Is it legitimate to call Mary the “Mother of God”? Some Christians reject the title, saying it implies that God himself somehow has his origin in Mary. How could the Creator of all things, who depends on no one else for his existence, possibly have a “mother”?

To understand why Christians have called Our Lady by this title since ancient times, we need to take a look at the controversy that arose when prayers addressed to her in this way first became popular 16 centuries ago.

From the very beginning of the church, at the heart of the faith she has proclaimed lies the insistence that her founder, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, is both God and Man. Jesus claimed for himself the very name of God revealed to Moses, “I AM” (Jn 8:58), and he assumed divine prerogatives such as the forgiveness of sin (see Lk 5:18-26).

The apostles testified to this reality. St. Thomas, for example, having known Jesus in his humanity, affirmed his divinity as well when he said to him after his resurrection, “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28).

St. John wrote in his Gospel that Jesus was “the Word” who “became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” and that this “Word was God” (Jn 1:1, 14). St. Paul taught that in Christ “dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily” (Col 2:9).

When early Christians pondered these and other declarations of the apostolic witness, they wondered: How exactly was Christ both human and divine?

Was he, as some claimed, simply God and only appeared to be human? Was he, as others speculated, a human to whom God attached himself in a special way, dwelling inside him? Or was he, as still others imagined, a kind of hybrid, partly human and partly divine?

Ultimately, in the light of Scripture and tradition, and led by the Holy Spirit, the church concluded that none of the above answers is correct. The Council of Ephesus, an ecumenical Church council held in the year 431, resolved the issue.
That council was provoked by a controversy over one particular question: Can we legitimately call Mary “the Mother of God”?

One prominent archbishop, named Nestorius, began to preach against the use of the Marian title “Theotokos,” which literally means “God-bearer,” or “the one who bore God.” Christ was two persons, he claimed — one human, one divine — joined together. Though Mary was the bearer (or mother) of the human person in Christ, she was not the mother of the divine person (God the Son). So she could not rightly be called the “Mother of God.”

After examining this teaching, the church pronounced Nestorius mistaken. Christ was not a combination of two persons, one human and one divine. That would be close to saying that he was simply a man to whom God was joined in a uniquely intimate way — a man specially indwelled by God, like one of the Old Testament prophets.

Instead, the church declared, Christ is only one divine Person — the second person of the Trinity. This single Person took our human nature and joined it to his own divine nature, so that he possesses two natures (see Jn 1:1-3, 14).

But those natures don’t constitute two different persons. Christ is not a committee. The two natures belong to one and the same Person, the divine Son of God. And those two natures, though not to be confused, cannot be separated.

In this light, the church concluded not only that it is correct to call Mary the Mother of God, but that it is important to do so. Mary conceived and bore in her womb the one Person, Jesus Christ, who is God in the flesh. If we deny that she is the Mother of God, then we are denying that her Son, Christ, is God, come down from heaven.

For this reason, Catholics today follow the ancients in calling Mary Theotokos, “the God-bearer,” the Mother of God. The apostolic witness is clear: As St. Paul put it succinctly, “God sent his son, born of a woman” (Gal 4:4).

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Paul Thigpen, Ph.D., is an award-winning journalist and the best-selling author of sixty books and more than five hundred journal and magazine articles in more than forty religious and secular periodicals.

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By Father Patrick Briscoe | OSV

Of all the things and people to be present at the birth of Jesus Christ, there were shepherds! I would probably have been more surprised if there were not shepherds. After all, David was a shepherd boy from Bethlehem. David taught us to pray, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Ps 23:1). And Christ fulfills David.

Imagine the life of a shepherd, his days spent under the vast expanse of open sky, hills and valleys stretching out before him. St. Patrick, a shepherd himself, was no stranger to this way of life. And then, on that glorious night, the angel of the Lord announced the good news of Christ’s birth to shepherds in the fields around Bethlehem. Patrick, too, found God while pasturing sheep.

• Shepherding the shepherds

The shepherd of shepherds will lead the way through unknown paths of life. He sent his angel to lead shepherds to him. And find him they did. But regardless of what comes, each step can be taken with the assurance that the Incarnate Lord walks alongside them. In solitary pastures and on stormy nights, every shepherd will pray, “Christ with me.“

The shepherds of Bethlehem, who lived as one with their flock, discovered on Christmas night a shepherd who lives as one with them. Their lives entwined with their sheep, they find a savior whose life will be inseparable from theirs. “Christ before me,” the shepherd humbly prays, kneeling before the infant king’s crib.

