Every Sunday, we recite the Nicene Creed and we profess belief in “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. From the very beginning, these four marks identifiy the Catholic Church as the one true church founded by Jesus. In the same creed we also profess our belief that Jesus, “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of Virgin Mary, and became man”. (Nicene Creed)
Jesus, who is God, took the form of His creature and became man. As it were, set aside His divinity to become one like us, so that he could suffer and die, to redeem mankind from sin and open the gates of heaven for us. He entered into our humanity, that we could enter his divinity. Stripped and deprived his divinity, in theological terms, he underwent “spoliation” and became in His human nature, entirely dependent upon the Blessed Virgin Mary in her womb. “And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14) Here we see the intimacy of Jesus with his mother. It was an intimacy that was to grow unto the moment of His birth in Bethlehem, to the moment of His crucifixion on Calvary and into eternity in Heaven.
Jesus came to us through Mary, so that through Mary we could go to Jesus. That Jesus, would so humble himself to come to us through Mary, should be seen as a “school of humility”, where we are to learn that through Mary, we come to intimate union with her Son. Here, let us consider that as Christians, we are to live lives in imitation of Christ. Imitating Jesus means imitating His love for His Mother. We love her so that it is not so much we who love Mary, but Jesus who loves her in us. As St Paul wrote, “…and yet I am alive; or rather, not I; it is Christ that lives in me.” (Gal 2:20), so it is that in our love for the Blessed Virgin Mary, it is not so much we who love Mary, but Christ who loves Mary in us. This is a basis for understanding devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, a devotion that has been so much a part of the life of the Church, that from the beginning, one could say, that devotion to Mary might well have been considered as the “fifth mark” of the Catholic Church.