Discourse on the Motherhood of Mary
I
I Mary as Mother of God, of Christ and of the Church (1/1/2019)
@1 My dear people of God, it pleases God our Father as the Creator of heaven and earth that we as His People should begin the chain of our celebrations of His Creatordom and Fatherhood every calendar year with the Feast of the Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Maria) as of the only one woman that is the Mother both of Man and of God at the same time, and whose being Mother of Man embraces her being both ‘Mother of the only one Son of Man Jesus the Christ as the Head of the religious Body called Christianity’ and ‘Mother of the entire renewed humanity, thus Mother of the Christians as the members of that same religious Body, and hence Mother of the Church as of the spirit filled aggregate and unity of the Christians as of the Christ faithful believers in the triune God’.
Her originally five-lettered name ‘MARIA’ synthesizes her personality as perfect participant in the mysteries of the life of Christ. The first letter ‘M’ stands for ‘Mater’ - Mother - and recaptures her participation in the joyful mysteries of Christ. The second letter ‘A’ stands for ‘Adolorata’ - the woman of sorrows, the mother of the man of sorrows, the sorrowful mother, mater dolorosa, the mother whose soul is pierced upon seeing her only child pierced with thorns and nails and lance and bleeding up and down and center and tortured and bruised and collapsing and eventually dead on the Cross - and recaptures her participation in the sorrowful mysteries of Christ. The third letter ‘R’ stands for ‘Regina’ - Queen, the Queen Mother, the Mother that at the end of her sojourn on earth was assumed body and soul into heaven and crowned in heaven. - and recaptures her participation in the glorious mysteries of Christ. The fourth letter ‘I’ stands for ‘Immaculata’ - the Immaculate One, the One who is in the state of stainlessness, having been conceived without stain, sine macula, and in whom there is thus no stain of sin, hence no original sin and no personal sin, no spot, nothing dark, no obscurity, but rather who is godly and in whom everything is bright and radiant, lucid and splendid. - and recaptures her participation in the luminous mysteries of Christ as of the Transfigured Lord, whereby the immaculate conception of Mary in Anna’s (as in her mother’s) womb is a divine preparation of Mary herself towards her own later conceiving and giving birth to a child that but will be a baby boy and divine person, hence towards her own later motherhood as Mother of the unique Godman.
The fifth as the last letter ‘A’ stands for ‘Annunciata’ - the Lady proclaimed blessed, the One whom all generations shall call blessed, the blessed one amongst women, the blessed Mother of the Blessed Jesus, the Blessed Mother of a blessed Son, the Blessed Mother the fruit of whose womb is blessed. - and recaptures her participation once more in the luminous mysteries of Christ but as of that Proclaimer of the Kingdom of God who has instituted the Eucharist and is really, namely with His humanity, and substantially, namely with His divinity, and truly, namely with the unity resulting from the Union of His divinity and His humanity, present and acting in this most eminent Sacrament of His supreme love for us humans.
In correspondence to the preordained wisdom of beginning the Immaculate Virgin’s name with the letter ‘M’ that stands for her being a Mother - in view of whose motherhood she was immaculately conceived - is the human wisdom of beginning the new year with the celebration of her proclaimed blessed motherhood as ministry, authoritative and exemplary maternal service, to the unique Godman as divine person and baby boy born by her.
This is the Child whom the Angel told her to call Jesus, ‘Redeemer of his people’, from the point of view of this child’s humanity, and to whom, as the prophet Isaiah had foretold, she as a Virgin would give the name Emmanuel, ‘God with us’, from the point of view of the same child’s divinity.
He is the Child born by her at Bethlehem in Judea for the redemption of the entire humanity and, through that redemption, for the continuation of that earthly journey of humans to God their Father (Pater) who is in heaven as in their proper fatherland (patria) and has invited them to come and see face to face the three persons in one God that have made man in their own image, in the likeness of themselves cf, Ge 1:26, with the consequence that man is similar to them, resembles them, has something in common with them. On this thing that God and man have in common the foresighted divine Providence in His unparalleled wisdom and efficient creativity has built that communion as communication and union and participation which is the holy and dynamic Salvation willed for everyone by Him (cf 1Tim 2:4). This is the communion in which He, the triune God, unites man to His divine Community and communicates to man His eternal life, the life lived by the three persons in Him, their divine life of eternal love for one another and eternal joy at one another and eternal glorification of one another and eternal peace with one another, while leaving Man to participate ‘ad infinitum’ in this eternal life of theirs communicated to him by them as to their most beloved creature. And such infinite participation is that in which consists the eternal banquet for the Saints at the end of all history after the second judgement, whereas Man’s seeing the triune God face to face fills man up with the Beatitude that the divine Trinity is and irradiates. For, this Beatitude is that which consists in the unity resulting from the union of the happiness (felicitas) given to Man by the one and indivisible divine essence, on the one hand, with the gladness (laetitia) given to him by the Father, the joy (gaudium) given to him by the Son, and the jubilation (jubilatio) given to him by the Holy Spirit, on the other hand. Hence Man’s seeing the triune God face-to-face, which fills his human heart with such a triune Beatitude, constitutes that beatific vision for which all of us humans keep on longing during our current earthly journey to our Heavenly Father and home (cf. Ps 42-43:2, 63: 1-2; St Augustine., Confessions, 1,1). And in this beatific vision consists also that attainment of the full knowledge of the truth which God our Saviour has generously willed for all humans (cf. 1Tim 2:4). And this same beatific vision will also be the divine retribution to the Just after the first divine judgement of man as the judgement of each human person at the end of that person’s divine mission on earth.
@2 Mary is enabled by God to be the only one woman that is the Mother of God and of humans through her graceworked identity as the Mother of that only one person who is both God and Man, Son of the living God and Son of Man, born of a Father , but without a mother, before the world was created, and born of a mother, but without a father, after the creation of the world. He is the One who is true God and true Man in one divine person called ‘Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, Christ the Emmanuel, the God-with-us’ and adored as God. He is the One who is worshiped in togetherness with the Father and the Holy Spirit, having been contemplated and identified as the incarnate Son of God, that only one begotten Son of God who is God and has, through the incarnation of the Word of God, become Man, but without ceasing to be God.