Christ is there when the shepherd rises in the crisp morning air, when he sleeps beneath the starry canopy, when he breaks bread at the end of a weary day’s toil. In all these moments, “Christ behind me, Christ within me” becomes a whispered assurance that the incarnate God is there — in waking and sleeping, in moments of rest and labor. “Christ beneath me, Christ above me …”

The shepherd’s life mirrors the encompassing nature of the Incarnation. Christ isn’t a distant figure but an ever-present companion, woven into every aspect of the shepherd’s life. “Christ on my right, Christ on my left …”

• Invited to set out in our hearts

This discovery of the presence of Christ is not hypothetical. Luke’s Gospel tells us, “They made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds” (Lk 2:17-18). And just as God called the shepherds, he calls us. “Exactly the same sign has been given to us,” says Pope Benedict XVI. “We too are invited by the angel of God, through the message of the Gospel, to set out in our hearts to see the child lying in the manger.”

Weakness and sin and all, he calls us. Like a shepherd, he calls us. He calls us to come to him, to see the babe among the animals and know that he is near. “Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down …”

The mystery of Christmas is the mystery of discovering Christ among us and carrying him with us from this day on. Never do we have to be alone. Never do we have to fear. Never do we have to agonize about the way we should go. Love has come and love will lead us. “Christ when I arise …”

And, please God, may others see his love in me. “Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me …”

This Christmas, I’m praying the Breastplate of St. Patrick at the manger. And I hope you will too. Together we can think of the shepherds, and in so doing, may we find again the Good Shepherd, who first revealed his love in the manger.
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Father Patrick Briscoe, O.P., is a Dominican friar and the editor of Our Sunday Visitor.

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The liturgical calendar is omnipresent in Catholic life. Many parish bulletins list the liturgical days of the week and corresponding Scripture readings. In December, tables in the narthex may be piled high with free calendars that identify the principal feasts of the church year (along with civic holidays). And, of course, each holy day of obligation we are reminded that Catholic worship is not simply a matter of showing up on Sundays; there is a larger pattern of feasts and fasts of which Sunday worship is only part.

But to say that the liturgical calendar is omnipresent is not to say that we always notice it. We often look past objects, such as street lights or telephone poles, precisely because they are pervasive. It is easy to treat the liturgical calendar merely as part of Catholicism’s décor, the ornamental mantle clock with Roman numerals that looks nice but which no one really uses to tell time.

Many holy men and women through the ages, however, have set their internal clock to the liturgical calendar and have found their lives reshaped in the process — for the purpose of the liturgical calendar is to orient our days around the person of Jesus. This process begins with Sunday worship, which is the cornerstone of the whole liturgical calendar. We celebrate Mass each Sunday — rather than on the Jewish Saturday — in recognition that when Jesus resurrected on Easter Sunday he began the renewal of the whole world and the universe was fundamentally changed.

But, while the Resurrection is the central Christian event, every moment of the life of Jesus is a revelation of the nature and character of God. For this reason, we need not merely Sunday worship but the entire Christian year. The church year is structured around the life of Jesus. It pursues him from the first signs of his coming in Advent to his birth at Christmas, to his trials in Lent and death on Good Friday, to the wonders of his Easter resurrection and ascension, and finally catches an apocalyptic vision of him enthroned as King in glory. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, “The Church, ‘in the course of the year … unfolds the whole mystery of Christ'” (No. 1194). The church leaves nothing out and skips no days; she asks us to meditate on Jesus at all times and in all circumstances.

The church’s desire to see Jesus in all things, and all things in light of Jesus, also influences the scriptural readings chosen for use throughout the liturgical year. Since Jesus is God’s ultimate self-revelation to humanity, the entire human attempt to know God — the complete story of religion and all of salvation history — also culminates in him (see Catechism, No. 102). Inspired by this insight, the Apostolic Fathers in the early days of the church developed the reading method known as typology.

Typology treats events and images recorded in the Old Testament (the type) as prefiguring the life of Christ and the church (the antitype). The fullness of God’s revelation as expressed in Christ exposes patterns and symbols in his earlier dealings with humanity that we might otherwise miss. To give just two famous examples: Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, who nonetheless does not die, is a type of Christ’s divine sacrifice and resurrection; Noah’s ark, the vessel in which humanity is saved from physical destruction, is a type of the church, the vessel in which humanity is saved from spiritual destruction.

The church assigns appropriate scriptural readings — generally an Old Testament passage, a responsorial psalm, a portion of an epistle and a Gospel story — for each day of the year. The Old Testament reading and the responsorial psalm are often chosen because of their typological relationship to the Gospel reading. While the basic pattern of our liturgical observances remains constant each year, our cycle of readings for these observances varies. We follow a two-year cycle for daily Mass and a three-year (A, B, C) cycle for Sundays, primarily so that we might encounter Scripture as fully as possible. The church uses the liturgical calendar to teach us to see “Christ in all the Scriptures.”

