Born Again to Mary, the Holy Theotokos
In which Teófilo explains how his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary also took off in 1979.
Mary the Dawn, Christ the Perfect Day;
Mary the Gate, Christ the Heav'nly Way!
Mary the Root, Christ the Mystic Vine;
Mary the Grape, Christ the Sacred Wine!
Mary the Wheat-sheaf, Christ the Living Bread;
Mary the Rose-Tree, Christ the Rose Blood-red!
Mary the Font, Christ the Cleansing Flood;
Mary the Chalice, Christ the Saving Blood!
Mary the Temple, Christ the Temple's Lord;
Mary the Shrine, Christ the God adored!
Mary the Beacon, Christ the Haven's Rest;
Mary the Mirror, Christ the Vision Blest!
Mary the Mother, Christ the Mother's Son.
Both ever blest while endless ages run.
Amen.
~ Medieval English Hymn
I know that this entry’s title will be grating to those readers who aren’t Catholic or Orthodox Christians. Even some Catholic Christians who may be sympathetic to the Protestant deemphasis of Mary, the Mother of Jesus who is also God Incarnate, may find this essay’s title discomfiting. I understand, but I won’t retract it. Let me explain why.
I stand with the Catholic Church in knowing that our devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship (CCC 971). The elevated veneration we give to our Lady is no mere liturgical adornment or afterthought. The truth as we hold it is that one can’t worship as a Catholic Christian and not venerate Mary, the Mother of God. Try as you may to erase Mary from the Church’s self-understanding and liturgy, you’ll only succeed by ceasing to be a Catholic Christian by cancelling her out from our faith. Let me explain what I mean.
Mary as Theotokos and Dei Genitrix
Without being exhaustive, let’s explore the scriptural foundations of Mary’s titles or “dignities.”. In the Bible we find Mother of My Lord (Luke 1:43b) and Mother of Jesus (John 2:1, 2:3: Acts 1:14). Knowing also that Jesus is God, coeternal with the Father (John 1:1) who became flesh, that is human (John 1:14), the Church extended the title Mother of God to Mary following the Scriptural logic. This teaching is known as Mary’s Divine Maternity. The first extra-scriptural title denoting this teaching was Theotokos, a Greek term meaning God-bearer. The closest Latin term was Dei Genitrix which means, literally, Mother of God.
Nestorius, an Archbishop of Constantinople, Christendom’s second most important see after Rome, was the first one who denied Mary was Theotokos in the fifth century A.D. He taught that too call Mary Theotokos was blasphemous as it implied that God had a mother. Nestorius proposed Mary be called Christotokos instead: “Mother of Christ” since she was only the mother of Christ’s human nature.
As it often happens with heretics, Nestorius observation was correct, but his solution faltered. Orthodox bishops pointed out to Nestorius that his solution divided Christ into two persons: one was the Logos or Word, and the other the man Jesus called Christ. Nestorius owned up to the solution. The Nestorian response was to insist that the Eternal Word inhabited this man Christ in a spiritual form, and that the Word and the Man Jesus acted as a single agent by some sort of spiritual-mental-moral agreement.
To accept this line of reasoning meant a change in the contents of the Catholic faith. We can no longer say God died for our sins, but only that the man Christ died for our sins. Christ was a perfect man, no doubt, but he was not God in the fullest sense of the word according to Nestorius. Christ’s humanity was only a kind of veil or costume the Word assumed to save us. Yet, the Church Fathers knew that no matter how perfect a man can be, his death will never be enough to atone for the fullness of human evil before God.
In other words, if Nestorius has had his way, the Christian teaching of freedom from sin and its eternal consequences go by the wayside. Human goodness would have to suffice to attain salvation but only by means of extreme asceticism. In essence, most of us would remain in our sins, and a small elite would think of themselves as being holy and superior to everyone else.
Not good enough.
The Church’s bishops met in council at the old Roman city of Ephesus, to review her faith and forge a doctrinal solution. After their review took place, the bishops declared Nestorius a heretic, and taught in turn that in Jesus of Nazareth there was only one person with two natures - one divine, one human - joined in Him. Christ wasn’t a divided freak, half God and half man, but one single person, fully God and fully human.
