Introduction
The Catholic Church does not regard Mary as a goddess or demigoddess. In fact, Mariandevotion is founded on the belief that she, a mere human being, was brought into an astonishingly intimate association with God. She is the first and best example of the heights to which a person can be elevated by God.
Why should Catholics give her such high honors? Because Jesus is not just the founder of Christianity, but the very substance (physical essence) of the Christian message. God became man; heis God. And Mary’s motherhood associates her intimately, and involves her enormously in the Incarnation (“God in-the-flesh”). In order to understand the Church’s teachings on her one must understand the total pattern of Catholic beliefs, just as one must understand the total pattern of Hindu beliefs in order to make sense out of Hindu reverence for cows. To the outsider it can appear ridiculous.
Mary is great not only because of her divine maternity, but she also exemplifies the perfect human response to God. We can understand this if we reflect on the fact that God has two images of us: what we are and what we can be, our fullest potential. In most of us, these two realities are far apart. But Mary was all that God expected her to be. She is rightfully called, “blessed among women” (Lk 1:42).
Her perfect response and her challenges of faith are the basic keys to her greatness. Mary was truly human, and had to grapple with the reality of what her role was. She doubted, suffered, and struggled as she “pondered these things in her heart” (Luke 2:19). The spiritual privileges we believe she was gifted with result from her perfect, total living out of her fiat: Let it be done to me… (Lk 1:38).
Titles of Mary
Mary as the Mother of Jesus
It was through her that Jesus took our nature and through her we are related to him. Mary is not venerated apart from Jesus. Anything we can say about her only enhances our understanding and worship of God. She is a mere human being, and her link with the mystery of Jesus is based on the most basic of human relationships: motherhood. Mary is the chosen one through whom Jesus became a blood relative to us.
Mary as Mother of God
The expression “Mother of God” does not primarily honor Mary, but Jesus as fully human and fully divine. This title, established at the Council of Ephesus (AD 431), implies several things regarding Mary. It is Mary who realized personally the hope of the Jews, giving birth to the divine Messiah. And anyone associated with him cannot help but become the object of awe. She is the woman in whose womb God lived (was tabernacled) for nine months. She is the new Ark of the Covenant.
If there ever was anyone who heard the Word of God and kept it, it was Mary. She is the perfect model of a faithful Christian. She was the first to hear and believe. She too
required faith in the Savior, but because she was faithful, her maternal relationship to the Savior gave her a unique place in salvation history. The physical bond between mother and child inevitably creates one of the deepest love relation-ships known to humans. If Jesus was a perfect human, his love for his mother must have been perfect. Likewise, as a good woman and devout Israelite, her love for him would have been immense. Can we not suppose then that their love had an intimacy and depth unparalleled in human relations? Finally, consider the words Elizabeth uses to greet Mary: And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord (Yahweh) should come to me? (Luke 1:43)
Mary as Immaculate Virgin
We know from the Annunciation that Jesus was conceived of a virgin: But Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?" (Lk 1:34). If God speaks to us through acts and gestures (e.g., foot washing, bread and wine, healings, etc.) then this spectacular miracle to mark the entrance of his Son surely has meaning because he could have taken human form in the normal way. The virgin birth signifies first of all a new beginning in salvation history. The virgin birth is also a sign of her holiness. Her virginity is a sign of her total consecration to God. Indeed, the angel Gabriel greeted her as “favored” and “graced”: "Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you" (Lk 1:28). By doing so the angel declares her to be holy with the saints. Never before or since in sacred history has anyone been thus addressed by a heavenly messenger. Additionally, it is her cousin Elizabeth who calls her “blessed” because of her faith:Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb (Luke 1:42).
Was Mary perpetually a virgin?This question is obviously closely related to her immaculate conception. The Gospels make several references to the brothers and sisters of Jesus (for instance see Mt 12:46, Lk 8:19, Mk 3:31). However in Jesus’ day close relatives were commonly referred to this way. Mary’s question to Gabriel: How can this be?... (Lk 1:34) indicates that she intended to remain a virgin. Otherwise, she would not have had a problem, since she was already betrothed to Joseph. Furthermore, if Mary had the firm intention of remaining a virgin, and if her virginity had been preserved by God miraculously even when she was called to be a mother, is it conceivable that she would subsequently have abandoned it?
Additionally, recall the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion as recorded in the Gospel of John: When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his home (Jn 19:26-27). According to custom it would be highly irregular for a Jewish mother to be cared for by someone else other than her natural offspring – if she had any.
The Church believes that Mary is not merely a saint among saints, but the supreme saint. This is based primarily on her vocation to be the Mother of God. God’s grace is given to everyone in proportion to his or her vocation; Mary’s vocation far surpassed that of any other human being, except Jesus.
