My 13-year-old son has some questions about various matters
of faith. . . . First, he wonders why we claim that the Virgin
Mary is the Mother of God. I told him it is because she gave
Him His human nature—a nature our Lord adopted through the
Incarnation. . . . He says, however, that the Virgin Mary
should only be considered the mother of Jesus’ humanity, not
the mother Christ’s divinity. I told him that the two cannot
be separated, and obviously the Catholic Church does not claim
that she is the mother of the divine nature of God (which has
existed for all eternity), but only of His human nature.
He also believes that when we pray to the Virgin Mary we
worship her. I explained to him that we Catholics do not
worship the Virgin Mary, but honor and venerate her as the
mother of our Savior. I guess I am not sure if I should say
that we pray to her, or, more exactly, we pray for her to pray
for us. He thinks that praying “to” somebody is equivalent to
worshipping that person. (I think he also associates kneeling
down to pray with an act of worship.) . . .
He also argues over the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. He
says that if the Virgin was born without sin and never sinned
in her life, then she was perfect; this, however, he says,
contradicts the Bible, which says that only God is perfect. .
. . Here he is equating different levels of perfection with
that of sinlessness. . . . I am aware of the explanation that
the merits of Christ were applied to her before her conception
and that it is still the blood of Christ that cleansed her,
or, more accurately, prevented her soul from being blemished
at conception.
This brings me to another point, which is more a question of
my own. God is absolute and eternal, never changing. There is
an instant in time when Jesus, the second Person of the
Trinity, however, adopts our human nature and becomes both God
and man. I understand that this is the “mystery of the
Incarnation” and hard, if not impossible, for humans to
completely comprehend. My question is, then, given the
unchanging nature of God, would not adopting a human nature be
considered a change? Is this explained by the mystery of the
Incarnation as well? I have asked myself this question before,
but have not been able to come up with a clear explanation.
Could you elucidate?
And last . . . does our Lord retain His human nature after His
death? I know He rose in His glorified body and shortly after
ascended into Heaven. Is it our belief that He retains His
glorified body in Heaven as well?
Thanking you in advance for your time and consideration.
God Bless,
Dear Mr.
Peace in Christ! The first question regarding why we call Mary
the Mother of God is addressed in our FAITH FACT,
The First
Marian Dogma. It covers why Mary is called the
“God-bearer” or the Mother of God and not simply the mother of
Jesus’ humanity. You are correct that, in the Church’s
teaching, Mary as Mother of God does not imply that she is the
mother of the divine nature of God, which has existed for all
eternity. The FAITH FACT should sufficiently explain why.
For the second question about Catholic veneration of Mary and
the saints and how this is distinct from the worship that
belongs to God alone, see two of our other FAITH FACTS,
Honor Thy
Mother and
All In the
Family.
Regarding the Immaculate Conception, your response is right on
target. We would only add that there are not only different
levels of perfection, but different kinds. To be perfected is
to be complete. God is perfect as only God is perfect. The
perfection of human beings means that we come to the
fulfillment of everything to which our humanity is ordered. In
addition, God is perfect by nature; He cannot be otherwise. We
come to perfection by grace. For a further explanation of the
Immaculate Conception, once more, see our
FAITH FACT
on the subject.
If God is unchanging, how is the Incarnation, taking on
humanity, to be understood? Is that not in itself a change?
While the answer to this question is bound up with the mystery
of the Incarnation, “mystery” in the Church does not mean
unintelligibility. While the following will certainly not be
exhaustive of such an august mystery, perhaps it will provide
some insight.
When it is said that God is unchanging, how is it that He is
unchanging? God is eternal. It is time (which is itself a
mystery) that is associated with change. The eternity of God,
unaffected by temporality, does not change, even, we would
submit, when the second Person of the Trinity entered time by
the assumption of a human nature. The Church confesses that
Christ had a human soul with all its attending “operations of
intellect and will” (Catechism, no. 470), but recalls
that all aspects of “Christ’s human nature belongs . . . to
the divine person of the Son of God” (Ibid). In His
human nature, Jesus “grew in wisdom” (Lk. 2:52), He “learned
obedience (Heb. 5:8). Yet, Jesus “communicates to His humanity
His own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In His soul
as in His body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways
of the Trinity” (Catechism, no. 470). So even by
assuming humanity, the eternal (i.e., unchanging) nature of
God remained the same. To say that the human nature of Jesus
produced a change in His divine nature would imply that the
two were fused. The teaching of the Church has always been
that the two natures were joined in one divine Person, but
Christ is not “a confused mixture of the divine and the human”
(Catechism, no. 464).
Last, does Jesus retain the humanity He assumed for all
eternity? The answer is “yes,” He does. He was crucified and,
in His resurrection, was glorified bodily, not with the intent
to discard His humanity afterwards. The Catechism
teaches that after He appeared for the last time to His
disciples on the Mount of Olives (as recorded in Acts 1), that
appearance ended “with the irreversible entry of His humanity
into divine glory. . .(Catechism, no. 659).
I hope this answers your questions. If you have further
questions on this or would like more information about
Catholics United for the Faith, please contact us at
1-800-MY-FAITH (693-2484). Please keep us in your prayers as
we endeavor to “support, defend, and advance the efforts of
the teaching Church.”
United in the Faith,
David E. Utsler
Information Specialist
Catholics United
for the Faith
827 North Fourth Street
Steubenville, OH 43952
800-MY-FAITH (800-693-2484)
