The Mother of God

Since I have most recently written about Walsingham in my travelogue, here is the Joint Orthodox-Old Catholic Theological Statement on, of all things, Our Lady... 27 August 1977.

The Church believes that the divine and human natures are hypostatically united in Jesus Christ. It accordingly believes also that the Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth not to a human being merely but to the God-Man Jesus Christ and that she is therefore truly Mother of God as the Third Ecumenical Council defined and the Fifth Ecumenical Coun­cil confirmed. According to Saint John of Damascus, the name Mother of God (Theotokos) 'embraces the whole mystery of the divine plan of salvation' (Orthodox Faith, 56).

1. In the Virgin Mary, the Son of God assumed human nature in its entirety, body and soul, in virtue of the divine omnipotence, for the power of the Most High overshadowed her and the Holy Spirit came upon her (Saint Luke 1.35). In this way the Word was made flesh (Saint John 1.14). By the true and real motherhood of the Virgin Mary, the Redeemer was united with the human race.

There is an intrinsic connection between the truth of the one Christ and the truth of the divine motherhood of Mary. '... for a union of two natures took place; therefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. According to this understanding of the unconfused union, we confess the Holy Virgin to be Theotokos because God the Word was made flesh and lived as a human being and from the very conception united to himself the temple taken from her' (Third Ecumenical Coun­cil, Formula of Union). '...we teach with one voice that the Son of God and our Lord, Jesus Christ, is to be confessed as one and the same person ... begotten of his Father before the worlds ac­cording to his Godhead but in these last days born for us and for our salvation of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to his hu­manity' (Fourth Ecumenical Council, Definition of Faith).

2. Venerating the Virgin Mary as Mother of God, whose child-bear­ing Saint Ignatius of Antioch called 'a mystery to be cried aloud' (Ephesians 19.1), the Church also glorifies her perpetual virginity. The Mother of God is ever-Virgin, since, while remaining a maiden, she bore Christ in an ineffable and inexplicable manner. In their address to the Emperor Marcian, the Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council declared: '...the fathers ... have expounded the meaning of faith for all and proclaimed accurately the blessing of the incarnation: how the mystery of the plan of salvation was prepared from on high and from the maternal womb, how the Virgin was named Mother of God for the sake of him who granted her virginity even after her pregnancy and kept her body sealed in a glorious manner, and how she is truly called Mother because of the flesh of the Lord of all things, which came from her and which she gave to him'. And in its deci­sion the Seventh Ecumenical Council declared: 'We confess that he who was incarnate of the immaculate Mother of God and ever-Virgin Mary has two natures' (Definition). As Saint Augustine says: 'He was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. And even the birth as human being is itself lowly and lofty. Why lowly? Because as human being he is born of a human being. Why lofty? Because he was born of a virgin. A virgin conceived, a virgin gave birth, and after the birth she remained a virgin' (Symbolus 1.3/6). (See also Saint Sophronius of Jerusalem, ep. syn.; Saint John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith 87 ; Saint Maximus the Confessor, ambig. 31 and others).

3. Accordingly the Church venerates in a very special way the Vir­gin Mother of God, though 'not as divine but as Mother of God ac­cording to the flesh' (Saint John of Damascus, On the Holy Icons 2.5). If, because of the redemption in Christ and its blessings, the Church glorifies God above all and offers him the worship of true adoration due to the divine nature alone, at the same time it venerates the Mother of God as chosen vessel of the work of salvation, as she who accepted the word of God in faith, humility and obedience, as the gate­way through which God entered the world. It calls her the Blessed One, the first of the Saints and the pure handmaid of the Lord, and thereby ascribes to her a relative sinlessness by grace, from the time the Holy Spirit descended upon her, for our Saviour Jesus Christ alone is sinless by nature and absolutely. The Church does not recognize the recent dogmas of an immaculate conception and bodily assumption of the Mother of God. But it cele­brates the entry of the Mother of God into eternal life and solemnly observes the festival of her dormition.

4. The Church venerates the Mother of God also in her role as inter­cessor for human beings before God, which is hers in particular be­cause of her outstanding place in the work of salvation. But it distin­guishes between the intercession of the Mother of God and the quite unique mediatorship of Jesus Christ: 'For there is one mediator be­tween God and men - the man Jesus Christ' (1 Timothy 2.5). 'O Merciful One, show your love to mankind; accept the Mother of God who bore you, who intercedes for us, and save your helpless people, O our Sav­iour' (Saturday Vespers, Tone 8, Theotokion). 'O God, grant us all to share the life of your Son in fellowship with the Virgin Mary, the Blessed Mother of our Lord and God and of all your saints. Look upon their life and death and answer their intercessions for your Church on earth' (Eucharistic Liturgy of the Old Catholic Church of Switzerland). Although the Mother of God is also called 'mediatrix' (mesitria) in the hymns of the Church, this is never anywhere in the sense of co-me­diatrix or co-redemptrix but only in the sense of intercessor.