The Truth About Mary

The following new series is taken from Dr. Mark Miravalle's revised version of Introduction to Mary. This week we start with an excerpt from Chapter One entitled, The Truth About Mary. – Asst. Ed.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, you have given the world its true light, Jesus, your Son—the Son of God. You abandoned yourself completely to God’s call and thus became a wellspring of the goodness which flows forth from him. Show us Jesus. Lead us to him. Teach us to know and love him, so that we too can become capable of true love and be fountains of living water in the midst of a thirsting world." 

– Pope Benedict XVI, Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, No. 42

In discussing the person and role of Mary, Mother of Jesus, two extremes must always be avoided. The first extreme is Marian excess. This is to place the Blessed Virgin on the level of a goddess, to ascribe to Mary a divine nature that would grant her equality with God himself. This excess radically violates the revealed biblical truth about the singularity of God and the complete though exalted humanity of Mary. Although historically there have been very few occasions when the Mother of Jesus has been posed as a "goddess," nonetheless, it remains a Marian excess that is obviously a grave rejection of and danger to the Christian faith.

The second extreme regarding the person and role of the Blessed Virgin is what we can call Marian defect. This is to minimize the role of the Blessed Virgin, to ascribe to Mary less than what the sources of divine revelation reveal about her. Marian defect, for example, would limit the Mother of Jesus to being only a "good disciple," a "sister in the Lord," a mere "physical channel of Jesus," but nothing more.

Unfortunately it is this second extreme of Marian minimalization that is encountered more widely today. This extreme also violates the revealed truth of the role of the Blessed Virgin, for Mary is revealed, as we shall discuss, both as intercessor and as Spiritual Mother to all humanity. To deny Mary the role of Spiritual Mother is to deny that aspect so central to her own identity, and to her relationship with Christ and his Body, the Church.

As we will examine, examples of Mary’s role as intercessor and Spiritual Mother are clear in Scripture in such places as John 2:1, at the Wedding of Cana, where Mary intercedes for the first miracle of Jesus, as well as in John 19:26, where at the foot of the Cross Mary is given the role of Spiritual Mother of John, the beloved disciple, and all later disciples of the Lord.

We can find warnings concerning these extremes, Marian excess and Marian defect, generally referred to in a statement from the Second Vatican Council regarding the proper balance of devotion to the Mother of Jesus:

What then safeguards the Christian from these two Marian extremes? What protects us from a "false exaggeration" in Marian excess or "too summary an attitude" in forms of Marian defect? The answer is the full truth and corresponding love properly attributed to the Mother of the Lord as officially taught and preserved by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. The Magisterium is that official teaching authority that Our Lord has granted to his Apostles and their successors, who, guided by the Holy Spirit, have the crucial responsibility to safeguard, interpret, and serve divine revelation, which is the revelation of God as contained in both Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture.

Let us return to the words of the Second Vatican Council to see how God’s full Word is revealed to us:

The Council points out that there is one twinfold source of God’s revelation to humanity. The first aspect of this one twinfold source is Sacred Tradition. Sacred Tradition comprises the oral truths and acts of Jesus Christ transmitted to the Apostles and their successors (the pope and the bishops in union with the pope) under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Vatican II describes Sacred Tradition in the following way:

Sacred Scripture is the other aspect of that one twinfold source. Scripture comprises the divine truths of God written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The books of Scripture, as the Council notes, "firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures." (3)

The Second Vatican Council strongly points out that both Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture must receive equal reverence as aspects of God revealing himself to humanity for our salvation. This understanding of the unity of Tradition and Scripture is extremely important in the proper study of Mariology. Many of the truths that God has revealed about the Mother of Jesus are strongly contained in Sacred Tradition, but at the same time, Marian doctrine will also be contained at least implicitly in the apostolic preaching that came to be written down and today is known as the New Testament.

The role of safeguarding this deposit of faith in Scripture and Tradition is given to the Magisterium of the Church, the official teaching body. Again from the Council we read:

The Magisterium, then, has the unique responsibility of safeguarding the deposit of faith that Christ gave to his Church which is guided by the Holy Spirit.

Why is a discussion about divine revelation so crucial for a proper understanding of the doctrine and devotion concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary? Because Marian orthopraxis is based on Marian orthodoxy. "Orthopraxis" is a Greek word which means the right practice, or correct devotion. "Orthodoxy" means the right or correct doctrine. Devotion to Mary will be authentic and spiritually fruitful only when it is based on the authentic doctrine that comes from the Word of God entrusted to the Church. Marian devotion will then be authentic and, as such, an instrument of grace and ultimate union with Jesus Christ, only when it avoids both Marian excess and Marian defect, and has sound Marian truth as its foundation. True doctrine about Mary is revealed in Scripture and Tradition, as safeguarded by the Magisterium. The truth of Christ and his Church is the only legitimate foundation for a balanced and legitimate devotion to the Mother of Jesus. In short, we can say that true devotion to Mary must be based on true doctrine about Mary.

It is also critically important to establish the twinfold source of Tradition and Scripture when discussing the presence and development of Marian doctrine. The question is sometimes posed, "How can a Catholic believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary, or her Perpetual Virginity, or her Assumption when these doctrines are not explicitly contained in the Bible?"

We must remember that the Bible is not the only source of God’s revelation. In fact, to believe that the Bible is the only source of Revelation is in itself a non-scriptural position—since nowhere in the Bible does it state that Scripture is the only source of Revelation. Rather, Scripture and Tradition constitute the full revelation of God entrusted to the Church, (5) and therefore a Christian truth need not be explicitly revealed in the Bible to be an authentic Christian doctrine. This includes the Church’s doctrine about Mary.

Nonetheless, every Church doctrine about the Mother of Jesus has at least an implicit presence in Sacred Scripture, and this scriptural "seed" is then nurtured and developed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Church’s Tradition and history, until it becomes the great "tree" of a Marian doctrine or dogma.

On this journey of Marian doctrine and devotion we will begin by discussing the nature of devotion to Mary and its origins in the first centuries of the Church. We will then proceed to the doctrine of the Blessed Virgin as found in the sources of divine revelation and as taught by the Church’s Magisterium.

After we have a solid understanding of Marian truth, we will examine the expressions of authentic Marian love. This will include treatments on the Rosary, the greatest Marian prayer; consecration to Jesus through Mary, the crowning of Marian devotion; and Mary’s message to the modern world through private revelation. We will end with a discussion in "defense of Mary," responding to basic objections both to the doctrine and to the devotion of the Blessed Virgin.

We begin our journey of Marian doctrine and devotion with the most complete ancient Marian prayer, recorded and dated at approximately 250 A.D. It is known as the Sub Tuum Praesidium, "Under Your Protection":

We fly to your patronage,
O Holy Mother of God,
despise not our petitions
in our necessities,
but deliver us from all danger,
O ever glorious and blessed Virgin.

This article was excerpted from Introduction to Mary: The Heart of Marian Doctrine and Devotion, and is available from Queenship Publishing at 1-800-647-9882, www.queenship.org., or PO Box 220, Goleta, California, 93116, U.S.A. 

Notes

(1) Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, November 18, 1965, Nos. 7, 9.

(2) Ibid., No. 8.

(3) Ibid., No. 11.

(4) Ibid., No. 10.

(5) Cf. Ibid., No. 9.