Transcript

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Matthew Leonard, Executive Director of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.

And welcome to the Bible and the Virgin Mary, part of the St. Paul Center's dynamic scripture study program called Journey Through Scripture.

We're about to embark on an exploration of what scripture and Catholic teaching have to say about the most amazing woman who ever lived.

And it's quite appropriate; we'll undertake our study in the beautiful chapel of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity here on the campus of Thomas Aquinas College.

Well, before we dive into our study, here's Dr. Scott Hahn, founder and president of the St. Paul Center and author of Hail Holy Queen, the book upon which this study is based.

Hi, I'm Dr. Scott Hahn.

The St. Paul Center exists for one purpose: to help Catholics to fall in love with our Lord through sacred scripture.

And we do that by reading scripture from the heart of the church.

We'll be right back.

It's designed to help you make sense out of everyday life.

Because the Bible isn't just a book; it's the Word of God.

And that Word is also a person, Jesus Christ.

That's why St. Jerome famously declared that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.

But ignorance of Scripture is also ignorance of His Blessed Mother.

I've been studying Sacred Scripture now for over 40 years.

I took college courses, graduate classes, I learned Greek and Hebrew.

But if I could pinpoint one thing that has made the biggest difference of all, it is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Looking at the story through her eyes, looking at Jesus through her maternal heart, this is what has made the Bible come alive for me like nothing else.

My prayer is that the Bible and the Virgin Mary makes it come alive for you as well.

Enjoy the study.

Thousands of books, songs, and poems have been written about Mary, and almost every great, sometimes not so great, artist has painted, drawn, maybe even sculpted her image.

Likewise, you've got the name of Mary being invoked by soldiers as they go into battle, maybe by kings and presidents as they've led their people, even the simplest and humblest of souls as they've gone about the business of their everyday lives.

Don't tell me you've never rolled into a full-mass parking lot and said, "Hail Mary, full of grace, help me find a parking place."

You know, the first time that I taught the Bible and the Virgin Mary was at Franciscan University of Steubenville.

And parking was at a premium because they had construction going on.

I was running late, and so I decided, well, I'm going to give this prayer a try.

And wouldn't you know it, I got the second best parking spot in the entire campus, right in front of the building in which I was going to teach.

So I grabbed my briefcase, and I ran upstairs, and I told the story to my students of how it is I got this parking spot.

There were these two little nuns in the front row, and one of them raised her hand and said, "Matt, you took our parking space."

And I said, "Sister, it's because you didn't pray the prayer."

Now, maybe that's not an official prayer of the church, but I still use it, just like many others who have sought out Mary's help in so many situations over the centuries.

But for all that, it's interesting to note that the New Testament only records about 15 different episodes involving the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Now, there are a couple of possible conclusions we can draw from that.

First, we could conclude that Mary actually isn't an important part of salvation history.

That all the stories and the songs and the artwork, they're just an afterthought.

They're just an add-on to the true message of the gospel.

Or we could conclude that there's more to those few passages than meets the eye.

And that their meaning isn't hard to see if you know how to read Scripture the right way.

It's not hard to see if you know how to read Scripture with the mind and the heart of the Church.

That's why we're here.

We're going to learn how to read Scripture from the heart of the Church so we can unpack all that the New and the Old Testament has to say about Mary.

And we're going to learn that Mary's not an afterthought.

She's no add-on to the gospel.

Rather, she's at the very center of the story of salvation history.

She's at the very center of God's plan to bring life, eternal life, to you and to me.

Before we really get into the study, let's quickly review those New Testament episodes that refer to Mary either directly or indirectly.

And again, there aren't that many.

Basically, this is what we're told about her.

In addition to Matthew's genealogy, which mentions her as the mother of Jesus, we learn in the Gospel of Luke that an angel announced to Mary, a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, that she would bear a son, Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

While pregnant with this son, Mary pays a long visit to her cousin Elizabeth.

In the Gospel of Matthew, we learn that she bears this son in the city of Bethlehem and was present as the shepherds and magi paid him homage.

When the evil King Herod orders the death of all the male children under the age of two in that horrible slaughter of the innocents, Mary and her husband Joseph flee with the child to Egypt.

