It’s not about Mary

even though it is somewhat about Mary, for the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, celebrated today, is really, first and foremost, about Jesus.

First of all, it is the octave, the end of an entire week of celebrating the feast of Christmas, the Nativity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Secondly, and more profoundly, the concept of Mary as the Mother of God is really an assertion about Christ, an affirmation of the reality of the Incarnation.

To say that Mary is the Mother of God is not to say that Mary is the origin of the divine nature of Christ. Christ as God exists as one substance with the Father and the Holy Spirit from eternity. Mary is the origin of Christ’s human nature, but that which a mother carries in her womb and gives birth to is a person, not just a nature, and the person to whom Mary gave birth was indeed the second Person of the Holy Trinity in hypostatic union of divine and human nature in the mystery of the Incarnation.

In other words, the description of Mary as Mother of God reaffirms the reality of Jesus Christ as truly God and truly man and yet one person, binding us with God in a wonderful way and setting the conditions for us to be bound even more wonderfully to God through his suffering, death and resurrection.

God the eternal Son of the Father is the child born of Mary, born in a stable, nailed to a cross, risen from the dead, our Savior, our Redeemer, our Lord, and our flesh-and-blood brother.