Module No.

4
The Third Article: “Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary”
Course Title: Faith and Revelation Course Code: Theo 1
Instructor: Jesly C. Lagua Term & AY: 1st Sem, AY 2020 - 2021
Contact no.: 09173307594 Email address: [email protected]

I. Overview
So far, the Apostles’ Creed has identified Jesus Christ as the Second Person of the Trinity who
became man. In this third article, we profess our belief in how Jesus became man. He was not
conceived by a human father, but by the Holy Spirit; and He was born of the Virgin Mary.
Our concern here will be to see how the Church understands the humanity of Christ, and to
identify the main privileges of His Mother, Mary. After all, it was from her that Jesus took His human
nature, and she is still His Mother now with Him in heavenly glory.

II. INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES (ILOs)

Upon completion of this module, the students should be able to:
A. comprehend the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the plan of redemption.
B. understand the intimate divine relationship of Mary with God and Christ.
C. appreciate Mary as the Model of Christian faith and discipleship.

III. Learning Resources and References

CPCP/ECCCE. Catechism of the Catholic Church. Makati, Metro Manila: Word and Life Publication,
1994.
ECCCE. Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Quezon City: Claretian Publication,
2005.
Banayat, Samuel. Sacred Scripture. Philippine Bible Society, 1996.
Vanhoozer, Kevin. Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005.

IV. Lecture Content / Summary of Lesson

Jesus Christ Is True Man
The oldest creeds of faith mention the most important facts of the earthly life of Jesus,
namely, His conception and birth, His suffering and dying on the Cross, and His bodily resurrection
from the dead. The language used is always about a Person who was one with the Father as God, but
also one with us as man.

Already in apostolic times, the heresy of Docetism held that Christ only seemed to be a man,
to be born, have lived, suffered, and risen from the dead. The Docetists were infected with the false
philosophy which claimed that matter and spirit are totally opposed to each other. Consequently, it
was said to be impossible that God, who is pure spirit, would become incarnate in a material body.

That is why St. John’s Gospel is so clear in teaching that Jesus Christ is indeed one with the
Father, who is God, and at the same time so insists on showing that Jesus Christ is true man. Jesus
became tired (John 4:6); He was in great distress (John 11:33); He wept at the tomb of Lazarus (John
11:35); He allowed His feet to be anointed (John 12:3); He washed the feet of His disciples (John
13:12); He was seized and bound in the Garden of Olives (John 18:12); He was slapped in the face by
one of the guards during the Passion (John 18:22); He was scourged, crowned with thorns, and
dressed in a purple robe (John 19:1-2); He carried His own Cross to Calvary (John 19:17); On the
Cross, He said, “I am thirsty” and, after taking some vinegar from the soaked sponge held up to his
mouth, He bowed His head and died (John 19:29-30); His side was pierced with a soldier’s lance, and
immediately there flowed out blood and water (John 19:34); After His resurrection, he invited the
doubting Thomas to put his fingers into the holes made by the nails in His hands and to put his hand
into His open side (John 20:27).

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Human Body and Soul.  There is more than passing value in knowing that Christ had a truly human
body and soul.

 Because he had a human body and soul, they could be separated—as they were on the Cross
—and thus cause His death.
 Because He had a human body and soul, He truly suffered in both, and thus redeemed us by
enduring both bodily and spiritual pain.
 Because he had a human body and soul, when he rose from the dead he was reunited in
body and soul.
 Because he had a human body and soul, He can be truly imitated by us in our striving after
sanctity. The virtues He practiced as man were the attributes of God in human form. As we
become more like Jesus in His life as man, the more we become like Jesus who is our God.
 Because He now has a glorified human body and soul, He is in the Holy Eucharist in the
fullness of His human nature united with the Second Person of the Trinity in one Divine
Person.
Human Free Will.  The true humanity of Jesus implies that He had a free human will. It was because of
this that He could merit our redemption. By the willing sacrifice of His life on the Cross, He won for us
the graces we need for our salvation. Sacrifice means the willing surrender to God of something
precious. Jesus made this surrender by His own free human will, voluntarily offering Himself on
Calvary to expiate our sins and save us for heaven and from hell.

While saying this, we dare not forget that, although He could really choose with a real human
will, yet He could never sin. Not only did He not, but He could not sin because his human nature was
united with His Divine nature in one Person who is God. And God cannot sin. The implications of this
mystery are practical in the extreme. It does not belong to the essence of human freedom to be able
to choose what is contrary to God’s will. Jesus Christ could choose with His human will. In fact, He did
so. But His choices were always what was most pleasing to His heavenly Father.

