The perfect person to protect us from heresies

As the Mother of Jesus, the Virgin Mary is well positioned to tell us that during his earthly life the Lord of glory did indeed have a physical body and human sentiments. Marian devotion is a touchstone of the true understanding of the Incarnation.

This is why the Mother of the Lord is the perfect person to preserve us from the heresies that deny the Incarnation, or that deny that Jesus possessed a human soul (something important for the deification of our own souls, since only "what has been assumed by the Son of God is saved"). Guarantor of the Incarnation, the Virgin helps us adore a God who, in her Son, has fully embraced our condition, except sin. Thus, the Virgin, through whom Jesus took a body like ours, is the promise, in her person and even more in that of her Son, of the wedding between Heaven and earth.

But this question of the body does not concern only the faith. It also has practical implications. In her maternal solicitude, the Virgin warns us against misusing our sexuality, in these times of deep crisis. Postmodern hedonism transforms our bodies into mere instruments of pleasure. Sometimes it despises the body (when it is "out of order"), sometimes it transforms it into an idol. Here again, the Blessed Virgin reminds us of the eminent dignity of our bodies and warns us that we are made for the gift of self, and not to satisfy selfish impulses, and that the body will be resurrected at the end of time.

Jean Michel Castaing, July 15, 2019

Aleteia