mariology

"The Word of the Father came forth from His Bosom, and in another bosom he put on a body. From a Bosom He came forth to a bosom. These pure Bosoms were filled with Him. Blessed is He who dwells in us."

"Now with the exception of the holy Virgin Mary in regard to whom, out of respect for the Lord, I do not propose to have a single question raised on the subject of sin-after all, how do we know what greater degree of grace for a complet victory over sins was conferred on her who merited to conceive and bring forth Him who all admit was without sin-to repeat then: with the exception of this Virgin, if we could bring together into one place all those holy men and women, while they lived here, and ask them whether they were without sin, what are we to suppose that they would have replied? Would it be the reply of this man (Pelagius) or that of John the Apostle? I ask you. No matter how they excelled in holiness during her their stay in this body, if they could have been asked, they would have exlaimed with one voice: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."."

"The error of Nestorius, who refused to acknowledge that Blessed Mary is the Mother of God, is likewise excluded. Both Creeds assert that the Son of God was born or was made flesh of the Virgin Mary. The woman of whom any person is born is called his mother, for the reason that she supplies the matter for human conception. Hence the Blessed Virgin Mary, who provided the matter for the conception of the Son of God, should be called the true mother of the Son of God. As far as the essence of motherhood is concerned, the energy whereby the matter furnished by a woman is formed, does not enter into the question. She who supplied matter to be formed by the Holy Spirit is no less a mother than a woman who supplies matter that is to be formed by the energy latent in male seed. If anyone insists on maintaining that the Blessed Virgin ought not to be called the Mother of God because flesh alone and not divinity was derived from her, as Nestorius contended, he clearly is not aware of what he is saying. A woman is not called a mother for the reason that everything that is in her child is derived from her. Man is made up of body and soul; and a man is what he is in virtue of his soul rather than in virtue of his body. But no man’s soul is derived from his mother. The soul is either created by God directly, as the true doctrine has it, or, if it were produced by transplanting, as some have fancied, it would be derived from the father rather than from the mother. For in the generation of other animals, according to the teaching of philosophers, the male gives the soul, the female gives the body."

"Now, first of all, they believed in an orthodox manner in the preaching of the Apostles who lived [at the time of] Constantine [...]. Later, Satan, who has been the enemy of man since ancient times, rose up and seduced the people of the land of Byzantium, and they corrupted the Faith of Christ and introduced heresy into the Church of God through the mouth of Nestorius."

"Nestorius, a follower of the Antiochian school where he had been trained, argued that in order to preserve the integrity of Christ's humanity, the divine person of the Word cohabited with the person of the man Jesus, with the consequence that in Christ, according to him, there are two natures and two persons, and Mary can only be called the mother of Christ and not the mother of God."

"Anathema 1. If anyone does not confess that the Emmanuel is in truth God, and that the Holy Virgin is, in consequence, Theotokos (Mother of God), since she brought forth according to the flesh the Word of God who has become flesh, let him be anathema."

"Nestorius reaffirms the unity of Christ despite the distinction between the natures, opposing the doctrine of Cyril of the single nature; he speaks of the “person” of the Son, in whom the relationship between the two natures is realised in a manner that is completely different from any other possible relationship between God and human beings. Nestorius is therefore careful to avoid the accusation of Christological dualism."

"Now do we say that the nature of the Word became flesh by undergoing change, nor that it was transformed into an entire man of soul and body; rather do we say that the Word, in a manner indescribable and incomprehensible, personally (hypostatically) united to Himself flesh animated by a rational soul, and thus became Man and was called the Son of Man..."

"Fragments of the schisms came to mind, passages from the heresies that had divided the Western and Eastern Churches for centuries. Here Nestorius contested the title of Mother of God given to the Virgin, since, in the mystery of the Incarnation, she had carried a human creature in her womb and not God."

