The Son of God made flesh can never be separated from His Mother — who is our Mother, too by PETER KWASNIEWSKI for Life Site News
There is no redemption of man without the motherhood of Mary, and this means, too, that the divine image in man, tarnished by sin, is restored to its original purity only through her maternal hands, and must bear her likeness.
Through the miraculous conception of the Son of God in the womb of the Virgin — the “great thing,” the miracle of miracles, that He who is mighty has done for her — God has given a new beginning to all women. Reflecting on Mary is the best way to give meaning to the observance of Mother’s Day.
“In the fullness of time, God sent His Son, born of woman” (Gal. 4:4). For St. Paul, these two aspects are inseparable: the sending of the Father’s only-begotten Son, and the birth of that same Son in time, in the human nature He took from His Mother. He who has only a Father in His divinity has only a Mother in His humanity. The Person of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, has a heavenly Father and an earthly Mother. Christ brings the grace and truth of God to mankind; in the person of Mary, the first believer, the human race receives Him and responds with a resounding Yes! — Be it done to me, Thy will be done on earth, in Bethlehem, in Egypt, in Nazareth, as it is in heaven, in the Son’s glorious communion with the Father in the Holy Spirit.
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Those who adhere to Christ are making their own the solemn fiat of Mary, which in turn echoed another fiat thousands of years earlier: God’s Fiat lux, “Let there be light,” on the first day of creation. It was at the beginning of time that God said Fiat lux, and now, “in the fullness of time, God sent His Son”; and how did He send Him? How did the God by whose command the entire cosmos came into being out of nothing, choose to re-create the world in grace? “God sent His Son, born of woman.” The sun of justice, the dawn of redemption, is ever preceded by the morning star of Israel, Miriam of Nazareth.
There is no redemption of man without the motherhood of Mary, and this means, too, that the divine image in man, tarnished by sin, is restored to its original purity only through her maternal hands, and must bear the likeness of her face and heart, her faith and prayerfulness, her love, her sorrows, and her joys. To the extent that one is becoming more like Christ, one is also becoming more like Mary. The Son is no more to be divided from His Mother than from His Father; only if His human nature could be severed from His divinity and consigned to oblivion would it ever come about that Mary should cease to play her singular role in the economy of salvation. As He has ever been and will ever be the unique Son resting in the bosom of the Father, so from the moment of the Incarnation, He will always be the Son of the Virgin, and she the woman “full of grace.”
At the Annunciation, Mary receives her Son not only in the capacity of an individual woman but also as a representative of humanity, remarks St. Thomas (Summa theologiae III.30.1). Her ecce ancilla Domini, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” is the definitive human answer to the proud non serviam with which the ages have echoed since the Fall of Lucifer and the Fall of Adam.