@2a) For, the Son of God in His preincarnate state is constituted by His three-dimensional being: His being the substantial Image of God as the proper dimension by which He is related to the Father; His being the Wisdom and power of God as the proper dimension by which He is related to the Holy Spirit; and His being the eternal creative Word of God, the divine Logos, as the proper dimension by which He is distinct from the Father and from the Holy Spirit. It is through this third dimension of the triadic identity of the Son of God, namely His being the eternal Word, that the Son of God has been made Man. The creative Word of God is eternal and omnipotent and is, therefore, truly God. And as truly God, the creative Word of God is omnipresent, i.e. present everywhere at the same time at all times and is thus both present inside and present outside but not separated from, both inherent in and adherent to, both distinct from and united with, the primary Origin (the very Alpha, the very First, the very Beginning, not the Starting) of all that exist (‘In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum”, Jo 1:1).
@2b) How is the true God, that the Son of God is, made Man? (Quomodo Deus homo factus est?). The Son of God was made man through the Godwilled incarnation of the Word of God as of a part of the Son that is identical with the Son and hence with God . The Son was made Man through the Word’s being made flesh for the accomplishment with this flesh of the Fatherwilled sacrifice on the Cross for the redemption of all humanity from the evil that had beset them and was hindering the already begun earthly journey of humans to heaven to meet the inviting Creator and Saviour God for the beatific vision and the eternal banquet.
@2c) And how was the Word made flesh? (Quomodo Verbum caro factum est?).
@2ca) The Word was made flesh through the Holy Spirit’s action of first uniting the Word of divine nature (taken from the Son of God, like at creation God had taken a rib from the side of the male and enclosed this bone in the flesh with which He then wrapped it and united it to form the new creature woman) with the flesh of human nature (taken from the Immaculate womb of the Virgin Mary) and then also uniting the divine nature of the Word with the human nature of the flesh, with the consequence that the resulting incarnate Word of God is that indivisible single unit of one divine person the unity (hence truth and truthfulness, goodness, beauty and beautifulness) of whom results from the twofold Union effected by the Holy Spirit as the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son. The first of the two unions is the union of the divine Word with the human flesh (as the Scripture says, ‘Et Verbum Caro factum est’ Jo 1:14) effected by the one and indivisible Holy Spirit as by the Spirit of the inseparable Father and Son. The second of the two unions is the union of the divine nature of the Word with the human nature of the flesh (as the Magisterium teaches in the Tradition of the Church since 22nd October 451 at the Council of Chalcedony, De Duabus naturis in Christo, cf. Denzinger-Hunermann, Enchiridion Symbolorum..., 300-302) effected by the same Holy Spirit.
@2cb) But In what consists the flesh of human nature with which the Holy Spirit has united the Word of divine nature? And in what consists the human nature of the flesh with which the same Holy Spirit has united the divine nature?
@2cba) God has created man in the image of Himself. But the image of God is such that God (being “the First and the Last”, cf Is 44:6, “the first, and also the last”, cf 48:12) is the union of two contraries, i.e, two opposites that but are not opposed to one another. As a result, God has created man in such a way that the human being is a genus of two contrary - opposite but not opposed - species called male and female : “God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). But it is precisely the three persons in the numerically one God that have created man in the proper image and likeness of themselves. The proper image and likeness of the three persons in the numerically one God is such that only one of them, namely the Father, has no origin, while the rest two, namely the Son and the Holy Spirit, have Origin but again diversely, such that the Son originates from only the Father, while the Holy Spirit originates from the Father and the Son together. It is in such image of theirs that the three person in the numerically one God have jointly created man: “God said ‘let us make Man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves’” (Gen 1:26).
As a result, the three divine persons together made Man in such a way that Man is constituted by three elements only one of which, namely the human body, is material, visible and mortal, while the rest two, namely the human soul and the human spirit, are spiritual, invisible and immortal, in similarity to the three persons in one God, only one of whom, called the Father, has no origin at all but is rather the Origin of all origins, while the rest two persons, called the Son and the Holy Spirit, have Origin, the Son originating only from the Father, while the Holy Spirit originates from both at the same time.
As a result, the human flesh and the human nature as well as the human person have each to be defined in terms of the three constitutive elements of the human being: body, soul and spirit. Thus comes the human flesh to be defined as consisting in the unity resulting from the mediated dissoluble union of the mortal and visible human body with the immortal and invisible human soul through the immortal and invisible human spirit contained in the body and containing the soul and thus uniting the body and the soul. For the same reason the human nature has come to be defined as consisting in the immediate and dissoluble union of the mortal and visible human body with the immortal and invisible human spirit contained in and by the human body. For the same reason the human person has come to be defined as consisting in the immediate and indissoluble union of the human spirit with the human soul contained in and by the human spirit.
But futhermore: as long as God has created man in His image such that man is like God, the human has to be like the divine, thus the human realities have to be defined (determined) in terms of the divine. Hence, as long as God has said Himself to be the First and the Last, and therefore to be He who has neither beginning nor end, it follows that each of the three constitutive elements of the incarnating divine Word (namely the divine Word Himself, the divine Will itself that the Word be made flesh, and the divine life lived by the divine Word) and each of the three constitutive elements of the human flesh with which the Word is to be united at the incarnation (namely the united human body and human soul and the uniting human spirit) would have to be defined in terms of having or not having a beginning and of having or not having an end.
Thus comes the divine Word to be descriptively defined as a supernatural person that has neither a beginning nor an end. For the same reason the divine life has come to be defined by way of description as a supernatural thing that has neither a beginning nor an end; and the divine Will (of the Father that the Word be made flesh) has come to be defined by way of description as a supernatural thing that has no beginning but has an end (with its accomplishment in the very act of the incarnation); the mortal human body as a created thing that has both a beginning and an end; the immortal human soul as a created thing that has a beginning but no end; and likewise the immortal human spirit as a created thing that has a beginning but no end and contains the soul and is contained in the body.
