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of The Blessed Virgin

In August we celebrate the principal feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary. For the first three centuries of the Church’s existence Mary received very little attention. Then, in 351 bishops and theologians met at Ephesus to resolve their differences over the nature of Christ. Was he really one person or two people stuck together, one divine and one human? The Council of Ephesus used the term Theotokos (English: Mother of God) to cut the gordian knot. It meant that Jesus had two natures - divine and human - but that he was one person - not two stuck together. Thus Mary was the mother of a human person who was and is God - even though she was not the source of his divinity.

Once the Fathers at Ephesus had made their decision and accepted the term Mother of God, they realised that even though it was designed in the first place to make a statement about Christ, it also made a very powerful statement about his mother. And from this time onwards Mary became ever more prominent in the consciousness of the Church.

Only two doctrines concerning Mary are regarded by Anglicanism as essential to the Christian faith: [1] That she was a virgin when she conceived Christ, and [2] That she thus became (and has ever since remained) the Mother of God, the Theotokos.

Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox regard two further doctrines as integral to the faith: [3] Mary remained a virgin all her life, because it would be inappropriate for the womb which bore God to bear anyone else. Thus Christ’s brothers must really be his cousins, and [4] after she had died, she was soon revived and taken body and soul into heaven. This is her assumption, or dormition, or transition, or ’falling asleep.’

Roman Catholics also have one further dogma [5] that she was conceived in the womb of her mother St Anne without the contamination of original sin. Although most Orthodox speak of her as immaculate they do not mean that Mary was exempted (in view of her future Son’s future merits) from the condition in which everyone else has been born. The Roman Church has also been rather sympathetic to two further ideas that [6] Mary is our co-redemptrix with Christ, and that [7] all God’s graces pass through her to reach us.

A more modern (and at the same time more authentically traditional) insight has been to see Mary as the Mother of Christ, and therefore as the mother of all those within the Body of Christ, the Church. As the Mother of the Church, Mary has an ongoing work in heaven interceding for and otherwise helping those who are her spiritual children here on earth. Death does not end the work and ministry of the Blessed Virgin - on the contrary, it perfects it and makes it universal.