Perpetual Virgin, Revamped

The next series on the Blessed Virgin has now been fully revamped: Perpetual Virgin. In addition to all the personal touches I slipped into the various chapters, it also now includes a substantial amount of new quotes from the Early Church Fathers as well as the following new concluding chapter:

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Mary, Court of the Eternal King

"You had good reason to be horrified at the thought that another birth might issue from the same virginal womb from which Christ was born according to the flesh. For the Lord Jesus would never have chosen to be born of a virgin if He had ever judged that she would be so incontinent as to contaminate with the seed of human intercourse the birthplace of the Lord's body, that court of the Eternal King."

-Pope St. Siricius (A.D. 392, Letter to Bishop Anysius).

This response of the Sainted Pope upon hearing from one of his brother bishops of the appearance of some Antidicomarites (as St. Augustine calls them) in Anysius' diocese, expresses well the heart of the Christian who has pondered this doctrine and come to accept the Church's position. It is beyond fitting that Our Lord Jesus, King of kings and Lord of lords, should not have to share His "court", the womb of His mother, with a sinful sibling. I am reminded of the Centurion's protest in the Gospel, "I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof..." (Matt 8:8). If we are not worthy that the Lord God should come into our homes, then how much more unworthy are we to enter the courts of the Holy One of Israel???
        As I learned the Catholic position, I too, little by little, began to realize the profound audacity of claiming that the Mother of God might sully both her "gate" and her womb by the touch of sinful humanity when she had been chosen by God to be His holy Ark, more holy even than the first. This may seem hypocritical to those who believe that Mary too was sinful. After all, if Mary was mired in sin like the rest of us, then our Lord's first home, "that court of the Eternal King," was already sullied by her own imperfections. But that's not what we believe. Indeed, it is one small part of the reason we attest that Mary was preserved from all stain of sin from the moment of her conception, but that's a topic for another time.
        Too often in America, our tendency regarding God is to forget the supreme reality of His holiness. We are too acquainted with the effects of His awesome mercy, which allows us to because not only servants but children and friends to Almighty God, that we almost completely forget His justice. We have become complacent and presumptuous, approaching His holy altar without the fear of the Lord. If nothing else, that is what this doctrine aught to rectify in our hearts. For the sake of our sanctification, we absolutely must remember that the Lord is holy─i.e. set apart─to the point that anyone who is not absolutely pure, devoid not only of all actual sin, but also of any and all mere attachment to sin, comes into His presence, His holiness and justice demand that He eradication that person (this, by the way, is also why we believe in Purgatory, but again that's a topic for later). In the Old Testament account of the Ark, which was also called the Ark of the Presence, returning from the Philistines, Uzzah did not sin in desiring the Ark to be safe─indeed, that desire fueled the calling of Joseph who offered his life to be protector of Mary and thus became likewise the protector of Christ─yet he was smote because He dared reach out his hand to touch the object that held the Presence of the Holy One of Israel─not even the Presence Himself, but that which held Him. And this was merely the seat of God, not the person whom His Presence fully entered! It would be the height of audacity to presume to touch such a person in a sexual manner! Indeed, that is why, while they believed that she was merely consecrated to the Lord in the normal way, the scribe and priest in the Protoevangelium were aghast at the prospect of someone having lain with her. How much more appalled would they have been to learn later that a sinful man had lain with the very Virgin to whom God had consecrated Himself in return?
        It is for this reason that the Catholic Church calls Mary "the Spouse of the Holy Spirit." Because, despite the long tradition of woman and men consecrating themselves to God in the Temple, and indeed throughout the centuries since the Incarnation, Mary was the first and last to whom the Holy Spirit in return united Himself so completely that a Divine Person, the Saviour of the World, was born of the union. As Christ Himself said, "What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder" (Matthew 19:6). In the end, the only question I was left with regarding this doctrine was not a question to be asked of Catholic apologists, but rather a question that I had to ask myself: if God has made Himself uniquely one flesh with this particular woman, how could I not believe that she would have remained faithful to God alone? And I respond in the words of St. John of Damascus: "Perish the thought!"

