Feast of the Nativity of Our Blessed Virgin Mary
A Discourse on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
By Fr . Prof. J. Egbulefu CCE
Ohuru, 8th September,2024.
Feast of the Nativity
1:Dispositio
@1 My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I joyfully wish you and me a very Happy Feast Day of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Mother, the Solemn Feast of whose Assumption into heaven and whose coronation as Queen in heaven we celebrated recently on August 15 and 22 respectively .
@2 To deepen and heighten the grandeur of the Feast of her Nativity, let us accompany the celebration with a mystic-theological meditation on that double birth of Mary which has made her christlike (christformis); a Christlikeness which consists in the correspondence to Christ as to a single divine person equipped with two natures, the one divine, the other human, for He was born two times (bis natus est) : the one time He was born of a (divine) Father and without a woman as mother, and that was before the world was created, thus before all Ages (ante omnia saecula), while the other time He was born of a (human) Mother and without a man as father, and that was long after the world had been created, hence after many generations (post multas generationes); a Christlikeness that is the criterion for that holiness which is divinely demanded as requisite for divine admission of man, and for human entry, into heaven; heaven into which Mary was assumed and in which she has been crowned as the Queen of all creation, thus Queen of the Universe and of History, Queen of the Angels and of Humans, hence the Queen of Queens, as pendant of Christ the King of Kings.
@3 The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary which we celebrate with joy on the 8th day of September every year is not only her physical birth by which she is the daughter of Saints Anna and Joachim but also and more deeply her spiritual birth by which she is that daughter of the Most High who is not married and is thus called ‘Daughter Zion and the new Daughter of Zion’.
Her nativity means that bipartite series of her births the two constitutive elements of which are her physical birth as ‘the daughter of Joachim and Anna’ and her spiritual birth as ‘Daughter Zion and new daughter of Zion’.
2: Positio
@1 Mary has been assumed into heaven and even crowned in heaven. But no one can be divinely admitted, and humanly enter, into heaven unless the one is holy, and no one can be holy unless the one is conformed to Christ who has two natures, namely the divine and the human.
The term ‘nature’ is here not to be understood in the geographical sense of the word. For it is the english translation of the latin noun ‘natura’, which comes from the latin adjective ‘naturus/natura/naturum’, meaning ‘to be about to be born’, or ‘to be about to give birth’, which in turn comes from the latin deponent verb ‘nascor, nasci, natus/nata/natum sum’, meaning ‘to give birth’, ‘nascor’ being present tense of the named verb spoken by the first person in singular number, while ‘nasci’ is the infinitive mood of the named verb, whereas ‘natus/nata/natum’ is the past participle spoken by or qualifying the first person in singular number of masculine gender, ‘natus’, or of feminine gender, ‘nata’, or qualifying a first thing in singular number of neutral gender, ‘natum’, and is different from the other two adjectival cases of the same verb: the present participle ‘nascens’, meaning ‘to be in the act of giving birth or of being born’, and the gerundive ‘nascendus/nascenda/nascendum’, meaning ‘to have to be born’, ‘to ought to be born’, qualifying an object that ‘must be born’, ‘should be born’, ‘is required to be born’.
@2 Thus Christ has two natures, namely the divine and the human, because, and in the sense that, He passed through two births : the one time He was born of a (divine) Father and without any woman as Mother, and that was before the world was created, thus before all Ages (ante omnia saecula), while the other time He was born of a (human) Mother and without any Man as Father, and that was long after the world was created, hence after many generations (post multas generationes).
@2a) Only this Christ that is both God and Man, has both divine natura and human nature, passed through both divine birth and human birth, has ascended into heaven.
@2b) And all who have been physically born (born from below, from between the legs of a woman) must also be spiritually born (born from above, from the opened heavens) through water and the Spirit (as through two objects that come from above, from the opened heavens) in order to have passed through two births, the one physical from below and the other spiritual from above, in order to see and enter the Kingdom of God.
