In 2018 Pope Francis added a feast day for Mary, Mother of the Church to be celebrated on the Monday following Pentecost – and the date he chose was intentional. On Pentecost Sunday, we celebrate the birthday of the Church, and on the memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, we celebrate the fact that Mary, as the mother of Our Lord, is intrinsically linked to the Church as her mother.
In issuing his decree to add this feast day to the Church’s calendar, Pope Francis wished to promote this devotion to “encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety.”
This year, the feast day is on May 20.
Why do we celebrate Mary as Mother of the Church?
While the popularity of the specific expression “Mother of the Church” has grown in recent centuries, the theological roots of this title for Mary go back to the early Church.
The Fathers of the Church often spoke of Mary as the New Eve. Just as the Woman Eve was “the mother of all the living” (Gen 3:20), the Woman Mary was mother of all those living in Christ. In Revelation 12:17, St. John says that this Woman’s offspring are “those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus.”
St. Augustine and St. Leo the Great also both reflected on the Virgin Mary’s importance in the mystery of Christ.
“In fact the former (St. Augustine) says that Mary is the mother of the members of Christ, because with charity she cooperated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church, while the latter (St. Leo the Great) says that the birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, thus indicating that Mary is at once Mother of Christ, the Son of God, and mother of the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church,” Pope Francis’ 2018 decree noted. It said these reflections are a result of the “divine motherhood of Mary and from her intimate union in the work of the Redeemer.”
Scripture, the decree said, depicts Mary at the foot of the Cross. There she became the Mother of the Church when she “accepted her Son’s testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal.”
In 1964, the decree said, St. Paul VI “declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as ‘Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother’ and established that ‘the Mother of God should be further honored and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles.’”
What is the role of the Virgin Mary in the Church?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that Mary’s role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (487) makes it clear that our beliefs about Mary are all tied to her relationship with the Lord: “What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.”
The Catechism also states (964-965): “This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ’s virginal conception up to his death”; it is made manifest above all at the hour of His Passion: Thus the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross. There she stood, in keeping with the divine plan, enduring with her only begotten Son the intensity of His suffering, joining herself with His sacrifice in her mother’s heart, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this victim, born of her: to be given, by the same Christ Jesus dying on the cross, as a mother to His disciple, with these words: “Woman, behold your son.” After her Son’s Ascension, Mary “aided the beginnings of the Church by her prayers.” In her association with the apostles and several women, “we also see Mary by her prayers imploring the gift of the Spirit, who had already overshadowed her in the Annunciation.”
St. Paul VI, in “Credo of the People of God,” further explained, “Joined by a close and indissoluble bond to the Mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption, the Blessed Virgin, the Immaculate, was at the end of her earthly life raised body and soul to heavenly glory and likened to her risen Son in anticipation of the future lot of all the just; and we believe that the Blessed Mother of God, the New Eve, Mother of the Church, continues in heaven her maternal role with regard to Christ’s members, cooperating with the birth and growth of divine life in the souls of the redeemed.”
— EWTN, CatholicCulture.org and the Vatican
Did you know?
“Mater Ecclesiae” is Latin for “Mother of the Church.”
What does the Catholic Church believe about Mary?
The Catholic Church has four dogmas regarding the Blessed Virgin:
- She is the Mother of God, also called “Theotokos” (Council of Ephesus, 431)
- Her Perpetual Virginity, i.e. maintained throughout her life (Lateran Council, 649)
- Her Immaculate Conception (Pope Pius IX, “Ineffabilis Deus,” 1854)
- Her Assumption into Heaven (Pope Pius XII, “Munificentissimus Deus,” 1950)
“O God, Father of mercies,
whose Only Begotten Son, as He hung upon the Cross,
chose the Blessed Virgin Mary, His Mother,
to be our Mother also,
grant, we pray, that with her loving help
your Church may be more fruitful day by day
and, exulting in the holiness of her children,
may draw to her embrace all the families of the peoples.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.”
