Question:
Answer:
Short Answer:
Mary is the Mother of God, because Jesus—her Son—is God. She is also our spiritual mother in heaven (Rev. 12:17) and thus able to intercede for us with Jesus.
Long Answer:
As the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus is Mary’s creator, and yet because Jesus is “the Word became flesh [who] dwelt among us” (John 1:14), he is both true God and true man. Consequently, by virtue of the Incarnation—i.e., Jesus’ becoming man through the power of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35)—Mary is the Mother of God, not simply the mother of his humanity—or him as a human person alone, as if Jesus were two persons. Rather Jesus is a divine Person who became fully human through the Incarnation. Also, we see that Mary’s divine maternity is a gift from God, not something she merited on her own (Luke 1:26-38), and a gift to fulfill the Father’s plan to send his only begotten Son to serve as our Savior (John 3:16-17).
Because Mary is the Mother of God, in whom God the Son dwelt most intimately, she is also the Ark of the New Covenant, as there are many scriptural parallels between Mary and the Ark of the Old Covenant, in which God manifested his presence most intimately on earth prior to his Incarnation. Also, corresponding to Jesus’ status as the New Adam (see Rom. 5:12-21), Mary is the New Eve and thus conceived without sin like the first Eve. Mary doesn’t merit this status by her own account, but rather—like her divine maternity—she receives her Immaculate Conception as a gift from God; and yet, unlike the first Eve who fell with the first Adam in committing original sin, Mary freely cooperates with the Lord and his grace in remaining free from sin her entire life. Consequently, she is assumed into heaven upon the conclusion of her earthly life, and her Assumption is not a latter-day doctrinal novelty that the Church created. Scripture portrays Mary as the holy queen of heaven (Rev. 12:1), not to be confused with the idolatrous one which the prophet Jeremiah condemns. Indeed, Mary is our spiritual mother, who looks out for us “her offspring . . . those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus” (Rev. 12:17, emphasis added).
St. James teaches that the prayers of a righteous man on earth avail much (James 5:16). How much more powerful, then, are the prayers of those men in heaven, i.e., the saints, “the spirits of just men made perfect”? (Heb. 12:23). Here we distinguish between praying to the saints in heaven vs. Old Covenant necromancy. And if the queen mothers of the Old Covenant kingdom of Israel held sway with their royal sons, how much more does the Blessed Mother, who is the New Covenant queen mother, because her divine Son is king of the restored and fulfilled Davidic kingdom of Israel (Luke 1:32-33; Rev. 17:14), which encompasses heaven and earth?
Because Mary and the saints reign with Jesus in heaven as divinely exalted collaborators, we ask for their prayerful intercession. To be sure, the Bible supports praying to the saints, not the worship of them. Finally, as with the seven sacraments, our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters affirm Mary’s heavenly queenship and thus her maternal care for us here on earth.