Dear Catholic Exchange:
My 13-year-old son has some questions about various matters of faith. . . . First, he wonders why we claim that the Virgin Mary is the Mother of God. I told him it is because she gave Him His human nature—a nature our Lord adopted through the Incarnation. . . . He says, however, that the Virgin Mary should only be considered the mother of Jesus’ humanity, not the mother Christ’s divinity. I told him that the two cannot be separated, and obviously the Catholic Church does not claim that she is the mother of the divine nature of God (which has existed for all eternity), but only of His human nature.
He also believes that when we pray to the Virgin Mary we worship her. I explained to him that we Catholics do not worship the Virgin Mary, but honor and venerate her as the mother of our Savior. I guess I am not sure if I should say that we pray to her, or, more exactly, we pray for her to pray for us. He thinks that praying “to” somebody is equivalent to worshipping that person. (I think he also associates kneeling down to pray with an act of worship.) . . .
He also argues over the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. He says that if the Virgin was born without sin and never sinned in her life, then she was perfect; this, however, he says, contradicts the Bible, which says that only God is perfect. . . . Here he is equating different levels of perfection with that of sinlessness. . . . I am aware of the explanation that the merits of Christ were applied to her before her conception and that it is still the blood of Christ that cleansed her, or, more accurately, prevented her soul from being blemished at conception.
This brings me to another point, which is more a question of my own. God is absolute and eternal, never changing. There is an instant in time when Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity, however, adopts our human nature and becomes both God and man. I understand that this is the “mystery of the Incarnation” and hard, if not impossible, for humans to completely comprehend. My question is, then, given the unchanging nature of God, would not adopting a human nature be considered a change? Is this explained by the mystery of the Incarnation as well? I have asked myself this question before, but have not been able to come up with a clear explanation. Could you elucidate?
And last . . . does our Lord retain His human nature after His death? I know He rose in His glorified body and shortly after ascended into Heaven. Is it our belief that He retains His glorified body in Heaven as well?
Thanking you in advance for your time and consideration.
God Bless,
Orlando A. Ciniglio
Boise, Idaho
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Dear Mr. Ciniglio,
Peace in Christ! The first question regarding why we call Mary the Mother of God is addressed in our FAITH FACT, The First Marian Dogma. It covers why Mary is called the “God-bearer” or the Mother of God and not simply the mother of Jesus’ humanity. You are correct that, in the Church’s teaching, Mary as Mother of God does not imply that she is the mother of the divine nature of God, which has existed for all eternity. The FAITH FACT should sufficiently explain why.
For the second question about Catholic veneration of Mary and the saints and how this is distinct from the worship that belongs to God alone, see two of our other FAITH FACTS, Honor Thy Mother and All In the Family.
Regarding the Immaculate Conception, your response is right on target. We would only add that there are not only different levels of perfection, but different kinds. To be perfected is to be complete. God is perfect as only God is perfect. The perfection of human beings means that we come to the fulfillment of everything to which our humanity is ordered. In addition, God is perfect by nature; He cannot be otherwise. We come to perfection by grace. For a further explanation of the Immaculate Conception, once more, see our FAITH FACT on the subject.
If God is unchanging, how is the Incarnation, taking on humanity, to be understood? Is that not in itself a change? While the answer to this question is bound up with the mystery of the Incarnation, “mystery” in the Church does not mean unintelligibility. While the following will certainly not be exhaustive of such an august mystery, perhaps it will provide some insight.
When it is said that God is unchanging, how is it that He is unchanging? God is eternal. It is time (which is itself a mystery) that is associated with change. The eternity of God, unaffected by temporality, does not change, even, we would submit, when the second Person of the Trinity entered time by the assumption of a human nature. The Church confesses that Christ had a human soul with all its attending “operations of intellect and will” (Catechism, no. 470), but recalls that all aspects of “Christ’s human nature belongs . . . to the divine person of the Son of God” (Ibid). In His human nature, Jesus “grew in wisdom” (Lk. 2:52), He “learned obedience (Heb. 5:8). Yet, Jesus “communicates to His humanity His own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In His soul as in His body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity” (Catechism, no. 470). So even by assuming humanity, the eternal (i.e., unchanging) nature of God remained the same. To say that the human nature of Jesus produced a change in His divine nature would imply that the two were fused. The teaching of the Church has always been that the two natures were joined in one divine Person, but Christ is not “a confused mixture of the divine and the human” (Catechism, no. 464).
Last, does Jesus retain the humanity He assumed for all eternity? The answer is “yes,” He does. He was crucified and, in His resurrection, was glorified bodily, not with the intent to discard His humanity afterwards. The Catechism teaches that after He appeared for the last time to His disciples on the Mount of Olives (as recorded in Acts 1), that appearance ended “with the irreversible entry of His humanity into divine glory. . .(Catechism, no. 659).
I hope this answers your questions. If you have further questions on this or would like more information about Catholics United for the Faith, please contact us at 1-800-MY-FAITH (693-2484). Please keep us in your prayers as we endeavor to “support, defend, and advance the efforts of the teaching Church.”
United in the Faith,
David E. Utsler
Information Specialist
Catholics United for the Faith
827 North Fourth Street
Steubenville, OH 43952
800-MY-FAITH (800-693-2484)
