Delano Herald Journal

Serving the communities of Delano, Loretto, Montrose, MN, and the surrounding area

Pastor’s Column, 8/18/2003



Today, as I write this, we celebrate the dedication of
the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome, the oldest church in the west dedicated
to Mary dating from 436 A.D.

Its title is officially “Our Lady of the Snows.”
That is a strange name for a church in Rome. If you are there this time
of the year, it is unbearably hot, making Minnesota seem quite pleasant.

It comes from a dream that Pope Sixtus had that he should
build a church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary on a hill covered with
snow. When he woke up in the morning, he inquired and found that one of
the hills did indeed have snow upon it designating the site of now one of
the four major basilicas in Rome.

In the confessio or the area below the altar you will find
wood from the manger in Bethlehem in a glass case celebrating Mary as the
Mother of God.

That is the purpose of the church ­ to celebrate the
definition of Mary as the Mother of God defined by the Ecumenical Council
of Ephesus in the year 431 AD. (Ephesus is where Mary lived with St. John
the Apostle.)

The title of Mary the Mother of God was taken for granted
from apostolic times until in the 400s there was a Patriarch of Constantinople
named Nestorius. He preached that it is wrong to say that Mary is “The
Mother of God (Theotokos in Greek ­ God Bearer)” but that she was
“Christotokos – Christ Bearer.”

After all she is just human, she is not a goddess who preexisted
before God and gave birth to God, so therefore she is just the bearer of
Christ the man, or the mother of the man Jesus.

The Council condemned Nestorius as a heretic because what
his teaching did to who Christ was. It was agreed that Mary is human like
the rest of us and that she is not a goddess who preexisted before God and
gave birth (existence) to God. We still believe that to this day.

But what matters is, who did Mary carry in her womb and
give birth to? Did she just give birth to a man who was adopted by God the
Son like God working through a prophet, or was the person in her womb really
God the Son Himself ­ human and divine as one person?

Is Jesus two persons or just one? It is heresy to say that
Jesus is two persons, he is only one person who gets his humanity from Mary
and his divinity from God.

Like if you have a king who marries a commoner and they
have a child who is heir to the throne and a future king, is he one person
or two?

Can you separate the right half and say it is royal and
the left half is not, or is it the top and the bottom half? That is ridiculious
it is only one person a royal person. So too Jesus is one person a divine
person who is God and man in one person.

Man who can suffer and die ­ God who can rise from
the dead and give us eternal life in the home of the King ­ Heaven.

When we honor Mary as the Mother of God, we are saying
more about who Jesus is. He is the redeemer ­ the eternal God born in
time to take our human nature and unite it to his divinity and be the bridge
between Heaven and Earth.

He is Emmanuel ­ “God who dwells with his people”
in a human body to aid us in our needs by his power as God, because He is
Son of God and Son of Mary.

The child in the womb of Mary, whom she gave birth to,
was God, so she is rightly titled “the Mother of God.”

As Elizabeth called her “Who am I that ‘the Mother
of My Lord’ should come to me.” The “Mother of My Lord” is
the title for the queen mother, the mother of the king, in the case the
king of heaven who is God.

The Queen Mother presents the king whom she gave birth
to ­ to his people as their Lord and King who comes to save them.

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