Can our finite minds ever grasp the awesome event, the singular moment in history, when the human and the divine come together?
No, our limited minds cannot fathom the depth of this mystery, Verbum incarnatum est (Word is made flesh).
We can try to deepen our understanding of this act of salvation history, but our thoughts, our words, our explanations will always leave us dissatisfied. We try to penetrate these divine mysteries – Chosen Woman, Holy Spirit, Son of God – and thanks to our faith we are helped to understand with an illuminated intelligence through the work of the Holy Spirit.
Yet mystery prevails, and like the beautiful Mother of God we approach the unfathomable, trusting in God and echoing Mary, “be it done unto me according to thy Word.”
Roman Catholicism has always recognized the central role played by the Virgin Mary in salvation history. To diminish Mary, or minimize her fiat “be it done,” leads to serious doctrinal flaws, even rejecting the mystery of God. We need to be led by Mary – a woman faithful to God’s will and chosen by God to bring into the world His divine Son to walk on the earth, to teach and to suffer, and to be killed.
The flesh of Jesus was the flesh of His Mother. Jesus was born of a sinless Virgin, and Mary’s beautiful flesh was unstained. For this reason she knew neither pains at childbirth nor the pain of death, though the Mother of God knew well the meaning of suffering (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 3.35.6).
Mary the Virgin, Mary the Beautiful, brought into the world the Son of God enfleshed in the womb of her immaculate body. Yet we also know that Mary’s Saviour, her own Son, redeemed her in advance from any stain of original sin by his anticipated actions on the cross.
What does the Beautiful Virgin enunciate? “Yes” to the Archangel Gabriel. “Yes” to the Holy Spirit, descending upon her the moment she pronounces the words of Incarnation, “be it done.” The Son of God is conceived. In that moment, in the amazing act of God, the Son of God who exists from all eternity, is begotten in Mary the Beautiful, Mary the Virgin.
Enfleshed in her womb is the Second Person of the Trinity with His human nature: the nature that has five senses, the nature that plays as a little boy, the nature that sends him running into his Mother’s arms as a child, and the nature of the suffering man who sees a world plagued by sin, his friend dying, and the poor, widows and orphans turning to him, pleading.
Mary is Theotokos (God-bearer) because the child to whom she gives birth is the person who exists from all eternity, yet she births him in the flesh, in history, in our time. The Second Person of the Trinity, co-eternal with the Godhead, through the Beautiful Virgin of Nazareth, brings the eternal God into the temporal world. This is her “yes” to God’s plan, to His design for salvation (Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 3.35.4).
When we celebrate the feasts of the Immaculate Conception, the Annunciation, or the Mother of God, the Church brings us to the same person: the Divine Being whom Mary brings into the world with her “yes” in her own flesh; the only one who can save us; the Anointed One; Jesus the Christ.
Father David Bellusci is a Dominican priest residing at St. Thomas Aquinas priory in Toronto.