Since I have already referenced it, the feast of Christ the King, the final Sunday of the liturgical year, may serve as a convenient example of this dynamic. The first reading for Christ the King in Year A is 2 Samuel 5:1-3; here the Israelites collectively accept David as their king. In the corresponding Gospel reading, Luke 23:35-43, the good thief on the cross accepts Jesus, the Son of David, as his king, and becomes in death the first person to pass into the heavenly kingdom. David’s divinely ordained but temporal kingship is a type of Christ’s permanent spiritual kingship.

The liturgical calendar’s frequent memorials of saints teach us another method of viewing all experience in light of Christ. The saints are a diverse bunch; they include men and women of nearly every race, region, occupation, economic status and psychological temperament. In the roster of the saints, we find a template of the many different ways in which salvation may be worked out, the varied human images that may comprise a reflection of the one Christ, the disparate forms his kingdom may take on earth. By commemorating these saints in the liturgical calendar, the church presents us with the entire picture of human sanctity, and asks us to evaluate our life’s challenges and the people around us accordingly.

The liturgical calendar, then, possesses the potential to transform the way we see the world. If we were truly sensitive to its patterns, we would view our own lives, other people, the Bible, human history and the passage of time itself differently. And the decisions we would make while seeing the world in this very different light would change us into different people.

The church understands human nature. Human beings naturally make sense of the world by telling themselves stories. We also structure the smaller stories of our personal lives in terms of the wider and more all-encompassing tales we know.

By superimposing Scripture over the days of our lives, the liturgical calendar trains us to understand our experience in terms of Christ. We neglect this training to our own detriment. If we allow the liturgical calendar to fade into the background, lost as a mere ornament, we will still imagine our lives as a reflection of a larger story, but it will be a vastly impoverished story.

In her work “The Pantheon Papers,” the novelist and Christian humanist Dorothy Sayers vividly depicted this truth. Sayers constructed a satirical liturgical calendar for modern materialism. This new calendar exposes the secular values that too often structure our lives and our days. Here the season of Advent is replaced with the season of advertisement; Christmas is replaced with “the Birth of Science”; the feast of Easter with the feast of the Enlightenment; All Hallows with All Hollows.

In the absence of the liturgical calendar, we will structure our lives around whatever shouts at us most loudly and whatever is most materially tangible, and our lives will be correspondingly hollowed. In the liturgical calendar the church offers us an important tool for spiritual enrichment and renewal.

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SIDEBAR: Tips for tuning in to the Christian year
• Prepare for Mass each Sunday by taking a look at the readings ahead of time. Perhaps pray with them using lectio divina.
• If unable to attend daily Mass, perhaps download an app or find the daily readings listed in your parish bulletin. Follow along with the church’s daily narrative of salvation history and allow it to transform your worldview.
• Each week, choose a saint whose feast is celebrated about whom you’ll learn something useful in your own path to holiness.
• Decorate your home liturgically. Perhaps use a table cloth with the seasonal color, or print out pictures of different saints to display near their feasts in a special place in your home.
• Research the variety of cultural expressions of seasons and feasts, including unique foods, traditions and music.

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Chene Heady, Ph.D., is associate professor of English at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, and author of “Numbering My Days: How the Liturgical Calendar Rearranged My Life” (Ignatius Press).

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Feature photo: “Bruges Public Library Manuscript 8 – Psalter with liturgical Calendar – Ghent, 13th century – From Ten Duinen Abbey” by Bruges Public Library is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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By Jenna Marie Cooper | OSV News

Q: Since Christmas is on Monday this year, can I go to a Christmas Vigil Mass on Sunday and have it fulfill my Sunday and Christmas obligations? (Boston, MA)

A: As you note, in 2023 Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday. And like all Sundays, Catholics are required to attend Mass in person, unless there is some legitimate reason (like illness or inclement weather) which makes attending Mass unduly difficult or impossible.

Of course the following Monday, Dec. 25, is Christmas Day, which is also a holy day of obligation. Because there are two days of obligation — Sunday and Christmas — this means that there are two distinct obligations to speak of. Each separate obligation needs to be fulfilled by attending a separate Mass. That is, you cannot “double dip” by attending a Christmas Eve Mass that happens to be on Sunday and have this one Mass fulfill two obligations. (In years when Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, Christmas essentially replaces the Sunday liturgically, which means there is only one obligation.)

