This year, for each day in the month of May, we will be posting excerpts of the book The May Book of the Breviary, by Father John Fitzpatrick, O.M.I., published by R&T Washbourne, London, 1904. Nihil Obstat: Father Thomas Dawson, O.M.I., and Imprimatur: Cardinal Francis Alphonsus Bourne, dated April 14, 1904.
May 15th – The Son of Mary is the Son of Man
the Venerable Bede
“As (Jesus) spoke (to the multitudes), a certain woman from the crowd, lifting up her voice, said to Him: ‘Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the paps that gave Thee suck’, But He said: Yea, rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:27,28).
It is plain that this was a woman of great devotedness and faith, for while the Scribes and Pharisees were at once tempting our Lord and blaspheming Him, she acknowledges His Incarnation with so much sincerity, and confesses it with so much confidence before them all, as to confound both the calumny of those personages who were actually present and the bad faith of heretics who were yet to come. For, just as the Jews at that time, blaspheming the works of the Holy Ghost, denied that the Son of God was verily consubstantial with the Father, so also in a later day, by denying that the ever-virgin Mary, under the mighty operation of the Holy Ghost, did supply flesh to the only-begotten Son of God when He was to be born in a human body, in like manner did these heretics deny that the Son of Man could be confessed to be consubstantial with His Mother.
But if we say that the flesh of the Word of God Incarnate was other than the flesh of His Virgin-Mother, then the womb that bore Him and the breasts that gave Him suck are proclaimed blessed without any reason. But the Apostle saith: “God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law” (Galatians 4:4); and we must not listen to them who think we ought to read, “born of a woman, made under the law,” but, rather, “made of a woman”; for, conceived in the Virgin’s womb, He took His flesh of the flesh of His Mother, and not out of nothing or from any other source, for, had He not been of human origin, He could not have been called the Son of Man. Then, having said so much in answer to Eutyches, let us lift up our voices also in union with the Catholic Church, of which this woman was the figure; let us raise up our hearts from amidst the crowd, and say to our Saviour: “Blessed is the womb that bore Thee; and the paps that gave Thee suck.”
“Yea, rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.” Our Saviour sweetly acquiesces in the woman’s testimony, declaring that not only was she blessed who was found worthy to bring forth the Word of God in the flesh, but that all those also are blessed who, by faith which cometh of hearing, study to conceive spiritually this same Word, and, by keeping Him through good works, bring Him forth and nurse Him, as it were, in their own hearts or in the hearts of others; yea, and that the Mother of God herself was blessed because she was in time the handmaid of the Word made Flesh, and still more because by her love of Him she keeps Him hers for ever and ever.
O God! who, by the fruitful virginity of the Blessed Mary, hast given mankind the grace of redemption, grant that we may enjoy for ever in heaven the happy companionship of her whom on earth we name the Mother of Grace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
