Transcript

Thank you.

All of them with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with Mary, the mother of Jesus.

That's the earliest description we have of the Church.

Jesus' little flock gathered in the upper room in Jerusalem, awaiting the arrival of the Holy Spirit.

It's in the opening chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.

But it could describe the Church in every age.

We are the apostolic Church, always gathered in prayer, together with Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Sometimes she makes her presence known in a powerful way, and we refer to such moments as Marian apparitions.

And over the course of our study, we're going to discuss a few of the Church-approved apparitions of Our Lady, because if she's making the effort to appear, we owe her attention, right?

Plus, these appearances of Mary have had a place in our tradition since the earliest days of the Church.

In fact, the earliest of these appearances seems to be recorded in the New Testament itself.

In the book of Revelation, St. John looks into heaven and sees a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

She gives birth to the Messiah, the ruler of all nations, and her child is caught up to God and to his throne.

John's description is mysterious, and it's written in deeply symbolic language.

Now, if his was the first Marian apparition, it certainly wasn't the last.

The next that history has recorded for us is from the mid-third century, when the Blessed Mother paid a visit to Saint Gregory the Wonder Worker.

Gregory was the great apostle of Cappadocia, the land that ranged from the Taurus Mountains to the Black Sea, land that is today part of Turkey.

In his youth, Gregory had traveled far to study with the world's greatest scripture scholar, a man named Origen.

Gregory's call, however, was to be a missionary.

He was an evangelizer.

And so he returned to his home country, a land that was overwhelmingly pagan.

When he first became bishop, there were only 17 Christians in the city.

Then he undertook the labors that earned him the nickname Wonder Worker.

And after 13 years of his preaching, there were only 17 pagans left in the city.

Among the families he evangelized were the ancestors of great saints such as St. Basil of Caesarea, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Macrina.

One night, while Gregory was at prayer, two figures appeared to him, a dignified old man and a beautiful young woman.

Both were radiant with a light so strong that Gregory had to avert his eyes.

As the vision went on, Gregory learned that the old man was the Apostle John and the woman was the Blessed Virgin.

Together, they instructed the young bishop in the Christian doctrine he was to pass on to the people of Cappadocia.

Gregory didn't keep this grace to himself.

When he proclaimed the gospel, he told the people of his encounter with these visitors from heaven.

Like St. John before him, he could say that his was a gospel he had heard himself and seen with his own eyes.

An apparition is a special grace given by heaven to certain chosen people.

We'll never know how many people have received such graces because many go unreported and unexamined.

The Church is recognized only a few as worthy of belief by all Christians.

These particular apparitions usually have relevance not only for the faith of the individual seer, but also for the Church as a whole.

What could be the message of Our Lady's appearance to St. Gregory in the mid-200s?

Mary is always there with the Church, as she was in the Acts of the Apostles, and the Church should always be evangelizing.

With Mary, we can work wonders of evangelization for her divine Son.

Welcome back to the Bible and the Virgin Mary.

In our first session, we noted that there are just barely more than a dozen mentions of the Virgin Mary in the Bible.

That being said, once we learn how to read Scripture appropriately, from the heart of the Church, we discover that she is deeply woven into the fabric of the inspired text.

Reading the Bible this way first requires looking for the literary or the literal meaning of the text as it's written in context.

Now once we know what the author was trying to say, then we can look a bit deeper to find the spiritual meanings to which the literal meaning points.

In using this approach, we learn that Matthew's introduction of Our Lady in the very first chapter of the New Testament places her smack dab in the middle of Israel's history.

The long-awaited Messiah comes to the world through Mary.

So now let's continue our reading lesson of Sacred Scripture by turning to the Gospel of Luke and his account of the Annunciation.

It's a bit long, but it's important that we read the whole story.

In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David.

And the virgin's name was Mary.

And he came to her and said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you."

But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be.

And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus."

He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High.

And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever.

And of his kingdom there will be no end.

And Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I have no husband?"

And the angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Therefore the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God.

And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth, in her old age, has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her, who is called barren.

For with God nothing will be impossible."

And Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.

Let it be to me according to your word."

And the angel departed from her.

Here again, our first objective is to understand the account in context.

We want to understand what the literal words written tell us about Mary.

Luke, like Matthew, introduces Mary as a virgin betrothed to Joseph, a descendant of David.

Luke also tells us that the angel Gabriel greets her with an interesting phrase: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you."

Now the first thing we want to understand about that sentence is that the word "hail" is not intended to be a synonym for "high."

Luke isn't saying, "Hey there, full of grace."

Rather, the word which is translated as "hail," and which is also sometimes translated as "rejoice," is the same word that Israel's prophets used to begin prophecies about the promised Messiah and the joy he would bring God's people.

We see that, for example, in both Joel 2:23-24 and Zechariah 9:9. In fact, the angel's announcement in Luke seems to be drawn almost word for word from a prophecy of Zephaniah.