@2cbb) Uniting the above answers to the above two questions - 1) regarding how the Spirit has effected the union of the Word of divine nature with the flesh of human nature and the union of the divine nature of the Word with the human nature of the flesh and 2) regarding in what the human flesh and the human nature may consist - it must be said that since the all-uniting Holy Spirit (who unites the Word of divine nature and the flesh of human nature and the divine nature of the Word with the human nature of the flesh) proceeds from the Father to the Son and from the Son to the Father (for such divine Spirit is that eternal and most pure, and therefore holy, and vitally indispensable and therefore not-to-be-removed, not-even-to-be-touched, hence sacrosanct, Air as breath of life itself in person that is exhaled, breathed out, by the Father to the Son and by the Son to the Father at the same time) and these two processions are not successive but rather contemporaneous acts and constitute together one and indivisible continuous, not fragmented, not fractured, but holistic, integral, act, it follows that the Holy Spirit must unite the whole of the divine Word with the whole of the human flesh at the same time. This means that He has to unite each of the three constitute elements of the incarnating divine Word (namely ‘the divine Word Himself, the divine Will of the Father done by the Word at the incarnation, and the divine life lived before and during and after the incarnation by the eternally living Word’) with each of the three constitutive elements of the human flesh (namely ‘the united human body and human soul and the uniting human spirit).
Thus 1) there is a sum-total of six hypostatic theandric (i.e. divine-human) unions resulting from union of the divine Word (a non-created, hence supernatural, person, hypostasis, that has no begining and no end) with the three constitutive elements of the human component of the Godman, namely with the mortal human body (as with a created thing that has a beginning and an end), with the immortal human spirit (as with a created thing that has a beginning but no end), and with the immortal human soul (as with another created thing that has a beginning but no end). And out of these six hypostatic theandric unions only one, namely the union of the divine Word with the human spirit is an immediate (i.e. direct) union, the rest five are mediated, and among the five only two come from the union of the divine Word with the human soul, and such are: the mediated union of the divine Word with the human soul through the divine life, and the union of the divine Word with the human soul through the human spirit, whereas the rest three of the five mediated hypostatic unions come from the union of the divine Word with the human body, and the three comprise the union of the divine Word with the human body through the spirit, the union of the divine Word with the human body through the divine Will, and the union of the divine Word with the human body through the unity resulting from the enhypostatic union of the divine life (as a supernatural thing, non-person, enhypostasis, that has no beginning and no end) with the immortal human soul (as with created thing that has a beginning but no end) at the point that they have in common, namely at the point of ‘having no end’.
2) But there is a sum-total of five enhypostatic theandric unions resulting from the union of the divine life (a supernatural thing, non-person, enhypostasis, that has no beginning and no end) with the immortal human soul (a created thing that has a beginning but no end), and with the immortal human spirit (a created thing that, like the soul, has a beginning but no end), and with the mortal human body (a created thing that has a beginning and has an end. And of all these five enhypostatic theandric unions, only one is immediate, namely the union of the divine life with the human soul, while the rest four of the five are mediated, whereby these four comprise, on the one hand, the two that result from the union of the divine life with the human body, and such are : the union of the divine life with the human body through the divine will, and the union of the divine life with the human body through the human soul, and, on the other hand, the two that result from the union of the divine life with the human spirit, and such are : the union of the divine life with the human spirit through the human soul, and the union of the divine life with the human spirit through the divine Word
3) And there is a sum-total of four enhypostatic theandric unions resulting from the union of the divine Will of the Father (a non-created that that has no beginning but has an end with its accomplishment by the Son in the incarnation of the Word) with the immortal human soul (a created thing that has a beginning but no end), and with the immortal spirit (a created thing that, like the soul, has a beginning but no end), and with the mortal body (as a created thing that has a beginning and has an end). And of these four enhypostatic theandric unions, two are mediated and two are immediate. The two mediated enhypostatic theandric unions are those of the divine Will with the human soul, and they comprise the union of the divine Will with the human soul through the divine life, and the union of the divine Will with the human soul through the human body. And of the two immediate enhypostatic unions , the first is the union of the divine Will with the human spirit (the only union in the form of a cross, stauros, and lying inside, and at the center of, the entire incarnate Word, wherefore this unique union is rightly called the staurological immediate enhypostatic theandric union), the second is rather the union of the divine Will with the human body (and it is precisely on the basis of this union - which recaptures the truth that the will of God that His Holy One would not see corruption faithfully remained united with the dead body of the crucified - that the corpse of Jesus did not decay during those days in the tomb nor after His resurrection).
4) There are, thus, altogether fifteen theandric unions inside the incarnate Word. The fifteen result from i) the six hypostatic unions of the divine Word with the human body, with the human soul and with the human body, only one of which is immediate while the rest five are mediated, ii) the five enhypostatic unions of the divine life with the human body, with the human soul, and with the human spirit, only one of which is immediate, which the rest four are mediated, where two of the four come from the union of the divine life with the human body through the human soul, and through the divine Will, while the rest two come from the union of the divine life with the human spirit through the human soul, and through the divine Word, and iii) the four enhypostatic
There are systems not only intra-relationally among the elements of each of these three groups of these altogether fifteen theandric unions in the incarnate Word but also inter-relationally among the three groups themselves, and most indicative of the latter is the obvious arithmetical proportion running from “six hypostatic unions existing in the form of ‘one immediate plus five mediated’ theandric unions”, through “five enhypostatic unions existing in the form of ‘one immediate plus four mediated’ unions, whereby the four exist in. two by two’ “, to “four enhypostatic that exist as two immediate and two mediated theandric unions”.
These fifteen - six hypostatic and nine enhypostatic - theandric unions are veritable sources and regulating principles of the diverse salvific institutions and operations of Christ.
