Our Lady and the Incarnation
"'God sent his Son, made of a woman.' Christianity, therefore, is the religion of the Incarnation. All there is in it proceeds from, depends on, and clusters around that ineffable mystery, in which the design of God in creation - the deification of the creature, or his elevation to perfect union with God - is consummated.
The devotion to Mary grows out of the Incarnation, as does the Church herself, and tends, we think, to keep alive faith in that crowning act of the Creator. If we would express Christianity as a whole we must symbolize the Incarnation, and the only perfect symbol possible is that of the reality which the Magi saw - the Madonna and Child.
And why is it the only symbol of the Incarnation? Because the Incarnation means that God is man; but how can we express the truth that God is man except by showing that he has a mother? In his divine nature he has no mother; then if he has a mother he is man.
Whence the Creeds do not merely say that Christ is the Son of God, or that the Son of God was made man, but affirm that He was 'born of the Virgin Mary'; 'Incarnate of (or from) the Virgin Mary,' - thus setting forth the same divine Person as at once the Son of God and the Son of Mary. That is, they show us the Incarnate God in his Mother's arms, they symbolize the Incarnation by the Madonna and Child." (Richard F. Quigley, Mary the Mother of Christ in Prophecy and its Fulfilment, pp. 61-62, bold markup added)
The devotion to Mary grows out of the Incarnation, as does the Church herself, and tends, we think, to keep alive faith in that crowning act of the Creator. If we would express Christianity as a whole we must symbolize the Incarnation, and the only perfect symbol possible is that of the reality which the Magi saw - the Madonna and Child.
And why is it the only symbol of the Incarnation? Because the Incarnation means that God is man; but how can we express the truth that God is man except by showing that he has a mother? In his divine nature he has no mother; then if he has a mother he is man.
Whence the Creeds do not merely say that Christ is the Son of God, or that the Son of God was made man, but affirm that He was 'born of the Virgin Mary'; 'Incarnate of (or from) the Virgin Mary,' - thus setting forth the same divine Person as at once the Son of God and the Son of Mary. That is, they show us the Incarnate God in his Mother's arms, they symbolize the Incarnation by the Madonna and Child." (Richard F. Quigley, Mary the Mother of Christ in Prophecy and its Fulfilment, pp. 61-62, bold markup added)
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