A theological meditation on the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Father John O. Egbulefu CCE, Rome 2020
My brothers and sisters in Christ !
Happy Feast Day of the Nativity of the
Blessed Virgin Mary !
@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.
@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 fact that
1) birth is preceded by the period of the 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 2) 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 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 (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 that same year in which the child Jesus was delivered by Mary from Mary’s womb to the world outside the womb
@3c) From these two premises as two eyes one sees then the reason why after having celebrated this year 2020 on the 25th of March the Feast of the Annunciation of the goodness 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 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, the Church comes nine months afterwards to celebrate on the 25th of December in this same year, m2020, the Feast of the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ by the Blessed Virgin Mary.
@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.
@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 birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the 8th day of September of each year - is the fact that
1) birth is preceded by the period of the 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 2) 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 exactly 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 last year 2019 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 this year 2020, which is today, 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 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 t 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 parent’s 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!!
@6 All these said above which take place before, during and after the birth of a child did 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 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.
But the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mass which we are celebrating today is not just only her physical birth by which she is the daughter of Saints Anna and Joachim but also and more deeply her spiritual mystical birth by which she is that daughter of the Most High who is not married and is thus called the new Daughter of Zion and Daughter Zion.
Since only those that do the Will of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as of the incarnate Son of the living Gif 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”.
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.
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 people of God comprising a part that is already in heaven and is called the heavenly Church and a part on earth that is travelling towards the heavenly Father and heavenly Church and is called the Church of Christ 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 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 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 (“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”).
Mary as the mother of the Son is “the new Mother Zion” , and this in the threefold sense that I explained it last month in theological discourse on the glorious Queenship of the heavenly assumed and crowned Blessed ever Virgin Mary Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ seated on the right hand of God the Father our earthly gaze at whom has awoken in us the desire to move ever more heavenwards driven by the Holy Spirit our eternal Guide to join them, our heavenly parents , God our Heavenly Father and Mary our assumed heavenly Mother, and our ascended heavenly Brother, Christ who from above is pulling or drawing us heavenwards to Himself while from here below the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the Father and of the Son keeps pushing or driving us upwards to go to joint the inhabitants of heaven and live with the three persons in one God their eternal life of blessedness - happiness, gladness joy, jubilation - and of love for one another, joy at one another , glorification of one another and peace with one another which is eternally going on among the three persons in one God what have jointly created each of us humans in their own image and likeness in view of this life of communion - communication and union and sharing - with them their inestimable and incomparable eternal life .