Behold Your Mother Dilemma

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De_Maria said:
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James817:
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James817:
Is there any historical precedent from early Christianity concerning the interpretation that Jesus is commanding Christians to take Mary as their mother?
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This is what I’m saying: “Behold your mother” doesn’t mean, “Have a personal relationship with My mother or be cut off from Me.”
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But it does say it in Revelations 12:17. Or why do you suppose it says that Mary is the Mother of all those who believe in the Gospel and keep the Commandments?

Let me spell it out for you. If you don’t believe the Gospel, God won’t save you. If you don’t keep the Commandments, God won’t save you. Thus, Mary is the mother of all who are saved.
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I’ve read Revelations 12:17, mind you, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t say
“Have a personal relationship with My mother or be cut off from Me.”
 
James817 said:
I’ve read Revelations 12:17, mind you, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t say
“Have a personal relationship with My mother or be cut off from Me.”
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Answer my question. Why do you suppose it says, “her seed are they which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ”?
 
As it is with the things to be found in the bible, the ECFs need not have pontificated on a subject for it to be held by the faithful.

It seems that the faith is being picked apart. Being stupid and slow of wit, I simply choose to believe and obey as best I can.
 
James817 said:
So in the passage about the Crucifixion, we read how Jesus put Mary in John’s care. Is there any historical precedent from early Christianity concerning the interpretation that Jesus is commanding Christians to take Mary as their mother?
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Actually I have never read anything that reflects a concept of this as a “commandment”. Mary is a gift to the Church. He has shared the gift of HIs mother with all of us. He told the disciples that all who hear the word of God and obey (as she did) would be His mother, brother, etc. We have been grafted into the Holy Family. I guess I am puzzled why this is so difficult? It seems easy for people to see Jesus as our brother, as all who follow Christ as siblings. I can imagine her mothering his disciples as well. When I think about the respect the Apostles must have had for His mother, it only seems natural that they would all “adopt” her in this way.
De_Maria said:
Looks like you’ve stumped the forum. Does our guest get a prize for this question?
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The pattern of the Church with regard to the handing down the doctrines of the faith is that doctrine is reflected in prayer, liturgy, and practices of the faithful. If any such practices contradict the doctrines of the faith, they are identified as heresy. As devotion to Mary developed in the Church, both East and West, there was no outcry about heresy. By this, as well as other signs, we know the practice was consistent with the Apostolic teachings.

We see the same for infant baptism. Today there is a belief in “believers baptism”, such that a person is expected to convert and make an act of faith before becoming baptized (so infants are excluded). But in the early Church, the only arguements we see related to infant baptism is how SOON they should be baptized, not whether they should reach the “age of reason”.

You can read about some of the earliest hymns/prayers of the Church here:


This early fragment predates the Council of Ncea by about 75 years and is about a century and a half prior to the declaration of the NT canon.
 
De_Maria said:
St. Ambrose was born in the 4th century.
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yes, but the roots of this are in the writings of Paul Galatians 4:4–5 Paul says, “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Why would Paul think it necessary to emphasize that God’s Son was “born of woman”? On a purely physical level, it is obvious that any man is born from a woman. But Paul is saying something deeper. By speaking of the woman, he is alluding to Genesis 3:15, which says, “I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” The woman in Genesis 3:15 is clearly Eve, and Paul is drawing a parallel between Eve and the woman from whom God’s Son was born.

By whom are we adopted? And if we are children of our Father in heaven, what then is our relationship with the Mother of Christ?

This might be a good site for @James817 because it responds to the most common issues related to this “dilemma”,


@James817 I encourage you to ask Jesus to show you what kind of relationship He would like you to have with His mother.
 
It means that if a person is a son of Mary they will do what Mary did, which was to hear God’s word and observe it.

Consider this passage:
John 8
39 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do what Abraham did, 40 but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God; this is not what Abraham did. 41 You do what your father did.”
 
James817 said:
It means that if a person is a son of Mary they will do what Mary did, which was to hear God’s word and observe it.
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That follows, but it is not a commandment from God per say, but a commandment of a conscience informed by the truth. imho
 
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Actually, folks, the early Church Fathers had tons to say about Jn. 19:26-27.

