Did Christ rebuke the woman who praised his Mother?
Some say that Our Lord Jesus Christ rejected a woman's praise of his Mother—but this is not the case at all.
Some say that Our Lord Jesus Christ rejected a woman's praise of his Mother—but this is not the case at all.
Editor’s Notes
In this piece, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ turned a passing voice—apparently raised in protest against the slanders of his enemies—into a revelation of his Mother’s dignity.
That God often draws forth praise for his Son from unexpected places.
Why Christ’s response to this woman reveals both Mary’s greatness and her deeper blessedness.
He shows us that true blessedness is found in hearing and keeping God’s word.
For more context on this episode, its significance and its place in the Roman Liturgy, see here:
Our Lord and his Slanderers
The Preaching of the Cross, Part II
Chapter II
St. Luke xi. 14-36
Story of the Gospels, § 103
Burns and Oates, London, 1887
Headings and some line breaks added.
Sung on the Third Sunday of Lent
Part I: How did Christ turn back the charge of casting out devils by Beelzebub?
Part II: The moment Christ announces his invasion of Satan’s kingdom
Part III: Did Christ rebuke the woman who praised his Mother?
Part IV: Why does Christ refuse to prove himself on demand?
Part V: Why does rejecting the truth lead to deeper darkness?
Witness of the woman in the crowd
It seems to have been often a part of the providence of God, with regard to His Incarnate Son, that the vilest calumnies of His enemies should call forth from the simple and poor testimonies in His favour. This providence may be illustrated by those words of our Lord about the children who were crying ‘Hosanna’ in the Temple, and who gave so much offence to the Pharisees, that if they were to hold their peace, the stones would cry out.
On the occasion before us, our Lord had just been speaking most seriously and gravely on the subject of the calumnies which had been invented in order to elude the argumentative force of His undeniable miracles. The power by which He wrought those miracles was attributed to a compact with Satan himself. The teaching of which we have just been speaking was certainly not among the most gracious and sweet of His utterances, for it was couched in language of grave reproof and even menace, implying as it did that the generation which was rejecting Him should be handed over to influences still more deadly and destructive than any to which it had been before subject, and from which it had been partially freed.
Yet it was then, and not when He was delivering the Beatitudes, or assuring the people of the immense mercy and love of the Father, under the image of the father of the Prodigal Son, or at any such time, that the voice came out of the crowd which gave occasion to the words of our Lord which the Evangelist now records. For the providence of God owed to Him, so to say, this reparation on this occasion, rather than on the others.
Mary praised by the poor and simple
Thus:
‘It came to pass, as He spoke these things, a certain woman from the crowd lifting up her voice said to Him, Blessed is the womb that bare Thee and the breasts which gave Thee suck.’
It was such an exclamation as may be heard any day in southern or eastern countries, and expressed the admiration of the speaker for the Teacher to whom they were applied. She thought, in truth, very little of anyone but Him. It was not so much His Blessed Mother as Himself that she meant to praise. But it was a spontaneous witness to His worth, coming from a simple heart, which had perhaps been shocked and hurt by the calumnies of which He had been speaking. It was a way of expressing her loyalty and devotion to Him, but it took the form which it would naturally take in such a mouth, and it also expressed literally a great truth which could not be denied.
It was indeed a blessed thing to have been chosen out of all women to be the Mother of God. In this certainly the woman made no mistake. Her words were far more true than she thought. For she could hardly know the great gifts which had been bestowed upon the Blessed Mother of God, in order to fit her for her great position in His Kingdom, and before it had even been possible for her herself to cooperate with the graces bestowed upon her, and by that cooperation multiply and intensify them. Her ideas of God’s goodness to His own Mother must have been limited indeed in comparison with that goodness itself. Nor could she have known that other second great fountain of grace, which had been flowing in Mary ever since she had been granted the use of her intelligent faculties, and of which our Lord was to speak in His answer to her exclamation.
But she could not but have the instinctive faith in the magnificence and bountifulness of God, which is but natural in any who have any knowledge of Him. So she could not but see that to have been the Mother of such a Son as our Lord must have been an unexampled and almost infinite blessing. There is something specially touching and instructive in the truth that God chose the instrument which He did choose, for this tribute of glory to our Lord, through His Blessed Mother.
