The Mother Of Jesus

EWTN Global Catholic Radio and St. Joseph Communications proudly present Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. This 50-part series was recorded on photograph records in the 1960s and the sound quality is sometimes limited. But the word of God spoken by Archbishop Sheen is timeless and now here is Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Friends, peace be to you. At this point in the unfolding of the divine mysteries and Christian doctrine, we come to some very important words in the creed, namely that our message, Lord, was born of the Virgin Mary. We will try to give first of all some evidence for this. Secondly, show how it was necessary in the present plan of the world's redemption. First of all, the evidence for it that our Lord was born of the Virgin Mary. In order to understand proofs, we must realize that the gospels were not first. There were traditions. Every member in the early church, I just to say, after penny costs and until the gospels were written, every member of the church already knew about the miracle of the loaves and fishes about the resurrection and about the Virgin birth. If something like, for example, the knowledge that we have that World War I began in 1914, we read that in the book. The fact that we read it in the book does not create the belief in us does it. It merely confirms what we already know. So, to the gospels set down in a more systematic way that which was already believed. Just suppose the Julian during the first 25 years of the church after penny costs. How would you have answered the question? How can I know what I am to believe? You could not say, I will look in the Bible. There was no new testament viable then. You would have to believe what the church was teaching in those days. Never once, for example, did our Lord tell the witnesses of his life to write. He wrote only once in his life and that was in the sands. But he did tell as a falsus to preach in his name. Be witnesses to him until the ends of the earth. Hence those that take this or that text out of the gospel to prove something are very awful, isolating it from the historical atmosphere in which it arose and from the word of mouth which passed on Christ's proof. When finally the gospels were written, they recorded a tradition. They did not create it. It was already there. After a while men had decided to put in writing this tradition. And that explains the beginning of the gospel of St. Luke. You remember how he begins? The Thal may us know the verity of these words in which Thal has been instructed. See, he assumes that people already had been instructed. The gospels did not start the church. The church started the gospels. The church did not come out of the gospels. It was the gospels that came out of the church. The church preceded the New Testament. Not the New Testament, the church. Men did not believe in the resurrection because the gospels said there was a resurrection. The gospel writers wrote down the story of the crucifixion, for example, in the resurrection, because they believed it. Now a light man. The church did not come to believe in the virgin birth because the gospels tell us there is a virgin birth. It was because the living word of God in his mystical body, the church already believed it. And they set it down in the gospels. If the apostles lived with our Lord who heard him speak in the open hills and in the temple. If the apostles did not teach the virgin birth, no one else would have taught it. No one else would have written it. It was too unusual an idea for men to make up. It would have been ordinarily too difficult for acceptance. If it had not come from Christ himself. Now the one man who might be inclined to doubt the virgin birth on natural grounds was the man who write it in his gospel, namely St. Luke. I say on natural grounds because Luke was the physician. And yet it's the medical doctor who sets down the virgin birth and tells us most about it. Many of the teachings of our Lord were denied by heretics because there was a protest against Christ in the church from the very beginning. Now these heretics denied some of his doctrines, but there was one teaching that no early heretic denied. And that is that our Lord was born of a virgin. One would think that would be the very first doctrine to be attacked. But the virgin birth was accepted both by heretics and by believers alike. It would have been rather silly to try to convince anyone of the virgin birth if you did not already believe in the divinity of Christ. And that is why probably Mary did not speak of it herself until after the resurrection. And she told the apostles and others, although certainly Joseph Elizabeth and probably John the Baptist already knew of it. And of course our Lord himself all the time, we need not say that. Now we come to an objection that is often urged. Does not the gospel say that our blessed Lord had brothers? If he had brothers, then Mary had other children. If Mary had other children, then if he was not always the virgin mother. Now we will try to give some answer to that. I stand in the pulpit very often and I begin my sermon by saying, my dear brethren. Does that mean that everyone in the congregation and I had exactly the same mother? Or is it just a form of speech? Now that wide use of the word brethren, that we have an even modern language, were used also in a very wide sense by scriptures. In the scriptures the word brother means a relative, sometimes a friend. Let us take for example Abraham and Lot. Abraham calls Lot