"I believe in God the Father Almighty,"

"He exists, not only inconceivably as God, but also conceivably as a man ; not only above the world, but also in the world, and of the world ; not only in a heavenly and invisible, but in an earthly and visible form. He becomes and is, He exists—we cannot avoid this statement ; to do so would be the worst kind of Docetism—with objective actuality. Does this mean, then, that He exists as one thing amongst others, and that as such He can be perceived and may be known like other things ? Well, we cannot deny that He is a thing like this, and can be perceived and knovra as such, if He was and is a man in the world, with an earthly and visible form. But, of course, a man is not merely a thing or object. As a man among men he is a human Thou, and as such distinct from all mere things."

"This skeptical way of thinking reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a human being never existed at all and is a myth. In ancient times, this extreme view was named the heresy of docetism (seeming) because it maintained that Jesus never came into the world "in the flesh", but only seemed to; (I John 4:2) and it was given some encouragement by Paul's lack of interest in his fleshly existence. Subsequently, from the eighteenth century onwards, there have been attempts to insist that Jesus did not even "seem" to exist, and that all tales of his appearance upon the earth were pure fiction. In particular, his story was compared to the pagan mythologies inventing fictitious dying and rising gods. (paragraph break) Some of the lines of thinking employed to disprove the Christ-myth theory have been somewhat injudicious."

"Stop your ears therefore when anyone speaks to you that stands apart from Jesus Christ, from David's scion and Mary's Son, who was really born and ate and drunk, really persecuted by Pontius Pilate, really crucified and died while heaven and earth and the underworld looked on; who also really rose from the dead, sice His Father raised Him up-His Father, who will likewise raise up all who believe in Him through Jesus Christ, apart from whom we have no real life."

"O you, Jews, which is more difficult, for a virgin to bear a child, or for a rod to quickened into a living thing? You admit that at the time of Moses a perfect straight rod took the form of a serpent and became an object of terror to him who cast it down, and he who before had held the rod fast now fled from it as a dragon..."

"Dost thou believe in God the Father Almighty?"

"...τὸν δι' ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν καὶ σαρκωθέντα ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα,..."

"L'apparition de la Très Saint Vierger sur la Montagne de La Salettepar la bergère de La Salette avec l'imprimatur de Mgr l'éveque de Lecce, Pierre Téqui éditeur, Paris, 2018, pp. 44. ISBN 978-2-7403-2158-4. (full text of the messages given by the Virgin Mary to Mélanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud, firstly published on November 15, 1879 with nihil obstat and imprimatur by bishop Salvatore Luigi Zola and Archbishop Carmelo Cosma, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Lecce; in French). French original text and English translation available here."

"Approach, my children, don't be afraid, I'm here to tell you great news. If my people won't submit, I'm forced to let go the hand of my son. It is so strong and so heavy that I can no longer maintain it, for the time I have suffered for you. If I don't want my son to abandon you, I have all the charge to pray to him unceasingly. For you, you don't care. No matter what you do, you will never be able to compensate for the trouble I have taken for you."

"Florence is the centre of the world. [The Dominican convent of] San Marco is the centre of Florence, and the Annunciation frescoed there by Beato Angelico is the centre of San Marco. Therefore, the Annunciation is the centre of the world."

"And surely what joy, what delight can ever be found that far surpasses the announcement made to that blessed Virgin and Mother of joy? Rejoice, O mother of supernatural joy! Rejoice, O nourisher of sublime joy! Rejoice, capital seat of the joy of salvation! Rejoice, cooperator of immortal joy! Rejoice, O mystical dwelling place of ineffable joy! Rejoice, O most blessed source of inexhaustible joy! Rejoice, O treasure of eternal joy who bears God! Rejoice, O most luxuriant tree of life-giving joy!"

"More good can be done with a well-said Hail Mary than in the Mission field by neglecting one's duty."

"We must know that the most important thing about Mary's apparitions today, as always, is the fact that she is a Mother! Our Lady is a Mother who cares for her little ones with immense tenderness. She prays for us, blesses us and has incredible love for us."

