Catechism paragraphs
484 – 534
“The mission of the Holy Spirit
is always conjoined and ordered to that of the Son. (Jn 16:14-15)
The Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of Life, is sent to sanctify the
womb of the Virgin Mary and divinely fecundate it, causing her to conceive the
eternal Son of the Father in a humanity drawn from her own. (Lk 1:34) 485 What the Catholic faith believes about Mary
is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary
illumines in turn its faith in Christ. 487
From all eternity God chose for the mother of his Son a daughter of
Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, a virgin betrothed to a
man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was
Mary.” (Lk 1:26-7) 488
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
“To become the mother of the
Savior, Mary was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role. (LG 56)
The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full
of grace.” 490 Through the centuries the
Church has become ever more aware that Mary, full of grace through God, was
redeemed from the moment of her conception.
That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope
Pius IX proclaimed in 1854: The most
Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular
grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus
Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original
sin. 491 The Fathers of the
Eastern tradition call the Mother of God the All-Holy (Panagia) and celebrate her as ‘free from any stain of sin, as
thought fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature.’ By the grace of God Mary remained free of
every personal sin her whole life long.”
493
MARY’S ASSENT
“By the power of the Holy Spirit,
Mary responded with the obedience of faith, certain that ‘with God nothing is
impossible:’ Behold, I am the handmaid
of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word. (Lk 1:28-38) 494 The One whom she
conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the
flesh, was none other than the Father’s eternal Son, the second person of the
Holy Trinity. Hence the Church confesses
that Mary is truly ‘Mother of God’ (Theotokos). 495 From the first formulations of her faith, the Church has
confessed that Jesus was conceived solely by the power of the Holy Spirit in
the womb of the Virgin Mary. The Fathers
see in the virginal conception the sign that it truly was the Son of God who
came in a humanity like our own. 496
The gospel accounts understand the virginal conception of Jesus as a
divine work that surpasses all human understanding and possibility. (Mt 1:18-25)
The Church sees here the fulfillment of the divine promise given through
the prophet Isaiah: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.’ (Is 7:14,
quoted in Mt 1:23) 497 People are sometimes
troubled by the silence of St. Mark’s Gospel and the New Testament Epistles
about Jesus’ virginal conception. Some
might wonder if we were merely dealing with legends or theological constructs
not claiming to be history. To this we
must respond: Faith in the virginal
conception of Jesus met with the lively opposition, mockery, or incomprehension
of non-believers, Jews and pagans alike; so it could hardly have been motivated
by pagan mythology or by some adaptation to the ideas of the age. The meaning of this event is accessible only
to faith, which understands in it the connection of these mysteries with one
another in the totality of Christ’s mysteries, from his Incarnation to his
Passover. 498 The deepening of faith
in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual
virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth ‘did not diminish his
mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.’ (LG 57) And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates
Mary as Aeiparthenos, the ‘Ever
Virgin.’ 499 Against
this doctrine the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions
brothers and sisters of Jesus. The
Church has always understood these passages as not referring to other children
of the Virgin Mary. In fact, James and
Joseph, ‘brothers of Jesus,’ are the sons of another Mary, a disciple of
Christ, whom St. Matthew significantly calls ‘the other Mary.’ (Mt 13:55)
500 Jesus is Mary’s only son, but her spiritual
motherhood extends to all men whom indeed he came to save. 501 At once virgin and Mother, Mary is the
symbol and the most perfect realization of the Church: ‘The Church indeed … by
receiving the word of God in faith becomes herself a mother. By preaching and Baptism she brings forth new
sons who are conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of God to a new and immortal
life.’” (LG 64) 507
THE MYSTERIES OF CHRIST’S LIFE
“Concerning Christ’s life the
Creed speaks only about the mysteries of the Incarnation (conception and birth)
and Paschal mystery (passion, crucifixion, death, burial, descent into hell,
resurrection, and ascension). It says
nothing explicitly about the mysteries of Jesus’ hidden or public life, but the
articles of faith concerning his Incarnation and Passover do shed light on the whole of his earthly life. All that Jesus did and taught, from the
beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, is to be seen in the light
of the mysteries of Christmas and Easter.(Acts 1:1-2) 512 Many things about Jesus
of interest to human curiosity do not figure in the Gospels. What is written in the Gospels was set down
there ‘so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and
that believing you may have life in his name.’ (Jn 20:31) 514 Christ’s whole earthly
life – his words and deeds, his silences and sufferings, indeed his manner of
being and speaking – is Revelation of
the Father. Jesus can say: ‘Whoever has
seen me has seen the Father.’ (Jn 14:9, Lk 9:35) 516 Christ’s whole life is
a mystery of redemption. Redemption comes to us above all through the
blood of his cross, (Col 1:13-14) but this mystery is at work throughout Christ’s
entire life. 517 Christ did not live his
life for himself but for us, from his Incarnation ‘for us men and for our
salvation’ to his ‘death for our sins’ and Resurrection ‘for our justification.’ He is still ‘our advocate with the Father,’
who ‘always lives to make intercession’ for us.
519 In
all his life Jesus presents himself as our model. He is ‘the perfect man,’ who invites us to
become his disciples and follow him. In
humbling himself, he has given us an example to imitate, through his prayer he
draws us to pray, and by his poverty he calls us to accept freely the privation
and persecutions that may come our way.
520 By his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, has
in a certain way united himself with each man. (GS 22) 521 To become a child in
relation to God is the condition for entering the kingdom. For this, we must humble ourselves and become
little. Even more: to become ‘children of God’ we must be ‘born
from above’ or ‘born of God.’” (Jn 3:7, 1:13, 1:12) 526
I bolded the above section
because I believe it to be a key teaching of the Catholic Church, one which
must be thought on much, to understand what it means to be and live as a
Catholic and a Child of God. It is how
we were created to be, and an clear example of how we are meant to live our
lives. This is most important, and we so
easily forget it in our concerns for ourselves.
“Jesus’ circumcision, on the eighth day after his birth, is the sign of his
incorporation into Abraham’s descendants, into the people of the covenant. It is the sign of his submission to the
Law. This sign prefigures that ‘circumcision
of Christ’ which is Baptism. (Cf Col
2:11-3) 527 During the greater part of his life Jesus
shared the condition of the vast majority of human beings: a daily life spent
without evident greatness, a life of manual labor. His religious life was that of a Jew obedient
to the law of God, a life in the community.
From this whole period it is revealed to us that Jesus was ‘obedient’ to
his parents and that he ‘increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with
God and man.’ (Lk 2:51-2) 531 The hidden life at Nazareth allows everyone
to enter into the fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily
life.” 533
In the next session, we’ll begin
considering those parts of the Creed which center on the mysteries of Jesus’
public life, catechism paragraphs 535 – 570.
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