Such institutions made by Christ for the salvation of humanity are three:
1) the one collective person called the Church and 2) the three things done in and by the Church for Christ: 2a) the Kerygma. - i.e. Proclamation comprising teaching and preaching of the Good News - on the God of the Kingdom and of salvation, such kerygma is instituted by Christ for the Church’s missionary task of prolonging the moral salvation of Man accomplished by Christ through His own Kerygma - i.e. proclamation, namely preaching and teaching - on the Kingdom of God as the reign of justice and peace and joy brought by the Holy Spirit; 2b) the Sacraments instituted by Christ for the Church’s missionary task of prolonging the spiritual salvation of humans accomplished by Christ through His paschal mysteries as mysteries of His passages: His dolororous passage from His sufffering, through His death on the Cross, to His burial in the tomb’;
2c) Theology in general and the Technoscientific Theology in particular. The Technoscientific Theology is that professional Theology that serves as the proper instrument with which to produce (invent, fabricate, create) material goods (objects and ideas) with which the Church can prolong the material salvation accomplished by Christ through His miracles. Theology in general is that intellectual activity of God believing thinkers on God in His pre-incarnate and incarnate and post-incarnate states and His corresponding acts and actions and activities which has been developed in the Church of Christ from the Church’s Kerygma of the Gospel, proclamation of the Good News, on the God of the Kingdom and of salvation, and which is done within a coordinate-system the two precise coordinates of which are faith and reason, fides et ratio, and which is nurtured with an organic and unitary vision of knowledge by an illumined mind attentive to the logic between faith and reason, hence to the coherence and relevance between, on the one hand, the believed - truths of and in the - word of God (logos tou Theou) and, on the other hand, the divine reason for man’s being, and being there, and being always inside another reality than himself, and hence for the human existence and human life in the world.
The salvific activities of Christ are also three: i) His Kerygma of the Gospel, proclamation of the Good News, on the Kingdom of God as of the reign of the justice and, from it, of the peace and, from it, of the joy brought by the Holy Spirit (cf Rom 14:17), for the moral salvation of humans; ii)His paschal mysteries for the spiritual salvation of humans; iii) His miracles, for the material salvation of humans) of Christ.
@2cc) The incarnation of the Word through which the Son of God was made Man by the work of the all-uniting Holy Spirit took place in the womb of the Virgin Mary and was willed by God the Father.
But for what purpose has God the Father willed that His Son be made Man, hence that the Word be made flesh? In other words: why was the true God, that the Son of God is, made Man? (Cur Deus homo?) Why was He made Man through the incarnation of the Word? Why was the divine Son made Man through the divine Word’s being made flesh? Why was the Word made flesh? (Cur Verbum caro factum est?). “For us men and for the sake of our salvation” (cf. the nicene-constantinopolitan Creed) the Son of God whom the Father had sent that we humans may have life and have it to the full (cf. Jo 10,10) came down from heaven and was made Man in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the power of the all-uniting and life-giving Holy Spirit. The three-dimensional Son of God was made Man through the Father-willed, Spirit-effected incarnation of the Word-dimension that is distinct from, but inseparably united with, the rest two dimensions according to which He is the Substantial Image of God the Father and the Wisdom and Power of God.
He descended and became Man “for us men” who had fallen into the trap set and the ditch dug for us on our way to God by His adversary, the devil, and were thereby severely wounded and bleeding and fainting and were in danger of dying so that He, having seen our human condition and showing mercy and compassion for us might through His sacrifice of Himself, His passion and death on the Cross, redeem us beginning from His liberating us from the ditch and trap, through His healing our wounds, to His reputing us onto the way to God from which we who were deceived, insinuated and seduced by His adversary had deviated and fallen.
He descended and became Man “for the sake of our salvation” (which consists in our returning till well into the interior of God from where God at creation had called us out into existence and wherein the beatific vision and the eternal banquet would take place to which God had invited us when he called us to come and see the three persons in Him who have created us in their image and to participate in their life of eternal love for one another, eternal joy at one another, eternal glorification of one another and eternal peace with one another) because if He has not come to redeem us we would have died on the way to the inviting God and would not have attained the salvation willed by God for us and therefore the salvific Will of God would not have been accomplished but rather crippled and the devil would have so-with appeared more powerful than God and God would not have been the Almighty any longer and thus would have ceased to be God.
@3 The God whose Mother Mary is, is that Son of God the Father who is the second person in the divine Trinity as in the proper content-component of that Reality ‘God’ (Deus) whose proper container-component is the Deity (Deitas) adorable in three persons, whereby the conditions for the Deity as the container to contain the divine Trinity (Trinitas divina) as the content in an adequate manner is that the structure of the Deity must be triadic and the divine Trinity must be inside and at the center of the Deity and hence of God that the two, the Deity and the divine Trinity together, constitute.
@3a) God is He who, being the first and the last, has no Being before Him and none after Him and thus neither depends on another than Himself for Him to be there, nor tends to another than Himself for Him to be in full, then He has no beginning - but rather exists by Himself and is the primary origin of all other beings than Himself - and has no end, but rather is the fullness itself and the ultimate goal to whom all other beings than Him tend for their fullness and fulfillment.
@3b) For, as long as every reality is constituted by two major components - the containing component called the container and the contained component called the content - and the containing component of the Reality ‘God’ is the one and indivisible triadic Godhead or Deity, while the contained component of the Reality ‘God’ is the divine Trinity as the unity existing out of the eternal union of the three persons in the numerically one God (namely ‘the Father who has no origin but is the Origin of all origins’, ‘the Son who eternally originates only from the Father’ and ‘the Holy Spirit who eternally originated from the Father and the Son together’) with and by the one and indivisible Substance of God that the three persons own together.