"Why is it Our Lady who appears? Why did Jesus himself or some canonised saint not appear in Lourdes (as in Rue du Bac, La Salette, Pontmain, Beauraing, Fatima, to mention only the last century and a half and events approved by the Church)? But it is because – according to theology, as meditated upon by mystics – according to the Catholic Creed, “the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed into heavenly glory 'in soul and body”. Thus, the words of the dogma of the Assumption, defined and proclaimed by Pius XII only in 1950 but believed, in its essence, since the time of the Fathers of the Church in both the East and the West (the feast of the “Dormition”, which has “in nuce” the Assumption of the Virgin Mother, is probably the oldest of the Marian feasts that unite the universal Church). In short, Mary, having carried in her womb the One who said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ (Jn 11:25), followed her Son in his eternal destiny before any other human creature; she is the one who preceded us all, already welcomed into eternity ‘in soul and body’. Therefore, if she appears to mortals, it is also to remind us that what she already is, we too will be. In short, she is the sign and pledge, in her very person, of that salvation we were talking about, which will give us true health: the vision of Mary's body already “saved” is a guarantee that everyone's body will be saved."

"The Annunciation appears as a unique moment in the world history of women: it is the moment when God, taking women as free partners in his covenant, brings them true emancipation."

"What art thou, Mary, thou who wilt presently bring forth? Whence hast thou merited, whence hast thou obtained this favor? Whence is it that He who made thee will be made in thee? Whence, I say, does this great gift come to thee? Thou art a virgin, thou art holy, thou hast vowed a vow. True, thou hast merited much; or better, thou hast received much. But how hast thou merited it? He who made thee is being made in thee. He is made in thee by whom thou thyself wast made; rather should I say, by whom heaven and earth were made, by whom all things were made; the Word of God is made flesh in thee, by taking flesh, not by losing divinity. The Word is joined to flesh; the Word is wedded to flesh, and the bridal chamber of this exalted marriage in thy womb. Let me repeat, the bridal chamber of this exalted marriage between the Word and flesh in thy womb, whence "he, the bridegroom, goes forth from his bridal chamber" (Ps. 18:6). He finds thee a virgin at His conception. He leaves thee a virgin at His birth. He gives thee fecundity. He takes not away thy integrity. Whence is this to thee? Perhaps I am too forward in asking such questions of a virgin and, I might say, somewhat rude in shocking thy bashful essay with such words. But I see a virgin who is indeed bashful, and yet one who can answer and at the same time put me in my place. "Dost thou ask of me whence is this? I blush to answer thy questions as to my blessedness. Rather, listen to the Angel's salutation... Believe him who I believed. Do you ask whence have I this favor? Let the Angel reply." Tell me, Angel, whence has Mary this?" I already said when I saluted her: 'Hail, full of grace'. ""

"The Annunciation is the beginning of a conception, something I wanted to compare to the creative process. As for iconography, Mary is usually depicted in an enclosed garden, a symbol of virginity, an inner, intimate space that I evoked through a red carpet."

"The Hail Mary has inspired poetry, painting, sculpture and music. In music, the Hail Mary sounded divine."

"‘'Mary, Mother of Jesus, | give me your heart, | so beautiful, so pure, so immaculate, | so full of love and humility, | so that I may receive Jesus in the Bread of Life, | love Him as you loved Him | and serve Him under the guise of the poorest of the poor.’'"

"Giuseppe Cesare Abba, Scritti vari, Morcelliana, 1995."

"Our Lady has appeared and spoken to many visionaries from many nations and in the most varied circumstances, as a living person who promises, announces, praises, exhorts, prophesies, prays, guides and protects from danger, heals the sick, works miracles, weeps, invites conversion and penance, and helps people to draw closer to Christ, her Son."

"Quann'ero ragazzino, | mamma mia me diceva: | Ricordati, fijolo, | quanno te senti veramente solo | tu prova a recità n'Ave Maria."

