Transcript

Catherine Laboure was one of 17 children born to a farming family in the Burgundy region of France.

If the family was comfortable by the standards of the time, they'd certainly earned their few comforts by hard work.

Catherine, too, from her earliest years, helped raise crops and tend animals.

Her mother died when Catherine was only nine years old.

And after the funeral, the little girl picked up a statue of the Blessed Virgin and said, "Now you will be my mother."

Catherine then spent some years with an aunt before returning to the farm at age 12 to manage her father's household.

An older sister entered the convent, and after several years, Catherine asked permission to follow her into religious life.

Her father refused to grant permission.

But the desire persisted, and Catherine continued to prepare to give her life to God.

She turned down several marriage proposals and sought tutors to help her acquire the skills she'd need for life in the convent.

Eventually, she prevailed and was able to enter the Daughters of Charity.

One morning in 1830, she awoke to hear a child's voice calling her to prayer in the chapel.

Once there, she heard the voice of the Virgin Mary speak to her.

The Blessed Mother said that heaven had a special mission for Sister Catherine.

What would the mission be?

Over time, it became clear that Catherine should arrange the production of a medal to be worn by faithful Catholics.

The Blessed Virgin showed her the design.

Mary appeared inside an oval frame, standing upon the earth.

Rays of light came forth from her hands.

Around the frame were the words, "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee."

The frame was surrounded by twelve stars, a large letter M with a cross on top, and the images of the hearts of Jesus and Mary below.

The Blessed Virgin also warned Sister Catherine about social upheavals that were about to come to her city of Paris: a brief but bloody rebellion.

Catherine told no one about these visions except the priest who served as her spiritual director and confessor.

The priest was extremely cautious, and he studied Catherine's claims for two years before taking the request to the Archbishop of Paris.

The Archbishop, it seems, had a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin under the title Immaculate Conception, and so he was quite taken with the report of Catherine's visions.

Faithful Catholics had always believed in Mary's sinlessness, but the Church had not yet solemnly proclaimed it as a dogma.

For the Archbishop, Mary's appearance to Sister Catherine seemed to arrive as heaven's confirmation of his dearest devotion.

He arranged to have the medal struck, and it soon proved to be enormously popular.

Before long, many millions were acquired by people all over the world, and they reported astonishing effects on their spiritual lives.

The devotion continues in popularity even to this day.

Since the earliest days of the Church, Christians have used sacramentals as a means of intensifying their faith.

Sacramentals are material objects, like sacred images or devotional medals, that have been blessed for the purpose of moving people to prayer.

Archaeologists have found the Blessed Virgin's image impressed on many sacramentals from ancient times: medals, lamps, cups, and icons.

Then, as now, these items prepare us to receive God's grace and dispose us to cooperate with it.

That's the greatest miracle of the Miraculous Medal: the conversion of individual hearts to Jesus Christ.

Catherine's confessor kept her identity a secret, and so did she.

For 46 years, she continued to work quietly with her sisters, tending the sick and dying.

Since her holy death in 1876, her body has never suffered decay.

She remains incorrupt and exposed for view by pilgrims.

She is herself a testimony to the miraculous quality of the metal she helped to bring into the world.

Hello and welcome back to the Bible and the Virgin Mary.

In our last session together, we began our focus upon the famous wedding at Cana passage.

And we saw that there are parallels between the first two chapters of Genesis and the first two chapters of John.

So you've got creation and a new creation.

First Adam and the new Adam, Jesus Christ.

Likewise, John connects the woman in the Garden of Eden, the first Eve, to the woman at the wedding at Cana, the new Eve, Mary.

In fact, we finished last time by debunking the false notion that by calling her woman, Jesus demeaned her.

We also show Jesus wasn't being dismissive of his mother when she came looking for him in the story seen in Matthew 12, Mark 3, and Luke 8. When he says, "Who is my mother and who are my brethren?"

in Matthew 12:48, he immediately answers his own question in verse 50. "Whoever does the will of the Father in heaven is my brother, my sister, my mother."