@3c) The Son eternally originated from the Father that eternally generates Him from the Substance of Himself as eternal Light that shines - emits rays that He casts on Himself, not on any reality that might be existing outside of Him, since, before He created the world, there was no other being existing at all except Himself, thus He was eternally casting His rays rather on Himself, on His innermost Self, on His Very Substance, on His one and indivisible Substance, in other words on His ‘Gene’, to generate thereby a shining image of His indivisible Substance, the substantial image of God the Father, an image that is not who, but rather what, the Father is, thus an image that is Light, an image that is, hence, Light from Light; for, the splendor of the rays of a shining Light is inseparable both from the shining Light and from the shining of the Light; and the shining of the Light is inseparable both from the shining Light and from the splendour of the splendid rays of the Light; the image that is generated from the substance of God by God the Father is an image that is not the same person, but rather the same thing, that God the Father is, an image that is thus God, Light, an image that is thus God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. But as long as this image is another person generated by God the Father from the very substance of God the Father as of the eternally shining Light that eternally emits rays that God the Father eternally casts on His very Substance as on His innermost Self to generate sowith the eternal image of His divine substance, a substantial image that, being another person than God the Father as His Generator and having the one and indivisible substance of God the Father together with the Father, such image is rightly called ‘the Son of God the Father’, not ‘a shadow of God the Father’, and is inseparably united with the Father more than the shadow of a reality is united to that reality, for a shadow is a thing that has no substance and has no will of its own, nor does it represent accurately and faithfully the size or shape, nor the mind, of the reality the image of which it is, moreover the Son of God having the same one and indivisible substance with God the Father, is equal to the Father in greatness - majesty and power - and in glory, and the two divine persons, God the Father and God the Son, each of whom is the union of God as of something which each of the two is, on the one hand, with His own person as with someone who is distinct from the other person, on the other hand, are as distinct from one another and inseparably united with one another as are the Sun and the Face of the Sun, as are the Face of the Sun and the Sunrays emanating from that face and emitted by the Sun, and as are the Sunsrays and the splendor of the rays of the shining Sun, for there are no rays of a shining Light that have no splendour and the two are distinct but inseparable from, and united with, one another.
@3d) The Holy Spirit eternally originates from the Father and the Son together by eternally proceeding from the two to one another at the same time. He is that vitally indispensable, hence not-to-be-removed, not-to-be touched, hence ontologically sacrosanct, most pure, most stainless, hence ethically holy, Air itself in person that is eternally breathed in from and breathed out to the living Father by the eternally living and, thus, respiring Son and breathed in from and breathed out to the living Father by the eternally living and, thus, respiring Father contemporaneously.
@3e) The distinction from one another of these three persons in the numerically one God leaves itself be made not only from the point of view of the above sketched diversity of their originations within the Godhead, but also from the point of view of the following sketch of the diversity of which constitutive elements of the concept of person (hypostasis) they hypostasize. For as long as a person is a spirit (i.e. intelligent living being) that is capable (i.e. has the ability and capacity) of producing word that is intelligible (i.e. understandable) to fellow spirits and contains the will or wish and mind or intention of the speaker and creates dialogue among the addressee and between them and the speaker, God the Father is the hypostasization of that capacity of the Spirit to produce such word, whereas the Son is the hypostasization of the produced intelligibile, the-mind-and-will-of-the-Speaker-containing, dialogue-creating Word itself, while the Holy Spirit is the hypostasization of the Unione of the fellowship of the listening spirits to whom the speaking Spirit has addressed the word with the intelligibilty of the word and with the Will and mind of the Speaker contained in the Word and with the dialogue, hence communication, of the addressees among themselves and with speaker of the word’
@3e) As a result of this order of the inner-divine originations among the three persons in the numerically one God (according to which the first of the three. namely the Father, has no origin, does not originate from another than Himself, whereas the second, namely the Son originates only from the Father by being generated from the substance of God the Father by the Father, while the third, namely the Holy Spirit originates from the Father and the Son together by proceeding from the two at the same time), the three divine persons are living in an intertwining relationship (perichoresis) among themselves according to which (as long as each one of the three is bipartite, the first part consisting in what all the three own together, while the second part consists in what is proper and peculiar to only Himself, and each, being truly God, is omnipresent (le present everywhere at the same time at all times) is both present inside and present outside each of the rest two divine persons, whereby inside God as inside an eternal Being - a Being without a beginning and without an end, and in whom there is therefore no interval, no interruption, neither in space nor in time, and thus no discontinuity, but rather continuity, no fracture and fragmentation and fraction, but rather wholeness and entirety and integrality) there is between any two realities, be it between any two persons, be it between any two things, be it between any person and any thing, no division but rather unity, no separation, but rather union and inseparability, no succession, but rather contemporaneousness, a divine person’s being present also outside any of the other two persons in whom He is present cannot mean that He is separated from any of the two but rather adheres to the one, wherefore each of the three omnipresent divine persons is at once inside (i.e. present in), thus inherent in, and adherent to each of the rest two, and every two own something together through which the two are contemporaneously present in the remaining divine person.
@3f) The one and indivisible thing that the three divine persons own together and that thus unites them and with which the three together are united is the one and indivisible divine essence (consisting in God’s being the first and the last Being) together with the one and indivisible divine nature (consisting in the Indissoluble union, and hence the inseparability, of all the divine attributes deriving from the divine essence) and together with the one and indivisible divine substance consisting in the all-embracing power constituted by the unity existing out of the divine nature and embracing all the three most powerful powers that can exist, namely the power to do all good things and do each well at the absolutely superlative level of its being well done, the power to do no evil and to make no mistake whatsoever, and the power to overpower and overthrow and overcome every evil). It is only as long as each of the three persons in the numerically one God is united with this one and indivisible thing (Essence, nature, substance, of God) that each of the three persons is said to be a divine person and thus truly God. And it is because this thing which the three divine persons own together, and without the union with which none of the three persons were a divine person, is indivisible that the three divine persons, namely God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, are not three gods but rather one and indivisible God. And it is only as long as the three persons in the numerically one God are in their togetherness United with this one and indivisible thing that the three persons constitute together with it the triune God who has created all things and whose Trinity, the divine Trinity, as His proper structure, is the proper principle of His intelligibility, namely the proper key for understanding His self-expressions, His signs and words and actions and His works and for identifying what belongs to Him or comes from Him or moves towards Him or leads to Him.
