CHAPTER 6

WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?

THE QUEEN MOTHER AND THE ROYAL FAMILY

IT CAN BE exhilarating to find out who Mary really is. At the same time, to some people, the facts can be overwhelming—even off-putting. If she is the new ark of the covenant, then like the old ark, she demands our profound reverence. Consider Saint Methodius’s prayer to the Blessed Virgin, from the third century:

God paid such honor to the ark, which was the image and type of your sanctity, that no one but the priests could approach it open or enter to behold it. The veil separated it off, keeping the vestibule as that of a queen. Then what sort of veneration must we, who are the least of creatures, owe to you who are indeed a queen—to you, the living ark of God, the Lawgiver—to you, the heaven that contains Him Whom none can contain?

As royalty, Mary can seem remote to those of us who labor at ordinary jobs, who bear no titles of nobility, who hardly distinguish ourselves from the crowd of royal subjects. How can we, dressed in the rags of our sins, approach Mary, who is sinless and enthroned in glory?

To answer that question, we need to recognize the serious spiritual and theological problem that lies behind it. It’s not so much a bad Marian image; she is, after all, sinless and regal. Rather, this Mary phobia—which is all too common, even among Catholics—betrays an erroneous self-image. Moreover, it reveals a deeper problem in the way we have appropriated the gospel of Jesus Christ. For the good news is that, even if we do go about dressed as paupers, we have royal blood coursing through our veins.

Royal Flesh

What is the truth at the heart of the gospel? Pope Leo the Great sums it up for us: “This is the gift that exceeds all others: God calls man His son, and man calls God ‘Father.’”

We are children of God. This is not a metaphor, not a slogan. It is a truth that is more real than the chair you’re sitting on. When we received the sacrament of baptism, we were bound by the covenant of Christ’s blood into the family of God. We were raised, at that moment, to share in the eternal life of the Trinity. Listen to Saint John as he speaks of this mystery in the New Testament: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God—and so we are” (1 Jn 3:1). And so we are! After so many decades of preaching the gospel, John still seemed astonished to hear himself speak those words: “we should be called children of God.” Imagine, then, the evangelist’s shock when he first heard the words Jesus spoke upon His resurrection: “I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God” (Jn 20:17).

By baptism we have become “sons in the Son.” The ancient Christians dared to call this action our divinization. “The Son of God became a son of man,” said Saint Athanasius, “so that the sons of men might become sons of God!” After two millennia, we need—right now—to recover the early Church’s sense of awe, astonishment, and gratitude for the gift at the heart of our redemption.

For we are children of God. This is the central and most profound fact about our redemption. We are not merely forgiven; we are adopted by God as sons and daughters. There’s a world of difference between those two views of redemption and justification. Think about it in everyday terms: you can forgive your auto mechanic if he overcharges you; but it’s unlikely that, upon forgiving him, you’ll adopt him into your family. Yet that is precisely what God has done. He has forgiven us our sins so that we might find our lasting home in the family we call the Trinity.

We are children of God; by grace, we have been adopted into His family. This truth, which theologians call divine filiation, is present throughout the New Testament, throughout the dogmatic statements of the Church, and in every volume of systematic theology. Divine filiation is the hallmark of an authentically Catholic understanding of the gospel. Still, divine filiation remains a term most Christians are unaware of—even though it’s a truth they cannot live without.

Salvation, then, is not only from sin, but for sonship—divine sonship in Christ. We are not merely forgiven by God’s grace; we are adopted and divinized. That is, we “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pt 1:4). From the beginning, this was the life for which God created man. The sin of the first Adam and Eve was not that they desired divine life but that they desired to be divinized without God.

Yet God’s will would eventually be accomplished. According to the Council of Trent, the justification of a sinner is “a translation from that state in which man is born a child of the first Adam to the state of grace and of the ‘adoption of the sons’ [Rom 8:15] of God through the second Adam, Jesus Christ, our Savior.” Justification, according to the Catechism, “consists in both victory over the death caused by sin and a new participation in grace. It brings about filial adoption so that men become Christ’s brethren. …We are brethren not by nature, but by the gift of grace, because that adoptive filiation gains us a real share in the life of the only Son, which was fully revealed in His Resurrection” (no. 654).

Fit for a King

This is the source of our royal lineage. We are children of God because of our close identification with Jesus Christ. Really, we can’t get any closer to Him than we do through baptism. Pope John Paul II put it this way: “Rising from the waters of the baptismal font, every Christian hears again the voice that was once heard on the banks of the Jordan River: ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased’ (Lk 3:22).” We are so closely identified with Jesus that Saint Augustine could say, “All men are one man in Christ, and the unity of Christians constitutes but one man.” Augustine went on to explain that, identified with Christ, we also share his threefold mission as priest, prophet, and king (see 1 Pt 2:9).

