The Cause of the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman

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Newman on the Blessed Virgin Mary: Mother of God, Mother of ‘All the Living’

Categorised as Featured and published Thursday, January 1st, 2009
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In this passage from An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine – the book Newman was writing when received into the Catholic Church in 1845 – he speaks of the title of ‘Mother of God’ which the Fathers of the Church give to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and how they go on to assert that Our Lady is the Mother of believers, and indeed of ‘All the Living’:

The title Theotocos, or Mother of God, was familiar to Christians from primitive times, and had been used, among other writers, by Origen, Eusebius, St Alexander, St Athanasius, St Ambrose, St Gregory Nazianzen, St Gregory Nyssen, and St Nilus. She had been called Ever-Virgin by others, as by St Epiphanius, St Jerome, and Didymus. By others, “the Mother of all living,” as being the antitype of Eve; for, as St. Epiphanius observes, “in truth,” not in shadow, “from Mary was Life itself brought into the world, that Mary might bear things living, and might become Mother of living things.” [...]

She is signified by the Pillar of the cloud which guided the Israelites, according to the same Father; and she had “so great grace, as not only to have virginity herself, but to impart it to those to whom she came;”—”the Rod out of the stem of Jesse,” says St Jerome, and “the Eastern gate through which the High Priest alone goes in and out, yet is ever shut;”—the wise woman, says St Nilus, who “hath clad all believers, from the fleece of the Lamb born of her, with the clothing of incorruption, and delivered them from their spiritual nakedness;”—”the Mother of Life, of beauty, of majesty, the Morning Star,” according to Antiochus;—”the mystical new heavens,” “the heavens carrying the Divinity,” “the fruitful vine by whom we are translated from death unto life,” according to St Ephraim;—”the manna which is delicate, bright, sweet, and virgin, which, as though coming from heaven, has poured down on all the people of the Churches a food pleasanter than honey,” according to St Maximus.

(Picture: Mosaic, Our Lady and Child, St Prassede, Rome)