"We raised our eyes to Our Lady, who said to us with kindness and sadness: – You have seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is about to end, but if they do not cease offending God, another worse war will begin during the pontificate of Pius XI. [...] To prevent this, I will come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If they accept My requests, Russia will convert and they will have peace; if not, it will spread its errors throughout the world, promoting wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be destroyed. In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph."

"Let us turn to the Virgin Mary: her Immaculate Heart, a mother’s heart, has fully shared in the “compassion” of God, especially in the hour of the passion and death of Jesus. May Mary help us to be mild, humble and merciful with our brothers."

"Without introducing himself [to Mary], the Angel can therefore begin immediately with his greeting: ‘Hail, full of grace.’ In this first form of greeting, he immediately gives her the title that is due to her, as he has no doubt that she will accept everything. Without having said it, with her demeanour and her constant expectation of the path reserved for her by God, Mary has already said her yes. The angel can therefore continue: ‘The Lord is with you!’ She has not yet conceived the Lord, but he is already with her because he has chosen her as his Mother, and with the same certainty with which the angel now addresses his announcement to her, the Lord also knew that she would accept everything, even to have him as her Son."

"“Ecce ancilla.” With these words, Mary places herself entirely at God's disposal. She is the chosen one, the one visited by the angel, yet she understands her service in such a way that all believers are included through her. She says yes, hoping to be able to speak on behalf of all those who are willing to believe. She is full of grace, but precisely when she responds in accordance with this grace, she wishes to withdraw—pure handmaid!—into the anonymity of service. And, as the only chosen one, she makes this available too. Her availability wants to include everything that God may ask of her, so that her availability also embraces the availability of all women to whatever is asked of them."

"There are two methods by which Catholics may know that a teaching of the Church is infallible and therefore must be obeyed by all Catholics in order to remain Catholic. The first of these, of course, is an ex cathedra pronouncement. Popes use this mechanism very infrequently, and then only to address the very fundamentals of Catholic faith. Only once since 1870 has the Pope spoken ex cathedra; on November 1, 1950, when Pope Pius XII declared the doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Many pro-life theologians have debated the wisdom of having the Church's teachings on birth control and abortion be formally declared infallible, and have decided that this would not be wise in the larger scheme of things. The reason is that such a pronouncement in an area of morals (as opposed to fundamental beliefs) would give the impression that all other moral teachings of the Church were optional. This might lead to a situation where disbelief would run rampant in the areas not specifically addressed ex cathedra, and would lead to more and more demands for such pronouncements in almost every area of Church teaching."

"4 Q. Why is it said of Jesus Christ that He ascended, and of His Most Holy Mother that she was assumed, into heaven?"

"She who was conceived without spot and borne without pain, who became mother without loss of virginity, who placed God in the world, who died without suffering, was also preserved from corruption ; and we believe she lives in heaven with her body. It is piously believed."

"Live in hope. And in hope, we are guided to put ourselves on the path which leads us to the goal of following in the footsteps of the Lord and his mother Mary, who is our mother."

"If Mary was thus strengthened against every movement of sin by her first sanctification, much more did grace grow in her and much more was concupiscence weakened or even completely uprooted in her, when the Holy Spirit came upon her, according to the angel’s word, to form of her the body of Christ. After she had been made the shrine of the Holy Spirit and the tabernacle of the Son of God, we may not believe that there was ever any inclination to sin in her, or that she ever experienced any pleasurable feeling of carnal concupiscence. And so we must view with revulsion the error of Helvidius who, while admitting that Christ was conceived and born of the Virgin, asserted that she later bore other sons to Joseph."

"Faith in Mary's Assumption is not an exaltation, with impossible images, of a glorious body that we do not know where to place: everything is in the mystery of God, which we cannot enter because he is beyond the veil of the sanctuary that will not open to our eyes until it is torn apart. What matters, instead, is to be able to live in the world a story that repeats the wonders that Mary sings here and which are wonders of salvation in time."

"Since Hw who humbled himself in her was God from the beginning and was life before all ages, it was right that the 'Mother of Life' be associated with Life; her death should be only a sleep, and her removal an awakening."

