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October 2003

Feast of the Divine Maternity

“Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and His name shall be called Emmanuel” (lsaias 7:14). “And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost, and cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb! And how have I deserved that the mother of my Lord should come to me?’” (Luke 1:42)

From the Breviary for October 11
From the Decree of Pope Pius XI

In the year 1931, amid the applause of the whole Catholic world, solemn rites were celebrated to mark the completion of the fifteen centuries which had elapsed since the Council of Ephesus, moving against the Nestorian heresy, had acclaimed the Blessed Virgin Mary, of whom Jesus was born, as Mother of God. This acclamation had been made by the Fathers of the Church under the leadership of Pope Celestine. Pius XI, as Supreme Pontiff wished to commemorate the notable event and to give lasting proof of his devotion to Mary Now there had existed for many years in Rome a grand memorial to the proclamation of Ephesus -- the triumphal arch in the basilica of Saint Mary Major on the Esquiline Hill. This monument had already been adorned by a previous Pontiff, Sixtus III, with mosaics of marvelous workmanship, now falling to pieces from the decay of the passing ages. Pius XI, therefore, out of his own munificence, caused these to be restored most exquisitelv and with them the transept of the basilica. In an Encyclical Letter, Pius set forth also the true history of the Council of Ephesus and expounded fervently and at great length the doctrine of the prerogatives of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Mother of God. He did this that the doctrine of this lofty mystery might sink more deeply into the hearts of the faithful. In it he set forth Mary, the Mother of God, blessed among women, and the most holy Family of Nazareth as the exemplars to be followed above all others, as models of the dignity and holiness of chaste wedlock, as patterns of the holy education to be given youth. Finally, that no liturgical detail be lacking, he decreed that the feast of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary be celebrated annually on the eleventh of October by the universal Church with a proper Mass and Office under the rite of a double of the second class.

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From Mary in the Documents of the Church
by Fr. Paul Palmer, SJ., S.T.D.

Nestorianism. The Council of Ephesus, 431 A.D.

Nestorius became Patriarch of Constantinople in 428... [His] heterodoxy was unmasked when one of his priests openly preached that Mary was not the Mother of God but merely the mother of the man Christ. Accordingly, Mary may be called Christotokos (Christbearer) but not Theotokos (God-bearer or Mother of God).

The most vigorous opponent of Nestorius was St. Cyril of Alexandria. Cyril’s second letter to Nestorius (430), in which he defends the propriety of referring to the holy Virgin as Theotokos, was read and approved at the Council of Ephesus (the third ecumenical council, 431). . . . An excerpt from Cyril’s letter and the first of his twelve anathemas are given below.

“Nor do we say that the nature of the Word became flesh by undergoing change, nor that it was transformed into an entire man of soul and body: rather do we say that the Word, in a manner indescribable and incomprehensible, personally (hypostatically) united to Himself flesh animated by a rational soul, and thus became Man and was called the Son of Man...

“Nor was He first born of the holy Virgin as an ordinary man, in such a way that the Word only afterwards descended upon Him; rather was He united [with flesh] in the womb itself, and thus is said to have undergone birth according to the flesh, inasmuch as He makes His own the birth of His own flesh. . . . For this reason [the Holy Fathers] have boldly proclaimed the holy Virgin Theotokos” — Second Letter to Nestorius (DB111a).

(The suffix tokos, from the verb tikto means more than “bearer.” It includes the whole process of motherhood, conception, generation and birth. Hence Theotokos is best translated “Mother of God.”)

Anathema 1. If anyone does not confess that Emmanuel is in truth God, and that the holy Virgin is, in consequence, Theotokos (Mother of God), since she brought forth according to the flesh the Word of God who has become flesh, let him be anathema. — Appended the Fourth Letter to Nestorius (DB, 112)

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