Now for the part that can get confusing: Even though you must attend two Masses to fulfill the two obligations, all this means is that you must go to Mass on that calendar day or attend a vigil Mass the evening before. The readings and prayers do not necessarily need to match the day whose obligation you are fulfilling. So, you could go to a Christmas Vigil Mass on Sunday, Dec. 24 and have it count as your Sunday obligation this year; but if you intend for this to fulfill your Sunday obligation, then you must also attend another Mass on Christmas Day to fulfill your obligation for the holy day.

Of course, if you were to attend a vigil Mass on Saturday for Sunday, and then the Christmas vigil Mass on Sunday (Christmas Eve) for Christmas day, then you’ve got it all covered.

Q: I am a member of our Altar Society and was told we are not to use artificial flowers/plants to decorate the altar. Yet, during the Christmas season artificial trees with elaborate shopping mall decorations are displayed on the altar. Please explain the rationale and guidelines. There seems to be a contradiction. (City withheld, Hawaii)

A: As far as I can find, there is nothing in the church’s universal law which strictly prohibits using artificial plants or flowers as sanctuary decorations.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (i.e., the “instruction book” for how Mass should be celebrated) does not discuss silk versus natural flowers, but in paragraph 305 it does specify that: “During Advent the floral decoration of the altar should be marked by a moderation suited to the character of this time of year,” and that “During Lent it is forbidden for the altar to be decorated with flowers. Exceptions, however, are Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday of Lent), Solemnities, and Feasts.”

However, in 2000 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued their own document with guidelines on the proper celebration of the liturgy titled “Built of Living Stones.” In this document, paragraph 129 states a clear preference for decorating with natural, as opposed to artificial, plants, noting: “The use of living flowers and plants, rather than artificial greens, serves as a reminder of the gift of life God has given to the human community. Planning for plants and flowers should include not only the procurement and placement but also the continuing care needed to sustain living things.”

Granted, this is a stated preference and not an absolute prohibition. But it could be that your specific parish or diocese has a policy of using only natural plants.

But even in places where natural plants are strongly preferred, practically speaking I imagine that Christmas trees, wreaths and other evergreen garlands are one case where it might be reasonable to make an exception and use artificial greenery. As anyone who has ever had a real Christmas tree in their home knows, the regular shedding of dead pine needles can create quite the on-going clean-up project, which might become overly burdensome to Altar Societies or those charged with care of the sanctuary.
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Jenna Marie Cooper, who holds a licentiate in canon law, is a consecrated virgin and a canonist whose column appears weekly at OSV News. Send your questions to CatholicQA@osv.com.

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Anyone who says evening prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours regularly recites the Magnificat from the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke. Named for its first word in Latin, this canticle is one of only four places in the Gospels where the Blessed Virgin’s words are recorded. And the Magnificat contains more words than the other three passages combined. The rarity and brevity of Mary’s words, however, should not diminish their importance. Indeed, the Magnificat is among the most theologically powerful speeches in the entirety of the New Testament. Given its place in the narrative of the birth of Our Lord, the commencement of Advent is the perfect time for meditating on Our Lady’s words.

A newly pregnant Mary travels to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist. When Mary greets Elizabeth, John leaps in his mother’s womb, prompting Elizabeth’s own contribution to the Christian liturgical tradition. “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” exclaims Mary’s cousin (Lk 1:42). “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled” (Lk 1:45). This elicits Mary’s response, that begins, “Magnificat anima mea Dominum“: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness; behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.”

• Echoing the prophet Isaiah

Mary’s pregnancy represents our own liturgical experience in the season of Advent. The Lord has arrived in her womb, yet she awaits the fulfillment of his appearance. So, too, we live under the lordship of Christ, while we wait in hopeful expectation of his return. And John the Baptist, who will become the voice from the desert proclaiming the coming of the savior, has already made his presence felt to Elizabeth. The incarnational details of the scene draw our minds to the God who became flesh so that we may become like God.

Echoing the hopeful words of the prophet Isaiah, the Magnificat could be called a primer on the church’s doctrine of solidarity. Here, at the commencement of the Blessed Virgin’s mysterious and wonderful gestation of Our Lord, she proclaims that this birth will upset the order of things. God calls lowly Mary as the exemplar of humility and selfless service. And in that humble submission, her soul is exalted. The last has been made first. Considering all these things, the Magnificat may be the perfect Advent prayer.

“A voice proclaims: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord!,” exclaims the prophet Isaiah. “Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God” (Is 40:3). From the disorder of wilderness will come the order of restoration. “Every valley shall be lifted up,” the prophet continues, “every mountain and hill made low.” The rugged and rough shall be made smooth and plain. And having made all things level, the Lord “like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, leading the ewes with care” (Is 40:11).