Well, Mary is that person par excellence.

She's fully entrusted herself to the will of God.

So getting back to Cana, we see that Jesus didn't intend to scold or distance himself from his mother.

But what did he intend?

The key to discovering that lies in the way Jesus addressed his mother.

He calls her woman.

Again, in anti-Catholic polemics, the use of that term is often held up as an example of Jesus distancing himself from his mother.

But there's no evidence of that.

Jesus often addresses women that way in Scriptures.

And in every instance, he's being polite and respectful to those women.

It is unusual, however, for Jesus to address his mother that way.

In fact, it's unusual for anyone to address their mother that way, at least in Scripture.

Nowhere else in either the Bible or the literature of that time is there an example of a son calling his mother "woman."

What this suggests is that the word, at least as it's used here, has symbolic value for John and Jesus.

And that idea gets further support from the fact that "woman" is the only way Jesus addresses Mary in John's Gospel.

Even when he's hanging on the cross, when Jesus entrusts Mary to John, he also refers to her as "woman."

"Woman, behold your son," says John 19:26. Here again, in order to unlock the meaning of the word's symbolic value, we need to read this passage in light of John's framework of a new creation.

Remember that in the first creation, "woman" was the name Adam gave Eve.

Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called 'woman.'"

And in the second creation, the new creation depicted by John in his Gospel, "woman" is the name Jesus gives Mary.

A woman also figures prominently in another of the books written by John, the Book of Revelation.

"And a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

She was with child, and she cried out in her pangs of birth in anguish for delivery."

And another sign appeared in heaven, behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads.

His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.

And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth.

She brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.

But her child was caught up to God and to his throne.

And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for 1,260 days.

Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon.

And the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.

Note that John describes that woman as a sign.

As in John's gospel, the book of Genesis lies behind the scene depicted in Revelation 12. So Genesis, John, and Revelation, they're all connected.

In other words, the drama that plays out in Revelation 12 is the fulfillment of the promise God made in the Garden of Eden.

I will put enmity between you and the woman.

And between your seed and her seed, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

Do you see the connection between that scene and the scene we read a few moments ago from Revelation 12? In Genesis, after Adam and Eve eat the fruit, God promised that throughout human history there would be an enmity, a total and complete opposition between the serpent and the woman.

He also promised that there would be an enmity between the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman.

Furthermore, God promised that there would be a decisive struggle, and that the woman's male child would crush the serpent's head.

Well, in Revelation, we see that battle metaphorically unfold.

There, a woman gives birth to a male child, a child whom the serpent attempts to devour.

That serpent also makes war against the rest of the woman's offspring, but ultimately, he's not successful.

He is defeated by the woman's offspring.

By comparing the promise God made in Genesis 3:15 with the dramatic fulfillment of that promise played out in Revelation 12, we can see that the woman depicted in both is the woman we meet in Cana, Mary.

In Revelation, the woman gives birth to a male child who is under attack by the serpent.

The serpent, however, doesn't just attack her male child.

He also attacks her other offspring, says Revelation 12:17. Well, that serpent is explicitly identified as the serpent of Genesis in Revelation 12:9. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.

He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him.

But who are the woman, the child, and the other offspring?

We're told in Revelation 12:5 that the child is the long-awaited Messiah.

He's the male child who would rule all the nations.

Well, that can only be Jesus, which means that the woman, his mother, has to be Mary.

And the other offspring?

Well, they're the people of God, the church, those who, as we're told in Revelation 12:17, keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus.

So how does this help us understand John's account of what took place at Cana?

Both Revelation and Cana share the same backstory, the creation story from Genesis.

In both Revelation and Cana, Mary is called Woman.

And in both Revelation and Cana, Mary is described as the mother of Jesus, the Messiah.