@2c) With only the physical birth (through man and woman as father and mother as human natural parents) without also the spiritual birth (through water and Spirit), one cannot enter, nor even see, the Kingdom of God.
That is why the Godman Jesus warned us humans seriously: “I tell you most solemnly, unless a man is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God....I tell you most solemnly, unless a man is born through water and Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God” (Jn 3:3.5).
@3 The Blessed Virgin Mary was divinely admitted, and humanly entered, into heaven only after she had passed through two births. Her double physico-spiritual birth, which was sign and instrument of the resemblance (similitude) of her birth to the dual divine-human birth of Christ, was the passport for her human entry, the credential for her being admitted by God, into heaven.
3: Expositiones
3.1 Mary’s physical birth as ‘the daughter of Joachim and Anna’
@1 The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, whom Christ on the Cross gave to us as our Mother, was born of her two parents, St Joachim and St Anna on a date not yet exactly known to us till today, like the very many people we know whose date of birth was not recorded in history, and the history of whose grandparents was not accurately, or even not at all, recorded.
@2 Our Mother, the Virgin Mary, is among the only three personalities in the history of salvation whose births are celebrated as Feast during the year in the devotional Tradition of the Church as of the New People of God. For, after the celebration of the birth of John the Baptist on the 24th day of June and the celebration of the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the 8th day of September, comes the celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ on the 25th day of December every year .
@3 The Church’s celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ on the 25th of December descends as the logical conclusion or consequence from two preceding facts as the premises.
@3a) The first fact as the first of the two premises - from which descends first of all 1) the logical conclusion that Jesus Christ must have been born on the 25th of December and thereupon 2) the logical consequence of celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ on the 25th day of December of each year) is the double fact or common human experience (cf. ratio) that A) the human birth of a child is preceded by the period of the child’s mother’s state of pregnancy as the period of her carrying the child in her womb from the moment of her conceiving the child in the womb till the moment of her delivering the child, whereby the period of pregnancy (which stretches from the moment of the mother’s conception of the child in her womb till the moment of her delivering the child from her womb to the world outside her womb) lasts nine months, and B) the human birth of a child is the child’s mother’s act or process of delivering the child from the mother’s womb to the world outside her womb on a particular day at a particular hour, whereby it is believed and generally agreed upon that the date on which the child is conceived in the womb of the mother must have been the date exactly nine months before the date of the delivery.
@3b) The second fact as the second of the two premises - from which descends first the logical conclusion that Jesus Christ must have been born on the 25th of December and secondly the logical consequence of celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ on the 25th day of December of each year - is the general belief (cf. fides) that the day on which Jesus Christ as a child was conceived in the womb of His Mother, Mary, must have been the 25th day of the March of that same year in which the child Jesus was delivered by Mary from her womb to the world outside the womb. But the Church has chosen to celebrate on the 25th of March of each year the Feast of the Annunciation of the Good News by the Angel Gabriel that she would conceive and give birth to a baby boy called Jesus, whereby Mary conceived in her womb immediately she said that it should be done to her according to the Word said to her by the Angel Gabriel as by the power of God the Most High, the power of the Holy Spirit, wherefore the Church comes nine months afterwards to celebrate on the 25th of December of the same year the Feast of only the physical Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ by the Blessed Virgin Mary, but not also of the spiritual Birth of the Son of God from the substance of God the Father since such Birth took place before God’s creation of the world, thus before all ages, thus before any date at all came to exist.
@4 Similarly the Church’s celebration of the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the 8th of September descends as the logical conclusion or consequence from two preceding facts as the premises.
