prayer, heroic poverty, heroic charity: one mind, one heart, one faith; brother sharing with brother earthly goods as well as divinest graces — and the supernatural fervor of all fed and sustained by that " Supersubstantial Bread," the "communication" of which, like a heavenly fire kindled in the hearts of the receivers, made men and women the light of the world, and the Gift within them shed abroad, wherever they went, the sweet odor of Christ.
Surely the sons of the "Valiant Woman" were rising up before the nations and calling her "Blessed" — aye. "Blessed among women."
VI.
It is usual with Protestants, in speaking of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to show a repugnance to calling her " the Mother of God." In so doing, they are doing, unawares, what Nestorius and his master, Theodore (afterward Bishop of Mopsuestia), a teacher in the school of Antioch, openly taught people to do in the beginning of the fifth century. In the preceding centuries such men as Origen, S. Alexander of Alexandria, and S. Athanasius, only expressed the common belief and orthodox sense of Christians, by emphatically calling Mary " the Mother of God."
Arianism and Nestorianism are the legitimate parents of modern Unitarianisra. Arius denied the divinity of the Son of God, and therefore refused to Christ, the Incarnate Son, the title and quality of true God. Theodore and Nestorius, while admitting that the Son was God, denied that the man Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, was in any sense true God. 'It is madness to say" (such are his words) " God was born of the Virgin; not God, but the temple in which God dwelt was born of Mary." These false teachers affirmed that the Divine Word had His dwelling in every human soul; but in Christ He manifested extraordinary power. He participated of the glory of the Word and Son more than any other human being; but it was only, after all, a difference in degree. It was, according to them, an error to say " God was born of the Virgin Mary," "God suffered, rose again from the tomb, and ascended into Heaven." These things could only be affirmed of human nature.
The whole Nestorian controversy thus turned on the great dogma, or doctrinal fact, whether Mary was and should be called "the Mother of God." On June 22d, 431, a general council assembled at Ephesus — the city in which Mary had spent the last years of her life, and which cherished toward her a deep and tender piety. The cathedral church in which the 160 bishops met, under the presidence of S. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, who represented Pope S. Celestine I. — was named in honor of "the Mother of God." The session lasted far into the night, and the doctrine of Nestorius and his school was solemnly condemned — the Blessed Virgin Mary was declared to be truly θεοτοκος, Mother of God.
The city, thereupon, was spontaneously illuminated, and the bishops, on issuing from the cathedral, were escorted to their lodgings by the joyous multitude, bearing lighted torches, and breaking forth into hymns of praise and thanksgiving.
It must not be forgotten that it was the Person of Christ Himself, at once both true God and true man, who thus triumphed in this solemn definition of faith. The heretics denied that the Son of the Virgin Mary was God; the bishops of the East and West assembled affirmed that He was, and that she was most truly Mother of God.
Her honor, therefore, was reflected on her Son. But, while He is very God, she is only a human being; she, the Mother of Christ, is only a creature — the most highly honored indeed of all created beings; while He is Creator.
In going back to the time of the Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431 —
two years before S. Patrick, sent by the same Pope Celestine I.,
landed in Pagan Ireland, we are amazed to find, in the writings
of such men as S. Cyril of Alexandria, and in the authentic descriptions of popular manners among Eastern Christians, how
deeply reverence for the Mother of God had penetrated all classes
in the community. The great Christian writers of that and the
preceding century — these saintly men whom we call the Fathers of
the Church, speak of Mary, not only as the Mother of God, but as
the "Second Eve." Long before them, one whose doctrine was
derived from the immediate disciples of the Apostles — S. Irenaeus —
draws out an elaborate parallel between Mary and the first Eve.
" Mary, by her obedience, became both to herself and to all mankind the cause of salvation. . . . The knot of Eve's disobedience
was loosed by Mary's obedience. . . . What the Virgin Eve bound
by unbelief, that the Virgin Mary unbound by faith. ... As by a
Virgin the human race had been given over to death, so by a Virgin it is saved."
It is also to be remarked here, that just as the title "Virgin Mother " was given to the Church by the early Fathers, so we find them applying the same prophetic passages of Scripture both to the Virgin Mother of Christ, and to His spouse the Church, who is the Virginal Mother of His children here below. Indeed, it is but natural to assume that she who is the Parent of Christ our Head, entertains all a parent's affection for His members, and performs towards them throughout the ages, both in Heaven and on earth, all a Mother's offices of love and watchfulness.
Hence, the constant application now to the Church, and now to the Immaculate Mother, of that passage in Apocalypse xii. i: "And a great sign appeared in Heaven, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. And being with child, she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered. And there was seen another sign in Heaven: and behold a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns. . . . And the dragon stood before the woman, who was ready to be delivered, that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son. . . . And her son was taken up to God and to His throne. And there was a great battle in Heaven; Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels. . . . And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world." It is only carrying out the idea of S. Irenaeus, to see the conflict prophesied in Genesis iii. 14, 15, at the very beginning of Revealed History, described as it happened in the last half of the first century of Christianity, as it has continued down to our own day. The Second Eve is foretold to the First in the memorable passage: "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel. To the woman also He said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children. ..."
The enemy of God and of mankind has never ceased from that day till now, to make war on God's children here below; in the Old Law on the Church which God established through Moses — amid what "sorrows" did she bring forth sons to God! In the New Law, how the battle has gone on, between the Church of Christ and the seven-headed serpent of Heresy — ever watchful to devour each generation of Christians! It is surely in sorrow, especially in our days, that the Church brings forth her children; and she needs the embattled hosts of Michael, invisibly aiding her, to cast out the Old Serpent, the Adversary.
