My dear parishioners,
Peace! On the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, 7 October, 2019, Pope Francis established the feast of Our Lady of Loreto, to be observed each year on the 10th of December. At the same time Pope Francis proclaimed a Lauretan Jubilee Holy Year to run from 8 December, 2019 through 10 December, 2020. There are fifty-one invocations in the Litany of Loreto. The following is a reflection on the thirteenth invocation: Mother of our Creator, pray for us.
To call Saint Mary “Mother of our Creator” is to acknowledge the divinity of Jesus Christ her Son. Jesus Christ was born of Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the fullness of time in Bethlehem (cf. Matthew 1:16-18; Luke 2:6). Jesus Christ asserts His divinity in various passages of the Gospel (cf. John 10:30; 14:11). Because Jesus Christ our Lord is God and Saint Mary is the Mother of our God and Lord, she is at the same time the Mother of our Creator. God created the heavens and the Earth, all that is seen and unseen, as we profess in the Creed (cf. Genesis 1:1-31).
Saint Mary, the Blessed Virgin, is Mother of the Creator because of the human nature of the Lord Jesus. The Divine Person of the Son is eternal, preexisting the Incarnation. Creation, redemption and sanctification are all properly speaking the work of God, the Most Holy Trinity. While one or another of the Divine Persons of the Trinity have a specific relation to each (e.g. the Father speaks and the world is created by His Eternal Word who is the Eternal Son as the Spirit hovers over the waters of creation (e.g. from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit; cf. Council of Constantinople II; CCC 258). Saint Mary is not the Mother of the Eternal Father or of the Holy Spirit. It was not the Father or the Spirit who was nailed to the wood of the tree of the Cross only the Son made man, Christ Jesus. Saint Mary, standing at the foot of the Cross beheld not only her Son and savior but also her Creator and ours (cf. John 19:25). It was not the Father or the Son who descended as flames or tongues of fire at Pentecost but the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 2:3).
To invoke Saint Mary as Mother of our Creator is not to divinize her as various pagan deities have invoking various “Earth Mothers” (e.g. Isis of Egypt; Gaia, Aphrodite, and Athena of Greece; Minerva of Rome; Pachamama of South America…). The veneration, devotion, respect and honor we show to Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Saint Mary is technically called “hyperdulia” which differs from dulia (shown to the other saints and holy angels) and qualitatively from latria which is due to God alone. When we honor the Mother of our Creator we are keeping the fourth Commandment of God our Creator (cf. Exodus 20:12; Matthew 15:4; Mark 7:10).
Father John Arthur Orr