The Theotokos

Mary Mother of God (Theotokos)

Mary's Fiat

Benvenuto di Giovanni, Annunciation, 1470
The Angelus

Mary, Ark of the Covenant

From the Book of Exodus (chs. 25-27), we learn that God commanded Moses to build a tabernacle surrounded by heavy curtains in which he was to place an ark constructed out of acacia wood covered with gold. Inside the Ark of the Covenant, the Israelites were to place a golden jar filled with the manna from heaven, Aaron's rod, and the stone tablets of the covenant (i.e., the Ten Commandments) (Hebrews 9:4). From thenceforward, the glory cloud of the Lord, also known as the Shekinah Glory, covered the tent and the Ark (Exodus 40:34-35; Nehemiah 9:18, 22). In the Bible, we often see this word, Shekinah, which means "to cover" or "to overshadow" representing the presence and glory of God the Father as it first protected and surrounded the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament and as it accompanies Mary in the New Testament.

After Moses's death, Joshua located the Ark of the Covenant in Shiloh in the Promised Land where it remained for more than 200 years. In a battle with the Philistines, the Philistines captured the ark (1 Samuel 5:1-6:12). When King David went to retrieve it (1 Sm 6:1-2), one of his envoys, Uzzah, was struck dead when he accidentally touched the sacred Ark which was covered with the Shekinah cloud of God's glory. (And, where Uzzah was killed instantaneously upon contact with the Shekinah, Joseph, Mary's husband deliberately refrains from "touching" Mary, surrounded as she was by God's Glory Cloud.) When David finally approaches the Ark, scripture tells us that he danced and leapt in front of the Ark before relocating it to the sacred city of Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:9-14). Here, one cannot help but think of St. John the Baptist who leaps in Elizabeth's womb at the arrival of Jesus in the new Ark of the Covenant, Mary.

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord." (Luke 1:39-45)

Like David who leaves the Ark in the "hill country of Judea" for three months, Mary remains with her cousin, Elizabeth, in the city of Judah for three months as well. While David danced at the sight of the Ark, he rejoiced by saying, "How can the ark of the Lord come to me?" Later, Elizabeth uses the same phraseology when she asks, "Why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" When Mary presents Jesus at the temple (Luke 1:56, 2:21-22), she fulfills David's typological example when he returns the Ark of the Covenant to the temple in Jerusalem (2 Sm 6:12; 1 Kings 8:9-11). Time and time again, the Old Testament prefigures the New Testament in beautiful and profound ways, and one of the most convincing typologies is the preparation for Mary as the new Ark of the Covenant in the Christian tradition.

The prophet Jeremiah, after receiving a prophecy from God, sealed the Ark in a cave in the same mountain where Moses received his divine inheritance from God and thereby declared: "The place shall be unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy. And then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud will appear, as they were shown in the case of Moses, and as Solomon asked that the place should be specially consecrated" (2 Maccabees 2:4-8). And the Ark will never be relocated, because just as Jesus is the fulfillment of the law of Moses--the Word made incarnate in a person, a man by the name of Jesus; Mary is similarly the fulfillment of scripture--the Ark made incarnate in a person, a woman by the name of Mary. Mary holds the new covenant of Jesus in her womb and thereby becomes the Ark of the New Covenant of Christ.

This is a beautiful passage I cite directly from Catholic Answers: "The Old Testament tells us that one item was placed inside the Ark of the Old Covenant while in the Sinai wilderness: God told Moses to put the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments inside the ark (Dt 10:3-5). Hebrews 9:4 informs us that two additional items were placed in the Ark: "a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron's rod that budded." Notice the amazing parallels: In the ark was the law of God inscribed in stone; in Mary's womb was the Word of God in flesh. In the ark was the urn of the manna, the bread from heaven that kept God's people alive in the wilderness; in Mary's womb is the Bread of Life come down from heaven that brings eternal life. In the ark was the rod of Aaron, the proof of true priesthood; in Mary's womb is the true priest. In the third century, St. Gregory the Wonder Worker said that Mary is truly an ark--"gold within and gold without, and she has received in her womb all the treasures of the sanctuary."

The Language of Love

I try to wear daily my medallions of the Holy Family: one for each of our children, James, Thomas, Claire, and baby Grace who was born at rest this past August. I look forward to wearing another medal when baby number five arrives in July. Our diocese distributes these medallions at each infant baptism (or burial rites in the case of Grace), and our children love to crawl on my lap and look for their individual medallions I wear around my neck. The children have learned much about Mary the perfect mother, Joseph the guardian of Christ, and Jesus the savior child by admiring these simple pieces of jewelry. The Holy Family also calls our family toward holiness as we pray together to be more like Mary, Joseph, and Jesus in our relationships with each other.