Sharing His kingship, we share everything, including His mother. Read closely what Pope Pius X had to say about this:

For is not Mary the Mother of Christ? Then she is our Mother also. And we must in truth hold that Christ, the Word made Flesh, is also the Savior of mankind. He had a physical body like that of any other man: and again as Savior of the human family, He had a spiritual and mystical body, the society, namely, of those who believe in Christ. “We are many, but one sole body in Christ” (Rom 12:5). Now the Blessed Virgin did not conceive the Eternal Son of God merely in order that He might be made man taking His human nature from her, but also in order that by means of the nature assumed from her He might be the Redeemer of men. For which reason the Angel said to the Shepherds: “Today there is born to you a Savior Who is Christ the Lord” (Lk 2:11). Wherefore in the same holy bosom of his most chaste Mother Christ took to Himself flesh, and united to Himself the spiritual body formed by those who were to believe in Him. Hence Mary, carrying the Savior within her, may be said to have also carried all those whose life was contained in the life of the Savior. Therefore all we who are united to Christ, and as the Apostle says are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones (Eph 5:30), have issued from the womb of Mary like a body united to its head. Hence, though in a spiritual and mystical fashion, we are all children of Mary, and she is Mother of us all.

Here, Pope Pius echoes a teaching that reaches back to Saint Irenaeus (whom we discussed in Chapter 2) and so, likely, to the apostle John himself. Remember that Irenaeus described Jesus’ birth as “the pure one opening purely that pure womb which regenerates men unto God.”

We are made brothers and sisters of Christ—adelphos, “from the same womb.” Thus we can confidently approach the queen mother of heaven not just because she condescends, in her great mercy, to hear us, but because we are her children, of royal birth, of noble blood. We can go to her not only because she is Christ’s queen mother but because she is ours.

Labor Paeans

How, then, are we—in our newfound royalty—to relate to this queen mother? The Marian dogmas take us only so far; and in fact, they seem to point beyond themselves. Even the dogma most recently defined, the assumption,has a penultimate quality: now that she’s in heaven, what does she do? We know after all what Jesus does; the book of Revelation tells us that He reigns (Rev 22:3). We know, too, what the martyrs do in heaven; the book of Revelation tells us that they pray for the satisfactory resolution of matters on earth (Rev 6:9–10).

It should be no surprise, then, that the book of Revelation tells us what Mary does in heaven. As the New Eve, the “mother of all the living,” she mothers the Church, “the rest of her offspring” (Rev 12:17). Addressing the question of why the woman of Revelation is still in labor, though she is in heaven, Pope Pius X said: “What birth was it? Surely it was the birth of us who, still in exile, are yet to be generated to the perfect charity of God, and to eternal happiness. And the birth pains show the love and desire with which the Virgin from heaven above watches over us, and strives with un-wearying prayer to bring about the fulfillment of the number of the elect.”

Always a mother, Mary watches over us, prays for us, and leads us to fulfillment in life. The Second Vatican Council teaches:

This motherhood of Mary in the order of grace continues uninterruptedly from the consent which she loyally gave at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven, she did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation…. Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix. ( Lumen Gentium 62, cited in Catechism, no. 969)

The Mediatrix Is the Message

You will sometimes hear non-Catholics objecting to the title “Mediatrix” applied to Mary. In my days as an evangelical, I would rush to the one Bible verse that seemed to snuff out that title: Saint Paul’s categorical assertion that Christ is the “one mediator between God and man” (1 Tim 2:5). How can these two claims—Christ as the one mediator and Mary as mediatrix—be reconciled?

The apostle Paul touched upon this mystery when he stated, “We are God’s coworkers” (1 Cor 3:9). If Christ is the one mediator, why would He have coworkers? Can’t God get the job done by Himself? Of course He can. But since He is a Father, His job is raising up mature sons and daughters; and the way to do that is by making us coworkers.

His work is our redemption, which He shared in an unparalleled way with Mary—to whom God entrusted such tasks as feeding His Son with her own milk, singing Him to sleep, and accompanying Him all the way to the cross, where she gave her sorrowful yes to His self-offering. In short, the Father willed that His Son’s entire existence as a man would hinge, so to speak, upon the ongoing consent of Mary. Can there be a more intimate coworker?

Being a disciple, a coworker with Jesus, takes effort. At times it takes suffering. One passage that seemed to have escaped my attention as a Protestant was Saint Paul’s rather curious line “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, the Church” (Col 1:24). Cradle Catholics may remember with some fondness being told (in the event of an unsuccessful team tryout, a skinned knee, or a broken heart) to “offer it up.” This simple phrase holds the key that unlocks the mystery of Mary’s coredemption, and ours. By consciously uniting our sufferings to our Lord’s redemptive sufferings, we become coworkers. By uniting her heart to His, especially at Calvary, the Blessed Mother became the coworker par excellence.

