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T h e F a t h e r s K n o w B e s t
MARY’S PRIVILEGES
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This Rock
Volume 5, Number 2
 February 1994 
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THE Fathers of the Church taught that Mary
remained a virgin after the birth of Christ and that she could be
titled quite properly the "Mother of God" (see "The
Fathers Know Best," October and December 1991). The Fathers also
taught that Mary had other distinctive blessings, such as her role
as the New Eve (corresponding to Christ's role as the New Adam), her
Immaculate Conception, her spiritual motherhood of all Christians,
and her Assumption into heaven. These gifts were given to her by God's
grace. She did not earn them, but she had them none the less.
Justin Martyr
"[Jesus] became man by the Virgin so that the
course which was taken by disobedience in the beginning through the
agency of the serpent might be also the very course by which it would
be put down. Eve, a virgin and undefiled, conceived the word of the
serpent and bore disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received
faith and joy when the angel Gabriel announced to her the glad tidings
that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her and the power of the
Most High would overshadow her, for which reason the Holy One being
born of her is the Son of God. And she replied `Be it done unto me
according to your word' [Luke 1:38]" (Dialogue with Trypho
the Jew 100 [ca. A.D. 155]).
Irenaeus
"Consequently, then, Mary the Virgin is found
to be obedient, saying, `Behold, O Lord, your handmaid; be it done
to me according to your word.' Eve, however, was disobedient, and,
when yet a virgin, she did not obey. Just as she, who was then still
a virgin although she had Adam for a husband--for in paradise
they were both naked but were not ashamed; for, having been created
only a short time, they had no understanding of the procreation of
children, and it was necessary that they first come to maturity before
beginning to multiply--having become disobedient, was made the
cause of death for herself and for the whole human race; so also Mary,
betrothed to a man but nevertheless still a virgin, being obedient,
was made the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human
race.... Thus, the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed
by the obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief,
the Virgin Mary loosed through faith" (Against Heresies
3:22:24 [ca. A.D. 189]).
Tertullian
"And again, lest I depart from my argumentation
on the name of Adam: Why is Christ called Adam by the apostle, if
as man he was not of that earthly origin? But even reason defends
this conclusion, that God recovered his image and likeness by a procedure
similar to that in which he had been robbed of it by the devil. It
was while Eve was still a virgin that the word of the devil crept
in to erect an edifice of death. Likewise through a Virgin the Word
of God was introduced to set up a structure of life. Thus what had
been laid waste in ruin by this sex was by the same sex re-established
in salvation. Eve had believed the serpent; Mary believed Gabriel.
That which the one destroyed by believing, the other, by believing,
set straight" (On the Flesh of Christ 17:4 [ca. A.D.
210].
Ephraim
"You alone and your Mother are more beautiful
than any others, for there is no blemish in you nor any stains upon
your Mother. Who of my children can compare in beauty to these?"
(Nisibene Hymns 27:8 [ca. A.D. 370]).
Ambrose
"Mary's life should be for you a pictorial image
of virginity. Her life is like a mirror reflecting the face of chastity
and the form of virtue. Therein you may find a model for your own
life . . . showing what to improve, what to imitate, what to hold
fast to" (The Virgins 2:2:6 [A.D. 377]).
Ambrose
"Come, then, and search out your sheep, not through
your servants or hired men, but do it yourself. Lift me up bodily
and in the flesh, which is fallen in Adam. Lift me up not from Sara
but from Mary, a virgin not only undefiled but a virgin whom grace
had made inviolate, free of every stain of sin" (Commentary
on Psalm 118 22:30 [A.D. 388]).
Timothy of Jerusalem
"Therefore the Virgin is immortal to this day,
seeing that he who had dwelt in her transported her to the regions
of her assumption" (Homily on Simeon and Anna [ca. A.D.
400]).
Augustine
"Our Lord . . . was not averse to males, for
he took the form of a male, nor to females, for of a female he was
born. Besides, there is a great mystery here: that just as death comes
to us through a woman, Life is born to us through a woman; that the
devil, defeated, would be tormented by each nature, feminine and masculine,
as he he had taken delight in the defection of both" [Christian
Combat 22:24 [A.D. 397]).
