Some Christians accuse Catholics of putting Mary on the same level as God because we call her the Mother of God.
Objection: To say Mary is the Mother of God, you are saying Mary would have to have preceded God in order to have given birth to him, or she would have to be divine herself! Catholics might refuse to accept that they worship Mary, but they do in belief. Catholics are guilty of Mariolatry!
As I have mentioned in previous articles on this topic, Catholics call Mary the Mother of God to protect and safeguard the divinity of Jesus Christ! After all, if we refuse to call Mary the Mother of God, in effect, we are committing the same heretical crimes as Arius (4th century) and Nestorius (5th century).
Arius did not believe that Jesus was the eternally begotten Son of God but was rather the created Son with a beginning. Since he would have had a beginning, Jesus was not truly God but a creation of God.
Nestorius, on the other hand, argued that Jesus was a divine and a human person at the same time. He believed that there were essentially two persons in Christ.
If you believe either of the above lines of thinking, you cease to be a Christian because you have reduced Jesus Christ to a mere man who has no power to save you from your sins and reconcile you to God!
So, how do Catholics answer this question?
We do not believe that Mary is older than God or is the source of Jesus Christ’s divinity. Both are absurd.
Catholics do not believe Mary is the Mother of the Trinity, but rather, the Mother of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word, who became flesh. The Catholic Church does not teach that Mary is the Mother of God the Father or God the Holy Spirit.
Let’s take this even further. Not only did Mary not provide Jesus with his divine nature, she did not give Him his immortal soul either! Ecc 12:7 says, “The soul shall return to God who gave it”. Scripture is clear that it is God who gives us our immortal souls, not our mothers.
So, if Mary did not provide Jesus with his divinity or immortal soul, what did she provide him with? His human nature. Fr Donald Calloway, a popular priest, speaker and author, talks about Fetal Microchimerism. The science behind this is wild, but to put it simply, when a mother conceives a child, her cells are present in the body of her baby in utero, and the cells of the baby are present in the body of its mother. This is not something that lasts the 9 months of pregnancy but extends into the rest of both of their lives.
I am thirty-two years old right now, and my cells still live in my mother, and her cells still live in me. In fact, when my mother gets sick, my cells – and the cells of my other five siblings – help to attack the sickness.
What does this mean? That Jesus’ cells exist in Mary right now, and Mary’s cells exist in Jesus Christ right now! Remember, this is science.
If Mary was responsible for giving Jesus his divine nature, or his immortal soul, but only his human nature, how can Catholics believe Mary is the Mother of God?
The answer is simple – Mothers do not give birth to natures; they give birth to persons. Mary is the Mother of God because she gave birth to the divine person, Jesus Christ – with two distinct natures (divine and human) joined in a hypostatic union without being commingled or divided.
Catholics do not worship Mary as a god; We do not make her equal to God the Father, Son or Holy Spirit, we do not believe she gave Jesus his divine nature – or even his immortal soul! But we do believe that God overshadowed her, and the Word became flesh in her (John 1:14).
