Yesterday, 25 March, was the holy day formally called The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and commonly referred to as Lady Day. It commemorates the day that the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary in Nazareth and told her that she was “blessed… among women” and “hast found favour with God” and would conceive and give birth to the Christ, the Son of God. The account can be found in St. Luke’s Gospel, the first chapter, verses 36-38. St. Luke does not provide the calendar date on which Gabriel visited the Blessed Virgin but he does say that it was in the “sixth month” (v. 26), i.e., of Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John the Baptist. Elizabeth conceived shortly after her husband Zacharias had received his visitation from Gabriel while serving in the Temple. Zacharias was of the “course of Abia” the Temple service of which occurred twice in the year, once in the week of the Day of Atonement. That this was the week in which the visitation took place can be inferred from indicators in the text that the Temple was very well attended that day. Also, there is an ancient legend that Zacharias was serving as High Priest on Yom Kippur that is difficult to reconcile with St. Luke’s account but can be explained as an embellishment on the correct detail of it having been Yom Kippur or at least the week thereof that the event took place. Yom Kippur falls in late September to early October, making October the month of John the Baptist’s conception, and March therefore, the sixth month of it. Although the earliest mention of the celebration of the Annunciation goes only back to the sixth century, the fact that the Church regarded it as having occurred on 25 March since the earliest centuries is easily demonstrated. St. Hippolytus of Rome, whose years were 170 to 235 AD, wrote that our Lord was born eight days before the Kalends of January.[1] That is 25 December by our way of reckoning dates.[2] Nine months to the day after 25 March.
There is a type of Protestant who thinks that any amount of honour
and attention bestowed on our Lord’s mother takes away from that which is due
to Christ Himself. The Annunciation, the
Gospel account of it, and its celebration reveal the foolishness of this way of
thinking.
Consider the salutation of Gabriel to the Virgin: “Hail, thou
that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou
among women.” (Lk. 1:28)
The first observation to be made about these words is that
the honour bestowed upon Mary here, that she is “highly favoured” or as William
Tyndale rendered it “full of grace”, the Lord is with her, and she is “blessed…among
women” come from the mouth of an unfallen angel speaking on behalf of God. It could hardly, therefore, detract from the
honour due to her Son.
The second observation is that this is the first three lines
of the Ave Maria. These are drawn
directly from the inspired words of Scripture.
The next two lines of the Ave Maria, are Elizabeth’s salutation when
Mary visits her immediately after the Annunciation (Lk. 1:42). The only things added to the Scriptural text
in the Ave Maria prior to the Sancta Maria portion are the names Mary and
Jesus. Remember that the next time you
hear someone claim these words are idolatrous.
Now consider the Christological significance of the
Annunciation. Objections to honouring
Mary often contribute to poor Christology.
Some Hyper-Protestants, in their zeal to throw out anything they
consider to be tainted with “papist Mariolatry”, object to the title “Mother of
God” or “Theotokos” and in doing so embrace the sort of thinking associated
with the fifth century Nestorius of Constantinople that was condemned as
heretical at the third ecumenical council.
Ironically, of course, Nestorius himself had no problem with honouring
Mary. His problem with “Theotokos” was
that he thought it suggested that Mary was the source of Jesus’ divinity. This is the same problem Hyper-Protestants
have with “Mother of God.” “Mary is not
the Mother of God” they will say “She is the Mother of Jesus” just as the fifth
century Nestorians called Mary the “Christokos” (Christ-bearer) rather than “Theotokos”
(God-bearer). The reason these arguments
are condemned as heretical is because they introduce division into the Person
of Christ. Jesus Christ is One Person. Mary is the Mother of that Person. That Person is both God and Man. Therefore Mary is the Mother of God. This obviously does not mean that Jesus gets
His deity from her. The Person Jesus has
always existed with and in His Father and the Holy Spirit as God. That Person became Man but was always
God. In becoming Man, He gained a
Mother. This is a completely unique
instance of a Person existing before His Mother, but that does not alter the
fact that she is His Mother, or that Mother is her relationship to Him as a
Person, and since He that Person is God as well as Man, she is the Mother of
God.