Today, our bishop, the Most Reverend James D. Conley, issued a beautiful letter on the importance of family life toward salvation and the transformative power of love in our hurting world. "The Language of Love" is filled with poignant statements on self-sacrifice and openness toward God's merciful will in the covenantal bond of marriage. Here are some excerpts that fill my heart with love:

Sacrifice is the language of love.  Love is spoken in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who poured out his life for us on the cross. Love is spoken in the sacrifice of the Christian life, sharing in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.  And love is spoken in the sacrifice of parents, and pastors, and friends.

We live in a world short on love.  Today, love is too often understood as romantic sentimentality rather than unbreakable commitment. But sentimentality is unsatisfying.  Material things, and comfort, and pleasure bring only fleeting happiness.  The truth is that we are all searching for real love, because we are all searching for meaning. 

And further on in his letter, Bishop Conley concludes:

Today, openness to children is rarely celebrated, rarely understood, and rarely supported.  To many, the Church’s teachings on life seem oppressive or old-fashioned.  Many believe that the Church asks too great a sacrifice. 

But sacrifice is the language of love.  And in sacrifice, we speak the language of God himself.  I am calling you, dear brothers and sisters, to encounter Christ in your love for one another.  I am calling you to rich and abundant family life.  I am calling you to rejoice in the love, and the sacrifice, for which you were made.  I am calling your family to share in the creative, active love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I pray that in true sacrifice, each of you will know perfect joy.

Through the intercession of Our Lady of the Annunciation, the Holy Family, and in the love of Jesus Christ,

You may hear Bishop Conley's letter in full, available here.

Jesus of Nazareth

In honor of the Advent season I read Joseph Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth. When it was published last year in 2012, I vaguely remember the attention focused on Benedict's re-dating of the historical Jesus' birth, but it wasn't until I read this book in its entirety that I realized the mysterious impact of Benedict's argument. Benedict cites Josephus' historical records that place the Quirinius census which would have caused Joseph and Mary to travel to Bethlehem--the site of Jesus' eventual prophetic birth--in the year 6 A.D., a date that places into doubt by six years the Gregorian dating system. Second, Benedict relies on astrological data to renegotiate the Gregorian calendar and scientifically explain the star of Bethlehem. That Benedict is interested in astronomy is no surprise given the Church's powerful telescopes at Castel Gandolfo in Italy and Mount Graham in Arizona. Between Kepler's Jupiter-Saturn-Mars supernova explanations (a phenomenon which occurred in the years 7-6 B.C.) and the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces (the symbol of ancient Christianity) which also occurred in 7-6 B.C., Benedict argues that Jesus' birth occurred somewhere within 7 B.C. and 6 A.D., most likely occurring earlier than later on the calendrical spectrum. About all of these astrological occurrences, Benedict writes most compellingly: "If these wise men, led by the star to search for the king of the Jews, represent the movement of the Gentiles toward Christ, this implies that the cosmos speaks of Christ, even though its language is not yet fully intelligible to man in his present state. The language of creation provides a great many pointers. It gives man an intuition of the Creator. Moreover, it arouses the expectation, indeed the hope, that this God will one day reveal himself. And at the same time it elicits an awareness that man can and should approach him" (100).

Theologically, I most appreciated Benedict's repeated emphasis on the paradox of the Christian life of the cross: it is a sign of hopefulness and yet also a sign of inevitable suffering. That one must suffer in the wounds of Christ to achieve Christian glory is a message that a secular world confuses, misunderstands, or rejects. Benedict writes, "We are not talking about the past here. We all know to what extent Christ remains a sign of contradiction today, a contradiction that in the final analysis is directed at God. God himself is constantly regarded as a limitation placed on our freedom, that must be set aside if man is ever to be completely himself. God, with his truth, stands in opposition to man's manifold lies, his self-seeking and his pride.

God is love. But love can also be hated when it challenges us to transcend ourselves. It is not a romantic 'good feeling.' Redemption is not 'wellness,' it is not about basking in self-indulgence; on the contrary it is a liberation from imprisonment in self-absorption. This liberation comes at a price: the anguish of the Cross. The prophecy of light and that of the Cross belong together" (86).