"The divine Christ, Who was conceived by this perpetual Virgin through the activity of the Holy Spirit, and was clothed by her with flesh animated by a rational soul, has called her to Himself and in His turn has clothed her with an unequalled glory. He has made her take part in His inheritance; for she is His most holy mother."

"O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon thy holy name, and as suppliants we implore thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin Immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel St. Michael, thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of souls. Amen."

"Surely we cannot deny that Your Reverence was perfectly justified in rebuking him on the score of Mary's children, and that you had good reason to be horrified at the thought that another birth might issue from the same virginal womb from which Christ was born according to the flesh. For the Lord Jesus would never have chosen to be born of a virgin if he had ever judged that she would be so incontinent as to contaminate with the seed of human intercourse the birthplace of the Lord's body, that court of the Eternal King. To assert such a view is to do nothing less than to accept as a basis that Jewish falsehood which holds that He could not have been born of a virgin. And once the weight of episcopal authority is gained for the view that Mary gave issue to many children, they will strive with even greater zeal to attack the truth of [Christian] faith."

"Latin is also important for maintaining the unity of the Church, because when people travel, and people travel more and more abroad nowadays, it is important for them to find the same echo that they heard from a priest at home, whether in the United States, South America, Europe, or anywhere else in the world. They are at home in any (Catholic) church. It is their Catholic Mass that is being celebrated. They have always heard the Latin words since childhood, their parents before them, and their grandparents before them."

"He [Eutyches] did not realize what he was bound to hold on the Incarnation of the Word of God. Nor he was willing to seek the light of understanding through a diligent search of the wide range of the Sacred Scriptures. And yet, he might have listen attentively to that common and universal confession in which the whole body of the faithful acknowledges it's belief in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son our Lord, who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary. By these three statements, the devices of almost all heretics are overthrown,...Unquestionably, therefore, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit within the womb of His Virgin Mother. She brought Him forth without the loss of virginity, even as she conceived Him without its loss...That birth, so wondrously unique and so uniquely wonderful, must not be understood in such a way that the distinctive properties of His humanity were excluded through this newness of His creation. For while it is true that the Holy Spirit gave fruitfulness to the Virgin, yet the reality of His body was received from her body; and "Wisdom building itself a house" (Prov. 9,11), "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn. 1:14)-that is, in that flesh which He took from man and which He quickened with the breath of a higher life..."

"Canon 3. If anyone does not in accord with the Holy Fathers acknowledge the holy and ever virgin immaculate Mary as really and truly the Mother of God, inasmuch she, in the fulness of time, and without seed, conceived by the Holy Spirit God the Word Himself, who before all time was born of God the Father, and without loss of integrity brought Him forth, and after His birth preserved her virginity inviolate, let him be condemned."

"From the first moment of her creation and infusion into the body, she had been preserved immune from the stain of original sin by a special grace and singular privilege of God, in anticipation of the merits of Jesus Christ, His Son and Redeemer of the human race."

"In vernacular language, it is said that the Precious Blood was shed “for all,” whereas in the Latin text (even the latest revised Latin text) it is said that the Precious Blood is “for many” and not “for all.” [...] The new Offertory prayers do not express the Catholic notion of sacrifice. They simply express the concept of a mere sharing of bread and wine. For example, the Tridentine Mass addresses the prayer to God: “Accept, O holy Father, almighty and eternal God, this Immaculate Victim which your unworthy servant offers to You, my living and true God, in reparation for my countless sins, offenses, and negligence.” The new Mass says: “We offer this bread as the bread of life.” There is no mention of sacrifice or victim. Interviewer: Could you cite a translation that actually contradicts Catholic dogma? Mgr. Lefebvre: Yes. For example, in the Latin text, the Virgin Mary is called Semper Virgo, “Ever Virgin.” In all modern translations, the word “ever” has been removed. This is very serious, because there is a big difference between ‘Virgin’ and “Ever Virgin.” It is very dangerous to tamper with translations of this kind."