Fundamentalist Objection: It is impossible for God to have a mother. The very claim is blasphemy. If a dog gives birth to a dog, a cat to a cat, and a human to a human, Mary would have to be God in order to give birth to God! What the Bible Says (presented by Tim Staples in his book Behold Your Mother): Granted, the phrase Mother of God is not in Scripture, but we do have something synonymous in Luke 1:43, in the account of the Visitation of Mary to her much older relative Elizabeth. When Mary entered Elizabeths home and greeted her, Elizabeth exclaimed with a loud cry: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains: Called in the Gospels the mother of Jesus, Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her Son, as the mother of my Lord. In fact, the One Whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, Who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Fathers eternal Son, the second Person of the Holy Trinity. Hence, the Church confesses that Mary is truly Mother of God (495). Biblical evidence for this dogma is not limited to the New Testament. St. Cyril of Jerusalem and the fathers of the Council of Ephesus referred to an intriguing prophecy from Isaiah 7:14 in their own exposition of both Jesus divinity and Marys divine maternity. For the holy prophet Isaiah does not lie when he says, Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted God with us. (quote from St. Cyril of Alexandrias Letter to John of Antioch) The Messiah was to be born of a woman, and yet He was to be called Immanuel, which means God with us. According to the council fathers, God with us means what it says: Jesus is God; so this prophetic virgin, Mary, would then be the Mother of God. Thus we have a text from the Old Testament that prophesied the mother of the Messiah was indeed to be the Mother of God. Add to that the text of Luke 1:43 and we have both the Old and New Testaments revealing the Catholic truth about Mary.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 20:23:00 +0000
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