Topic:  Was Mary delivered?

Source of this posting: Moderator response

Date originally posted: December 3, 2003

Moderator who originally posted this source: Father Phillip

Question:   In the song, MARY DID YOU KNOW, written by Mark Lowry & Buddy Greene, (c)1991 Word Music, there is the line (speaking to Mary)...the child that you delivered, would soon deliver you..... This has sparked some discussion on whether or not this is not in keeping with our Catholic Doctrine. If Mary was Immaculately Conceived, did she need to be delivered?

Answer: 

Thanks for your question to www.CatholicQandA.org about the Blessed Mother.

Though I only have the vaguest recollection of the song to which you refer, what you indicate in your question is, I'm pretty certain, completely in keeping with the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Surely, Mary was Immaculately Conceived; that is the clear and definitive teaching of the Church. But, as Pope Pius IX made clear in his bull establishing once and for all our belief in the Immaculate Conception, that singular grace was given to Mary through the merits of Christ Jesus.

All human persons need to be saved by Christ -- no exceptions. Mary is a human person, so she, too, was in need of the redemptive grace which God gives to the world through Christ.

The problem is, I suspect, one of "chronology." Because you and I have rather a lot of difficulty moving beyond the limits of "chronos" and it's pattern of past-present-future, we have a hard time remembering that God and God's saving acts are not limited by that pattern.

Remember: With God there is no time. God is Eternally Present to all reality "simultaneously" which means that God is as "present" to the creation of the world, as to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, as to the Crucifixion of Jesus, as to the American Declaration of Independence, as to your birth, as to the death of your great-great-grandchild, as to the Second Coming of Christ. (I am not, of course, suggesting that all of these events are of 'equal' significance in the history of salvation!)

Since God is not bound by the limits of our "chonology," for God all things are possible -- as the Archangel told Mary! So, the salvation which God offers to Mary in her Immaculate Conception comes through her Son Who is also the Son of God.

That Mary's Immaculate Conception was "before" (chronologically speaking) the birth-death-resurrection of Jesus really makes no difference in God's time.

All salvation, all grace comes from God through the divine Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Who was incarnate of the Blessed Virgin.

(By the way, the word "doctrine" in your question, modified by the adjective "Catholic" probably ought not to be capitalized. We don't really have anything that is a specific entity called "Catholic Doctrine" per se. Catholic doctrine[s] is a constantly developing body of belief, the precise boundaries of which tend to be dynamic -- given the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit. In English usage only proper nouns are normally capitalized when they do not begin a sentence, and "Catholic doctrine" as a concept doesn't quite meet the test of being denoted as a proper noun.)

Blessings,
Father Phillip