Mother of God, Revamped

I've completed the rewrite of the Mother of God series, including a newly added closing chapter. I hope you'll take the time to review the page and, if you like, comment on it. For the sake of those who don't have time to read the whole page right away, I'll include the new closing segment here:
 
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God-Bearers Like Mary

 
        Much more could be said about the ways in which Mary is the true antitype of the Ark of the Covenant, but I think that perhaps we've seen enough to be convinced. Or, if this has not been enough, I suspect that no amount of words will suffice; only the grace of God will do. Nevertheless, as I said in the beginning, the Church teaches and defends the doctrines pertaining to Mary not so much because of what they say about Mary, but because of what they say about Jesus and about ourselves. And that is why I eagerly embrace them. This doctrine, as was stated in the first chapter, hinges on the Divinity of Christ. If Jesus is God, then His mother is God's mother. If Jesus is God, then the woman who bore Him bore God. But what about us? Why does this matter for us and what does it teach us about our relationship with God?
        There is no simple answer to those questions. Like Mary, each of us must ponder these things. Mary is essentially, the prototypical Christian, and so it is our task to "[b]e imitators of [her] as [she] imitates Christ" (I Corinthians 11:1). There are many, many ways in which each of us is called to be a God-bearer, an ark of the new covenant. We are called to be Christ's ambassadors to those who are yet dying in sin, and thus to carry Him within ourselves as we live out our daily lives. This is why, at the end of Mass, we are told, "Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord," or "Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life." At Mass, we receive the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus because He is truly present in the Eucharist (a.k.a. the Lord's Supper, a.k.a. Communion), and then we are sent to bear Him forth into the world so that His saving presence might save everyone with whome we come into contact.
        Each of us, having been created in the image and likeness of God, is called to protect the dignity of that inherent godliness in a myriad of ways. Just as Mary protected her Son by putting her whole body between Him and the entire world when He was too small to survive alone in it, we may be called to put our bodies in harm's way in order to protect those who are too weak to protect themselves. Some do this by campaigning for the end to Abortion, by standing outside Abortion clinics, praying for and speaking to those who enter in the hopes that they may save the lives of unborn children. Others do it more routinely, by serving as doctors, nurses, medical technicians, etc., working to safeguard and improve the health of those who are ill, despite the ever-present possibility that they themselves may be infected by any one of the illnesses under which their patients suffer. Still more put themselves in harm's way in a manner very similar to the Blessed Mother: by being parents, protecting their children from the dangers of the world, teaching them how to face it, and, of course, training them to know, love, and serve Jesus as their very own Lord and Saviour, Eternal King of their lives and lover of their souls. There are as many ways to answer this call as there are Christians who hear it.
        Whatever your particular calling, it is this Truth to which you owe that calling. Without Mary's willingness to be the Mother of God, the Son of God might never have become human, might never have taken on Himself the mortal flesh that allowed Him to die for your sins. Without Mary's conscious choice to bear God within her womb, none of us would be Christians. She is the first, best Christian; she offered herself completely, body and soul, to God so that He might have a body to offer up for us. Ponder this mystery─ponder Mary's motherhood; ponder the incomprehensible reality of Emmanuel, Transcendent God tangibly present with man, sharing the same human flesh as each and every one of us; ponder the suffering the Philistines endured because they refused to recognize the Ark for what it was; ponder the all-humbling joy felt by David and Elizabeth, indeed by the whole Isrealite people, when the Ark of the Most High God was brought to them, though they were not worthy─ponder all this and your Christian life will become more unfathomably meaningful than ever before.
        Before I became Catholic, I never knew any of these things about Mary. I never pondered these things. And now, because I know them and ponder them, I not only know more about Jesus and His mother, and about God and His plan for salvation, but I have a richer, deeper, and closer relationship with Him. I love God more because I can see His love more clearly. Because I see His mother for who she is, I can better see Jesus for whoHe is. If you know more about who my mother is, you will know a great number of things about me that I myself could never tell you; in the same way, as we learn to know the Mother of God, we come to know things about Him which He can better show us─through her─than tell us. That is why, when God says, "honor your father and your mother" (Exodus 20:12), we would do well to honor His mother too.