Annotatio CIV

”Isaac besought the Lord for his wife.” — Genesis 25:21

Chrysostom, homily 49, after the narration of this sentence, seems to brand the Virgin Mary with a mark of incredulity, because she did not believe the announcing angel that the conception of Christ in her womb would come to pass without human intercourse.¹ For thus he introduces the angel speaking to Mary: “And because you are so incredulous, believe through this.”² And after a few [words] he adds: “Plainly, through everything, he led her by the hand to believe the annunciation; and see how great skill Gabriel uses: for he does not recall to her memory Sarah or Rebecca, who were barren and old, because these were ancient narrations, but he leads her to that which recently happened in Elizabeth, to provoke her mind to believe.” This same defect of faith Chrysostom seems to ascribe to her at the death of her Son, when in [the homily on] Psalm 13 he speaks thus: “When Christ was crucified, there was none who did good; all the disciples fled; John withdrew naked; Peter denied; the sword of doubt passed through the very soul of Mary his mother.”³ Not unlike this opinion is what others write concerning the doubt of Mary — Origen (homily 17 on Luke), Theophylact (on Luke 2), and Augustine (in the Questions on Luke) — as you will be able to see below in the censures on the Gospel of Luke. There are those who wrongly judge that Chrysostom’s temperament — by its own nature hostile to feminine ways — could not restrain itself from attributing something womanish even to Mary, whom elsewhere too, in the commentaries on the Gospels of Matthew and John, he censures as importunate and ambitious. But since Chrysostom, among Mary’s other virtues, everywhere celebrates also her faith with wondrous praises,⁴ it is necessary to refer his words not to any kind of doubt or incredulity of hers (which would be placed under the crime of unbelief), but to a certain hesitation arising from vehement admiration and astonishment — such as [arises] whenever unusual appearances of events, beyond the measure and order of nature, first present themselves to us. Which he himself indicates clearly enough, when in that place he describes Mary as struck with amazement, in the highest admiration, at the words of the angel. Read Annotations 58, 138, 139, 140, and 185 of book 6.