Isaiah’s prophecy of God’s mercy echoes through from age to age until it finds its renewed articulation in Mary’s canticle, in which the Lord “has helped Israel his servant, remembering his mercy” (LK 1:54). God “has … lifted up the lowly,” Our Lady proclaims (Lk 1:52). “The hungry he has filled with good things” (Lk 1:53). Like Isaiah, Mary’s prophetic voice puts the poor and hungry in the center of theological consideration. To those whom mercy has been denied, mercy now has come.

• A song for a fallen world

Some commentators have suggested that the Magnificat may be a traditional early Christian hymn, put in the mouth of Mary as a kind of early creedal confession. Part of the explanation for this theory is that the hymn makes no direct reference to Mary’s pregnancy, or the expectation of the coming of the savior. The broader message, these scholars contend, makes it more likely that the hymn came later, and was retroactively put into the mouth of Our Lady.

While the theory has some merit, I believe that it misses the overall messianic tone of the canticle. The song is not simply about Our Lady’s pregnancy, but rather about what that pregnancy means to a fallen world. Just as the birth of Christ is about much more than a baby in a feeding trough, so the Magnificat accounts for the expansive — indeed, eternal — message of the Incarnation. A lowly birth to a lowly woman ushers in the magnificent fulfillment of God’s offer and promise of salvation. This puts the Magnificat squarely in the context of the Incarnation, which has commenced in Mary’s womb.
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Kenneth Craycraft is an associate professor of moral theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and School of Theology in Cincinnati.

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By Effie Caldarola | OSV News

Christina Rosetti’s poem, In the Bleak Midwinter, is a Christmas classic.

“In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. . .”

As Advent begins and the first wintry weather sets in, those words come to mind. As I write, today is such a day — gusty wind, hard rain, fluid and not yet frozen like a stone, but cold and bleak nonetheless.

In the darkest nights of our year, and in the dark nights of our world’s present turmoil, it seems so wonderful, yet challenging, that hope appears in the guise of a baby born to the poor.

When we saw the news reports of tiny premature babies huddling together in bombed-out hospitals in Gaza, it seemed the baby Jesus lay there among them. And when some “preemies” were evacuated to medical care in Egypt, how can we not remember the little refugee who fled into Egypt with Mary and Joseph?

So much suffering in this world right now, so much sorrow. So many bad, despotic governments, so many refugees, so much climate catastrophe, so much divisiveness, so much terror, so much war.

Rosetti’s poem asks us, “What can I give him/poor as I am …” and ends by saying, “Give him my heart.”

And in the midst of brokenness, we bring a heart made joyful by his presence, despite this weary world. It’s up to us to decide how we might give our heart during Advent. We may need a plan.

A small daily journal might help. Keep it short and simple. A prayer offering each morning, a little commitment: I will do this one thing today to simplify my lifestyle to honor our Earth, and one thing today to bring joy to another.

Maybe it’s the season you put canvas bags in your car and begin the habit of using them instead of those disposable plastic bags. Maybe find the phone number of an old friend or an elderly relative and surprise them with a call.

Share Christmas cookies with a lonely neighbor. Give yourself a bonus point for letting your kids help. Start a bag and place one item cluttering your home into it each day. Bonus points for giving away something someone else can really use.

Write your pastor a note telling him what he’s done or said to inspire you this year. Find people to thank. Find people to gently and courteously nudge, perhaps toward more environmental activity — your congressman, perhaps, or even your bishop. Add some thanks.

Sit down for a quick coffee with a friend. Give yourself a bonus point if you’re at a coffee shop and you’ve brought your reusable coffee cup.

Add joy by not sniping at your spouse when you’re exasperated. Bonus point for giving him or her a hug instead.

Make Advent loving and fun, with your focus on Jesus. Write all those little accomplishments in your journal. Keep it meaningful. We’re all really busy right now, right? So go easy on yourself in these hard times. Remember that Christmas is all about joy, gratitude — and Jesus.

Pope Benedict XVI, writing in the first volume of his trilogy, “Jesus of Nazareth,” addressed the great question that the book would ask: “What did Jesus actually bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity and a better world? What has he brought? The answer is very simple: God. He has brought God.”

And always remember: God alone is enough.

“We are all meant to be mothers of God,” wrote the theologian Meister Eckhart, “for God is always needing to be born.”

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Effie Caldarola is a wife, mom and grandmother who received her master’s degree in pastoral ministry from Seattle University.

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