So, though it’s true that Mary can’t be the Mother of Christ’s divine nature, the Council of Ephesus taught it was still appropriate to call her Theotokos, because women are the mothers of persons, not of natures. Mary was, and still is, the Mother of a Man who happened to be God.
Every privilege the Church recognizes in Mary of Nazareth derives from the fact of her unique and exclusive motherhood of the Word made flesh. The Word took of her flesh, of her very genes, to form the human nature from which the person of Jesus Christ would emerge. Mary was the Mother of the Lord as the Bible says, in all His essential personal attributes. She was the Mother of a unified person, not of a good, but schizophrenic Jewish man. This means God made of Mary very special person for her to transmit to her Son her own humanity. Mary’s wasn’t a womb God borrowed to incubate His Son; Mary was a true mother to her Son in all the senses that matter.
Schoenstatt and Me
Fast forward 21 centuries from the Incarnation of the Word in Mary. Since then, the Church has bestowed upon her numerous titles and recognitions. Many of these titles grew from grassroots movements the Church later recognized as authentic expressions of Catholic faith and liturgical Marian veneration.
That’s where I found myself in 1979. At that time, following my “charismatic experience,” I was seeking a context or venue where I could practice a more robust Marian piety compared with the piety I was used to. It’s not that this common piety was wrong. It’s just that I asked myself: if Mary if so important, what does she have to teach me other than daily Rosary praying. Again, that’s not wrong either - my Mercie and I now pray the Rosary every day, together. We have received tremendous graces from it. Yet, I wanted to experience Mary as a Mother to me, as my connection to my own earthly mother began waning. I was losing my Mom but gaining another one who had been close to me from the beginning of my life of faith.
It happened that my friend Z was also a militant member of the Schoenstatt Apostolic Movement. Schoenstatt is a Catholic Marian movement founded in Germany in 1914 by Fr Joseph Kentenich. He saw the movement as a renewal means for the Catholic Church. The movement is named after the town of Schönstatt (meaning, "beautiful place") itself part of the town of Vallendar near Koblenz, in Germany. In 1979 Schoenstatt had a single shrine in Puerto Rico, located in Cabo Rojo, where the movement was centered.
I had visited the Shrine previously during the 8th-grade class trip. I found the location beautiful and the Shrine inspiring. However, I didn’t know anything about the Movement until Z explained to me what it was. My friend Z had been a member of the Movement since its beginnings in Puerto Rico in the early 1970’s. We would go there every Thursday and one Sunday a month for several months, in pilgrimage. This was also the time when Fr. Esters began directing me.
It was in Schoenstatt where I found the robust Marian piety I was looking for. What was I looking for? A way to have a personal relationship with the resurrected and ascended Mother of my Lord. And I got it!
It would take me a few more years to profess my Covenant of Love with Our Lady, but in 1979-80, I was hooked. Without a doubt, introducing me to Schoenstatt has been Z’s longest lasting legacy in my own life, for which I’ll be thankful to her for all eternity. Thanks to Z, I was “born again” for Mary, the Holy Theotokos, God-bearer, Mother of God and Mother of every Christian.
I then became a strange specimen indeed: a charismatic Schoenstatter. At the time many found the practice of both spiritualities a difficult endeavor. Charismatic Catholics saw members of Schoenstatt as too “hyper” in their hyperdulia to Our Lady, and therefore, on the verge of idolatry. From their viewpoint, Schoenstatt Catholics looked upon their charismatic brethren as in danger of proximate Pentecostalist heresy, if not outright in it. Both misgivings are founded upon misapprehensions and misperceptions from people who are otherwise members of the same Catholic Church and brethren in the love of Jesus and Mary. The Corinthian temptation toward partisanship and division was, and remains, alive and well in our Church.
Things that were for others causes for mistrust and rejection became fused within my heart. This fusion in my heart of my charismatic experience and my love for Our Lady was to be the first of many such fusions. Later I would get to fuse my inclinations for military service and Franciscan peace and my love for the Christian East and Latin West. But for that moment, my charismatic and Schoenstatt Marian spiritualities completed my adult faith foundations. My spiritual connection to these “power lines” strengthened me for the road ahead, as we will see.