First, in Luke 1, we have, "Hail, or rejoice, full of grace.

The Lord is with you.

Do not be afraid, Mary.

You will conceive in your womb the Son of the Most High."

Compare that with what we see in Zephaniah 3: "Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion, the King of Israel, the Lord is in your midst.

Do not fear, O Zion, the Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory."

Or as the New American Bible puts it, "Your God is in your midst, a mighty Savior."

By comparing these two passages, we can see that Luke seems to be depicting Mary as the daughter of Zion.

He's depicting her as the representative of her people, the one who's called to rejoice because God, as her Savior and King, has come into her midst.

Luke, again like Matthew, is telling us that the historic hopes of Israel are focused on Mary.

She's the one who's first privileged to hear the words that all of Israel has been longing to hear: God has come again to dwell with his people.

Luke's account also tells us that Mary's son will be the son of the Most High and will be given the throne of his father David.

Now, to grasp the literal meaning of that passage, we've got to return to the Old Testament and take a closer look at God's covenant with David.

"When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

I will be his father and he shall be my son.

When he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men."

But I will not take my merciful love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you.

And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.

Your throne shall be established forever.

Now, do you see the similarities between Luke's account of the Annunciation and that passage?

God swore to David that David's son shall be my son.

And Gabriel promises Mary that her son will be the son of the Most High, which is another way of saying son of God.

God also swore to David that his son would rule on David's throne forever.

Likewise, Gabriel promises Mary that her son will be seated on the throne of David, his father, forever.

We'll focus on other elements of Luke's Annunciation story in future lessons, but for now, we're going to jump to the conclusion of this account.

Mary has asked how she, being a virgin, will conceive the child promised by the angel.

Well, Gabriel responds, for with God, nothing will be impossible.

Now, all of us have heard these words a thousand times.

Whenever we come up against some seemingly insurmountable obstacle, some pious soul is sure to say, well, don't worry about it, because nothing is impossible with God.

But when first-century Christians and Jews heard those words, they didn't connect them to some saccharine sweet Hallmark card.

They connected them with the Old Covenant and the Old Testament.

Because an angel spoke almost those exact same words to Sarah, Abraham's wife, when she laughed at the idea that she could bear a son in her old age.

Is anything too hard for the Lord?

At the appointed time, I will return to you in the spring, and Sarah shall have a son."

By using those words, Luke shows us that Mary, like Sarah, is being called to bear the son of God's covenant promise.

Those words, however, don't just connect Mary's son to Sarah's son.

They connect her to all the other miraculous births in salvation history.

In addition to the birth of Isaac, we can hear echoes of Rebekah's conception of Jacob and Esau.

And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was barren, and the Lord granted his prayer.

And Rebekah, his wife, conceived, says Genesis 25:21. We can also hear echoes of Rachel's conception of Joseph.

Then God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her and opened her womb.

She conceived and bore a son and said, "God has taken away my reproach."

The angel's words to Mary connect her to those three mothers and their miraculous conceptions.

Likewise, Mary's response to the angel connects her to yet another mother who miraculously conceived a son, Hannah.

Now, Hannah is the mother of Samuel, the priest and prophet who anointed David king of all of Israel.

And Hannah, like Sarah and Rebekah and Rachel, was barren.

Desperately wanting a child, she promised God that if she had a son, she would give him back to God, that she would consecrate the boy to the Lord's service.

And she vowed a vow and said, "O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your maidservant, and remember me, and not forget your maidservant, but will give to your maidservant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head."

As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth.

Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard.

Therefore, Eli took her to be a drunken woman.

And Eli said to her, "How long will you be drunken?

Put away your wine from you."

But Hannah answered, "No, my lord, I am a woman sorely troubled."

I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.

Do not regard your maidservant as a base woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation.

Then Eli answered, "Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition, which you have made to him."

And she said, "Let your maidservant find favor in your eyes."

Then the woman went her way and ate, and her countenance was no longer sad.

Five times in that passage, Hannah described herself as the Lord's maidservant or handmaid.

And in presenting herself as the handmaid of the Lord, Mary recalls Hannah and her oath.

Mary, too, will consecrate her son to God's service.

She, too, will give him back to God so that he can be a priest and prophet anointed to be a Davidic king.

Luke draws the connection between Mary and Hannah even more clearly in his account of the visitation.

When Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, Elizabeth greets her with the words, Mary's response is a song of praise for God's saving plan.

And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

For he has regarded the lowest state of his handmaiden.

For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.

For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

And his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm.

He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree.

He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away."

He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity forever.

That song is the prayer that we call the Magnificat, and it closely resembles the song of Hannah in 1 Samuel, which Hannah prayed after she conceived and bore a son.

By drawing all these comparisons, Luke does more than just connect Jesus with all the other miraculous births of salvation history.

He demonstrates that Jesus is the last and greatest of these births.

He's the true son of the promise.

He's the Messiah who has come at last.