The struggle He experienced in His agony in the Garden was never a conflict of His free will
with the will of the Father. It was the spontaneous dread a human being experiences when faced with
the prospect of pain.

The Historical Jesus.  A resurgent Docetism in modern times tries to reduce the historical facts about
Jesus to mystical or even mythical ideas about Jesus. That is why we hear so much nowadays about
the difference between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.

Early Christian believers, so the argument runs, were so hypnotized by the wonderful man Jesus
that they made Him out to be more than He actually was. Their fervent imagination made Him into a
Divine Person, and their pious fancy credited Him with all kinds of humanly impossible deeds. These
ideas are at the root of what Pope St. Pius X condemned ( Lamentabili, July 3, 1907) as Modernism.
Some of the statements that the pope rejected are worth quoting in full:

1. “The divinity of Jesus Christ is not proved from the gospels. It is rather a dogma which the
Christian conscience has deduced from the notion of a Messiah.”
2. “It may legitimately be granted that the Christ whom history presents is far inferior to the
Christ who is the object of faith.”
3. “A critic cannot affirm that Christ’s knowledge was unrestricted by any limit, except by making
a supposition that is historically inconceivable and that contradicts moral sense.”
4. “Christ did not always have the consciousness of His messianic dignity.”

The Catholic Church has never allowed her followers to say that the creative imagination of the
early believers adorned the original facts about Jesus. On the contrary, the Second Vatican Council
(Dei Verbum, V, 19) issued and uncompromising statement about the historical validity of the gospels:

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“Holy Mother the Church,” the council declared, “has firmly and with absolute constancy held and
continues to hold that the four gospels…whose historical character the church unhesitatingly asserts,
faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal
salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven.”

The key word in the Council’s teaching is “really.” This recalls what St. Peter wrote to the first
century Christians when he told them: “It was not any cleverly invented myths that we were repeating
when we brought you the knowledge of the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Why
not? Because “we had seen His majesty for ourselves” (II Peter 1:16).

It also recalls what St. Ignatius wrote on his way to martyrdom in 107 A.D. “Jesus Christ,” he said,
“is really of the line of David according to the flesh…He was really nailed to the Cross in the flesh for
our sake…He suffered really, and He also really raised Himself from the dead. It is not as some
unbelievers say . . . In reality, it is they that are make-believers” ( Letter to the Smyrneans, 1-2).

In today’s skeptical age, when, for many, the historical foundations of Christianity are being reduced
to myths, we must be able to see those who would demythologize the gospels for what they really
are: They are make-believers.

The Blessed Virgin Mary

Our Lady is mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed only in reference to her giving birth to Jesus
Christ. This is consistent with the few passages in the New Testament that speak of the Blessed Virgin.

Yet Mary’s place in Catholic faith and piety grew immensely through the centuries, and Marian
piety has also been one of the principal areas of development of doctrine in the Catholic church in
modern times. Two solemn Marian definitions in less than a century. Two Marian years for the
universal Church in one generation. Two major Marian shrines with millions of pilgrims annually from
every part of the world - approved by the Church again in less than a century. Twelve papal
encyclicals on the Rosary alone by four sovereign pontiffs. And a library of Marian literature that has
no counterpart in all previous Catholic history. All these are some indication of what has been rightly
called “The Age of Mary.” In God’s providence, Mary is meant to be venerated, we may safely say, as
she has never been before.

All of this presumes that our Marian faith keeps pace with our devotion. In the words of the
Second Vatican Council, Let the faithful remember that true devotion consists neither in sterile
or transitory affection, nor in a certain vain credulity, but proceeds from true faith, by which
we are led to recognize the excellence of the Mother of God, and we are moved to a filial
love toward our Mother and to the imitation of her virtues ( Constitution on the Church, VIII,
67).

Mother of God.  Since apostolic times, it was assumed that since Jesus Christ is true God, Mary must
be the Mother of God. But in the early fifth century, a heresy arose that claimed that Christ not only
had two natures, but that He was two persons, one human and the other divine. Named after
Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorians were willing to call Mary the Mother of Christ
(Christotokos) because she conceived and gave birth to the human person of Christ. But they refused
to say she is the Mother of God (Theotokos). The Council of Ephesus (431) condemned Nestorianism,
declaring unhesitatingly that we should call “the holy Virgin Mother of God”.