Scripture also tells us that Mary presented Jesus in the temple when he was a small baby and that later, when he was 12, Mary found Jesus teaching in that same temple.

Mary was also present at a wedding in Cana, where she watched Jesus perform his first public miracle in John 2. She came looking for him when he was teaching in Matthew 12 and was mentioned later in Nazareth when he was rejected by his own people.

Later, of course, Mary watched her son die on the cross and was among those gathered with the apostles in Jerusalem awaiting the promised Holy Spirit.

More indirect references to Mary come in Luke 11, where an anonymous woman cries out to Jesus, "Blessed is the womb that bore you."

Paul mentions her, but not by name, in Galatians 4:4: "But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law."

And lastly, she appears in Revelation, the woman clothed with the sun, who brought forth the male child, who is to rule all the nations.

And that's the last word the Bible has to say about Mary.

And again, depending on how you count it, Mary is mentioned about 15 times in the New Testament.

Now, that's less than most of the apostles, far less than Peter, who gets 155 different mentions.

But it's Mary, not Peter, who makes it into the Apostles' Creed.

In fact, she's one of only two people, besides Jesus, who are mentioned in the creeds.

Now, how did that happen?

How did a woman whose scriptural name is barely a dozen times come to inspire some of the church's earliest liturgies and prayers, as well as some of its most controversial and misunderstood beliefs?

Now, those are good questions.

And not surprisingly, they've been sticking points for many non-Catholics who struggle to find a scriptural basis for what Catholics believe about Mary and how we honor her.

Now, at best, those non-Catholics look upon our Marian beliefs and devotions as products of a pious but, you know, misguided imagination.

At worst, they call it Mariolatry, a false worship that undermines the perfect saving work of Christ and robs him of his glory.

Now that's a pretty serious charge, and it deserves a serious answer.

And over the next 12 sessions, we're going to find that answer.

We'll see how prayers such as the Hail Mary are composed largely of biblical words, and we'll see how the Church's teachings about Mary are definitive interpretations of Scripture passages pertaining to Mary.

In fact, through a close study of the Bible, we're going to find the seeds for nearly all Catholic devotions to Mary.

Now, to help you get an idea of where we'll be going over the next 12 sessions, here's a roadmap of sorts.

We're going to start by talking about how to read Scripture, and specifically, how we need to read the passages about Mary.

Once we've done that, we'll start putting those reading skills to use and see how Mary, as the new Eve, fits into God's plan to save us.

After that, we'll explore Mary's relationship to the Ark of the Covenant and see what that has to tell us about Mary's perpetual virginity.

Later, Mary's motherhood, including her title as Mother of God, will be front and center in our discussion.

In Lessons 9 and 10, we'll unpack the scriptures that give us the doctrine of Mary's Immaculate Conception and her title All-Holy.

Finally, in our last couple of sessions, we'll see how the Church's belief in Mary's Assumption and her coronation as Queen of Heaven and Earth is rooted in the Bible.

And throughout the study, we'll look not only at what the Bible says about Mary, but also at what the earliest Christians believed about her.

We'll address some of the most common objections against Marian devotions and doctrines, and talk about the biblical justification for the devotions themselves.

By the end of the study, you'll understand why Catholic devotion to Mary, rooted in the biblical witness of Christ's first followers, is far from blasphemy.

In fact, you'll probably be thinking that it's wrong not to honor Mary as the human person who most perfectly conforms to the image of God.

Now we've got a lot of ground to cover, but before we can appreciate the connections between the Mary of Scripture and the Mary of doctrine and devotion, we first need to learn how to read Scriptures.

More specifically, we need to learn how to read what the Scriptures have to say about Mary.

And once we've learned that lesson, we'll see that while the direct biblical references might seem scant on the surface, they're quite profound and rich with meaning.

We'll also see that Mary is deeply woven into the fabric of the inspired text.

Now, it's important to understand that when we talk about learning to read the Scriptures, we're not talking of decoding the Bible.

This part of the Bible study isn't the Da Vinci Code for Catholics.

Rather, the goal of this lesson is to give you the time-tested tools that Catholics have always used to read and interpret the Bible.

