Mary, Our Blessed Mother - Joan of Arc...Mediatrix of all Graces •By her fiat, Mary became the channel of grace of God [s salvation and holiness. • ^Mary's function as mother of

Mary, Our

Blessed Mother

All Generations Shall Call Me

Blessed Presentation 12: RCIA 2012

Hail Mary

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee.

Blessed art Thou among women

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

Amen

Mary—God’s Mother and Ours

• Marian Dogmas

• Mary’s Role in Salvation History

• Mary Prefigured in the Old Testament

• Who is Mary?

• Mary’s Role in the Church

• Marian Apparitions

Marian Dogmas

• Mother of God – Council of Ephesus, 431

• Perpetual Virginity – Council of the Lateran, 649

• Immaculate Conception – Pope Pius IX, Apostolic Constitution "Ineffabilis Deus,"

December 8, 1854

• Assumption – Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Munificentissimus Deus,

November 1, 1950

Prefigured in the Old Testament

• Genesis 3:15

I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed: he shall crush your head.

• Protoevangelium –first announcement of the Messiah Redeemer

• Mary predestined from the beginning of creation

Prefigured in the Old Testament

• Isaiah 7:14 Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son, shall name him Emmanuel.

• Matthew 1:22-23 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means God with us.”

Who is

Mary? Chapel of Our Lady,

Cathedral of St. Matthew the Evangelist, Washington, D.C.

Who is Mary?

• New Eve

• Immaculate Conception

• Full of Grace

• Handmaid of the Lord

• Ever Virgin

• Mother of God

• Queen of Heaven and Earth

The New Eve Eve Mary

Eve created without sin Mary conceived without sin

Adam called the first Eve "woman": "She shall be called "woman", because she was taken out of man" (Gen. 2:23)

Jesus the New Adam calls Mary "Woman" (John 2:3),

Eve was the "mother of the living" (Gen. 3:21)

Mary is the Mother of all who have eternal life in Christ

Eve disobeyed God and became the indirect cause of the Fall by giving Adam the fruit (Genesis 3:6)

Mary obeyed God (Lk 1:38) and so became the indirect cause of our salvation by bringing the Savior into the world

In God's original plan, life - both physical and spiritual - must be transmitted by a man and a woman. When Adam and Eve fell they lost their spiritual life and so could not give it to their offspring.

God ordained that the restoration of spiritual life to humanity must also occur by a man and a woman. The Man is Jesus Christ, and the woman is the Virgin Mary.

The Immaculate Conception

CCC 491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, "full of grace" through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:

The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.

CCC 492 The "splendor of an entirely unique holiness" by which Mary is "enriched from the first instant of her conception" comes wholly from Christ: she is "redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son."136 The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person "in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" and chose her "in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love.”

Full of Grace Luke 1: 28 And he came to her and said, "Hail, full of grace, * the Lord is with you!" * 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. 30* And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31* And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33* and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end." 34* And Mary said to the angel, "How shall this be, since I have no husband?" 35* And the angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born * will be called holy, the Son of God.

Full of Grace

CCC 2676 Full of grace, the Lord is with thee: These two phrases

of the angel‘s greeting shed light on one another. Mary is full of

grace because the Lord is with her. The grace with which she is

filled is the presence of him who is the source of all grace.

"Rejoice . . . O Daughter of Jerusalem . . . the Lord your God is in

your midst.” Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his

dwelling, is the daughter of Zion in person, the ark of the

covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. She is

"the dwelling of God . . . with men.” Full of grace, Mary is wholly

given over to him who has come to dwell in her and whom she is

about to give to the world.

Handmaid of the Lord

Luke 1:38 And Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her.

CCC 511 The Virgin Mary “cooperated through free faith and obedience in human salvation .” She uttered her yes “in the name of all human nature.” . . . By her obedience she became the new Eve, mother of the living.

Ever Virgin

CCC 510 Mary “remained a virgin in conceiving her Son, a virgin in giving birth to him, a virgin in carrying him, a virgin in nursing him at her breast, always a virgin” (St. Augustine, Serm. 186, 1: PL 38, 999): with her whole being she is “the handmaid of the Lord .”

Ever Virgin

• What about the “brothers” and “sisters” of Christ?

– Aramaic and other Semitic languages do not distinguish between a blood brother or sister and a cousin or other near relative.

– Second, the Greek word for brother (or sister), adelphos (adelpha) , denotes a brother or sister, or near kinsman.

Ever Virgin

• Luke 2: 6-7: While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. . .

