Meditation on the Magnificat, which is the Gospel appointed for the Dormition of the B.V.M., may always be expected to be fruitful.
The Blessed Virgin Mary declares that all nations shall call her blessed. What gives her the audacity to make this claim?
She was told: first by the Angel Gabriel: "Blessed art thou among women," and second, echoed by Elizabeth her cousin, who said, "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb."
So now, as a third declaration, she says it herself, thus making threefold the testimony to the origin of her blessedness in the Triune God, whom she carries within her womb.
The Triune God is within her? Most assuredly, for in that she carries the Incarnate One, she carries the Eternal Son. Yet God is not divided, and though she does not carry the Father or the Spirit, still she carries God, she becomes the Theotokos, the God-bearer, the Mother of God.
Behold, the life she feels within her womb is her own son, her own flesh and blood; yet she knows within herself (for she has never known a man) that the angel's declaration is true: she carries the Almighty. She knows she will bear her Creator.
So within the tiny space of her womb is the meeting-place of heaven and earth, and in that she has given of her own flesh to this her Offspring, He has become forever her Son as well as the Son of the Father.
He will be now and for all eternity the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
And so even after her sojourn on earth she remains His mother, and for all eternity she will remain the mother of God.
And He will be forever our Brother.
Deo gracias!
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2 comments:
Kudos for this post!
She was told by the angel, she was told by Elizabeth, but most of all, she was told by the Holy Spirit, for we are explicitly told she was filled with the Holy Spirit as she spoke the Magnificat.
Well, in a *way* she carries the Father, since "I and the Father are one," and in a *way* she carries the Holy Spirit, since it was He who overshadowed her and who animates (is the soul of) her Son. As you say, God is not divided.
Yes, the Mother of God, and also, because we are members of Christ's Body, the Body to which she gave birth, she is the Mother of us all.
I think one needs to be careful about saying things like "she carries the Father." No, she carries the Son. For although God is not divided, yet we are forbidden by the catholic religion from saying that the Father became incarnate. She is not the Mother of the Father.
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