The Church has called the Blessed Virgin Mother of God since the first centuries of Christianity. The title, which the Fathers expressed through the Greek word Theotokos, occupies a central place in the Catholic faith because it proclaims an essential truth about Jesus Christ: the one who was born of Mary is the eternal Son of God made man.
The 11th of October was for decades the date of the liturgical feast of the Virgin’s Divine Maternity, established by Pius XI in 1931 on the occasion of the fifteenth centenary of the Council of Ephesus. Although in the current Roman calendar the solemnity of Saint Mary, Mother of God, is celebrated on January 1st, the ancient feast of October 11th continues to be preserved in the 1962 liturgical calendar.
The history of this celebration leads to one of the great doctrinal controversies of the ancient Church. In the year 431, the bishops gathered in Ephesus had to defend the unity of Christ’s Person against a teaching that endangered the true understanding of the Incarnation.
How can Mary be the Mother of God?
The difficulty some find with this title usually stems from a confusion. Mary did not give origin to the Son’s divinity, nor did she exist before God. The Word is eternal, consubstantial with the Father, and did not begin to exist when He was conceived in the Virgin’s womb.
What the Church confesses is that the eternal Son of God assumed a true human nature in Mary’s womb. The child whom she conceived, carried in her womb, and gave birth to in Bethlehem is a divine Person, the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. That is why Mary is truly the Mother of God: her motherhood refers to the Person of her Son, who is God made man.
A mother does not give birth to a human nature considered in an abstract way, but to a concrete person. In Mary’s case, that Person is the eternal Word. To deny her the title of Mother of God would ultimately obscure the personal unity of Jesus Christ and unduly separate the man born of the Virgin from the Son of God.
The controversy that led to the Council of Ephesus
In the fifth century, the teachings of Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, provoked a serious controversy over how to understand the union of divinity and humanity in Christ. His resistance to fully accepting the title Theotokos was interpreted by his opponents as the result of an undue separation between the divine Word and the man Jesus.
Saint Cyril of Alexandria became one of the principal defenders of Mary’s divine motherhood. For him, calling the Virgin Mother of God was a necessary consequence of the Incarnation: if Jesus Christ is one single divine Person, the woman from whom He was born according to the flesh is truly the Mother of God.
The Council of Ephesus, convened in 431, confirmed this faith and defended the unity of Christ. Tradition preserves the memory of the enthusiasm with which the faithful of Ephesus received the conciliar decision, for they understood that the defense of Mary’s dignity was inseparably united to the defense of the true identity of her Son.
The doctrine would be further clarified twenty years later by the Council of Chalcedon, which confessed Jesus Christ as true God and true man, one and the same Son, in two natures without confusion or separation. Ephesus and Chalcedon thus remain closely united in the history of the Catholic faith.
A feast to remember the truth about Christ
In 1931, on the fifteenth centenary of the Council of Ephesus, Pius XI wished to honor in a special way the Virgin’s divine motherhood. The celebration of October 11th was incorporated into the Roman calendar and offered the faithful an annual occasion to contemplate the mystery of the Incarnation from the perspective of Mary’s motherhood.
The choice of this date would later acquire an additional historical significance. On October 11, 1962, Saint John XXIII inaugurated the Second Vatican Council precisely under the protection of the Virgin whose divine motherhood was celebrated that day. Benedict XVI would later recall that the Pope had wished to entrust the great ecclesial assembly to Mary’s maternal heart and to link its work to the mystery of Jesus Christ.
The title of Mother of God also occupies a privileged place in the daily prayer of Catholics. Every time the Hail Mary is prayed, the Church asks for the intercession of “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” recognizing the singular dignity of the one whom the Lord chose to bring the Savior into the world.
The divine motherhood and the Christian life
Mary’s greatness proceeds entirely from her relationship with Jesus Christ. She was chosen to be His Mother and received the graces necessary to fulfill a unique vocation in the history of salvation. Her divine motherhood is the foundation of her other privileges and explains the singular place she occupies among all the saints.
At the same time, the Catholic faith recognizes in her a mother who intercedes for the disciples of her Son. The Virgin who carried Christ in her womb, remained with Him at the foot of the Cross, and accompanied the nascent Church with her prayer continues to be invoked by the faithful as Mother of God and our Mother.
That is why the title Theotokos does not belong solely to the formulas of the ancient councils. It is present in the liturgy, in the Rosary, in the litanies, and in the prayers that Christians have handed down from generation to generation.
When a Catholic calls Mary Mother of God, he also confesses who Jesus is: the eternal Word who became flesh for our salvation. Devotion to the Virgin finds its deepest foundation precisely in this truth, because all her greatness leads to the mystery of her Son.