Fr. J. Egbulefu CCE
(Founder of the Emmanuelites)
II
Sermon on the Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary (in the Chapel of the Incarnation, Emmanuelite Mother House, Ohuru Umuchukwu, Aba NIGERIA, on 1/1/2019)
@1 My dear spiritual Sons, my dear people of God, we Christians, believers in Christ the Emmanuel, and Catholics in particular who believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary is His Mother, and was immaculately conceived in the womb of her mother, Anna, here on earth and finally was, at the end of her stay and work here on earth, assumed with her body and soul into heaven, rightly dedicate the first day of every calendar year to her as to the Mother of Jesus Christ the Emmanuel, and we have gathered to celebrate such divine motherhood of hers this very first day of the new year 2019.
@2 Motherhood presupposes womanhood and daughterhood.
In other words, before Mary is a mother, she must be a woman and a daughter, and these two requisites are revealed in the Scriptures.
@2a) On the one hand, Mary is a woman. This is known to us from the New Testament. We know it from the event on the Cross where the crucified Jesus, entrusting His beloved Apostle, John, son of Zebedee and brother of James, into the maternal care of Mary said to her "Woman, this is your son".
We know of this same womanhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary from the event of her finding the missing Jesus in the temple and of His dialogue with her during the marriage feast at Cana in Galilea. We also know of this womanhood of Mary of Nazareth from the very words of Elizabeth where she said “blessed are you among women”.
@2b) On the other hand, Mary is a daughter. Her daughterhood as the second requisite for her motherhood is deducible from the two biblical Testaments.
@2ba) For: Since, according to the doctrine of Christ in the New Testament that ‘anyone who does the will of the heavenly Father of the Son of God is the brother and the sister and the mother of the Son (cf. Mt 12:50) known for His radical obedience to the Father, whereby in effect such a one becomes a son of God or daughter of God, or the Father, but on the other hand Mary at the Annunciation has done the Will of God the Father through her famous ‘fiat’ to the Word and, hence, to the Will of God contained in that Word, it follows that Mary as female by doing the divine Will is daughter of God the Father of the Son.
@2bb) Since the two diverse oldtestamentary prophecies about the Daughter Zion and the Daughter of Zion have all been fulfilled in Mary, it follows that Mary is the new daughter Zion and the new daughter of Zion. @2bba) There is a notable difference between on the one hand the title “daughter of Zion” used by the prophet Zephania (Zeph. 3:14: “Shout for joy, daughter of Zion, Israel, shout aloud! Rejoice, exult with all your heart, daughter of Jerusalem!”) and, on the other hand, the title “daughter Zion” used by the prophet Zechariah (Zech. 2:14: “Sing and rejoice, daughter Zion! Now, I am coming to dwell in your midst – oracle of the Lord”, and 9:9: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey”).
That difference can be seen clearly in the mirror of our contemporary pattern of addressing young ladies, according to which ‘daughter Zion’ would today be “Miss Zion” , whereby ‘Zion’ would be ‘Mr. Zion as the family father of Miss Zion’, while ‘Miss Zion’ means ‘a certain daughter of Mr. Zion that but is not yet married to a man or has not yet been married by any man, or has never married’. Thus, ‘daughter Zion’ as ‘Mr. Zion’s daughter not yet married’ is the synthesis of ‘daughter of Mr Zion’ and ‘a woman that is not yet married’. In effect Mary as the new daughter Zion is that new daughter of Zion that is the synthesis of the new ‘daughter of Zion’ and the new ‘woman that is not yet married’.
@2bbb) Mary is the new ‘Daughter of Zion’ in the sense that her exultance, her song of joy, in the Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55) “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit exults in God my Salviour...”) upon hearing the words of the Angel Gabriel to her (Lk 1:28: Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is with you”) is an echo of the joy to which the old ‘daughter of Zion’ is invited by the prophet Zephaniah (3:14: “Shout for joy, daughter of Zion, Irael, shout aloud! Rejoice, exult with all your heart, daughter of Jerusalem!”), whereby Zion here does not mean a person but a place, a city, the holy city of Jerusalem. And in this case the proper way to say today ‘the daughter of Jerusalem’ would be ‘Miss Jerusalem’, but this would mean for the man of today ‘the most beautiful of all the beautiful young unmarried ladies of a particular place, like of a particular city or nation or continent, hence Miss Rome, Miss Italy, Miss Europe, or of the whole place, like of the whole world, hence Miss World, in a defined particular time like in a particular year.
But there is a case in which Zion is not a place but a person and not a single person but a collective person, and such is the case where all the inhabitants of Zion are invited by the prophet Isaiah to rejoice (cf. Is 12:4-6) . In such a case the old ‘daughter of Zion’ is to all the inhabitants of Zion as ‘Mary, the new daughter of Zion’, is to ‘the Church, the new people of God’.
Furthermore, when “Daughter of Zion” means “Daughter of Jersusalem”, and Jerusalem means not just the earthly city in geographical Israel but rather the supernatural city called heaven, in which God lives, then Mary is the daughter of heaven, i.e daughter of Him who lives in heaven and who is the owner of heaven and Maker of all things by His Word (cf, Wisd 9:1-3; Jn 1:3-4), daughter of the Creator God, daughter of God the Father, daughter of the almighty Father (‘cf. the Igbo hymn to Mary Immaculate saluted by God Himself with ‘Ave’ at the Annunciation: “Ada nke Nna ji ike nile, Maria, n’enweghi njo, Chukwu n’onwe ya n’ekene gi, ‘macula non est in te’ !!”). It is toward such a supernatural City, heavenly Jerusalem, that the new as the sacramental Israel, namely the Church as the new people of God consisting of two halves, the first that is already in heaven and is called the heavenly Church and the second that is still on earth and travelling towards the heavenly Father and towards uniting with the heavenly Church and is called the earthly Church of Christ and is contemporaneously ‘on an evangelizing mission to the peoples of the nations in this terrestrial planet’ and ‘on a journey to heaven 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, of eternal glorification of one another, of eternal joy at one another and of 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 which 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(“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. Jerusalem is built on a city strongly compact, it is there that the tribes go mourning, oppressed by the foe. We shall go up with joy to the house of our Father”).
