Wayne, your question for Tim.
I was wondering why the the Catholic Church,
when they pray to Mary or venerate Mary,
that she is called the "Mother of God."
Yes. And now also the Hail Mary, when they
do the "Hail Mary"s, isn't that idolatry? It's
idolizing Mary.
You know what, those are both great questions. Let's talk
first about Mary as the mother of God.
Well, the first reason why we believe Mary is the mother of God is because it
is an historical fact. The fact is that Jesus Christ
is revealed in sacred scripture to be God manifest in the flesh, right? John 1:
1-3 says "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God. All things were made through him, and
without him was not anything made that was made."
And then in verse 14 it says "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."
Well, how was he made flesh? He was born of the
Virgin Mary. So what we have here is almighty God was born
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which means Mary
necessarily is the mother of God.
Scripture tells us in Luke 1:43 St. Elizabeth says
of Mary, after she had conceived Jesus and goes to the house of Elizabeth, "Who
am I that the mother of my Lord should come unto me?" And of
course she's referencing, under the power of the
Holy Spirit, 2 Samuel 6:9
when King David said of the Ark of the Covenant "Who am I that
the Ark of my Lord
should come unto me?" And so we know the scriptures are
here revealing Mary to be the new Ark of the
Covenant, just as in the Old Testament the Ark was
the Ark of almighty God. Of course, the new testament fulfillment of that Ark
would not have something in it less than the God of the Old Testament, because
then the fulfillment would be less than the type. We know that
of course the New Testament Ark would be the Ark of Almighty God. So of course
Elizabeth calls Mary "Mother of my Lord," God; Mary is in fact
the mother of God; and, my brother, this leads to us
honoring Mary. Because think of it this way, brother: the Bible gives us
basically two essential reasons why we honor
some members of the Body of Christ more than others,
right? Think of this: 1 Timothy 5:17
commands us to give "double honor" to the teaching elders.
Now what does that mean? That means, guess what, I'm gonna honor
the teaching elders twice as much as I honor this knucklehead sitting here
right now, Cy Kellett, because the Bible tells me
to. So number one, we honor some members of
the Body of Christ more than others because of their office. But number two,
we also honor them because of their holiness,
or what God has done for them, in them, and through them. Well, the
Blessed Mother's a great example of that,
because in Luke 1:48 she says—she prophesies
under the power of the Holy Spirit—"All generations shall call me blessed, for
the Almighty has done great things for me.
Well, the Blessed Virgin Mary has done the
greatest thing that any human
person—and notice I said "human person," because Jesus was not a human person, he
was a divine person who had a human nature and a divine
nature; he was fully human, but he was a divine person—Mary did the
greatest thing that any human person has ever done
in the history of the world. And that is: she, through her
"Yes," in Luke 1:37-38, she said
"Let it be done unto me according to thy word," and as a result of her "Yes,"
Jesus came into the world and all of us could be saved. So of course
we honor Mary because of her office as Mother of
God, and also the fact that she cooperated with God's grace and
God did something through her greater than—
in fact, without Mary, there is no Jesus. There's no
Apostle Peter. There's no Paul. There's no 12 apostles. There's
nothing, there's no New Testament, without Mary's "Yes" to almighty God. Now, could God
have chosen someone else? Absolutely! God could choose anybody
wants to. But the bottom line is, He chose Mary and Mary said "Yes." Does
that get you started, anyway, as to why we
honor her? But please understand: we do not adore her,
we do not worship her, that would be a mortal sin for a Catholic
because we adore and worship God and God alone; but we honor her because of the
great things God did through her.
Okay. First of all, you have the Trinity, which is God the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. She was the mother of God the Son. Amen!
Not God the Father, right? Amen! That's good Catholic preaching right there, brother.
Now understand, I'm not—I kind of sound like I'm jesting.
I'm not jesting. That is absolutely what the Catholic Church teaches. She is not
the mother of the Father, she's not the mother of the Holy Spirit.
She is the mother of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity
incarnate. But the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity
is almighty God. Hence, she is the mother of God. She's not the mother of the
Trinity, but she's the mother of God, because she
is the mother of the Second Person Blessed Trinity, who IS God.
He is. And as Colossians 2:9 says, I'm sure you know,
that in him "the fullness of the godhead dwells bodily." Right? It's not like part
of God is in Jesus and part of God's in
the Father and part of of God's in the Holy
Spirit. No, all of God's in all three.