Nestorian bishops, however, continued to propagate their views. The confusion this produced
among the people contributed to the success of Islam among Christians in the seventh century. Islam,
as we know, considers Jesus a great prophet, even the Messiah. He is called the “son of Mary” ( Ibn

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Maryam), but according to Mohammed, Jesus may not be called “Son of God” ( Ibn Allah). To this day,
Moslems identify Christians as those who venerate Mary as the Mother of God.

Every aspect of Marian faith in Christianity rests on this premise: that Mary gave her Son all
that any human mother gives the fruit of her womb. Since the Child she conceived and gave birth to
was a Divine Person, she must be honored as the Mother of God. History confirms this judgment.
Where belief in Mary’s divine maternity is professed, faith in her Son’s Divinity remains intact.

Immaculate Conception.  Mary’s conception without original sin was a logical preparation for her
divine maternity. Since the Child she was to bear would be the All-Holy God, it was unthinkable that
His Mother would ever have been stained with sin.

From the earliest times, the Fathers of the Church—like St. Irenaeus in the second century, St.
Cyprian in the third century—wrote of Mary as not only immaculate but entirely immaculate, not only
spotless but most spotless, that she alone was to be the dwelling place of all the graces of the Holy
Spirit, because she was predestined to become the dwelling place of the Son of the Most High.

It is not surprising, then, that in 1854, Pope Pius IX proclaimed the following definition: “The
most holy Virgin Mary was, in the first moment of her conception, by a unique gift of grace and
privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ the Redeemer of mankind, preserved
from all stain of original sin.”

This means that from the first moment of her existence, Mary was preserved from the
common defect of lacking supernatural life. She possessed sanctifying grace from the moment she
was conceived. She also possessed the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and the gifts of the Holy
Spirit.

Absolute Sinlessness.  Consistent with the privilege of her Immaculate Conception, Mary was also
preserved from all sin. This says more than at first may seem to be implied. Not only did she never
actually offend God by even the slightest sin, but she was specially protected from committing sin.

Moreover, since our Lady was conceived without original sin, she was preserved from the one
consequence of this sin that all of us so painfully experience. She did not have concupiscence or the
unruly desires that are the heritage of all other descendants of man’s original estrangement from
God.

Perpetual Virginity.  Mary’s virginity is expressed in the Apostles’ Creed. St. Luke states that “the angel
Gabriel was sent from God…to a virgin…and the virgin’s name was Mary” (Luke 1:26-27).

Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus was already foretold in the Old Testament. Isaiah predicted
the coming Messiah in a famous prophecy, declaring that “the Lord himself shall give a sign…Behold
the virgin [Hebrew alma, Greek parthenos] shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called
Emmanuel” (Isaiah 7:14).

From the early days of the Church, this prophecy was understood to refer to Mary’s virginal
conception of her Son, and St. Matthew’s Gospel so interprets the words of Isaiah (Matthew 1:23). Nor
was there any question among Christ’s faithful believers but that Mary was a perpetual virgin.

Against those few individuals who denied Mary’s unimpaired virginity, St. Basil (329-379)
wrote, “The friends of Christ do not tolerate hearing that the Mother of God ever ceased to be a
virgin.” Ambrose (339-397) wrote a whole treatise defending “the perpetual virginity of the Blessed
Mary.” And Pope St. Siricius in 392 simply declared that Mary was a “perpetual virgin”.

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Bodily Assumption into Heaven.  Since our Lady was conceived without sin, she was not subject to the
universal penalty of sin, which is bodily death.

The early tradition about Mary’s departure from this world is especially strong in Eastern
Christianity. We have records of the celebration of the Dormition (the Falling Asleep of Mary) from the
end of the seventh century. The original title, Dormition, was changed into Assumption in the
Gregorian Sacramentary, sent by Pope Hadrian I (790) to Emperor Charlemagne as the liturgical
standard to be used in Charlemagne’s empire. By the end of the eighth century, the Feast of the
Assumption was celebrated universally in the West on August 15. And, in 847, Pope Leo IV ordered
that an octave of the feast should also be observed.

The modern impetus for promoting the definition of Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven
belongs to St. Anthony Claret (1807-1870), founder of the Claretians and bishop of Santiago in Cuba.
Thousands of petitions from all parts of the world were sent to Rome asking the pope to define
Mary’s assumption into heaven.

Finally, in 1946, Pope Pius XII addressed an official query to all the Catholic bishops in the
Church. “Do you,” he asked them, “in view of the wisdom and prudence that is yours, judge that the
bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith; and do
you, along with your clergy and faithful, desire it?”

