honored as Theotokos, as mother of God, and so he knew that he
couldn’t give way to Nestorius’ erroneous thinking and thus contradict what had
already been held as true (though not concretely defined as such) for nearly
four centuries.
Legend has it that crowds of people
waited outside the basilica during the last days of the council waiting to hear
what the bishops had decided the truth was about Mary. When the bishops emerged and definitively declared
that Mary was, indeed, the Theotokos,
the crowd erupted with joy that the bishops had confirmed what they already
knew in their hearts was true. They
purportedly carried the bishops through the streets along with images of Our
Lady, singing songs and praising God that Mary is, indeed, the Mother of God.
A heresy, in theological terms, is
when someone attempts to explain away a mystery by removing one of the truths
that makes it mysterious. In the case of
Nestorius, he tried to explain away the mystery of how Mary could be the mother
of an eternal being by excluding her motherhood from the eternal nature of
Jesus. His fault, of course, is that it
made Jesus less of what we know him to be through what he had revealed to us
when he walked among us on earth (i.e. both the Son of God and the Son of
Man). Nestorius got caught up in trying
to make it all work out in his head instead of being content to dwell in the
mystery of it all.
St. Cyril led the charge for truth
because he was unafraid to proclaim the truth that had been revealed to us, even
if it meant that it was still too mysterious to
explain. He knew what Mary had taught
us: that sometimes we have to be content to dwell within the mystery.
When the shepherds came to see the
baby Jesus, they revealed to Mary and Joseph all that they had seen and heard
in the field: Angels in the air revealing the birth of the child and singing
songs glorifying God. Mary didn’t press
the shepherds to explain how all of that could have possibly happened, but rather,
as the Gospels relate to us, she and all there “were amazed by what had been
told them by the shepherds … and Mary kept all of these things, reflecting on
them in her heart.” Mary allowed herself
to dwell within the mystery of what had been revealed and there she encountered
deeply the One who had revealed it: God in her son.
We, too, can sometimes get caught in
the trap of trying to escape the mystery of it all. When life gets difficult and we struggle to
understand where God is in the midst of our trials, we often are tempted to
explain away the mystery by denying some truth about God. “Well, I guess God doesn’t really care about
me” or “He must be punishing me for my sins”, we’ll be tempted to say. The challenge for us, however, is to allow
ourselves to dwell within the mystery of what seems to be God’s absence—to keep
these things, reflecting on them in our hearts—so as to open ourselves to
encountering there God’s presence in the unexpected: like in a little child,
born into poverty in a little town in ancient Palestine.
If we can do this, my brothers and
sisters, we will be blessed in 2014. May
the peace of God, which is beyond all understanding, keep your hearts and your
minds in the knowledge and love of God and of his son, our Lord Jesus Christ so
that you, too, may enjoy this blessing in the New Year.
Given at All Saints Parish:
Logansport, IN – December 31st, 2013 & January 1st,
2014
The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