And in doing that, Luke also demonstrates that Mary is the greatest mother of salvation history.

She is the woman of the promise.

She is the woman who all the other great mothers of the Old Testament foreshadowed.

Now, I said these first couple of sessions were going to be a reading lesson.

So they're lessons designed to give us the tools that we need to read the Bible and understand what it has to say about the Blessed Virgin Mary.

So, what have we picked up so far?

First, we've seen that a literary reading, so reading a literal text in context, gives us knowledge of historical truth.

In the passages we've read so far, the historical truth has been that Jesus was born through the Holy Spirit to a virgin named Mary.

But this historical truth also conveys a divine meaning, or spiritual sense.

That's to say, the historical events and the manner in which the events are written about communicate far more than just facts, because they reveal the existence of a plan of salvation that God is working out in human history.

In fact, Matthew and Luke's accounts assume the existence of a divine plan in which the covenant oaths that God swore with Abraham and David are meant to find their ultimate fulfillment in the coming of Jesus Christ.

The two seem to envision a sort of a golden thread connecting the events, figures, and institutions of the Old Testament with those of the New Testament.

The reason for the evangelist's careful use of quotes and allusions to Israel's past is to reveal the unity between the Old and the New Testaments.

So they want to show how what happens to Mary is the continuation and the culmination of what has come before.

And this way of reading and writing is broadly known as typology.

And when it comes to understanding what the Bible has to say about Mary, well, typology is one of the most important tools in your toolbox.

Typology connects the persons, places, and events of the Old Testament to the persons, places, and events of the New Testament.

It studies how God's work in the Old Covenant prefigured what he accomplished through Christ in the New Covenant.

So, what happens here points forward to what happens here.

A type is anything in the Old Testament that points to the coming of Christ and his work in our redemption.

And Jesus himself taught the apostles to understand him using typology in their reading of scriptures.

For example, in Matthew 12:39 to 40, he showed them how the prophet Jonah was a sign that prefigured him.

But he answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign shall be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."

A couple verses later, he also showed them how Solomon was a type of him.

"The Queen of the South will arise at the judgment of this generation and condemn it.

For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

And behold, something greater than Solomon is here."

In John 2:19, he also said the temple is a type of him.

Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

Of course, he wasn't talking about the Jerusalem temple where the Jews came to sacrifice and worship.

He was talking about himself, the new temple of the new covenant.

Jesus summed up this way of reading scriptures in Luke 24:44 to 45, when he said, "So what he showed them was that the persons, places, and things, and events of the Old Testament were written to prepare us for him."

Now, even in Jesus' day, this way of reading the Scriptures was nothing new.

In the Old Testament, particularly in the writings of the prophets and the psalmists, we often find typology used to prepare Israel for its coming Savior.

For example, Isaiah spoke of a new creation.

"For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind," says Isaiah 65:17. Isaiah also referred back to Israel's exodus from slavery in Egypt during the time of Moses.

In Isaiah 11, he said that that first exodus foreshadowed a new exodus.

"And the Lord will utterly destroy the tongue of the sea of Egypt and will wave his hand over the river with his scorching wind and smite it into seven channels that men may cross dry shod.

And there will be a highway from Assyria for the remnant which is left of his people, as there was for Israel when they came up from the land of Egypt."

Isaiah, as well as Ezekiel and Jeremiah, also spoke of the coming of a new Davidic shepherd king and the restoration of the kingdom.

The New Testament writers saw each of these great types of creation, the exodus, and the kingdom of David gloriously fulfilled in the new covenant of Jesus.

St. Paul tells us that Jesus was the new Adam, the firstborn of the new creation.

Paul and Luke declare that his cross and resurrection mark a new exit from slavery to sin into glory, while his church, says a number of New Testament authors, is the new Jerusalem and the new kingdom of David.

And typology doesn't just illuminate our understanding of Jesus but also illuminates our understanding of Mary.

As we'll see in the lessons ahead, the New Testament writers developed a typological understanding of Mary's role in salvation history.

They saw her as the New Eve, the Ark of the New Covenant, and the new Queen Mother of the Kingdom of God.

And when we understand how the writers used typology, we find that Mary is depicted as mysteriously inseparable from the saving mission of her Son.

So what the New Testament has to say about Mary may only fill up a few verses, but read in the context of the rest of the story, it tells us all we need to know.

Mary was made holy, destined from all eternity to give the Word flesh, to bear God's only begotten Son, and to be crowned mother over all who enter his kingdom.

In our next lesson, we'll turn our attention to that great story in John chapter 2, the wedding at Cana.

And we all know it is Jesus' first miracle when he turned the water into wine, but there's a whole lot more to the story.

In fact, we're going to see how this passage is connected all the way back to the very beginning of the Bible, the creation account in Genesis, and what that means.

We're also going to learn why some people who claim that Jesus scolded Mary at Cana, they're not really being true to the text.

Until then, God bless you.

So, so thank you.