@4a) The first fact as the first of the two premises - from which descends first of all 1) the logical conclusion that the Blessed Virgin Mary must have been born on the 8th of September and thereupon 2) the logical consequence of celebrating the physical birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the 8th day of September of each year - is the fact that A) birth is preceded by the period of the mother’s state of pregnancy as the period of carrying the child in her womb from the moment of her conceiving the child in the womb till the moment of her delivering the child, whereby the period of pregnancy - which stretches from the moment of the mother’s conception of the child in her womb till the moment of her delivering the child from her womb to the world outside her womb - lasts nine months, and B) birth is the mother’s act or process of delivering the child from the womb to the world outside her womb on a particular day at a particular hour, whereby it is believed and generally agreed upon that the date on which the child is conceived in the womb of the mother must have been the date nine months before the date of the delivery.
@4b) The second fact as the second of the two premises - from which descends first the logical conclusion that the Blessed Virgin Mary must have been born on the 8th of September and secondly the logical consequence of celebrating the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the 8th day of September of each year - is the general belief (fides) that the day on which the Blessed Virgin Mary as a child was conceived in the womb of her Mother, Anna, must have been the 8th day of the December of the year immediately preceding the year in which the child Mary was delivered by Anna from Anna’s womb to the world outside the womb.
@4c) From these two premises as two eyes one sees then the reason why after having celebrated the previous year on the 8th of December the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the womb of Anna, the Church comes nine months afterwards to celebrate on the 8th of September of the following year the Feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Anna.
@5 The chain of stages undergone by the child till their birth is reflected by the chain of emotions lived by humans when it comes to birth, ranging from the expectation of the birth, through the process of the act of giving birth, and the success in delivering the child, to the joy over the successful delivery and the joy at seeing the new born baby, the admiration of the children and of the courageous Childbearer, the Mother, as the woman who, with all her strength and love, brought forth the child from her womb into the land of the living to see the light of the day and to join in living on earth, and to enjoy life with others and to work with them to bear fruits in abundance with which to glorify God the Creator and Giver of life. Immediately after the birth of the child follows the chain of the two parents’ activities of caring together for their child with love, ranging from feeding and protecting, through guiding and teaching, to blessing, in conformity with the development of the capacities of the child from lying in the arms of the Mother, through sitting down and creeping and standing up, to walking and running!!
All these events that take place before, during and after the birth of a child did took place also with regard to the physical birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of our Lord Jesus and the daughter of Anna and Joachim as of her two human parents, except that she was not conceived with original sin in the womb of Anna and had no stain of sin all her life long on earth. And they constitute the proto-typical, archetypal, forms of the constitutive elements of the typical celebration of the physical birth of Mary by the people of God.
@6 But unlike the two births of Christ - the spiritual as pre-creational birth and the physical as post-creational birth - are such that only the physical as post-creational can be dated and celebrated, the two births of Mary, the spiritual and the physical are post-creational and therefore such that both can be dated and are distinct from one another but to be celebrated inseparably united with one another. This difference in the celebration which goes back to the dissimilarity between the dual birth of Mary comprising her physical as post-creational birth and her spiritual as also post creational birth, and the dual birth of Christ comprising His spiritual as pre-creational birth and His physical as post-creational birth, whereby the duality of the birth of Mary was sign and instrument of the resemblance, similarity, similitude, but not of equality nor of identity, of her birth in relation to the duality of the birth of Jesus, and the relation between the celebration of the physical as post-creational birth of Mary and the spiritual as also post-creational birth of Mary takes as its regulating principle the proper relation between the two natures in Christ that recapture His two births. For like the two natures in Christ, (although His divine nature expresses His spiritual as pre-creational birth, while His human nature expresses His physical as post-creational birth) are so united with one another that they are inseparable from one another in spite of being so distinct from one another that they cannot be confused with one another and cannot be changed into another (cf. Council of Calcedony of the year 451, About the two natures in Christ, in: Denzinger-Huenermann, editors, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd edition, 2012, Ignatius publishers, San Francisco, nos. 301-302), so too the celebrations of the two births of Mary, namely the celebration of her physical birth and the celebration of her spiritual birth, are (because of the one and indivisible post-creationality common to the two births) in an indissoluble union with one another and (because of this indissolubility of their union) inseparable from one another, in spite of being so distinct from one another that they cannot be confused with one another and cannot be changed into another.
