May 2025

 

Her virgin eyes saw God incarnate born,

When she to Bethl’em came that happy morn:

How high her raptures then began to swell,

None but her own omniscient Son can tell.

 

The month of May, with its abundant growth, flowers, and – hopefully – warmer weather is here at last, and May is traditionally the month of Mary, Mother of God and Queen of Heaven.

 

Mary is the Mother of Christ and – by logical extension – the Mother of God. If we attest that Jesus is the son of God (God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father), it follows that Mary is not only the Mother of Christ, but also the Mother of God.

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Now, if Mary is the Mother of God, surely she should be accorded due respect in view of her unique place in the economy of salvation. Not worshipped, but uniquely honoured. Without Mary, the whole question of the hypostatic union of God and man in Jesus Christ is impossible: indeed, the very position of Mary as Mother of God testifies to, and focuses upon, the central message of Christianity  ̶  the incarnation. ‘The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us’

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The words of the seventeenth-century Anglican bishop Thomas Ken remind us that the honour and distinction given to Our Lady Mary is truly a reflection of the glory of her divine son.

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Heaven with transcendent joys her entrance graced,

Next to his throne her Son his Mother placed:

And here below, now she’s of heaver possest,

All generations are to call her blest.

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Deacon Douglas MacMillan

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The Collect

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God our redeemer,

you have delivered us from the power of darkness

and brought us into the kingdom of your Son:

grant, that as by his death he has recalled us to life,

so by his continual presence in us he may raise us to eternal joy;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,

who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever. Amen.