Mary as Immaculate Conception
This dogma says that by a unique privilege and grace she was conceived without sin; immaculate means “without stain”. The grace of God embraced her in the first instant of her existence and preserved her until her death. Beyond the evidence presented above, we can look at two additional points. First, John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus, was sanctified by the Holy Spirit even before his birth: He(John) will be filled with the holy Spirit even from his mother's womb (Lk 1:15). Mary’s far greater intimacy with Jesus would seem to call for an even more radical sanctification (holiness). Second, God worked a miracle to preserve Mary’s physical integrity and virginity; must this not be a sign of an even more important spiritual integrity?
A common objection by our non-Catholic brothers and sisters is that if Mary were without sin, she would be equal to God. But in the beginning, God created Adam, Eve, and the angels without sin, but none were equal to God. Most of the angels never sinned, and all souls in heaven are without sin. This does not detract from the glory of God, but manifests it by the work he has done in sanctifying his creation. Sinning does not make one human. On the contrary, it is when man is without sin that he is most fully what God intends him to be – most fully human.
Some might still object by citing Romans 3:23: all have sinned. Have all people committed actual sins? Consider a child below the age of reason. By definition he can’t sin, since sinning requires the ability to reason and the ability to intend to sin. This is indicated by Paul later in the letter to the Romans when he speaks of the time when Jacob and Esau were unborn babies as a time when they: had done nothing either good or bad (Rom. 9:11).
The Assumption of Mary
The doctrine of the Assumption says that at the end of her life on earth Mary was assumed, body and soul, into heaven, just as Enoch (Gn 5:24) Elijah (2 Kgs 2:11), and perhaps others,had been before her. It’s also necessary to keep in mind what the Assumption is not. Some people think Catholics believe Mary "ascended" into heaven. This is incorrect. Christ, by his own power, ascended into heaven. Mary was assumed or taken up into heaven by God. She didn’t do it under her own power.
Why this belief? All humans are destined for bodily resurrection. But because we have been touched by sin our resurrection is delayed. This was not God’s original plan (see the first chapters of Genesis); it is a consequence of sin. But if Mary was totally without sin, there was no reason for her resurrection to be delayed. Furthermore, Mary’s body was the Temple in which Jesus’ body was tabernacled for nine months. It is surely appropriate that the incorruptibility of Jesus’ body be extended to His mother, preserving her from the ravages of death which he had conquered.
The Church has never formally defined whether the Blessed Mother died or not, and the integrity of the doctrine of the Assumption would not be impaired if she did not in fact die, but the almost universal consensus is that she did die. Pope Pius XII, in Munificentissimus Deus (1950), defined that Mary, "after the completion of her earthly life" (note the silence regarding her death), "was assumed body and soul into the glory of heaven."
The possibility of a bodily assumption before the Second Coming is suggested in Matthew 27:52–53: [T]he tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. Did all these Old Testament saints die and have to be buried all over again? There is no record of that, but it is recorded by early Church writers that they were assumed into heaven, or at least into that temporary state of rest and happiness often called "paradise," where the righteous people from the Old Testament era waited until Christ’s resurrection (cf. Luke 16:22, 23:43; Heb. 11:1–40; 1 Pet. 4:6), after which they were brought into the eternal bliss of heaven.
There is also what might be called the negative historical proof for Mary’s Assumption. It is easy to document that, from the first; Christians gave homage to saints, including many about whom we now know little or nothing. Cities vied for the title of the last resting place of the most famous saints. Rome, for example, houses the tombs of Peter and Paul. In the early Christian centuries relics of saints were zealously guarded and highly prized. The bones of those martyred in the Coliseum, for instance, were quickly gathered up and preserved—there are many accounts of this in the biographies of those who gave their lives for the faith.
It is agreed upon that Mary ended her life in Jerusalem, or perhaps in Ephesus. However, neither those cities nor any other claimed her remains, though there are claims about possessing her (temporary) tomb. And why did no city claim the bones of Mary? Apparently because there weren’t any bones to claim, and people knew it. Here was Mary, certainly the most privileged of all the saints, certainly the most saintly, but we have no record of her bodily remains being venerated anywhere.
Mary as Spiritual Mother
No one exists in the Church for himself or herself alone. The graces we receive are meant to be shared. As the one nearest to Christ, Mary has to be the one who most helps others draw near to him. Her motherly role in the order of grace means concretely that the grace of Jesus is given to us through her. Mary is not an alternative avenue to God, but simply one who has been assumed into intimate collaboration with him, as all of us are to a lesser degree.
Origin of the Hail Mary
1. Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.The Angel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary in Luke 1:28.
2. Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.Elizabeth’s greeting to Mary in Luke 1:42.
3. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death. A Medieval petition.