his brother. As we read in the book of Genesis, pray let us have no strife between us too, between my shepherds and thine. For we are brethren. Now Lot was not a brother of Abraham. He was an effulment, but that is the way the scripture speaks of friends and relatives. Thirdly, there are several indeed who are mentioned as brothers of Christ, such as James. But they are indicated elsewhere as the sons of another Mary. I mean elsewhere in scripture. They may marry the sister of the mother of our Lord and the wife of Cleophess. And again, James was particularly mentioned as the brother of our Lord, as for example by St. Paul who said, but I did not see any of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother. But this James is regularly named the enumeration of the apostles of the son of another father, namely Alpheus. And you will find out recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Furthermore, the so-called brethren of our Lord are nowhere mentioned in this scripture as the sons and the daughters of Joseph and Mary. No where in scripture is it said that Joseph had begotten brothers and sisters of Jesus. As nowhere does it say that Mary had other children besides her divine son. Now we come to some rather unusual proofs of the virgin birth from sacred scripture. I say unusual because I mean apart from the very obvious references that there are in St. Luke. Two of these proofs were going to draw from the gospel of St. John and also from the writings of St. Paul. First of all, St. John, St. John assumes the virgin birth. We say this because throughout the gospel of St. John, there is the assumption of a double birth. We are first of all born of our parents. And then we are born of God, the waters of the Holy Spirit in baptism. Remember that is what our Lord meant when he told Nicodemus that he must be born again. First birth he took from his mother in the flesh and the second is the birth of the Spirit. Now what makes us Christians is not being born of our parents, but being born of God through baptism. Now notice when St. John speaks of this second birth, namely our birth of God. He practically assumes the virgin birth. Because he said in the beginning of his gospel that our Lord gave to us quote the power to become the sons of God, then he tells us that this happens by a birth. But he immediately says this is not a human birth. And then he goes on to enumerate the reasons why it's not a human birth. He said it is neither a blood nor a sex nor of the human will. Now this statement of John certainly assumed a question and common understanding of the virgin birth. What is blood? What is sex? What is the human will? What a human birth? All of these elements are eliminated in the story of the birth of our Lord. The blessed mother says that she is a virgin, that she knows not man, and God says that the power of God will overshadow her. You get the same element you see in the gospel of St. John that you get in the gospel of St. Luke. How could any Christian in those days have understood this spirit to a kind of a birth unless they understood the virgin birth? Therefore it already happened. No one at the end of the first century read the beginning of the gospel of St. John was amazed to say John should have spoken of a new generation without sex. They were not amazed because at this time the whole Christian world knew that this is how Christianity came into being. The virgin birth in other words is God's idea. Not man's. No one would ever have thought of it if it had not happened. Now we come to another proof from the gospel of, see, or not the gospel, rather the epistles of St. Paul. St. Paul also assumes the virgin birth. Now as you know, the epistles were originally written in Greek. When St. Paul speaks of the birth of our Lord, he uses in Greek a very peculiar expression. Let us take for example St. Paul's message to the Galatians. Quote, then God sent out his non-emission to us. He took birth. Notice that? He took birth from a woman. Took birth as a subject of the law to make us sons by adoption. Whenever St. Paul describes the birth of our Lord, he never uses the ordinary word to describe birth. In other words, he never uses the word to describe a human birth, which is the result of the conjunction of man and woman. The word that is always used in every other New Testament passage. Now the common word in Greek is some form of the Greek word. G-now, G-e-n-n-a-o. That means a birth such you had and I had. But St. Paul, in four instances, speaks of the temporal beginnings of our Lord. Remember the person of our Lord was eternal. It was only a human nature that had a beginning. Now in the four instances where St. Paul touches on, the temporal beginnings of our Lord. As a man, in those four instances St. Paul uses an entirely different Greek word because it was not the ordinary kind of birth. He used some form of the word, you know, my G-i-n-o-n-a-i. He never wants, does he employ that other word which means a common ordinary birth, such as all mortals have. He never uses that to describe the birth of our Lord. He uses always the word which means like to come into existence or to become. One very interesting proof of this is any passage in the Galatians chapter 4 verses 23, 24 and 29. In that epistles St. Paul uses the word to be born, I just just say in the ordinary way, three times. He uses it to describe the birth of Ishmael and the birth of Jacob. But when he comes to the birth of our Lord, he refuses to use that word. He uses another word, a form of the verb, you know, my