– Collect for the Feast of Mary, Mother of the Church
Pictured above: Mural from the Church of the Visitation in Ein Kerem, near Jerusalem, depicting Mary protecting Christians with her mantle. The image was inspired by the oldest known hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God, the “Sub tuum praesidium,” first written down in the third century. Photo taken by Dominican Father Lawrence Lew, who has an extensive photography collection for people to enjoy on Flickr (search “Lawrence OP”).
Catholics honor St. Athanasius on May 2. The fourth century bishop, Father of the Church and Doctor of the Church is known as "the father of orthodoxy" for his absolute dedication to the doctrine of Christ's divinity.
St. Athanasius was born to Christian parents living in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 296. His parents took great care to have their son educated, and his talents came to the attention of a local priest who was later canonized as St. Alexander of Alexandria. The priest and future saint tutored Athanasius in theology, and eventually appointed him as an assistant.
Around the age of 19, Athanasius spent a formative period in the Egyptian desert as a disciple of St. Anthony in his monastic community. Returning to Alexandria, he was ordained a deacon in 319, and resumed his assistance to Alexander, who had become a bishop. The Catholic Church, newly recognized by the Roman Empire, was already encountering a new series of dangers from within.
The most serious threat to the fourth-century Church came from a priest named Arius, who taught that Jesus could not have existed eternally as God prior to His historical incarnation as a man. According to Arius, Jesus was the highest of created beings, and could be considered "divine" only by analogy. Arians professed a belief in Jesus' "divinity," but meant only that He was God's greatest creature.
Opponents of Arianism brought forth numerous scriptures which taught Christ's eternal pre-existence and His identity as God. Nonetheless, many Greek-speaking Christians found it intellectually easier to believe in Jesus as a created demi-god, than to accept the mystery of a Father-Son relationship within the Godhead. By 325, the controversy was dividing the Church and unsettling the Roman Empire.
In that year, Athanasius attended the First Ecumenical Council, held at Nicea to examine and judge Arius' doctrine in light of apostolic tradition. It reaffirmed the Church's perennial teaching on Christ's full deity, and established the Nicene Creed as an authoritative statement of faith. The remainder of Athanasius' life was a constant struggle to uphold the council's teaching about Christ.
Near the end of St. Alexander's life, he insisted that Athanasius succeed him as the Bishop of Alexandria. Athanasius took on the position just as the Emperor Constantine, despite having convoked the Council of Nicea, decided to relax its condemnation of Arius and his supporters. Athanasius continually refused to admit Arius to communion, however, despite the urgings of the emperor.
A number of Arians spent the next several decades attempting to manipulate bishops, emperors and Popes to move against Athanasius, particularly through the use of false accusations. Athanasius was accused of theft, murder, assault, and even of causing a famine by interfering with food shipments.
Arius became ill and died gruesomely in 336, but his heresy continued to live. Under the rule of the three emperors that followed Constantine, and particularly under the rule of the strongly Arian Constantius, Athanasius was driven into exile at least five times for insisting on the Nicene Creed as the Church's authoritative rule of faith.
Athanasius received the support of several popes and spent a portion of his exile in Rome. However, the Emperor Constantius did succeed in coercing one Pope, Liberius, into condemning Athanasius by having him kidnapped, threatened with death, and sent away from Rome for two years. The pope eventually managed to return to Rome, where he again proclaimed Athanasius' orthodoxy.
Constantius went so far as to send troops to attack his clergy and congregations. Neither these measures, nor direct attempts to assassinate the bishop, succeeding in silencing him. However, they frequently made it difficult for him to remain in his diocese. He enjoyed some respite after Constantius' death in 361, but was later persecuted by Emperor Julian the Apostate, who sought to revive paganism.
In 369, Athanasius managed to convene an assembly of 90 bishops in Alexandria, for the sake of warning the Church in Africa against the continuing threat of Arianism. He died in 373, and was vindicated by a more comprehensive rejection of Arianism at the Second Ecumenical Council, held in 381 at Constantinople.
St. Gregory Nazianzen, who presided over part of that council, described St. Athanasius as "the true pillar of the Church," whose "life and conduct were the rule of bishops, and his doctrine the rule of the orthodox faith."
— Catholic News Agency
Read more about the Doctors of the Church and the Fathers of the Church