Everything good that can and has been said about the Blessed Virgin Mary pales in comparison to the sound title Mother of God
3 min • Digitized on May 7, 2023
From A Defense of the Teachings of Mary, page 66
By St. John Henry Newman
Now I have said all I mean to say on what I have called the rudimental teaching of Antiquity about the Blessed Virgin; but after all I have not insisted on the highest view of her prerogatives, which the Fathers have taught us.
You, my dear Friend, who know so well the ancient controversies and Councils, may have been surprised why I should not have yet spoken of her as the Theotocos;—but I wished to show on how broad a basis her greatness rests, independent of that wonderful title; and again I have been loth to enlarge upon the force of a word, which is rather matter for devotional thought than for polemical dispute. However, I might as well not write on my subject at all, as altogether be silent upon it.
It is then an integral portion of the Faith fixed by Ecumenical Council, a portion of it which you hold as well as I, that the Blessed Virgin is Theotocos, Deipara, or Mother of God; and this word, when thus used, carries with it no admixture of rhetoric, no taint of extravagant affection,—it has nothing else but a well-weighed, grave, dogmatic sense, which corresponds and is adequate to its sound. It intends to express that God is her Son, as truly as any one of us is the son of his own mother.
If this be so, what can be said of any creature whatever, which may not be said of her? what can be said too much, so that it does not compromise the attributes of the Creator? He indeed might have created a being more perfect, more admirable, than she is; He might have endued that being, so created, with a richer grant of grace, of power, of blessedness: but in one respect she surpasses all even possible creations, viz. that she is Mother of her Creator.
It is this awful title, which both illustrates and connects together the two prerogatives of Mary, on which I have been lately enlarging, her sanctity and her greatness. It is the issue of her sanctity; it is the source of her greatness. What dignity can be too great to attribute to her who is as closely bound up, as intimately one, with the Eternal Word, as a mother is with a son?
What outfit of sanctity, what fulness and redundance of grace, what exuberance of merits must have been hers, on the supposition, which the Fathers justify, that her Maker regarded them at all, and took them into account, when he condescended “not to abhor the Virgin’s womb?” Is it surprisng then that on the one hand she should be immaculate in her conception? or on the other that she should be exalted as a queen with a crown of twelve stars?
Men sometimes wonder that we call her Mother of life, of mercy, of salvation; what are all these titles compared to that one name, Mother of God?
I shall say no more about this title here. It is scarcely possible to write of it without diverging into a style of composition unsuited to a Letter; so I proceed to the history of its use.