– Greek prototokos

– Term "first-born" was a legal term under the Mosaic Law (Ex 6:14) referring to the first male child born to Jewish parents regardless of any other children following or not—the first to open the womb

Mother of God

• CCC 495 Called in the Gospels "the mother of Jesus," Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even more the birth of her son, as "the mother of my Lord.” In fact, the One whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Father's eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity. Hence the Church confesses that Mary is truly "Mother of God” (Theotokos).

Mother of God

• Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople (428-431), incited stated that Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ, a regular human person, period.

• This union of two persons—the human Christ and the divine Word—was “sublime and unique” but merely accidental.

• Nestorius asserted that the human Jesus died on the cross, not the divine Jesus. As such, Mary is not “Mother of God,” but simply “Mother of Christ”—the human Jesus.

Mother of God • Council of Ephesus (AD 431) declared, “If anyone does

not confess that the Emmanuel is truly God and therefore that the holy Virgin is the Mother of God (Theotokos) (since she begot according to the flesh the Word of God made flesh), anathema sit.“”

• The Council officially recognized that Jesus is one person, with two natures—human and divine—united in a true union.

• Ephesus affirmed that our Blessed Mother can rightfully be called the Mother of God. Mary is not Mother of God, the Father, or Mother of God, the Holy Spirit; rather, she is Mother of God, the Son—Jesus Christ.

Queen of Heaven and Earth

“Jesus is King throughout all eternity by nature and by right of conquest: through Him, with Him, and subordinate to Him, Mary is Queen by grace, by divine relationship, by right of conquest, and by singular choice [of the Father]. And her kingdom is as vast as that of her Son and God, since nothing is excluded from her dominion.“ Pope Pius XII, in his Radio message to Fatima, Bendito seja, May 13, 1946, AAS 38. 266

Queen of Heaven and Earth

• A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. (Rev 12:1)

• Pope Pius XII proclaimed the feast of Mary’s Queenship: “Mary is God’s masterpiece, as the most wonderful of His creatures, as the brightest mirror of the divine perfections.”

Glorious Assumption

CCC 966 "Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death." The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son's Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians:

Mary’s Role in the Church

• Mediatrix of all Graces

• Coredemptrix with Christ

• Advocate for the People of God

• Mother of the Church

• Our Mother

Mediatrix of all Graces

• Our Lady brings Jesus to us and takes us to Jesus.

• Mary’s first action after the Incarnation is to visit St. Elizabeth—an act of mediation—bringing Jesus into the home to instill sanctifying grace into the soul of John the Baptist while in Elizabeth’s womb.

Mediatrix of all Graces • By her fiat, Mary became the channel of grace of

God’s salvation and holiness.

• “Mary's function as mother of men in no way obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power.” (Lumen gentium, n. 60)

• Mary carries out her maternal role in constant dependence on the mediation of Christ and from him receives all that his heart wishes to give mankind. (Pope John Paul II, October 1, 1998)

Coredemptrix with Christ

When the Church invokes Mary under the title, "Coredemptrix", she means that Mary uniquely participated in the redemption of the human family by Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour. At the Annunciation (cf.Lk.1:38) Mary freely cooperated in giving the Second Person of the Trinity his human body which is the very instrument of redemption, as Scripture tells us: "We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Heb.10:10).


And at the foot of the cross of our Saviour (Jn.19:26), Mary's intense sufferings, united with those of her Son, as Pope John Paul II tells us, were, "also a contribution to the Redemption of us all" (Salvifici Doloris, n.25). Because of this intimate sharing in the redemption accomplished by the Lord, the Mother of the Redeemer is uniquely and rightly referred to by Pope John Paul II and the Church as the "Coredemptrix."


• The Marian title Coredemptrix never places Mary on a level of equality with her Divine Son, Jesus Christ. Rather it refers to Mary's unique human participation which is completely secondary and subordinate to the redeeming role of Jesus, who alone is true God and true Man.

Advocate for the People of God

"When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, 'They have no wine.' And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.' His mother said to his servers, 'Do whatever he tells you" (Jn. 2:3-5).


• “Her advice was followed when the servants filled the jars to the brim. Mary addresses the same invitation to us. She urges us to enter this new period of history with the intention of carrying out whatever Christ said in the Gospel on the Father's behalf and now intimates to us through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.”

• “Our holiness consists in doing everything the Father tells us. And this is the value of Mary's life: the fulfillment of God's will.” – Pope John Paul II, General Audience of Wednesday, January, 12, 2000


Pope Pius VII, at the turn of the nineteenth century, teaches Mary's unique maternal role to be advocate to her Son in the order of intercession for humanity :

"...While the prayers of those in heaven have, it is true, some claim on God's watchful eye, Mary's prayers place their assurance in a mother's right. For that reason, when she approaches her divine Son's throne, as Advocate she begs, as Handmaid she prays, but as Mother she commands."