Furthermore, the epistle to the Hebrews explains Christ’s high priesthood in terms of His being the firstborn Son of God (Heb 1:1–2:17), which serves as the basis for our own divine sonship (Heb 2:10–17), as well as our priestly sanctity and service (Heb 13:10–16; see also 1 Pt 2:5). Once again, there is no tug-of-war between the Redeemer and the redeemed.

As firstborn Son in God’s family, Jesus mediates as the High Priest between the Father and His children; whereas Mary mediates as queen mother and advocate (see 1 Kgs 2:19). Pope John Paul II called this her “maternal mediation.” For the Father, Mary mothers the Son. For us sinners, she mothers our Savior. And for her Son, she mothers His siblings. When it comes to Mary’s role in God’s saving plan, “mother” is not only a noun but a verb, and hence an office.

As the Mother of God and His children, Mary shows us how to glorify the Father, not by groveling but by receiving the gift of His Son in the fullness of the Spirit. So if you want to judge how well people grasp the gospel in its essence, find out how much they make of having God as their Father—and Mary as their mother.

Abba, Not Allah

This, after all, is the essential difference in Christianity. It’s not that Christians believe in only one God; there are three major monotheistic religions on earth. What makes Christianity distinctive is that Christians dare to call God “Father.” In ancient Israel, the people of the old covenant spoke of God’s fatherhood, but mainly in a metaphorical sense—He fathered them by providing for them and guiding them through perils.

Only Christianity can call God “Father” because only through the new covenant has God revealed Himself as a Father from all eternity. The doctrine of God the Father requires the revelation of the Trinity, because God can be an eternal Father only if there is with Him an eternal Son.

Judaism is noble because it raises believers to be good servants of God. The very word “Islam” literally means “submission” to Allah. But Christianity consists neither in servility nor in mere submission. Christianity consists in the love of sonship, the love of the eternal Son for the Father, the divine love in which we participate. And a loving son serves better than even the most willing and loyal slave.

I will go so far as to say that this loving sonship is possible only when believers hold to the authentically Catholic understanding of the gospel. In his book-length interview, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II spoke of what happens when Christians sin or otherwise lose their sense of divine sonship: “Original sin attempts, then, to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God Who is Love and leaving man only with a sense of the master-slave relationship.”

I believe the master-slave relationship—or as I prefer to think of it, the boss-worker relationship—is pervasive in Christianity today. What are its warning signs in believers? They put on their best face for God, but they never tell Him what they really think. They have what they call a personal relationship with Him, but they consider it impious to ask Him hard questions. They speak of God’s sovereignty while they seethe with resentment over His demands. They scrupulously fulfill His commandments, but they have little sense of a family relationship with Him, His Church, or His mother. How, then, can they begin to call upon him as Jesus did, as “Abba,” which means “Daddy”?

Taking a Contract Out

I feel a familiar ache in my heart as I say those words, because for many years I pursued such an understanding of God, salvation, and justification. As a Protestant minister and seminary professor, I followed Calvin and Luther, who read Saint Paul’s letters to the Romans and the Galatians as if God were sitting as judge in a Roman courtroom, acquitting us even though He knew we were guilty, all because Christ had paid our penalty.

But the deeper I went into Romans and Galatians, the more I realized that the ancient authors were Hebrew before anything else. Their categories, language, and assumptions were steeped in the covenants, not in the juridical structures of the Roman empire. I had long assumed that a covenant was a legal instrument—a contract. Gradually, however, I began to wake up to something that the Catholic Church has taught from the beginning: that a covenant differs from a contract almost as much as marriage differs from prostitution. A contract exchanges property, goods and services, rights and duties; a covenant exchanges persons. In a contract, this product is yours and that one is mine; but in a covenant, I am yours and you are mine. Thus the covenants God makes always say the same thing: I will be your God and you will be My people—My family, My kinfolk—because covenant creates kinship.

Covenant creates family bonds that are even stronger than biological family bonds. That’s something that every ancient Hebrew knew. That’s what Paul knew, and John, and James. So when they heard the news that God was making a covenant with them, they knew that He was no longer merely a lawgiver or judge. He was a Father foremost, and forever.

Bond for Glory

A strong sense of sonship—the sense that comes with deep conversion—frees us to love our mother. For as long as we cling to the master-slave relationship, we will never understand the Blessed Virgin Mary. As long as we consider ourselves God’s servants or mere prisoners whom He has freed, so long we will see her as a threat to His glory. A master is glorified by his slave’s servility. A master is sovereign as long as his servants grovel. But not so a father, who desires only the love of his children.