It was not by the voice of an angel that the greatness of Mary was to be declared, nor by the witness of the Apostles, or of the authorities of the Church. The voice came from the crowd. It was the voice of an unnamed person, it expressed nothing that could derive weight from the speaker, it was the simple utterance of what hundreds felt besides herself, not so much in consequence of any direct teaching or any superior illumination, as from the natural instinct of hearts concluding rightly about God in His dealings with man.
The instincts of natural religion and piety are quite enough for the conclusions concerning the greatness of Mary which prevail, and have always prevailed, in the Catholic Church. They rest upon the fitness of things, and on the goodness and magnificence of God. They are like that conclusion for the questioning of which our Lord said to His Apostles, ‘Are you also without understanding?’ And it is in accordance with the ways of God’s dealings, that such conclusions should come forth to the world, not so much by the constraining force of dogmatic definitions, as by the true and tender instincts of the devout heart and mind of the common mass of the faithful. In the course of the history of the Church, it is frequently so.
Thus when Nestorius began, in the pulpit at Constantinople, to utter his heresies against the Mother of God, attacking through her the Divine Unity of the Person of her Son, the first voices that were lifted against him came from the people assembled to hear him, even though he was at the time in the highest post of ecclesiastical authority in the Imperial City.1
So, in our own days, when the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mother of God came to be defined by the Supreme Pontiff, the definition may be said to have been greatly brought about by the unanimous instinct of the faithful people all over the world feeling that Mary could not but be immaculate in her conception. No doubt, theological reason and the authority of the Fathers were on the same side, as they could not but be. But the truth still remains, that the dignity of Mary and all that follows therefrom belong to the class of truths to which piety and dutiful devotion to our Lord are irresistibly led, so that they almost seem to require no proof and no authentic teaching to bring them home to Catholic hearts.
Answer of our Lord—its meaning
Our Lord seems to have taken the exclamation of this pious woman as it was intended by her, rather as a praise to Himself than as a simple declaration of the greatness and blessedness of His Mother. Thus, as when the young ruler called Him ‘Good Master,’ He did not admit the praise as applied to Himself, but checked the speaker, saying, ‘Why callest thou Me good? None is good but One, that is, God,’ so here also He put aside the implied honour by correcting the words of the woman out of the crowd, without denying them.
‘Yea, rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.’
As in the one case He could not deny that He Himself was good, but wished to check the light-hearted impetuosity of the speaker, by leading him up to the truth which he was not yet prepared for, the truth of His own divinity, at the same time that He gave an example of the virtue of humility, so now He did not deny the marvellous prerogative of His Blessed Mother as such, but He led the speaker and the hearers on to the truth concerning our Blessed Lady which was of more general importance, as well as of a higher grade, than even that of her incommunicable gifts.
This truth was that if she was blessed for what she had received without her own cooperation, she was still more blessed for what she had won by her cooperation with grace, by her hearing of the Word of God and keeping it, and that this blessedness was more profitable as a subject of praise and contemplation by others, inasmuch as, though God could have but one Mother, He could have, and desired to have, as many faithful hearers and keepers of His Word as there were to be human souls to whom it could be addressed.
This good woman did not understand the incomparable sanctity of the Mother of God, nor did she know, perhaps, very much of her dignity, for it must be uncertain whether she understood that the Son of Mary was a Divine Person. As our Lord was engaged in teaching, and not in proclaiming the praise or the greatness of His Mother, He was as it were bound to turn the thoughts of His hearers to the subject which was most practical for them.
The truth concerning Mary is, that there are many things in her glories and her crown which cannot be shared by others, and many others in the same which can in a measure be shared by all. She is first Mary the Mother of God, she is also Mary, the first and greatest of the saints of God, holy with a holiness which answers to her Divine Maternity, gifted at her very beginning with graces and favours higher than those granted to all angels and saints together. And still beyond this, by her faithfulness to grace and her unintermitted strain to advance in perfection and Divine love, she is raised in grace and glory to a height which can be hers alone.
Thus, although that first grace was unparalleled and without peer, as the condition of the Mother of God must of necessity be altogether unique in His Kingdom, still it was made by her own incomparable faithfulness the beginning and foundation of that immense glory which she has attained, in which it is that God finds His chief delight and His own highest honour.