@2bbc) Mary is the new ‘Daughter Zion’ in the sense that her exultance, her song of joy, in the Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55) “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit exults in God my Salviour...”) upon hearing the words of the Angel Gabriel to her (Lk 1:28: Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is with you”) is an echo of the joy to which the old Daughter Zion is invited by the prophet Zechariah (Zech. 2:14: “Sing and rejoice, daughter Zion! Now, I am coming to dwell in your midst – oracle of the Lord”, and 9:9: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey”).
@3 The Virgin Mary is Mother in a threefold sense : Mother of Jesus, Mother of God, Mother of the Church.
Mary is mother of Jesus as long as she conceived him as child in her very womb, gave birth to him as true Man from her womb, fed him with her breast, washed and clothed and reclothed him with her hands, taught him the native language and culture of their people with her knowledge, guarded and guided, protected and led him aright with her hands and instructions. Mary is the Mother of God as long as Jesus her son is a divine person, not a human person.
Mary is the Mother of the Church as long as she is entrusted as mother by Jesus into the care of his beloved Apostle as of the symbol of His one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
The Virgin Mary as the mother of Jesus is that young woman betrothed to Joseph at Nazareth who a) after receiving the Good News of her imminent divine motherhood from he archangel Gabriel during the angelic annunciation in Nazareth hurried on a visit to Elizabeth her relative with whom she stayed for the first three months of her pregnancy, and returned with the advanced pregnancy to Joseph who as her spouse got upset by the sudden pregnancy for which he was not responsible only to be calmed down by the revelation to him of the secret and mystery of that unexpected pregnancy, whereby while was taking her as pregnant woman from Nazareth in the north to the south for a registration concerning the census of the citizens of the Jewish nation she on the way gave birth to Jesus at Bethlehem and in a manger, a birth she gave without losing her virginity, Bethlehem is a village near the holy city in the south where the registration was taking place, and Mary after her post-natal purification, had to flee into Egypt with her newly born baby boy to save him from being murdered by King Herod, a flight that had got to be made after the angel had told Joseph to take the mother and child and flee to Egypt. And ever since the family returned to Nazareth after the flight into Egypt where they stayed as refugees on flight of the persecuted, Mary intensified her maternal care for Jesus as her persecuted child, for she worried over the disappearance of Jesus on the way while they were returning from a feast, she mediated between Christ and the needy hosts and between Christ and the Apostles at the marriage feast at Cana in Galilee, and she followed Jesus in his apostolate even up to her presence at Calvary where her son was hanging on the Cross.
@4 Mary is the Mother of God, and this fact of her Divine Motherhood results from the divinity of the person of the child that she has born, Jesus the Christ as the incarnate Son of the living God that Son of God that is God and has been made Man through the incarnation of the Word but without ceasing to be God. And the fact of such divinity of the person of Jesus can be taken from the biblical data concerning: i) Lk. 1:26-38: The Annunciation when the angel said to her : "you shall conceive and bring to light a son, and you will give him the name Jesus and he shall be called the son of the most high, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his Father and his kingdom will have no end"); II) was Lk. 1:39-45: The visit of Mary to Elizabeth: Elizabeth exclaimed "blessed are you amongst women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, who am I that the mother of my Saviour should come to me". iii) Mt. 1:18-25: The angel’s revelation to Joseph of the mystery surrounding the conception and birth of Christ: “Joseph, son of David, dont fear to take Mary with you as your spouse, because that which is in her is generated through the work of the Holy Spirit and she will bring to light a son and you will give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins". And all these happened to fulfill the words of the prophet: "behold a virgin shall conceive and shall put to light a son and they shall give him the name Emmanuel which means God with us".
@5 Mary is the Mother of the true Man Jesus as of a true human being in so far as Jesus has human nature, but without being a human person. This fact of Mary’s human motherhood can similarly be taken from biblical data concerning : a) Mt. 1:1-17: The real geneology of Jesus: Jesus Christ was predicted as descendant of Abraham (cf. Gen. 12:13), and of the tribe of David (cf. 2 Sam. 7:12-16). The word ‘genealogy’ comes from the verb ‘to generate’ , and it does not always indicate only immediate generation but also mediated one. In fact among the Jews, it could only indicate a legal paternity, not a natural paternity. "Eleazer generated Mathan, Mathan generated Jacob, Jacob generated Joseph the spouse of Mary and she who gave birth to Jesus called Christ".
b) Lk.2:21-40: The circumcission and presentation of Jesus in the temple, in fulfillment of the Jewish law of Moses that every first born male should be consecrated to the Lord. Mary is astonished by the words of Simeon to her in the temple that this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel and would be a sign of contradiction so that the secret thoughts of many would be laid bare and a sword would pierce her own soul. c) Mt. 2:13-15: The flight into Egypt; After the angel had appeared to Joseph in a dream, asking him to wake up from sleep and take the child and mother and flee into Egypt.
d) The marriage feast at Cana: three days after Jesus had encountered Nathaniel (Jn1:47) and left for Bethany (Jn1:43), there was a wedding feast at Cana in Galilee, and his mother was there too as well. Himself was also invited to come with his disciples to the feast, and when Mary noticed that the host has run out of wine, she said to Jesus; "they dont have anymore wine". Jesus first said to her "how does that concern me woman, my hour has not yet come", then his mother said to his servants "whatever he says you do it".
@6 Mary is Mother of the Church and this fact of her ecclesiastical motherhood goes back to the fact that Jesus the founder of the Church never called His mother ‘my mother’ but rather ‘woman’. Similarly he never called himself a priest but rather ‘the Son of Man’. Jesus never called Mary ‘my mother’ because he never wanted to privatize her, since she, being the mother of the Godman, is mother both of God and of Man, whereby as mother of the son of Man she is mother both of every single human being and of the human collectiveness like the human family, the human community, the human society, etc., thus she is mother of the entire humanity, wherefore Jesus rather preferred to call Mary ‘woman’ which is requisite both for her being his mother and for her being the mother of the rest of us humans. Hence at the Cross He called her ‘woman’ and gave us to her as her children and gave her to us as our mother, and since then we have learnt to call her our mother. But she is his mother, as long as it is herself that gave birth to him as to a true human being.