How much more true is this of the ageless Father, God Himself. God does not gain glory from our groveling; nor does He lose glory when we pay due honor to His creatures. God the Son gained not a drop of glory for Himself—after living, dying, and rising as a human being—that He had lacked beforehand. Not even God can increase that which is infinite. He came and died and rose and reigns in order to share His glory with us.

As recipients of that glory, as coheirs with Christ, as sharers in His kingship, as children of God, it’s fair for us to ask: How much glory is He willing to share? And how successful will He be?

Being perfect love, He wants to share it all. But since we’re finite creatures and He’s the infinite creator, how could we possibly share in the fullness of divine glory? We can’t do it on our own. But surely perfect love will do everything He can to give us all His glory. And, being all-powerful, He will surely succeed. Indeed, when we see Mary, we realize that He has already succeeded. He gave us all His glory by giving it to the only one who would give it to all of us: our mother.

If you come to visit my home and you give something to my small children—say, a box of candy—I can guarantee you that a fight will ensue over who gets how much. But if you give a box of chocolates as a gift to my wife, I can just as surely guarantee you that the candies will make their way to each and every child in due proportion. That, God knows, is how motherhood works.

God did not create and redeem the world in order to get more glory, but rather to share it, in due proportion, with all of us. There is no tug-of-war between the Creator and His creatures. The Father made and redeemed us through the Son and the Spirit, but He did it for our sake—starting with Mary, in whom it was accomplished not only first but best.

Do we detract from Christ’s finished work by affirming its perfect realization in Mary? On the contrary, we celebrate His work, precisely by focusing our attention on the human person who manifests it most perfectly.

Mary is not God, but she is the Mother of God. She is only a creature, but she is God’s greatest creation. She is not the king, but she is His chosen queen mother. Just as artists long to paint one masterpiece among their many works, so Jesus made His mother to be His greatest masterpiece. To affirm the truth about Mary does not detract from Jesus—although refusing to affirm it does detract from Him.

The Blessed Virgin’s Merit

The problem comes when people think of divine providence in terms of human economics. What, after all, did Mary ever do to earn such honor from God? All her good works flowed from His graces. Thus all honor and glory belongs to God. He owes us no graces.

If “merit” is understood as a purely economic term, then to speak of anyone meriting honors from God is untrue and offensive. But if we consider merit in a familial sense, it is as natural as an inheritance, or an allowance. In other words, as children in God’s family, we merit grace as a child earns dessert—by eating everything on his plate. What father begrudges his kids the gifts he gives them? Or resents those whom he rewards? As Saint Augustine wrote: “When God rewards us for our labors, He is only crowning His work in us” (Catechism, no. 2006).

According to the Catechism, it is God’s “fatherly action” that enables us to merit: “Filial adoption, in making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God’s gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love, making us ‘coheirs’ with Christ” (nos. 2008–9).

Christ has merited our capacity to merit—which He confers on us with the grace of His divine Sonship and the life of His Spirit. Indeed, Jesus did not merit a single thing for Himself, since there was nothing He needed. Thus, He merits only according to our need.

Where does God the Father show the world just how much His Son really merited? In each one of us, to be sure, but most of all in Mary. Unlike the rest of us—in whom there is often a yawning gap between what we want and what God wants—with Mary, there is no gap. The Church ascribes to Mary an unlimited capacity to merit. Far from detracting from Christ’s saving work, she exemplifies it. By the gift of an infinite grace, Mary attained the goal of the covenant: a perfect interpersonal union of divine and human wills. With Mary, the ideal and the real are one and the same.

This Is a Test

Mary is the test of how well a Christian has accepted the gospel. It’s not that she’s the central figure of salvation history. She’s not; Jesus is. But our understanding of Mary reveals everything about how we understand Jesus and His saving work.

We live our sonship best by listening to Mary and loving as she loves. Listening means responding when she says: “Do whatever He tells you.” Loving means standing by Christ, even to the cross. Loving means choosing Him, in every instance, over sin.

Divine motherhood is the place where Eve and the ark are fulfilled in heaven and in your home. Divine motherhood is the place where the Church’s dogmas become mother’s milk for those who wish to grow in wisdom. Divine motherhood is the place where mysticism meets theology—in our heart of hearts.

Divine motherhood is the place where God wants Christians to meet Christ, their brother. I’ll say it again: adelphos means “from the same womb.” What establishes brotherhood, then, is motherhood. For Mary to have given us her Son is remarkable. But for Jesus to have given His mother to us—the very people who crucified Him and sinned against His Father—that’s something great beyond imagining! After giving us His mother, we can be sure that there’s nothing He would withhold.