There are so many titles for the Blessed Virigin Mary. Of course we know her as Our Lady of Guadalupe & Our Lady of Lourdes & Fatima…in Vietnam she is Our lady of Lavang…in Poland Our Lady of Czestochowa…in Ireland they call her Our Lady of Knock…in England our Lady of Walsingham. She has been called the Queen of Heaven…the Queen of Angels…the Queen of Peace…the Queen of the Rosary. She is Our Lady of Sorrows…our Lady of Perpetual Help…and our Lady of Victory. She is the Star of the Sea…the Mystical Rose…and the Seat of Wisdom. She’s even been given titles we’ve probably never heard of…Mary the Bridal Chamber of the Lord…Mary the bridge between God and Man…Mary the God-Bearer and the Tabernacle of the Word. I’ve even called her Mary the First Monstrance of the Eucharist because her cousin Elizabeth adored the Lord in her womb just as we adore him at Eucharistic Adoration.

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary The Mother of God…a difficult title to say the least. Mary the Mother of God. It was a stumbling block in the early church as many good and holy Christians with no ill intent at all fell victim to the trap of heresy. How could a thirteen year old girl actually be the mother of God…it was very confusing then…it remains confusing even today. It’s much easier to understand and believe that she is the mother of this little baby Jeshua, or Jesus as we know him. But the Mother of God is a lot to take for sure.

So how did they…how do we…come to a full understanding of this mystery? It must start with Jesus…we come to know Mary because of Jesus. For the early Christians...Who exactly was Jesus? It’s easy for you and me…we just go to our Catechism. But for them…they were trying to understand something for the first time that was an unexplainable mystery. We have 2000 years of reflection to help us. Some of them thought that Jesus couldn’t possibly be human…he must have been God appearing as a human. Some believed that he surely wasn’t God…he was just a holy man…no human could ever be God. Some thought he was half God and half Man. And all three of these were and are wrong. The Church teaches that Jesus is 100% God and 100% Human. And this is precisely where we enter into the understanding…as best a mystery can actually be understood…of who Mary the Mother of God is. The Chruch teaches us:

Called in the Gospels the Mother of Jesus, Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her son, as the Mother of My Lord. In fact, the One whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who really became her Son in the flesh, was none other than the Father’s eternal Son, the second person of the Most Holy Trinity, God Himself. Hence, the Church believes that Mary is truthly the Mother of God. CCC 495 In other words…if Jesus is 100% human…which he is…then Mary is the mother of the man Jesus. And if he is 100% God…which he is…she gave birth to him and thus is the mother of the Person Jesus who is God.

This is why we pray all those Rosaries…why we load our churches with statues of her…why we want to be reminded of her every day of our lives. She’s indespensible to the whole story of Salvation. You might remember my homily for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Mary…conceived without sin…who lived her entire life without sin…IS the way you and me WERE before we fell to sin. This is why we call her the New Eve and Jesus the New Adam. With the Incarnation, God re-configures humanity to its most authentic identity…the way that Adam and Eve were before the fall. With the Incarnation God re-introduces us to ourselves. And Mary plays an indespensible role in that salvific act. Mary must be free of sin from birth to her ascension…in fact this is why she “fell asleep” rather than “died” and why her body is nowhere to be found here on earth. She…body and soul…is the way we would have been had we not sinned that day back in the garden. She is the way that you and I will hopefully be one day when we are in Heaven and Jesus returns to raise our mortal bodies into immortal glory. A totally appropariate title to add to her many titles then would certainly be Our Lady the Template for Humanity…or Our Lady the Instruction Manual for Humanity…or Our Lady the Indispensible Ingredient in Salvation History.

Again from the Catechism and St. Irenaeus of Lyon…Being obedient, Mary became the cause of Salvation for herself and the whole human race. Hence the Church Fathers…those theologians of the first four centuries…glady explain…The knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience making Mary…Our Lady the Mother of the Living.

Pope Benedict teaches us that in the Baby…God becomes small so that you and I won’t be intimidated by Him. Mary was 13…an insignificant teenager in and even more insignificant province of the Roman Empire. She too was small…simple…humble…young…not yet made cynical of a world against her…she was honest…open…available to God…willing rather than willful. And that’s how God comes into our lives…through Her…with Her…making us…hopefully…like her.

Today we celebrate this dual role of Mary of Nazareth. She is the thirteen year old girl who bravely said “Yes” to the Angel Gabriel. She is also the “New Eve” who in total perfection and grace serves as the bridge by which God himself arrives to meet you and me in our daily lives. Our Lady…indespensible in this overwhelming miracle…Our Lady Mother of the Living and Template by which we must live…pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.