166 The Faith of Our Fathers "Our sufficiency is from God, who hath made us fit ministers of the New Testament."218 Now of all who have participated in the ministry of the Redemption there is none who filled any position so exalted, so sacred, as is the incommunicable office of Mother of Jesus; and there is no one, consequently, that needed so high a degree of holiness as she did. For, if God thus sanctified His Prophets and Apostles as being destined to be the bearers of the Word of life, how much more sanctified must Mary have been, who was to bear the Lord and "Author of life."219 If John was so holy because he was chosen as the pioneer to prepare the way of the Lord, how much more holy was she who ushered Him into the world. If holiness became John's mother, surely a greater holiness became the mother of John's Master. If God said to His Priests of old: "Be ye clean, you that carry the vessels of the Lord;"220 nay, if the vessels themselves used in the divine service and churches are set apart by special consecration, we cannot conceive Mary to have been ever profaned by sin, who was the chosen vessel of election, even the Mother of God. When we call the Blessed Virgin the Mother of God, we assert our belief in two things: First — That her Son, Jesus Christ, is true man, else she were not a mother. Second — That He is true God, else she were not the Mother of God. In other words, we affirm that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word of God, who in His divine nature is from all eternity begotten [167] of the Father, consubstantial with Him, was in the fulness of time again begotten, by being born of the Virgin, thus taking to Himself, from her maternal womb, a human nature of the same substance with hers. But it may be said the Blessed Virgin is not the Mother of 218 II Cor. iii. 6. 219 Acts iii. 15. 220 Isaiah iii. 11.