Now before you conclude that I have gotten away from my main
point think of this question: When did the Incarnation take place? When was the Hypostatic Union formed? When did the Eternally-Begotten Son of God add
a complete but anhypostatic[3] human nature, subject to
the consequences of the Fall such as mortality except for the taint of sin
itself, to His Own Eternal Person and become Man?
The answer, of course, is Lady Day, the day of the
Annunciation. The Incarnation did not
take place at Christ’s birth on Christmas.
By that time His human life had already been growing for nine
months. Jesus’ humanity was never
not-united to His deity and His Person but was created already in union with
Him. Otherwise His humanity would not
have been His but someone else’s that He took in a manner similar to
possession. The Incarnation, therefore,
and Jesus’ conception are one and the same event. Gabriel’s message to the Blessed Virgin was:
Fear not, Mary: for
thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb,
and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and
shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him
the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for
ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. (Lk. 1:30-33).
After inquiring as to how this was possible and receiving
the answer that it would be by the power of the Holy Spirit, her response was “Behold
the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” (Lk. 1:38) In these words she in submissive obedience consented
to being the God-bearer and the miracle was accomplished.
Mary’s response was a significant theme in the writings of
the earliest Church Fathers. St.
Irenaeus wrote:
In accordance with
this design, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, Behold
the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to your word. Luke 1:38 But
Eve was disobedient; for she did not obey when as yet she
was a virgin.
And even as she, having indeed a husband, Adam, but being nevertheless as yet
a virgin…
having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both
to herself and to the entire human race; so also did
Mary, having a man betrothed [to her],
and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, become
the cause of salvation, both to herself
and the whole human race…And
thus also it was that the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary.
For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin
Mary set free through faith.[4]
This same comparison had earlier been made by Justin Martyr.[5]
While the Hyper-Protestants may rage against this comparison
and find in it evidence that “Romanism” had begun to creep into the Church as
early as the second century it rests upon Scriptural authority. Mary and Eve are joined in the first and the
last books of the Bible.
In the curse on the serpent in Geneses 3:15 reads “And I
will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed;
it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Who is the woman in this verse?
On the one hand it is obviously Eve. She was the only woman present at the
time. On the other hand it has to be
Mary because it was Mary who gave birth to Christ, the seed that crushed the
head of the serpent even as he bruised His heel on the Cross. So which is it? Clearly both.
Turning to the final book of the Bible, we find in the
twelfth chapter of Revelation a woman spoken of again, this time at great length. She is never named but is just called the
woman. She has an enemy, however, who is
“a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon
his heads.” (Rev. 12:3) In the chapter he has an army of angels and fights against
St. Michael the Archangel and his angels.
St. Michael is victorious and the dragon and his angels are cast out of
heaven. When this happens the dragon is
identified as “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth
the whole world.” (Rev. 12:9) The same
serpent upon whom the curse was pronounced in Genesis 3. Here he is shown, just as Genesis says, to be
the enemy of the woman, making war on her and her seed. For the woman “being with child cried,
travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered” (Rev. 12:2) and the dragon “stood
before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as
soon as it was born.” (Rev. 12:4). Here
is the seed of the woman promised in Genesis.
To make clear that the child is Jesus Christ the next verse reads “And
she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron:
and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.”
