“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb”
Elizabeth’s words of greeting to Mary eloquently express a significant doctrinal sensibility which belongs to orthodox Christianity. We cannot think of Jesus apart from Mary, nor Mary apart from Jesus. Mary appears in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles at a number of key doctrinal moments: Christ’s nativity, his crucifixion and even at Pentecost. In the liturgical life of the Church, the major feasts of Christ are complemented by a series of Marian festivals, a kind of parallelism. Her Annunciation is his conception which anticipates his nativity complemented by the commemoration of her nativity (September 8th). Mary and Jesus meet in the double-feast of Candlemas, at once the Presentation of Christ in the Temple and the Purification of Mary (February 2nd). His Resurrection has its counterpart in her Assumption, the Falling Asleep or Dormition of Mary (August 15th). Similarly, his conception at her annunciation is complemented by her conception which we commemorate this night (December 8th) whether with or without the adjective “immaculate”. It means pure or spotless which is part of the larger story of doctrinal reflection. Christ is like us in all respects except sin. Mary’s ‘immaculate’ conception is related to that idea which has to do with the nature of redemption.
As John Donne puts it in an extravagant sonnet, Annunciation, God “yields himself to lie/ In prison, in thy womb; and though he there /Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet he ‘will were/Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try”. The underlying theological insight is that sin, both original and actual, is a negation of our humanity in its truth and purity. Christ assumes his humanity from Mary and as such, in this view, is pure. Christ is the eternal son of God, “that pure one,” as Irenaeus puts it, “opening purely that pure womb which regenerates men unto God and which he himself made pure.” The emphasis, once again, is on the necessary connection between Christ and Mary. Mary’s purity remains a major theme for Anglican divinity and appears in the proper preface for Christmas and the Annunciation. Christ “was made very man of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother; and that without spot of sin, to make us clean from all sin” (BCP, p. 79).
We meet to honour Mary, Virgin and Mother. She is, as one 17th century writer put it, “The Femall Glory” (Anthony Stafford). For it is through her that we are blessed by the fruit of her womb who in turn is blessed because Christ’s Incarnation is through her. “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb”. But only as she says, “according to thy word”.
Yet there is a paradox. In this second week of Advent which is defined explicitly by the emphasis on the Scriptures as the doctrinal instrument of salvation we celebrate a completely non-biblical event, namely, Mary’s conception. Why the conception? Her Annunciation depends logically upon her conception, namely, her very existence and being, we might say. This minor commemoration has always been part of our devotion since the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. As such it reminds us of an older doctrinal and devotional tradition of reflection about Mary’s role and place in the understanding of human redemption. It is in this sense that Stafford articulates an orthodox Christian understanding: “Until they are good Marians, they shall never be good Christians”.
Though not biblical in the strict sense, the conception of Mary belongs to the theological reflection upon the meaning of Christ’s Incarnation. This feast is part of an Anglican tradition of Marian devotion that is governed by a clearly defined theological understanding. It belongs to a form of theological reasoning upon the Scriptures which have to be thought upon since they are “written for our learning”. It is a question about our reasoning upon revelation, a reasoning into the mysteries revealed.
To be sure, there is no direct Scriptural basis for this feast. There are, to be sure, no end of legends and stories that have entered into the Christian imaginary, both East and West, that fill in the gaps in imaginative ways about the story of Christ and Mary. One of the most famous stories that captured the European imagination is the meeting between Joachim and Anna, the supposed parents of Mary, at the golden gate in Jerusalem. This has become the setting for Mary’s ‘immaculate’ conception, frequently depicted in Christian art. But it is entirely a non-biblical story. Yet once again, it reveals the interest in the person of Mary in relation to Christ as Saviour. It first appears in the 2nd century Protoevangelium of James (The First Gospel of James) and then in the 3rd century Evangelium de nativitate Mariae, the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary. These stories look back to the story of Hannah and the conception of Samuel (1 Samuel 1). After that, well, it takes on a life of its own.
In the Medieval period, there was a debate between the Franciscans and the Dominicans about the doctrine or teaching of the immaculate conception of Mary. It was promoted by the Franciscans and countered by the Dominicans. It would not be until 1854, that the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception would be promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church as a necessity of saving faith. Anglicans, whether they are attracted to the concept or repulsed by it, cannot regard the Immaculate Conception of Mary as an essential of the Faith for the simple reason that it is not found in Scripture. Which is not to say that Mary does not have a special role and place in doctrine and devotion. She does and in a way which constantly stresses the interplay and interrelation between Mary and Jesus.