‘Woman’ is the female species of the genus ‘human being’, while ‘Man’ is the male species of such a genus. The woman as the female species of the genus ‘human being’ is thus said to be of the feminine gender, while the ‘man’ as the male species of the genus ‘human being’ is said to be of the masculine gender. God created the living human being as a genus into two contrary, i.e. opposite but not opposed, species : “male and female He created them”, and these two species of the genus ‘human being’ called ‘the Man’ and ‘the ‘Woman’ are of two contrary, i.e. opposite but not opposed, genders, namely masculine and feminine. The ‘woman’ as the female species of the genus ‘human being’ differs from the female species of the genus ‘animal’ by having a rational soul (constituted by nine faculties ‘reason, heart and mind’, ‘the will, the intellect and the memory’, conscience, faculty of intuition, faculty of affection’) and spirit, whereas the female species of ‘animal’ has neither spirit (wherefore an animal can be killed or slaughtered without the commandment of God ‘ thou shall not kill!’ being contravened) nor reason (wherefore no animal can compare and contrast nor make arguments) but rather instinct.
The woman that Mary the Mother of the Godman is, is neither created in the same way that God has created the first woman as the woman created to be a helpmate to the Man, namely by taking a rib from the side of a Man and then enclosing the bone in the flesh. The created female human being Mary was also not created in the same way that the Creator God has created the human being in the image and likeness of Himself, namely by creating the male and female species together and contemporaneously and not successively and separately from one another. Mary is a special creature of God, a special human being, a special woman, whom God created in the same way that He created light (“let there be light”, ‘fiat lux’, and immediately there was light in the world of its Creator) by saying ‘let there be Mary’, ‘fiat Maria’, and immediately there was Mary in the womb of her mother Anna. And since Mary was conceived in the womb of her mother Anna in this way that is different from the way every other human person is conceived in the womb of the person’s mother she was able to be conceived without stain, sine macula, hence she is said to be immaculately conceived and her conception by her mother in the mother’s womb is thus called Immaculate Conception. And God kept Mary sinless from the first moment of her conception in the womb of her mother Anna to prepare the Virgin Mary to be the worthy mother of the Son of God. And by living in the presence of God without sin she shared beforehand in the salvation Christ would bring by His death.
Furthermore, God’s ‘fiat Maria’ as the Word by which God called Mary into existence is the cause of Mary’s ability to always say fiat about the Word of God to her and hence to always do the will of God contained in the Word of God, to always obey the speaking God of the Word, hence to always be holy. Hence she is called “Holy Mary Mother of God” who being holy is most apt to pray effectively to God for the rest of us humans as those who, not always obeying the speaking God of the Word through our not always doing the Will of God contained in His Word to us are rather sinners always in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness for us to be reconciled with Him and only so have peace and only so have joy in us and only so be able to give peace and joy to others and only so be true signs and instruments of the peace-giving and joy-bringing Christ the Redeemer and Saviour as Son of Man and Son of God, Son of our Mother Mary and Son of our Heavenly Father.
Mary is Mother of the entire human race (‘Mater toti humani generis’) and hence also Mother of the Church. For, as long as Jesus Christ whose mother she is, is a true human being but not a human person, and is a true human being only as far as he has human nature, it follows that Mary is the Mother of all humans that have the human nature in common with Christ true Man, and such are the rest of human beings that unlike him are no divine persons but rather human persons. Thus Mary is the mother of us human persons who believe in Jesus as the Saviour of the entire humankind. Mary is the Mother of the Church as of the new people of God. Abraham is the father in the faith in God of Israel as of the old People of God. But Mary is the mother in the faith in Christ as in the God made-man. Mary is the first to know Christ, know that Christ the Lord and Saviour has come into the world, since she is the first to know that He has come into her womb. She is thus also the first to believe in Him. She is the first Christian, the prototypical Christian, the original Christian, the Christian from whom the other Christians spring up. Thus, she is the Mother of Christians (the new Mother of Zion) and at same time the Mother Christian (the new Mother Zion, ‘Ecclesia Mater’), hence She is the Mother of the Church (‘Mater Ecclesiae’), the Mother of the new people of God, ‘Mater novi populi Dei’).
@7 The consequences of the motherhood of Mary include her universal Queenship and hence her coronation. Mary is a universal Queen Mother, as long as She is the Mother of Christ, and Christ as true God is universal King, but the Mother of a King is a Queen, the Queen Mother. And she is the prototypical Princess as the Princess par excellence, as long as she, being an exemplary doer of the will of the Heavenly Father of the Son is prototypical daughter of God the almighty Father, but God the almighty Father is King, and the daughter of a King is archetypal princess.
And Mary has been crowned in heaven after her assumption into heaven. For to be a queen a woman must get and have and wear her crown of glory. A Queen is that woman who - unlike a King as Man that has throne - has rather a crown, and - like the King - is a Ruler and reigns, using the authority and sovereign powers with which she, like he, is invested to protect and promote, guard and guide, conserve and transform, defend and lead along the way of justice and peace, of security and orderliness, both the royal objects as things, thus the royal property and patrimony, space or territory, places and events, and the royal subjects as persons, thus the royal family, people, and ministers or authoritative servants, to the fullness of prosperity and welfare and of perfection and happiness. Christ while still on earth before he ascended into heaven had asked His Heavenly Father to grant that those whomvtge Father gave to him on earth may be there wherever he is and that they be in heaven with him when he must have ascended into heaven so that they might see the heavenly glory with which the Father loved him even before the world was created. Accordingly after Christ had ascended into heaven Mary as the first of all the humans that the Father had given to Him, and the Father gave her as mother to Him, was assumed into heaven, she was carried both body and soul by the angels from this world to the heavenly Christ her Son as to the King of the Universe and was crowned Queen of the universe as Queen of heaven (Regina Caeli) and earth (Regina terrarum, Regina nationum) and of all the created inhabitants of heaven (Regina Caelorum, Regina Angelorum, Regina Sanctorum) and earth (Regina humani generis).
Fr. J. Egbulefu CCE
(Founder of the Emmanuelites)