3.2 Mary’s spiritual birth as ‘Daughter Zion and new daughter of Zion’
@1 Since only those that do the Will of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as of the incarnate Son of the living God are the brothers and sisters and mother of our Lord Jesus. But Mary is one that does and has done such divine Will in an exemplary manner. Therefore Mary is at once sister and mother of the Son of God and therefore daughter of the Father of the Son of God.
For that reason, Mary as the daughter of the heavenly Father is “the new daughter Zion”, while she as the mother of the Son is “the new Mother Zion”.
@2 What used to be “daughter Zion” those days would today be “Miss Zion”, which means that daughter of Zion that is not married, or has not yet married, or has never married.
Thus “daughter Zion” is the synthesis of “daughter of Zion” and “she who is not yet married‟.
Thus Mary as the daughter of the Father is “the new daughter Zion as the new Daughter of Zion that is not married‟.
She is the new daughter Zion in the sense that the exultance of her spirit as she discloses it in her Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55) is the new as the perfected form of that joy which had begun to be in the old Daughter of Zion ever since she was invited to it by the prophet Zephaniah (3:14: “Shout for joy, daughter of Zion, Israel, shout aloud! Rejoice, exult with all your heart, daughter of Jerusalem, and to which all the inhabitants of Zion are invited by the prophet Isaiah (cf. Is 12:4-6), whereby the old daughter of Zion is to all the inhabitants of Zion as the new daughter of Zion is to the new people of God, the Church.
@3 And when “Daughter of Zion” means “Daughter of Jerusalem”, and Jerusalem comes to mean not just the earthly city in geographical Israel but rather the supernatural city called heaven, in which God lives, then Mary as the new daughter of Zion is the daughter of heaven, i.e. the daughter of Him who lives in heaven and is the owner of heaven and the Maker of all things through His Word (cf. Wisd 9:1-3; Jn 1:3-4), hence she is the daughter of the Creator God, the daughter of God the Father.
It is toward such a supernatural City, heavenly Jerusalem, that the new as the sacramental Israel, namely the new people of God comprising a part that is already in heaven and is called the heavenly Church and a part on earth that is contemporaneously “on an evangelizing mission to the peoples of the nations in this terrestrial planet‟ and “on a journey to heaven, travelling towards the heavenly Father and heavenly Church, in response to the heard and accepted invitation of the heavenly Father at humans to come and see and participate in the inner-divine life of eternal love for one another, eternal joy at one another, eternal glorification of one another, and eternal peace with one another going on among the three persons in the numerically one God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit‟.
And the Church of Christ on earth makes such an earthly pilgrimage to heaven with a joy that recaptures the joy that the old people of God expressed when invited to come to the old city Jerusalem, precisely to the temple as the house of God in that city (“How I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’. And now our feet are standing in your gateways Jerusalem ....Since all are my brothers and friends, I say ‘Peace be with you !’ Since the Lord our God lives here, I pray for your happiness” Ps 122:1-2.8-9; cf. the song: I rejoiced when I heard them say: ‘let’s go to God’s House’. And now my feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem. We shall go up with joy to the house of our Father).