All the feasts of Mary are keyed to the festivals of Christ. There is also a wonderful doctrinal sensibility in which Protestants and Roman Catholics meet in relation to Mary. Luther, the great Father of Protestantism, in his sermon on the Magnificat in 1521, makes the following point. Mary does not want us to come to her but through her to Jesus. It is the same idea as Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits, captured in one of their mottoes, per Mariam ad Jesum, through Mary to Jesus.
“The Femall Glory” is, I think, a wonderful phrase and yet, it is, actually, the title of a book by a pious, devout and theologically astute 17th century English layman, Anthony Stafford. He was the first, he thinks, to have “written in our vulgar tongue on this our Blessed Virgin.” Unique perhaps in its style, it was not unique in its ideas and thinking but belongs to the rich and lively tradition of Marian devotion in 17th century Anglican divinity. It embodies the distinctive qualities of classical Anglican divinity with its strong orthodox and doctrinal sensibility and its devotional focus and emphasis on the purity of Mary. “The Femall Glory” is an outstanding work of holy imagination which understands the subordination of the affective language of devotion and prayer to the language of essential doctrine and credal affirmation.
Our salvation is Jesus Christ, true God and true man. Mary is the pure source of Christ’s true humanity and as such is the bearer of his divinity into the world. At the heart of Anglican Marian devotion is the strong orthodoxy of the Council of Chalcedon which in 451 AD gave theological coherence to the scriptural images of Mary in the economy of salvation by calling her Theotokos, the Mother of God. She is the Mother of God, not because she is the source of Christ’s divinity, which as creature she cannot be, but because she is the chosen vessel, pure and prepared by the grace of God, by which Christ becomes man without ceasing to be God. This means distinguishing, as Stafford puts it, “betweene the Mother of God and the Mother of the Godhead; the first of which she truly is, the latt’r she is not”.
It is all about the mystery of the Incarnation, “that the Union of both natures, God and Man, being in Christ, she must, by strong consequence, bring forth both God and Man.” The measure of Chalcedon governs the devotional discourse of Anglican divinity.
The Anglican Divines of the 17th century celebrate the purity of Mary because of the purity of Christ. Only as pure can he freely bear the impurities of our sins which make us less than ourselves, less than fully human. Only as pure can he restore us to the truth of ourselves in God. Only as pure can he show us the Father and show us to the Father. Anything less would be to compromise essential orthodoxy.
But what is that female glory? It is, as Stafford makes clear, the glory of our humanity, as male and female. We behold the truth of our humanity in her who is the source of Christ’s true humanity. Stafford’s treatise contains “An Epistle to the Feminine Reader” that “here you may learn to transforme your ugly vices, into as amiable Vertues”; and “An Epistle to the Masculine Reader”, “requiring your Imitation, whose meanest Perfection farre excels all your so long vanted masculine merits”, a critique of both the claims of femininity and masculinity. Such is the universality of its orthodoxy. Mary is an example for all with respect to the truth of our humanity.
Mary’s pure openness to the will of God is not a matter of passivity but of human agency. She shows us the true nature of humanity’s active engagement with God. This appears in Mary’s question at the Annunciation: “how shall this be seeing as I know not a man?” This shows the uniqueness and the mystery of the Incarnation. Lancelot Andrewes makes the point especially clear about the doctrine of Mary’s conception. He says that for Mary “to conceive is more than to receive. It is so to receive as we yield somewhat of our own also. A vessel is not said to conceive the liquor that is put into it. Why? Because it yieldeth nothing from itself. The Blessed Virgin … [gave] of her own substance.” This last word echoes the proper preface appointed for both the Annunciation and for Christ’s Nativity.
It means being defined by the theological Word which engages the discourses of our own world and day without simply being collapsed into them. Otherwise it is not the Word. Such are the challenges for contemporary Christianity. Corporately and individually, through her “whom no man can honour too much that makes her not God,” as John Donne puts it, echoing Augustine, we may discover again the essential Marian qualities of the Church. It is about our being with Christ through our active attentiveness to his Word proclaimed and his Sacraments celebrated. In a way, it is about conceiving Christ in our hearts even as he was conceived in her womb having conceived her in his mind, “thou wast in his mind, … whom thou conceiv’st, conceived; yea, thou art now thy maker’s maker”, as Donne says about Mary (Annunciation).
She is rightly seen as blessed, as highly favoured. And we too shall be blessed and highly favoured and never “at any time more fully than in the blessed Sacrament to which we are now a-going”, as Mark Frank puts it.
There he is strangely with us, highly favours us, exceedingly blesses us; there we are all made blessed Marys, and become mothers, sisters, and brothers of our Lord, whilst we hear his word, and conceive it in us; whilst we believe him who is the Word, and receive him too into us.
Only so will we be good Marians who recognise with Elizabeth that:
“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb”
Fr. David Curry
The Feast of the Conception of the BVM
December 8th, 2022