Since she gives birth to Jesus Christ, this woman is clearly
the Blessed Virgin Mary. As in Genesis
3:15, however, she is also Eve, because it is here in Revelation that the
conflict between the woman and the serpent begun in Genesis 3 comes to its
final close. This is Mary as the New
Eve. Eve, of course, was the wife of
Adam, whereas Mary the New Eve is the Mother of Jesus Christ, the New
Adam. Note however the first and the
last verses of the chapter. In the first
she is clothed with the sun, stands on the moon, and has a crown of twelve stars. This alludes to the visions of Joseph in the
book of Genesis. The final verse speaks
of the dragon making war on the “remnant of her seed” who “keep the
commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Mary, the New Eve, is not merely Mary as an individual,
but Mary as representative of the people of God. The sun, moon, and stars are the symbols of
Israel. It is the Church that has the
testimony of Jesus Christ. The Church,
according to St. Paul in Romans, is the “olive tree” of Israel, with some
branches removed for unbelief, and “wild” branches (Gentile believers) grafted
in. The Church is described as the bride
of Christ of the New Testament. Mary is
literally the Mother of Jesus Christ, but as the New Eve she figuratively
represents the collective that is the bride of Christ.[6]
The early Fathers clearly had strong Scriptural support for
their teaching that the Blessed Virgin was the New Eve, whose obedience played
such an integral role in the restoration of that which had fell into ruin
through the disobedience of the first Eve.
Perhaps we should pay more attention to their interpretation of the
Scriptures and less to those whose determination to honour only Christ has
become an obsession that would condemn even the Protestant Reformers[7] for honouring her with the
honour that the Scriptures give her.
We beseech thee, O
Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts; that, as we have known the incarnation of
thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we
may be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; through the same Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.[8]
[1] St. Hippolytus of Rome, Commentary on Daniel, 4.23.3.
[2] The Romans reckoned backwards from the Kalends
of the next month, we reckon forwards from that of the current month.
[3] Without personal identity distinct from the Eternal Personhood of the Son of God. Since Jesus’ human nature was created already united to His Eternal Person it never actually existed in a state of anhypostasia. The term that denotes the actual state of Jesus’ human nature as it has existed from the moment of its creation in union with His deity in His Eternal Person is “enhypostatic.” “Enhypostatic”, “in the person”, is the only state in which Jesus’ human nature has ever actually existed since it was created already in union with His Person. Since “enhypostatic” describes the human nature as united with the divine in Christ, “anhypostatic”, “without person”, is used to speak of the human nature by itself in contexts where it would be difficult to make sense without speaking as if His human nature had existence by itself prior to the Hypostatic Union. The importance of these distinctions and this highly specialized, even for theology, terminology, is their usefulness in avoiding the error of Apollonaris, who taught that Jesus’ human nature was lacking a component which His divine nature made up for (the Logos, he taught, took the place of a human nous or mind), the error of thinking of the Incarnation as either a sort of possession or a fusion of two persons, one divine one human, into one, or the error of thinking of Jesus’ Person as a composition formed by the union of the divine and human natures. In the Incarnation an Eternal Person added a second, created nature to His eternal nature and that second nature was created as His and never belonged to any other person distinct from His Eternal Person. See Eric Mascall, Christ, the Christian and The Church: A Study of the Incarnation and its Consequences (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2017).
[4]
St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies,
translated by Alexander
Roberts and William Rambaut in Ante-Nicene
Fathers, Vol. 1, edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A.
Cleveland Coxe, III.22.4.
[5] St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 100.
[6] Note that the imagery of Rev. 12:1 is also that
of a queen. The woman is seen in heaven
wearing a crown of stars. The queen of
heaven. It is significant to observe
that in the books of Kings, the queens are consistently mentioned, unless they
figure into the narrative in some other way, as the mothers of their sons
rather than the wives of their husbands.
The queen mother rather than the queen consort was the more prominent idea
of the queen in the Old Testament. Here,
and not in the worship of Astarte condemned by Jeremiah, we find the origin of the
Regina Coeli title for Mary. Let the Hyper-Protestants fume all they like,
it will not change the fact.
[7] The Protestant Reformers, at least the
Magisterial Reformers, especially the English and Lutheran, but not excluding
the Swiss, all had a Mariology that would be considered way too High by many
contemporary Protestants.
[8] Collect for the Annunciation of the Blessed
Virgin, Book of Common Prayer.