Origen isn’t exactly a Father, but he’s a great ecclesiastical writer, and one of the earliest theologians and Scripture commentators. In his Commentary on John (T. 1, n. 6), he calls John “the flower of the Scriptures,” and says that you can’t understand his Gospel or writings unless the reader:
has "reclined upon the breast of Jesus, or… received Mary from Jesus to be his mother also. Yes, such a one and so great must he necessarily become, who is to become another John.

“…For if, in the judgment of those whose opinions are sound concerning Mary, there is no son of Mary except Jesus; and if Jesus says to His mother, ‘Behold thy son,’ and not, 'Behold, he is thy son too” – then it is the same as if He said, ‘Behold, he is Jesus whom you brought forth.’

"For whoever is perfect, no longer lives himself, but Christ in him. (cf. Gal. 2:20) And since Christ lives in him, it is said to Mary about him, ‘Behold thy son – Christ.’

“How great an understanding, then, do we not need, to be able to find out the Word that lies hidden among treasures, covered by the bare letter’s shell!.. But he who would properly understand, should be able to say with truth, ‘We have the mind of Christ, so that we may know the things that are given to us by God.’ (cf. 1 Cor. 2:16)”
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A disciple of Christ, a Christian, is a little Christ and a part of His Body. So it’s not strange that Origen is pointing out that John is literally Mary’s son, and so is every baptized Christian. (In a way, it’s our own moms who are spiritually moms to us, because our own selves already died in Christ. Heh, that’s a weird way to think of it.)

St. Hilary of Poitiers sees it differently in his Commentary on Matthew, chapter 1.
"Unless He were leaving the charity of a son in His disciple, for the solace of His now desolate mother, never would Our Lord, at the time of His Passion, have transferred Mary to the Apostle John to be his own mother, by saying to them both, “Woman, behold thy son,” and to John, “Behold thy mother.”
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St. Cyril of Jerusalem takes still another tack in his Catechetical Lectures (Lecture 7, 9), saying that Jesus was assigning John to Mary!
"When He was dying and His Body was nailed to the Cross, the Only-Begotten Son of God, seeing Mary, His mother according to the flesh, and John, the best-beloved of His disciples, said to John, ‘Behold thy mother,’ and to Mary, ‘Behold thy son,’ clearly teaching by it the affectionate love that she should have for John.

“…In the same way that Mary was John’s mother – because of her love [“philostorgian”] for him, and not because she gave him birth – so Joseph was called the father of Jesus.”
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St. Ambrose was a very Roman guy for somebody from Milan, so he makes a typical Roman interpretation based on family piety for the matron of the household, in his Exposition on Luke (Book 10).
"‘Mary, the Lord’s mother, stood before the Cross of her Son.’ (Jn. 19:25) Nobody but St. John the Evangelist taught me this… John has taught what the others did not teach: how He spoke words to His mother when on the Cross. He deemed it of greater moment that the Conqueror of Torments showed the duties of piety to His mother, than that He made a grant of the heavenly Kingdom. For if it was a religious act to grant pardon to the thief, it was an act of much more abundant piety for the mother to be honored by her Son with such great affection.

“‘He says to her, “Behold thy son.” After that, He says to the disciple, “Behold thy mother.”’ Christ made His last will from the Cross, and divided the duties of piety between His mother and disciple.”
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There is a lot more. Ambrose goes on and on, talking about all sorts of implications to the story, and how parents should imitate Mary while children should imitate Jesus and John. He circles around and repeats himself in Consolation at the Interment of Valentinus and his On the Institution of Virginity (where he talks a lot about how Mary obviously didn’t remarry or have other kids). Obviously a story close to his heart.

Other writers talk about how John was a virgin too, and so it was very fitting for John and Mary to be able to take care of each other and understand each other.

There are a ton of early Christian writings dealing with Mary as a type of the Church or Israel, and St. Ambrose even studies the Church as a type of Mary! (In his commentary on the Song of Songs.) The praying female figure in the catacombs of Rome is often identified with this Mary/Church link.

For example, the early Christian letter about the martyrs of Lyons (Lugdunum whateveritis) calls the Church “the Virgin Mother” in relation to the apostate Christians who repented and became martyrs, saying that those she had “expelled as lifeless miscarriages, she received again as alive.”
 
