Joyful Mystery—The Birth Of Jesus [3 of 20]

Adoration of the Shepherds by Georges de La Tour, c. 1644

T

hird Joyful Mystery—The Birth of Jesus. She gave birth to her first-born Son and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the place where travelers lodged (Lk 2:7).

The very first Marian title with tremendous implication for how Christians understood Jesus was Mary as Theotokos, Mother of God. It was used as early as 230 AD by Origen of Alexandria. Mary's motherhood of God was so controversial that some Christians vehemently opposed it. How can God have a mother? Some feared that this title could make it seem as if the Virgin Mary existed from the beginning of time. The first proponents of the title during the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD said that it was to be used in a very specific way—Mary gave birth to God only in the sense that she gave birth to Christ. She did not conceive and give birth to God the Father. The other title that flows from Theotokos is Mary as Mother of the Church. Pope Francis decreed the celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary—Mother of the Church in the General Roman Calendar on the day after Pentecost. The Decree draws on St Augustine's and Pope St Leo the Great's reflections on the Virgin Mary’s importance in the mystery of Christ.

“In fact the former [St Augustine] says that Mary is the mother of the members of Christ, because with charity she cooperated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church, while the latter [St Leo the Great] says that the birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, thus indicating that Mary is at once Mother of Christ, the Son of God, and mother of the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church.”

In 1964, the decree says, Pope Paul VI “declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as ‘Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother’ and established that ‘the Mother of God should be further honored and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles'."

Additional Material:

The Visitation [2 of 20]

The Presentation [4 of 20]

Dedication of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major (August 5, 2021)

Fr JM Manzano SJ