Remember Mary, the Mother of God!
Christmas time is the Holy Feast of the Incarnation!
But let’s remember too that there’s no Jesus without Mary.
In Christian tradition, Mary is celebrated as Theotokos (Θεοτόκος), bearer of God; in Latin, Dei Genitrix, for “Mother of God.” Mary is the human vessel through whom the God-man is birthed into the world. He clothes himself with her flesh and thereafter she clothes him with a fabric of her own making.
Of course, I can’t resist a good joke about Mary as Theotokos from Eric Vanden Eykel:
I do not have a Marian spirituality, I’m allergic to calling Mary co-redemptrix with Christ, and the only place I’ll do a “Hail Mary” is on the football field. That said, we should commemorate Mary’s role in the incarnation and celebrate her blessedness … because Scripture tells us to (see Luke 1:48-50).
Here I must refer you to Amy Peeler’s superb book Women and the Gender of God, where she shows how the incarnation proves that God sanctifies and uses a woman’s body for holy and salvific purposes:
With bold simplicity, the incarnation of Jesus through Mary affirms the confluence of holiness and female bodies in a radically powerful way. The incarnation, in continuity with a positive view of the Levitical purity laws, puts misogyny out of bounds. The sinful fruit may cause some to despise the female body, but the God of Judaism and Christianity did not. To redeem humanity, God cultivated and dwelt within the flesh of a woman. The son of God is then born, which, no matter what happens, with pain or not, by separating the hymen or not, means that the embodied God passes through the birth canal of a woman. Because he is completely human and was born in the time before formula and bottles, he is nursed at the breast of a woman. From that moment until he was grown, her hands held him; her arms enveloped him; her lap gave him a place to rest. God’s choice to allow the body of a woman, even the most intimate parts of herself, to come into direct contact with the body and blood of the Son stands against any who would deny women by virtue of the fact that they are women access to the holy (pp. 61-62).
A wonderful sentiment for this Christmas!
Yes, let’s worship the Saviour, but let’s remember too his blessed mother from whom his humanity comes to us for our redemption!
Amy's comments are beautiful!! We protestants at times perhaps demean Mary by not recognizing the fact that she was "highly favored" and to be revered as the "mother of our Lord." It is wrong to worship her or see her as a co-mediator, but it is also wrong to see her as just like any other women. Hers was a high and holy privilege.
Many have argued that the high view of Mary in Roman Catholoicism has engendered an innate respect for woman. One that is often found wanting in the Protestant world.