@4 Mary as the Mother of the Son is “the new Mother Zion” , and this in the fourfold sense in which I have explained it earlier in the ‘Treatise on the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary’ who was gloriously assumed into heaven and ceremoniously crowned in heaven in the sight of Her Son our Lord Jesus Christ seated on the right hand of God the Father (our earthly gaze at whom has heightened in us the zeal for heaven and the love and joy of
moving ever more heavenwards as we are being driven by the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete and Our eternal Guide, to move ever more upwards till we join our heavenly parents, God our Heavenly Father and Mary our assumed heavenly Mother, and our ascended heavenly Brother, Christ Our Ascended Lord, who from above is pulling or drawing us heavenwards to Himself as He promised us before ascending to His Father and Our Father who is in heaven, while from here below the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the Father and of the Son together keeps pushing or driving us upwards to move on to join the inhabitants of heaven and live with the three persons in one God their life of eternal love for one another, eternal joy at one another, eternal glorification of one another and eternal peace with one another inside God. For, it was for the purpose of this communion of life with them that the three persons in one God had jointly created each of us humans in their own image and likeness. It was in view of this life of communion as of communication and union and sharing with them their inestimable and incomparable eternal life that these three eternal persons who are inside one another (mutually inherent, each inside each of the rest two of the three at the same time, with the result that the three are intertwined, in an intertwining relationship, perichoresis), only one of whom, the Father. has no origin, while the other two, the Son and the Holy Spirit, have origin (though they originate diversely, the Son originating passively and only from the Father who generates Him from His divine substance, while the Holy Spirit originates actively and from the Father and the Son together), have made each human being to be similar to themselves as to a triad of uncreated persons in the sense that each human being is that triad of created things, only the first constitutive elements of which, namely the human body, is visible and mortal, while the other two constitutive elements of the triad, namely the human soul and the human spirit (the spirit containing the soul and contained in the body and thus uniting the soul and the body), are invisible and immortal.
@4a) Mary as the Mary of the Son is “the new Mother Zion”, first, in the sense that her being that Mother as a person around whom the three wise men (Mt 2:1-12) from the East gathered when they came to Bethlehem to adore the New-born and Most Holy Child as God in human flesh, is the new as the condensed and perfect form of Jerusalem’s being that Mother Zion as a city to which God made his adorers confluence from all the four cardinal points of the globe. Jerusalem as the old Mother Zion is that universal Mother of whom Psalm 87:5 speaks: “All call Zion ‘Mother’, since all were born in her”. Zion – represented by Jerusalem – is that city towards which God makes his adorers confluence from the four cardinal points of the globe (cf. Ps 87:4), taking off thereby from the East, represented by Babylon as the eastern superpower, to arrive at the West, represented by Rahab, now Egypt (cf. Ps 89:11 and Is 30:7; 51:9) as the western superpower, whereas the South is represented by Cush, namely Ethiopia (cf, Ps 68:32 and Is 18:7), while the North points towards Tyrus, a very well-known commercial centre (cf. Ps 83:8; Ezek 26:2.12.17; 27:1-36; 28:4-5).
@4b) Mary is the new Mother Zion , secondly, in the sense that her giving birth to a child who is a divine and, therefore, adorable person, a birth that has made her become a Mother, is the new as the condensed and perfect form of that spiritual rebirth which takes place in Zion, i.e. in Jerusalem (cf. Ps 87: 4b: ‘here so and so were born’; 5b: ‘all were born in her’; 6c: ‘it was here that so and so was born’), and which consists in the conversion of those peoples – strangers and sinners – who come from all parts of the globe to Jerusalem to make penance for their sins and get their spiritual life renewed , wherefore Jerusalem is exalted as the source from which the people of God as ‘a people with Zion as their common mother and with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob as their common fathers in the faith in God’, and hence as ‘a family’ draws her origin.
@4c) Mary is the new Mother Zion, thirdly, in the sense that her being called blessed by all generations is the new perfect form of Zion’s, i.e. Jerusalem’s, being that city of God of which people say marvellous things.
@4d) Mary is the new Mother Zion, fourthly, in the sense that her being an elected Creature of God with whom God the Creator is very pleased and for whom God has predilection (Electa et Predilecta Dei) and who is a great friend of the Holy Spirit (Amica Magna Spiritus Sancti) is the new and perfected form of Jerusalem’s being that “city of God” founded on the holy mountain which the Lord loves and the gates of which He prefers to any town in Israel, and of which God has glorious predictions to make (cf. Ps 87: 1-3).