Within months, the pope received an almost unanimous reply in the affirmative.
Consequently, on November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII issued the solemn definition which stated: By the
authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by Our Own
authority, we pronounce, declare, and define as divinely revealed dogma: The Immaculate
Mother of God, Mary ever Virgin, after her life on earth, was assumed body and soul to the
glory of heaven.

The grounds for defining Mary’s assumption as a dogma, or revealed doctrine, were Sacred
Tradition as a co-equal source of divine revelation, along with Sacred Scripture. One reason for the
definition was expressed by the pope when he spoke to the assembled four hundred bishops the day
after the definition. He expressed the hope that this new honor to Mary would introduce “a spirit of
penance to replace the prevalent love of pleasure, and a renewal of family life stabilized where
divorce was common, and made fruitful where birth control was practiced.”

Devotion to the Blessed Virgin.  As spelled out in the Second Vatican Council, devotion to the Mother
of God is really a composite of three elements: veneration, invocation, and imitation. They belong
together and may only be separated at the risk of detracting from the honors due to Mary, and
depriving ourselves of the graces God wishes to confer on humanity through His beloved Mother.

Veneration of the Blessed Virgin includes all the honor and praise, recognition and love that
she deserves as the Mother of the Redeemer and Mother of the human race. Veneration may be
described as loving appreciation. The appreciation is based on the knowledge we have of Mary,
based on the truths taught us by faith. The love is inspired by the depth of our appreciation, which
depends on reading, study, and meditation about the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The first seven parts of the Hail Mary are all statements of veneration:

1. Hail Mary
2. Full of grace
3. The Lord is with thee
4. Blessed art thou among women
5. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus
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6. Holy Mary

7. Mother of God—are so many acts of praise and honor, lovingly addressed to the Blessed Virgin.
All are drawn from Sacred Scripture or the tradition of the Church. And all are so many acts of praise
of the Divine Majesty for the gifts bestowed on the one who gave the Son of God his finite humanity.

Invocation builds on veneration. Because Mary is so pleasing to the Trinity, she, more than any other
creature, can effectively plead for us before the Throne of God. We invoke her so that she might
intercede for us.
The last three parts of the Hail Mary are all forms of invocation

1. Pray for us sinners

2. Now 

3 And at the hour of our death—are confident petitions asking Mary to pray for us on the three levels
that we most need supernatural help from the Mother of Divine Grace. We plead for mercy from an
offended God: mercy for ourselves and others, mercy of forgiveness of the guilt—or loss of grace—
incurred by our sins; mercy of remission of the penalty due to our willful rejection of God’s love. We
plead for help now, right now, at every conscious moment of our lives to enlighten our minds so we
may know what God wants us to do, and help to strengthen our wills so we may do His will. Finally,
we plead for the gift of final perseverance to leave this life in divine friendship and enter eternity in
the grace of God.

Imitation finally builds on invocation because without help from her Son we could never
imitate the virtues of His Mother. Those virtues span the Litany of our Lady. Unlike her Son who
possessed the beatific vision from the moment of conception, Mary had to believe and trust. Her faith
is to be a model for our acceptance of revealed truth without comprehending why or how. Her hope
is the pattern for our trustful confidence that God will see us through this valley of tears to our
heavenly home.

But it is especially Mary’s charity that we are to strive to follow in our daily lives. Her love for
God was the highest of any angel or saint. As His Mother, she loved Him with “love beyond all telling.”
Yet she never separated this contemplative love of God from the selfless love of others. Her going “in
haste” to help her kinswoman Elizabeth, her concern for the wedding guests at Cana because “they
have no wine” were only episodes that the gospels briefly touch on to reveal what we know was a
lifetime of service to others.
V. Learning Activities

“The whole of Christ life was a continual teaching: his silences, his miracles, his gestures, his
prayer, his love for people, his special affection for little and the poor.” Give 5 examples on how you
show love for others especially the little, last, outcast and poor.

VI. Supplemental content

VII. Assessment

Answer the following: Minimum: 3 sentences. Maximum 5 sentences.

1. Mary’s Divine Motherhood emphasizes her obedience into God’s will. What is the
meaning of these obedience in the endeavors of human being?
2. The world is covered with temptations. These temptations lead man to live in an impure
life. Mary’s virginal conception emphasizes that she was totally preserve from original sin
and remained pure throughout her life. As a Christian how can we compel our self and
others to live in purity and evade into the destructive presence of evil temptations?

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 3. Why we venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary?
VIII. Assignment
Read!

1. The 4th Articles of Faith

2. The Gospel about the paralytic man: Mark 2: 1-12 (Read, observe, and feel how the mercy of
Jesus lives towards the paralytic person) What is being merciful to you?

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