Mary, the mother of God

What Our Lady is telling us, in Latin Madonna. Mother of Good Counsel. Mother Help of Christians. Our Lady of Grace. There are hundreds of titles of Mary born from the earliest times from the hearts of believers who loved and venerated her in a special way. In prayer they experienced what Mary is, for those who turn to her: a Mother who listens, who suggests the way, who helps to untie the knots of life, who leads those who believe by the hand. to live and breathe Christ.
But every title of Mary implies the first fundamental theological title that was given to her at the Council of Ephesus in 431: Mother of God. John's house, a relentless fight was fought between bishops. For Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, Mary was Christokòs, mother of Christ, true man and God for a special divine adoption. For Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, Mary was Theotokòs, mother of God, mother of the divine Person who assumes human nature, the two natures perfectly united, distinct and not confused: Jesus Christ, God as the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Apparently the debate was on Mary, in reality it was on the relationship between humanity and the divinity of Jesus, still a hot topic after more than 100 years from the Council of Nicea and 50 from the Council of Constantinople, the where Jesus Christ true God and true man had been defined and confirmed. From the Council of Ephesus Nestorius was defeated and his doctrine condemned with this formula: "If anyone does not confess that Emmanuel is God in the true sense of the Word and that therefore the holy virgin is the Mother of God, because she generated the Word of God who is from God, be anathema ».

The incarnation is not an avatar. God took our body, a body that can die. Jesus is not a man: he is God in the body and with his death Christ conquered death. Mary's free Yes to God made her virginity fruitful, her flesh became the abode of the Spirit, says Gregory of Nissa: whoever visited Mary is God, God himself. She is the Mother of God who opens the door to heaven for us: if our Yes is virgin, pure from hypocrisy, we too can give flesh to the Word of God, become God's presence in the world.

Prayer knows this and contemplates what the mind does not understand. As an ancient hymn says:
Speakers shining like fish are mute to You, Mother of God: utterly incapable of saying
the way Virgin and Mother You are.
But we who admire the mystery sing with faith:
Hail, shrine of eternal Wisdom, Hail, treasure of his Providence. Hail, You the learned are ignorant, Hail, You impose silence on the rhetoricians ...
Hail, lift us up from deep ignorance,
Hail, for all you are a beacon of science… Hail, You bring to those who set sail to Life.
Hail, Virgin and Bride!


Flaminia Morandi
NP August / September 2021