A dear and holy priest that I know says that the titles most preferred by the Blessed Virgin Mary are Mother of God and Mother of Mercy. Two titles that apparently could be in contradiction as we could ask ourselves how it is possible that from one side the Blessed Virgin Mary is the mother of God, the Almighty, and on the other side She is Mother of miserable and poor as we are. Mary is the mother of the id quo maius cogitari nequit, as Saint Anselm would say, and in the meantime, She is the Mother of the nothingness, that is us. In both titles what is common is that Mary is mother, and we must consider her as what She really is. It is necessary to specify that as Mary was not mother of God in a figurative meaning – in fact the Blessed Virgin gave a real body to Our Lord Jesus Christ – neither She is our mother in a figurative sense. If our biological body was generated by our parents, our soul was generated by Mary in the meantime She accepted the mission that God entrusted to her. In his work True Devotion to Mary, Saint Louis de Monfort tells us that our soul belongs to the Blessed Virgin Mary for a singular privilege given to Her by God himself. Here we can try to understand the importance of the consecration to Mary which is precisely to recognize voluntarily her right on our soul. For this reason, we have the duty to honor Her and to give her the worship She deserves.

The reader will surely remember that the divine maternity of Mary is a truth of faith stated by an official dogma. Those who oppose to this truth are subjected to excommunication ipse facto and for this reason they must not be considered part of the Holy Roman Church. In the history there have been some heresies that denied the divine maternity of Mary: this is the case of Arianism, an heresy spread during the IV century from Arius. Among the heresies against this dogma we find also the one spread by Nestorius against the whom spoke Saint Cirillo of Alessandria. Nestorius denied the hypostatic union of the human and divine nature of Our Lord Jesus Christ. If Jesus wasn’t properly God starting from the first instant of his conception, there would be a moment in which Mary wouldn’t have been Mother of God and this is completely absurd. It is very important to know all kinds of heresies that have been during the history of the Church because this knowledge allows us to stay resolute on our faith.

In addition, it is important to remember that dogmas and catholic doctrine documents aren’t an ideology separated from our daily life. Dogmas and faith must have concrete consequences on our lives otherwise religion would be reduced to a lot of useless papers. At this point we could ask: what does the dogma of the Divine Maternity teach us? First, it teaches us that Mary is Mother of God and for this reason She must be an example to look at for all women that want to become mothers. Women of our days, blinded by egoism, forgot that their nature is to be mothers. Maternity belongs to woman in an ontological way: it belongs to its essence and for a woman refusing to be mother means to refuse herself. There are a lot of career women that apparently may seem happy, but in the deep of their heart they are not and this is because they refuse to be mothers. This doesn’t mean that women should not empower and develop their talent, this would be a shame, but what is important is that pride must not prevail. In fact, although the Blessed Virgin Mary was and is the most intelligent woman on the whole world, She lived her life hidden in the secret looking after her lovely Child Jesus Christ and being submitted to Sanit Joseph. Too many families nowadays split because of the refusal of women on being mothers. Catholic women know that their model must be the Blessed Virgin Mary and she must be invocated constantly to be fertile not only in a material way but even in a spiritual way.

It is important to remember that a woman could be mother not just in a biological way but even in a spiritual sense. There were a lot of saints women that established a maternal relationship with those souls that they met during their lives. Saint Catherine of Siena had some people for the whom she became a spiritual mother. We should even consider those women that, although they are married,  they are sterile and, for this reason, despair recurring to barbaric techniques like the fertilization in vitro or the surrogate motherhood. If the will of God for a bride and a groom is that they must not have children, they should accept this fact and submit lovingly to this Holy Will. Catholic doctrine teaches us that sterile couples could pour their love in many ways and spiritual motherhood and fatherhood is not less important than being it in a biological way. In addition, we should even consider those women not married that conceive and abort the baby they carry in their womb: these are homicides that instigate divine justice.

In the end and thanks God, there are even a lot of women that in secret spend their lives for their children and their families, sometimes scarifying themselves even until death, like did Saint Gianna Beretta Molla or the Venerable Servant of God Mariacristina Cella Mocellin. Let us pray the Blessed Virgin Mary so that She could teach to all women how to be real and zealous mothers.