Fidelity of our Lady
Still more than this. The one great virtue which includes all others in our Blessed Lady being her incomparable fidelity, it is also the one great virtue in which she is imitable by us and by all of us, at all times, and under all conditions of our trial. It was therefore natural that our Lord should take the opportunity of insisting on a truth of which His hearers had so much need. The duty of faithfully hearing and keeping the Word of God was one of universal application and obligation, and could be put forth without saying more about the Mother who bare Him and gave Him suck.
And so, without saying more about her, He insisted on this duty, the failure in which had been the very cause of that fearful fall of the Pharisees and His other enemies which had led them to that terribly black and satanic calumny of which He had lately complained. His description of the soul out of which the evil spirit had been cast, and to which he afterwards returned with seven other spirits more wicked than himself—what was it but the description of a soul which had heard the Word of God and had not kept it?
And the condition of the poor crowds to whom He was now preaching, who had received Him so gladly at first, and were now in danger of falling away from Him on account of the pressure of temporal persecution which was certain to be the lot of those who remained faithful to Him, as well as on account of the calumnies they were led to believe, and the stern requirements of the law which He was teaching—what was it but the condition of souls in the greatest possible danger of being led away to hear the Word of God and not to keep it?
This, as our Lord could foresee, was to be the end of a great number indeed out of all those who heard Him, and therefore that was no time for pious ejaculations about the blessedness of natural relationship to Him. It was a time for preparation for suffering and persecution on account of the faith, when nothing would suffice to support the souls of His hearers under the trials which were to come upon them but this faithfulness to grace of which He speaks.
Thus then, our Lord is here acting on the rule which is followed by all true apostolic preachers, who consider the improvement and strengthening of the hearers as the one great object of their ministry, and who leave alone, except on special occasions, the discussion of subjects which have less practical import or moral significance, for the sake of insisting on those by the consideration of which the souls of their audience may really gain.
End of Part III. Having turned the woman’s exclamation into a lesson on hearing and keeping God’s word, our Lord next addresses the deeper blindness of his generation. He rebukes their demand for a sign, pointing instead to the sign of Jonas, which foreshadows his own death and resurrection:
Our Lord and his Slanderers
Part I: How did Christ turn back the charge of casting out devils by Beelzebub?
Part II: The moment Christ announces his invasion of Satan’s kingdom
Part III: Did Christ rebuke the woman who praised his Mother?
Part IV: Why does Christ refuse to prove himself on demand?
Part V: Why does rejecting the truth lead to deeper darkness?
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Editor’s Notes: See Reuben Parsons’ Studies in Church History, Vol. I, pp 276-7:
The congregation were horrified at the blasphemy, and a certain simple monk openly contradicted it, and attempted to put Anastasius out of the sacred building. But by order of Nestorius the zealous man was publicly flogged, and sent into exile. The greater part of the people now began to absent themselves from church, lest they should communicate with heretics. Many priests attempted in their sermons to check the spread of the contagion, but the threats of their bishop kept too many silent. In the meantime, the false shepherd was indefatigable in his preaching, and soon the faithful lamented that ‘an emperor we have, but no bishop’. […] But there were not wanting in the capital able defenders of the truth. A distinguished Attorney named Eusebius (afterwards bishop of Dorylæum) challenged the prelate to a public dispute, and Proclus, newly consecrated as bishop of Cyzicus, delivered an admirable panegyric on the Mother of God before an immense audience of all classes of society.”
See also Mourret-Thompson’s History of the Catholic Church, Vol. II, p 581—talking of Eusebius, Bishop of Dorylæum:
He it was who, in 428, while still a layman and a lawyer, when Nestorius in a sermon stated his opinion about the title Mother of God given to Mary, interrupted the preacher and said in a loud voice: ‘It is the eternal Word that was incarnate in Mary.’
Dom Prosper Guéranger also writes, on the feast of St Cyril of Alexandria:
In the very year of his exaltation, on Christmas Day 428, Nestorius, taking advantage of the immense concourse which had assembled in honor of the Virgin Mother and Her Child, pronounced from the episcopal pulpit the blasphemous words: ‘Mary did not bring forth God; Her Son was only a man, the instrument of the Divinity.’ The multitude shuddered with horror. Eusebius, a simple layman, rose to give expression to the general indignation, and protested against this impiety. Soon a more explicit protest was drawn up and disseminated in the name of the members of this grief-stricken Church, launching an anathema against anyone who should dare to say: ‘The Only-begotten Son of the Father and the Son of Mary are different Persons.’