Motherhood, the glory of God

Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God

In an age where so much of modern narrative seems centered around how traditional patriarchal society has robbed women of their rightful place and privilege, the issue of motherhood remains contentious. The debate between pro-life and pro-choice camps can be reduced to a woman’s procreative rights, her right to choose, “to be” or “not to be” a mother. For those who insist on separating their femininity from motherhood, being a mother seems like another form of shackling by a male-dominated society. But for those who come to recognise that all life, even that of a newly conceived baby in the womb, is precious and sacred, then being a mother is the greatest privilege and crown of their womanhood.

Motherhood reflects the glory of God. It is the particularly feminine shape of holiness that women of faith strive for. When Saint Paul says that women are “saved through childbearing” (1 Timothy 2:15), he does not mean that women can earn their salvation by giving birth, but that God is able to save them even as they endure the feminine part of sin’s curse (Genesis 3:16). Childbearing symbolises the creational role of women because motherhood is the clearest example of the difference between men and women.

When God made men and women in His image, He gifted women with a peculiar way to showcase His image. Women, like God, have the gift of generative love. A woman has the ability to love a man in such a way that she can turn it into a human being. Mothers have a kind of incarnational power. In other words, women manifest the glorious love of God through creation, through birth. The unique gift of generation that was given to women is precisely what was damaged at the fall. Now, there is pain in childbearing (Genesis 3:16). The pain of birth tarnishes the gift of motherhood. But the tarnish makes way for a new possibility: redemption. After the fall, women can still generate human life, but they must do so by embracing their curse. Mothers embrace the pain of their fallen nature, they embrace death, and from that death a life is born. In every birth, a mother gives of herself for the sake of her child. So, because of the fall, motherhood not only reflects the generating love of God in creation, but also the regenerating love of Christ on the cross. Mothers embrace the curse so that we may be born, and Christ embraced the curse so that we may be reborn.

If all these things could be said about human motherhood, how much more can we speak of the supreme motherhood? The Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the greatest of all mothers. Motherhood has always been a sacred and noble vocation, but Mary raised it to an even greater stature when she became the Mother of God. It is startling to me that Catholics are perceived as having a negative view of women when Our Lady is so highly honoured. In the Catholic faith, The Blessed Virgin Mary is the most exalted of all Christians. Worship is reserved for the Holy Trinity alone. But Catholics honour and venerate Our Lady above all other saints. Why should we so honour her? God needed a woman to bear His son on earth. God needed a mother to be born a human, for what unites all human beings is that we all have human mothers. Strictly, for our Lord Jesus Christ to be born into this world, there was no need for man. But a woman, a mother was indispensable. And that is why Saint Paul declares, “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law” (Gal 4:4). So the Virgin Mary did not save the day in spite of being a woman, she conquers, she brought our Saviour into this world, precisely because she was a woman, something no man could do.

So today the Church celebrates the supreme motherhood, the Divine motherhood of Mary, whom the Eastern Christians call “Theotokos”, the God-bearer, or “the one who gave birth to God.” This only serves to impress on us that the noblest title accorded to Mary is essentially Christological. The belief that the Virgin Mary is the Mother of God is the corollary of the belief that her son, Jesus Christ, is God Incarnate. It is a shorthand that expresses two truths:  that Christ is God and yet took on human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The Word of God, who is God Himself, through whom all things were created, became a part of His own creation when He was conceived, gestated and born of the Virgin Mary. The Word of God is simultaneously the man Jesus of Nazareth because He has a human mother. This is in essence the central tenet of the Christian faith – the dogma of the Incarnation. So, if you take away the human mother from this equation, this entire doctrine falls apart and with it the entire Christian faith. Just like the whole house would fall apart without the mother.

The dogma that Mary is the Theotokos, or God-bearer, contributes to a celebration and exaltation of womanhood. By emphasising that Our Lady is the Mother of God, the Church not only maintains a high Christology (highlighting that Christ was always divine), but also makes the shocking assertion that God Himself chose to dwell in a woman’s body as His abode for nine months. She was, as Saint Cyril of Alexandria who successfully defended this noble title at the Council of Ephesus, the “container of the Uncontainable.” Perhaps even more scandalous, is the emphasis the Church Fathers place on Christ being born “of Mary,” not merely “from Mary.” By this they meant that God allowed His very body to be formed from Mary’s womb.

In his 1995 Letter to Women, Saint John Paul II says that the Catholic Church “sees in Mary the highest expression of the ‘feminine genius’ and she finds in her a source of constant inspiration.” As the mother who is “blessed among women” (Lk 1:42), Mary gives us the clearest and most inspiring picture of what the ideal mother should look like, and every Christian mother would be wise to take her cues from her. Rather than to see her conception and pregnancy as a curse and a burden, one that risked condemning her to humiliation, rejection and even death, Mary accepted it for what it is – the greatest blessing from God. She of all persons knew that her femininity was not diminished nor compromised by becoming a mother, but rather it was augmented and brought to perfection in her motherhood.

And finally Mary shows all women, all mothers, that the highest calling is not motherhood. The highest calling is to know God, to love Him and serve Him and be with Him in Paradise forever. Mothers are called to showcase to all people how they should act towards God. Her vocation is to work for the salvation of her family members and all souls. Through this vocation, she reverses the damage done by Eve. When Eve refused to submit to God in the garden, all the world fell into chaos. The Virgin Mary, on the other hand, willingly submitted to God, and the whole world was saved through the seed planted in her. Every mother in their submission to God tells the gospel story.

So today, as we honour the Blessed Virgin Mary as Mother of God, as the Holy Theotokos, we honour all mothers and all women too. This is exactly what Bishop Proclus of Constantinople said in a fifth century homily, “What we celebrate is the pride of women and the glory of the female, thanks to the one who was at once both mother and virgin … let nature leap for joy, and let women be honoured! Let all humanity dance, and let virgins be glorified… Let women come running, because a woman … is giving birth to the fruit of life. Let virgins also come running because a virgin has given birth … let mothers come running, because by means of the Tree of Life a virgin mother, has set right the tree of disobedience. Let daughters also come running, because a daughter’s obedience has punished a mother’s disobedience.”