Augustine
"That one woman is both mother and virgin, not
in spirit only but even in body. In spirit she is mother, not of our
head, who is our Savior himself--of whom, even herself, all are
rightly called children of the bridegroom--but plainly she is
the mother of us who are his members, because by love she has cooperated
so that the faithful, who are the members of that head, might be born
in the Church. In body, indeed, she is the mother of that very head"
(On Holy Virginity 6:6 [A.D. 401]).
Augustine
"Having excepted the holy Virgin Mary, concerning
whom, on account of the honor of the Lord, I wish to have absolutely
no question when treating of sins--for how do we know what abundance
of grace for the total overcoming of sin was conferred upon her, who
merited to conceive and bear him in whom there was no sin?--so,
I say, with the exception of the Virgin, if we could have gathered
together all those holy men and women, when they were living here,
and had asked them whether they were without sin, what do we suppose
would have been their answer? Would it be what Pelagius says, or would
it be what the apostle John says? I ask you, however excellent might
their holiness have been when in the body, if they had been so questioned,
would they not have declared in a single voice: `If we say we have
no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us!' [1 John
1:8]?" (On Nature and Grace 36:42 [A.D. 415]).
Gregory of Tours
"The course of this life having been completed
by blessed Mary, when now she would be called from the world, all
the apostles came together from their various regions to her house.
And when they had heard that she was about to be taken from the world,
they kept watch together with her. And behold, the Lord Jesus came
with his angels, and, taking her soul, he gave it over to the angel
Michael and withdrew. At daybreak, however, the apostles took up her
body on a bier and placed it in a tomb, and they guarded it, expecting
the Lord to come. And behold, again the Lord stood by them; the holy
body having been received, he commanded that it be taken in a cloud
into paradise, where now, rejoined to the soul, [Mary] rejoices with
the Lord's chosen ones and is in the enjoyment of the good of an eternity
that will never end" (Eight Books of Miracles 1:4 [A.D.
575]).
Gregory of Tours
"But Mary, the glorious Mother of Christ, who
is believed to be a virgin both before and after she bore him, has,
as we said above, been translated into paradise, amid the singing
of the angelic choirs, whither the Lord preceded her" (ibid.
1:8).
Theoteknos
"If the God-bearing body of the saint has known
death, it has not, nevertheless, suffered corruption; it has been
preserved from corruption and kept free from stain and it has been
raised to heaven with her pure, spotless soul by the holy angels and
powers" (Homilies [ca. A.D. 600]).
Germain I of Constantinople
"Let death pass you by, O Mother of God, because
you have brought life to men. Let the tomb pass you by, because you
have been made the foundation stone of inexplicable sublimity. Let
dust pass you by; for you are a new kind of formation, so that you
may be mistress over those who have been corrupted in the very stuff
of their potter's clay . . . Painful though it be for the soul to
be drawn away from the body, most immaculate lady, it is far more
painful to be deprived of you!" (Second Sermon on the Dormition
of the Blessed Virgin Mary [ca. A.D. 683]).
John Damascene
"We had closed paradise; you [Mary] opened again
the entryway to the tree of life. We turned joys into sorrow; you
turned sorrow back into the greatest of joys for us. And how would
you, the immaculate, taste of death? You are the bridge of life, you
are the staircase to heaven; and [for you] death will be but a passage
to immortality. O Most Blessed, truly blessed are you!" (Second
Homily on the Dormition of Mary 8 [ca. A.D. 697]).
John Damascene
"[The apostles] could only think that he who
had been pleased to become incarnate from her in his own Person and
to become man and to be born in the flesh, God the Word, the Lord
of Glory, who preserved her virginity intact after her paturition--he
was pleased even after her departure from life to honor her immaculate
and undefiled body with incorruption and with translation prior to
the common and universal resurrection" (ibid. 18).
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