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St. Clement of Alexandria, in his “The Tutor of Children,” (Book 1, Chapter 6) also seems to think that “the Church” can be used as a title of the Virgin Mary. He goes into great detail about how all Christians are Mary’s children, even though she did not bear them in her body.
"Calling her little children to her, she nourishes them with holy milk – indeed, with the infant Word… This little infant, beautiful and her own, was Himself the milk, nurturing with the Word the new people that the Lord Himself gave birth to, with labor pangs of flesh, and whom He wrapped in the swaddling clothes of His Precious Blood. Oh, the holy newborns! Oh, the holy swaddling clothes!

“The Word is all things to the little infant: both father and mother, and tutor and nurse. ‘Eat,’ He says, ‘and drink My Blood.’”
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St. Ephrem’s “Sermon on the Night of the Lord’s Resurrection” also talks about the flip side of this:
"Why did the Lord first show His Resurrection to a woman, and not to men?

"A mystery is revealed here, with regard to the Church and the Lord’s Mother.

"The Virgin received the first beginning of His advent on earth, and to a woman He Himself showed His resurrection from the sepulchre. Both at the beginning and the end, it is His mother’s name that is there, and it resounds. It was a Mary that received Him on His coming into life, and also one who saw the angels at the sepulchre.

"The Virgin Mary is, again, the figure of the Church, which received the first-fruits of the Gospel. Mary saw Him, as representing the Church.

"Blessed is He who brought joy to the Church and to Mary!

"Let us call the Church by the name of Mary, for She is worthy of the double name.

“Mary ran first to Simon, the foundation, and announced it to him as to the Church, and told him that she had seen the risen Lord.”
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Mary was very commonly thought of as the “new Eve,” and thus “the mother of the living” (ie, of Christians) very early in Christian times. St. Irenaeus talks about this.

St. Epiphanius goes farther, saying that Mary was a sort of reverse-image of Adam, too.
“For of Adam it is said that God ‘formed’ him, but it is not said of Eve that she was formed; but that she was ‘built.’ So we read that God took one of Adam’s ribs and ‘built’ it into a woman for him, to show us that when, for Himself, the Lord had ‘formed’ again a body from Mary, thus the Church was built from a rib from Mary.”
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What you can see from these selections is that, in early Christian times, there were several different lines of interpretation of this John passage, and none of them really conflict with each other. You can also see that the interpretation that Mary was the Mom of the Church was so standard that you didn’t even need to connect it with Scripture; but that it was constantly connected to Scripture in many different ways, often in ways we don’t think about.
 
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Mintaka said:
Actually, folks, the early Church Fathers had tons to say about Jn. 19:26-27.
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Great finds! Thanks for your posts!

The thing is, the OP is asking the question in a legalistic way which is diametrically opposed to the mystery! That is why there is no explicit teaching of the ECFs “COMMANDING” Christians to take Mary as their mother OR ELSE! IOW, as Christians we are the beneficiaries of this mystery! Why would we deprive ourselves? If we did, it would be our own loss, assuming we could remain Christians and deny the Motherhood of Mary to all Christians.
 
If you want to query your concerns you can address me. I do not deny that Mary is the Mother of the Church; I simply state that there is no evidence to substantiate the claim that one must have a personal relationship with her to have a share in the Kingdom.
 
James817 said:
Is there any historical precedent from early Christianity concerning the interpretation that Jesus is commanding Christians to take Mary as their mother?
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I think what you are saying is that you don’t accept the writings of the early Christians about their relationships and perceptions of Mary, and don’t accept that the whole of the early Church (including the Reformers) accepted the interpretation that Jesus gave Mary to the Church from the cross.

You might want to consider asking Jesus to form your heart to regard His mother as He wishes you to do.
 
James817 said:
If you want to query your concerns you can address me. I do not deny that Mary is the Mother of the Church; I simply state that there is no evidence to substantiate the claim that one must have a personal relationship with her to have a share in the Kingdom.
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I guess I was unaware of that claim. It seems a logical derivation, since Mary is the Theotokos (God-bearer) and she instructs us to “do whatever He tells you” it seems she could not be separated from a share in the Kingdom.
 
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