Mary Issue 83 | 2004 Purchase this issue

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Hans Memling (ca. 1435 -1494) was a Flemish master painter who studied under Rogier van der Weyden (pp. 22-23). His "Seven Joys of the Virgin" depicts a series of Marian moments drawn (like the Rosary; see p. 30) from medieval devotions to Mary.

Her seven joys are the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Resurrected Christ's appearance to Mary, Christ's Ascension, Pentecost, and Mary's own (as tradition had it) bodily Assumption into heaven.

Jaroslav Pelikan reminds us that the Annunciation to Mary can be seen as God's ultimate validation of free will. Mary's obedience to the angel's message "was no less voluntary in its affirmation than the disobedience of Eve had been in its negation." (Mary Through the Centuries, p. 87)

As have Protestants since his day, Martin Luther affirmed the Ephesus Council's formula that stated Mary was truly the "mother of God": "God did not derive his divinity from Mary; but it does not follow that it is therefore wrong to say that God was born of Mary. … She is the true mother of God. … Mary suckled God, rocked God to sleep, prepared broth and soup for God, etc." (On the Councils and the Church, 1539)

Christian literature's most ancient hymn to Mary, the so-called "Akathist" hymn (late 5th or early 6th century), makes Mary one focus of the Magi's praise: "The children of the Chaldees seeing in the Virgin's hands him whose hands made men, and knowing him as Lord … cried out to her who is blessed: Hail! Mother of the unsetting Star. Hail! Splendor of the Mystic Day. …"

Peter Chrysologus (ca. 380-ca. 450), bishop of Ravenna and defender of the Ephesus Council's Theotokos formulation, ...