because the birth of our Lord was a virgin birth. You will find in the New Testament 33 times some description of the birth of a child. And in every single instance, the New Testament uses the word G-i-o-o-n-a-i, extraordinary birth like yours in mind. But that word is never used once concerning the birth of our Lord. Our Lord as a person had an eternal birth. In as much as he assumed with human nature, he had a temporal birth, a beginning, yes. But the beginning came from a virgin. You see the reason of the differences this, our Lord was born into the human family, into the human race. He was not born of it. God formed Adam, the first man without the seed of a man. So why should we shrink from the thought that the new Adam would also be formed without the seed of a man? As Adam was made of the earth into which God breathed, a living soul, so the body of Christ was formed as a flesh of Mary, but the Holy Spirit. And so firmly rooted was the virgin birth in Christian tradition that none of the early apologists ever had to defend the virgin birth. It was believed in even biheretics as we said, just as much as the crucifixion was, because it stood on exactly the same footing as an historical fact. Here's another interesting point. There are two birth stories in the gospel. The birth of our Lord and the birth of John the Baptist. But notice the different strengths. The gospel story of John the Baptist centers on the Father, Zachary. The gospel story of the birth of Jesus centers on the Mother. Why does it center on the Mother? Again because of the virgin birth. Now you may ask, well why is there a virgin birth? Could our blessed Lord have come to this earth in any other way? Oh certainly. Our Lord really need not have been born at all. But given the present order of things, why is there a virgin birth? Now here we come to something that is a little difficult to understand, and we hope that we can make it clear. The reason we believe in a virgin birth and the reason in the present order are Lord chose that way. It was first to all. He wanted someone very good to bring him into this world. No great cry on sunk leader makes his entrance into the city over dust-covered roads when he could come on a flower screw an avenue. Had infinite purity chosen any other part of entrance and humanity, but that of human purity, it would have created a tremendous epigraphy for us. Namely, how could he be sinless if he was born of a sin-laden humanity? If a brush dipped in black becomes black and if a cloth takes on the color of the dye, would not he and the eyes of the world have partaken of the guilt in which all humanity shared? If he came to this earth through the weak field of moral weakness, he certainly would have some chast hanging onto the garment of his human nature. In other words our problem is this. How could God become man and yet be a sinless man? First of all, he had to be man. He had to be like us. In order that he might be involved in somewhere in our humanity, in order that he might take upon himself, our sins. But at the same time, no, our blessed Lord, had to be a perfect man. Nevertheless, he could not be a sinful man. He had to be a sinless man. He had in some way to be outside of that terrible current of sin that has passed on and infected all humanity. You see the problem? He had to be a man. He had to be different from all of a man in the sense that he had to be our Redeemer and sinless in the new Adam. The problem is very much like that of a ship. Imagine a ship sailing on a sea that's very dirty and foul. It wishes to pass to another sea or lake immediately nearby where the waters are crystal clear and pure. Now evidently there has to be some break between the powe waters and the carewars. Otherwise, they would merge. So what happens? There is often a lock built. So a ship sailed along those foul waters then comes into the lock where the foul waters are completely separated from it. And then the ship is finally lifted into the clear waters. So our blessed Lord in some way had to be related to the sinful humanity that went on before, related in as much as he would be a man. That because he would be sinful. At the same time he had to be sinless so that he himself would not need redemires. What would be our Redeemer? Now that lock that lifted our blessed Lord out of that sinful current of humanity and made him the sinless man, the new head of the human race was the Virgin Mary. And then think of the beautiful, beautiful application that has for all of us. The blessed mother is the inspiration of everyone. A mother is the protectors of the Virgin and the Virgin is the inspiration of Motherhood. Without mothers there would be no versions in the next generation. Without the Virgin's mothers would forget that's the blind ideal who lives beyond the earth. How often, for example, when you visit someone, you hear it. Said, oh, that child looks exactly like the father. Well, if we had looked at our blessed Lord, they would have said, he looks exactly like his mother. He got something from the father's side, mainly divinity, but he also got something from his mother's side, namely, his sinless humanity. That's why we love Mary. He will marry full of grace. This has been Life's Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Shin. For more information about this series, contact St. Joseph Communications at 1-800-526-2151. Outside the US, call 818-3313-3549. And please join us again next time for Life's Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Shin on EWTN Global Catholic Radio.