Pope Benedict XVI's emphasis on Jesus' infancy narrative would not be complete without a meditation on the role of Jesus' mother, Mary. As a child, I never really pondered in my heart the role of Mary despite the fact that she always points toward Christ ("Do whatever he tells you" [John 2:5-8]) and despite the fact that she always encourages us to "ponder all these things in [our] heart[s]" (Luke 2:19). She was someone we paraded around at Christmas pageants, stowed away in the costume closet for the rest of the liturgical year, and then retrieved when the Nativity scene again was reenacted. But reflecting on Mary especially since I myself became a mother made me keenly aware of her pivotal role in salvation history. When Simeon says to Mary in the Temple, "a sword will pierce through your own soul" (Luke 2:35), we see how the paradox of the Cross is also applied toward the mother. Jesus' death on the cross is described in Christian vernacular as "The Passion," and yet it is with Mary where we learn true "com-Passion"---a passion that is wedded to the suffering of others most perfectly enacted when Mary was pierced by the suffering of her son, the Christ. Benedict writes, "From Mary we can learn what true com-passion is: quite unsentimentally assuming the sufferings of others as one's own…The Mater Dolorosa, the mother whose heart is pierced by a sword, is an iconic image of this fundamental attitude of Christian faith" (87). [On an entirely personal note, my own mother often bemoaned her name, Delores, but as I witness her own Via Dolorosa in her life of self-sacrifice to her family---to my brother and to me all through our childhood; to my dad before, during, and after his cancer journey and death; to my children and to her other grandchildren; and to my grandparents---I cannot help but think that her name suits her more than any Seinfeld episode could diminished the grandeur of her name…]

Jesus of Nazareth is a quick read and a fine introduction to Benedict's genius theological mind. I've read much of his theology and am always amazed at his simplicity, articulateness, and philosophical persuasiveness in a world that so immediately discards Christian philosophical epistemology as anti-intellectual and superstitious. Benedict really is one of the most profound writers I've encountered in my many years of research, study, and scholarship. This book, Jesus of Nazareth, does not operate like Benedict's other systematic theological texts: it neither delves into minute details of systematic logic,  nor does it include expansive footnotes or citations that define Benedict's other works. This text is written for the lay reader, for the devoted or the fallen-away Catholic, for the Christian peering inside the Catholic tradition, or for the secular reader who might appreciate a spiritual insight into Jesus' infancy narrative vis-a-vis the rationalist inquiry that Benedict provides (see first paragraph above).

Benedict closes his book with the fact that Jesus paradoxically is both "true man" and "true God." Jesus' wisdom grows so that at twelve years old, he has acquired human wisdom far beyond his years but he is still a man who "does not live in some abstract omniscience" (127)---he is instead "rooted in concrete history, a place and a time, in the different phases of human life, and this is what gives concrete shape to his knowledge" (ibid.). Thy dynamic between Jesus' humanness and his divinity "remains a mystery" (ibid.) as Benedict recounts in this beautiful book on Jesus of Nazareth.

Mary the Head Crusher: Ipsa conteret!

Rubens Immaculate Conception 1628

http://catholicism.org/mary-the-head-crusher.html

When we go to Mass, we often stop at the small fountain and garden outside the front entrance of our church, and the kids have had plenty of time to gaze at the peaceful statue of the head-crushing Virgin Mary. She is adorned in blue and white, and she stands on the head of the fruit-wielding snake.

Mary, the Woman, crushes the head of Satan, as prophesied in the book of Revelation (Revelation 12); and Jesus adumbrates Mary's role as the Woman of John's apocalyptic vision while also affirming her status as the new Eve--the Eve who destroys the snake rather than falling prey to its lies--when he honorifically refers to his mother as Woman.

When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour the disciple took her to his own. (John 19:26-27)

In the unitive genius of the bible, Mary's head-crushing ways follows a trinity of Old Testament/Septuagint head-crushing female warriors in the figures of Jahel (who head-crushes the evil Sihara); an unnamed Woman (who head-crushes the despotic Abimelech); and Judith (who head-crushes Holofernes, King Nebuchodonozor's Assyrian General):

Jahel, Haber's wife, took a nail of the tent, and taking also a hammer: and going in softly, and with silence, she put the nail upon the temples of his head, and striking it With the hammer, drove it through his brain fast into the ground: and so passing from deep sleep to death, he fainted away and died. (Judges 4:21)

And Abimelech coming near the tower, fought stoutly: and approaching to the gate, endeavoured to set fire to it: And behold a certain woman casting a piece of a millstone from above, dashed it against the head of Abimelech, and broke his skull. And he called hastily to his armourbearer, and said to him: Draw thy sword, and kill me: lest it should be said that I was slain by a woman. (Judges 9:52-54).

And Judith stood before the bed praying with tears, and the motion of her lips in silence, saying: Strengthen me, O Lord God of Israel, and in this hour look on the works of my hands, that as thou hast promised, thou mayst raise up Jerusalem thy city: and that I may bring to pass that which I have purposed, having a belief that it might be done by thee. And when she had said this, she went to the pillar that was at his bed's head, and loosed his sword that hung tied upon it. And when she had drawn it out, she took him by the hair of his head, and said: Strengthen me, O Lord God, at this hour. And she struck twice upon his neck, and cut off his head, and took off his canopy from the pillars, and rolled away his headless body. (Judith 13:6-10)

From Mary's womb, Jesus crushes death on the skull of Calvary (Latin: calva, skull)! Hail Mary, full of grace: Ipsa conteret!

I will put enmities between thee and the Woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head (Latin: ipsa conteret caput tuum), and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel. (Genesis 3:15)