Devotion to, and love for the Holy Mother of God is not a Catholic novelty. St. Athanasius makes clear that the mind and heart of the Church were always steadfastly focused on Mary the mother of God from the earliest days of Christianity. Mary was no ordinary woman! She was not merely a tool but a sort of partaker in God’s plan for our salvation in Jesus Christ. Because without a body, there would be nothing to crucify, there would be no Eucharist, and there would be no Church.
“[Jesus Christ] had then to take a body like ours. This explains the fact of Mary’s presence: she is to provide him with a body of his own, to be offered for our sake. Scripture records her giving birth, and says: She wrapped him in swaddling clothes. Her breasts, which fed him, were called blessed. Sacrifice was offered because the child was her firstborn. Gabriel used careful and prudent language when he announced his birth. He did not speak of ‘what will be born in you’ to avoid the impression that a body would be introduced into her womb from outside; he spoke of “what will be born from you” so that we might know by faith that her child originated within her and from her.”
-St. Athanasius
The word took on flesh and human nature through Mary, not through magic.
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