• Catholics do not worship Mary; worship is reserved for God alone.

• The Fourth Commandment is to Honor thy Father and Mother.

• The Hebrew word for “honor” also means to “glorify.”

• So Jesus glorified His mother. Our goal as Christians is to imitate Jesus.


• Not only do those in heaven pray with us, they also pray for us.

• In Revelation, John sees that "the twenty-four elders [the leaders of the people of God in heaven] fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints" (Rev. 5:8).


Because he is the only God-man, Jesus is the only Mediator between man and God (1 Tim. 2:5), but this in no way means we cannot or should not ask our fellow Christians to pray with us and for us (1 Tim. 2:1-4), including those Christians in heaven, who have already had their sanctification completed, for "[t]he prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects" (Jas. 5:16).


• Angels do the same thing: "[An] angel came and stood at the altar [in heaven] with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God" (Rev. 8:3-4).

Mother of the Church

CCC 973 By pronouncing her "fiat" at the Annunciation and giving her consent to the Incarnation, Mary was already collaborating with the whole work her Son was to accomplish. She is mother wherever he is Savior and head of the Mystical Body.


CCC 963 Since the Virgin Mary's role in the mystery of Christ and the Spirit has been treated, it is fitting now to consider her place in the mystery of the Church. "The Virgin Mary . . . is acknowledged, and honored as being truly the Mother of God and of the redeemer. . . . She is 'clearly the mother of the members of Christ' …since she has by her charity joined in bringing about the birth of believers in the Church, who are members of its head.” "Mary, Mother of Christ, Mother of the Church.“


”In this incomparable, mystery she became Mother of all men. She became in a special way Mother of the Church. The Church fixes its gaze upon her as its perfect Prototype, and learns close to her heart to" "treasure and reflect" on all things that through salvation history have; touched all men and that also become evident in the history of peoples, nations, generation's and continents.”

– John Paul II

Our Mother

John 19: 25* So the soldiers did this. But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26* When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son!" 27 Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

Our Mother

St. John—the disciple whom Jesus loved—is made a symbol for every disciple, for every Christian, and that as a result every Christian is to regard Mary as his mother. Since we are all members of Christ, and since Mary is Christ's mother, Mary is also our mother through Christ.

Marian Devotion

Luke 1:48 For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness; behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.

This prophecy has come true in the course of Christian history, and it is the basis of Marian devotion, for that is what we are doing when we honor and glorify Mary: we are calling her blessed on account of all the marvelous things God has done for her and all the glorious graces he has given her.

Marian Apparitions Our Lady of Guadalupe

On December 9, 1531 and Aztec Indian, Juan Diego, saw the Virgin Mary near Mexico City. She put her image on his cloak, a cloak still to be seen in the great shrine of Guadalupe. The fiber of the cloak should have disintegrated in about 30 years, but is still sound today. There are images in the eyes of the picture of several people, who probably were present when the image appeared. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the Patroness of the Unborn and also the Patron of the North American continent.

Marian Apparitions

• Our Lady of Lourdes • Our Lady appeared to Bernadette

Soubirous, a 14 year old peasant girl, in 1858 in Lourdes France. A spring appeared there which feeds the baths at the shrine today. Many miraculous healings are reported from bathing in the waters.

• Many miracles take place when the Blessed Sacrament passes in procession during the great pilgrimages. This fact testifies to the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist.

Marian Apparitions Our Lady of Fatima May 13, 1917! World War 1 is raging in Europe. The Mother of God appears to three poor children in Fatima, Portugal: Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. Though not fully realizing the impact of Mary’s visit, these three adhere to the request of Our Lady, allowing the Holy Spirit to change their lives. She asked for penance, the Rosary and Immaculate Heart devotion on first Saturdays. On May 13, 1981 Pope John Paul II is shot at close range. Although the bullet riddled his body no vital organs were damaged. The Holy Father had dedicated his priesthood to Our Lady of Fatima on his day of ordination. He stated later that Our Lady’s hand guided the bullet’s path. He visited Fatima after his recovery to give thanksgiving and presented the removed bullet which was placed in the crown of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima.

Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thine intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.

Documents

Mary, Our Blessed Mother - Joan of Arc...Mediatrix of all Graces •By her fiat, Mary became the channel of grace of God [s salvation and holiness. • ^Mary's function as mother of