These are the methods the popes used when they write about Scripture.

They're the methods the Church Fathers and Doctors used when they wrote about Scripture in the first centuries after Christ.

They are, in fact, the same methods the apostles and evangelists used when they penned the actual pages of Scripture.

Only by understanding how the Bible's authors intended us to read what they wrote can we actually understand what they wrote.

Now we're going to begin this reading lesson simply by taking a look at the literal or literary sense of the texts.

In other words, what do the words on the page tell us about Mary?

Mary's first appearance in the New Testament comes in its very first chapter, at the end of this long genealogy that opens the Gospel of Matthew.

There, she's introduced as Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

Now, to understand what Matthew tells us with these words, you've got to read them in context.

They conclude a genealogy that Matthew is primarily presented to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Now, why does demonstrating that fact matter so much to Matthew?

Why does he have to bring David and Abraham, Old Testament guys, into the opening verse of his gospel?

Well, the reason why Abraham and David make it into the very beginning of Matthew's gospel is because of God's covenants with Israel, the covenants of salvation history.

See, the story of Jesus, and therefore the story of Mary, cannot be understood apart from the story of Israel.

And their story is a story of covenants.

Now, for those of you not familiar with the term, a covenant may seem like it's similar to a contract, but it's actually quite different.

To start with, a covenant is more binding than a contract.

See, the punishment for violating a covenant is death, not a mere fine or a penalty.

Covenants are also far more powerful.

Contracts form temporary business partnerships, so they involve the exchange of goods and services.

I've got money, you've got a car I want to buy, so this is mine, that's yours.

Well, instead of exchanging goods and services, covenants involve an exchange of persons.

So rather than, this is mine and that is yours, a covenant says, I am yours and you are mine.

In other words, covenants make families.

Accordingly, throughout salvation history, God has used covenants to bring men and women into his family, the family of God.

I mean, that's what we're all made for.

Getting back into the family of God is what it's all about.

Now, for those of you not familiar with the term salvation history, it simply refers to history from God's perspective.

It's the story of how, in time, he has made men and women part of his family.

And God himself tells us that story in the pages of the Bible.

And God, as the Catechism tells us, is the principal author of Scripture.

2 Timothy 3:16 and 17 tells us that all Scripture is inspired.

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

The Greek word Paul uses for inspired in that passage is theonoustos, which literally means God-breathed.

So when we talk about the Bible being inspired, we mean that the words of Scripture are the very words of God.

Now that doesn't, of course, mean the words of Scripture weren't also the words of men.

The authors of the various books of the Bible weren't automatons or robots mechanically taking down dictation from God in the beginning.

2 Peter 1:20 and 21 tells us that the human authors of Scripture were moved to write by the Holy Spirit.

So they wrote down exactly what God wanted and nothing more.

Nevertheless, the sacred books still bear their own personal style, their own individual perspective.

Now, how did this happen?

Well, it's a mystery similar to the Incarnation.

Just as the Word made flesh is both human and divine, so is the Word of God brought to us in Scripture, both human and divine.

Now that we've got all of our terms like salvation history and inspired straight, we need to take a quick look at the covenants God used to bring men and women into his divine family.

God made his first covenant with humanity in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.

And then he made his family a little bit bigger with the second covenant of salvation history, his covenant with Noah.

And this time, he didn't just make a covenant with one married couple, but rather with Noah's entire household.

Then that family got even bigger when God made his covenant with Abraham, welcoming Abraham's tribe into his family.

God then made his fourth covenant with Moses and the entire nation of Israel.

And his fifth covenant with David and David's kingdom, which included people from many tribes and many nations.

All of those Old Testament covenants foreshadowed the new covenant of Christ, the covenant through which God would bring all of humanity into his divine family.

But even though all of those covenants foreshadowed the new covenant, God's covenants with Abraham and David have special significance.

Remember, Abraham was the founding father of God's chosen people, Israel.

And when God made his covenant with him, he promised Abraham that through his descendants, all the nations of the earth would be blessed in Genesis 22:18. God also promised Abraham that kings would stem from his line.

And later, God swore an oath to one of those kings, King David, that his kingdom would have no end.

He also swore that David's son would be God's own son and that he would reign forever over Israel and all the nations of the world.

Now, the problem was that less than 500 years later, the Davidic kingdom collapsed and its people were sent into exile.

And that was an exile from which many of them never returned.

From a human perspective, it seemed like God hadn't held up his end of the bargain.

And yet, despite how things seemed, Israel's prophets still spoke about a Christ or a Messiah.

This Christ, they promised, would liberate Israel's scattered tribes and reunite them in a new and everlasting kingdom.

And that kingdom, they said, would be a light to the nations.

They also said that the Christ would be the son that God promised to Abraham and David.

Read in context then, the few words that Matthew gives us about Mary at the beginning of his gospel are no trifling matter.

In one short sentence, Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ, Matthew effectively places Mary at the center of Israel's history.

Of her was born the Christ through whom God would fulfill his covenant promises to Abraham and David.

But Matthew didn't just position Mary at the center of Israel's history with that little sentence.

He also positioned her at the center of human history.

The fruit of Mary's womb is the source of the world's salvation.

Through Christ, born of Mary, God bestows his divine blessing upon all nations and all peoples.

Matthew reiterates that point a few verses later when he writes that Mary was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit.

And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to send her away quietly.

But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Immanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.

He took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son, and he called his name Jesus.

What Matthew tells us there is that Mary's virginal conception of Jesus fulfills this promise made by God through the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament.

In fact, verse 23 quotes Isaiah 7:14. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means God with us.

Then, in chapter 2, Matthew repeats the passage from Micah, showing us that the long-awaited Messiah has come through Mary.

But you, O Bethlehem, Ephrathah, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.

Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who has labor pains has brought forth.

Then the rest of his brethren shall return to the sons of Israel.

And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah.

For from you shall come a ruler who will govern my people Israel.

Mary is she who has brought forth, and through Mary, God is with us.

And again, to grasp the full import of what Matthew tells us about Mary in this passage, we have to understand the Old Testament context that Matthew assumes.

You see, Matthew expects that his readers will hear in those words one of the great promises of salvation history, the promise that God will one day come again and dwell with his people like he used to before the collapse of the Davidic kingdom, when the presence of God literally dwelled in the temple.

We see hints of that promise in Isaiah 43:5. Fear not, for I am with you.

We also see it in Ezekiel 37:24-28. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

And throughout Matthew's gospel, Jesus himself reinforces the notion that in him, the fulfillment of that promise has come.

For example, Jesus describes how he will be with us for all time, especially in the Eucharist in chapters 18, 25, and 26. And his last words to his disciples before his ascension into heaven resound with the promise, "I am with you always to the close of the age."

That's why Matthew's reference to Mary as the virgin prophesied by Isaiah places her at the center of God's saving plan for Israel and the world.

The literal meaning of the text here is that Mary is the divine sign that God long ago promised to give his people.

She is the sign of God's eternal faithfulness to his covenant with David.

She is the sign that God has finally come to bring about the fulfillment of his plan for all creation.

In our next lesson, we're going to continue our focus on how to read what the Bible has to say about Mary by looking at the account of the Annunciation in the Gospel of Luke.

We'll also see how Our Lady's miraculous conception of Jesus echoes several similar occurrences in the Old Testament.

But before we jump back into the text, we're going to do something just a little different.

Part of the point of Journey Through Scripture is to show that what unfolds in Scripture is supposed to unfold in our lives.

See, the story, it's not over and done with.

We're standing in the stream of salvation history right now.

And as we're going to learn in this study, Mary's role is not over and done with.

She remains a very active participant in the salvation of the world through Jesus Christ.

In fact, she's made herself known to us through various apparitions over the centuries since the time of Jesus Christ.

So in our next lesson, we're going to begin with a couple of very early apparitions of Our Lady, and then we'll begin each subsequent lesson by discussing one of the Vatican-approved appearances of Mary in chronological order.

We'll close our discussions of these apparitions in our final lesson by looking at the Marian dimension of the papacy of St. John Paul II. Starting with the apparitions, it's a great way to remind us that Mary's not some far-off figure in the Bible.

She's a loving mother who continues to look after her precious children, you and me.

Until then, God bless you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.