It's also important to note that she's associated with Jesus' other disciples.

In Revelation, she's the mother of other offspring, the people of God.

And at Cana, through her influence, Jesus performs his first miracle, the miracle that serves as the catalyst for his disciples' belief in him.

This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him.

Ultimately, through setting up those parallels, John depicts Mary as the new Eve.

He shows us that just as Adam was a type of Christ, so too was Eve a type of Mary.

The original mother of all mankind foreshadowed and illuminated the role the mother of Jesus would play in salvation history.

At Cana, in a sense, the new Eve radically reversed the decision of the first Eve.

The first woman led the first Adam to commit his first evil act.

But at Cana, the new woman leads the new Adam to perform his first glorious work.

Eve counseled Adam to defy God and eat the fruit.

The new Eve, however, brings the people's needs to her son and teaches them to obey him in faith.

"Do whatever he tells you," she says in John 2:5. The first Eve, says Genesis 3:20, was the mother of all living.

And by teaching the disciples and servants to believe in Jesus, the new Eve becomes the mother of the Church.

She's the mother of all believers, all who live in Christ.

Now this recognition of Mary's role in salvation history took root almost immediately in the early Church.

One of the first Christian apologists, Justin Martyr, articulated that recognition.

In the second century, he wrote, "Christ became man by the Virgin in order that the disobedience that proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin."

And she replied, "Be it done unto me according to thy word."

And by her has he been born to whom we have proved so many scriptures refer, and by whom God destroys both the serpent and those angels and men who are like him.

Notice that Justin points to the pattern of salvation history.

He says, an evil angel conceived sin in the first Eve.

An angel of God announces the conception of Jesus to the new Eve.

Justin Martyr wasn't, of course, the only one of the Church Fathers who saw what John saw.

St. Irenaeus, the early Church's first systematic theologian and a disciple of St. John's disciple Polycarp, also recognized Mary's role as the new Eve in the new creation.

He wrote, "...the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary.

The knot which the Virgin Eve tied by her unbelief, the Virgin Mary opened by her belief."

Going on, he says, if the former, Eve, disobeyed God, the latter, Mary, was persuaded to obey God so that the Virgin Mary became the advocate of the Virgin Eve.

And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so it was rescued by a virgin.

Once we recognize Jesus as the new Adam and Mary as the new Eve, we can also recognize the wedding at Cana for what it is, a sign of the new covenant.

As the Sabbath, the seventh day, was the sign of God's first covenant with creation, the wedding feast at Cana, which took place on the seventh day, with its faithful servants and miraculous abundance of wine, is a sign of God's new covenant with creation.

In the first covenant, we witness the marital union of a man and a woman, Adam and Eve.

And in the new covenant, we have a man and woman present at a wedding.

Mary, of course, is Jesus' mother, not his bride.

But in order to understand the supernatural depths of the biblical symbolism that John intends here, we need to set aside our natural ways of reading and employ some of the spiritual ways of reading we talked about in an earlier lesson.

Think back to the full account of the wedding at Cana that we read in our last lesson.

Did you notice who was not mentioned?

The couple being married.

Isn't it odd the wedding feast would be described but not the bride and groom?

Well, it is odd.

But it makes sense when you understand what John reveals to us through this story.

First, he reveals to us who Mary is.

As the woman, Mary becomes the locus of a host of biblical symbols and expectations.

She is simultaneously a daughter of Israel, the mother of the new people of God, and the virgin bride of God, the one who conceives and bears his son through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Even more important, in this story, John reveals who Christ is.

When the head waiter tastes the wine, his remarks to the bridegroom seem to be addressed to Jesus.

You have kept the good wine until now.

John stresses this reading by immediately following the head waiter's remark with these words.

This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee.

Here, John shows us that one of the oldest promises of the Old Testament has finally been fulfilled.

That promise that God would come as a divine bridegroom who will wed his people in a new and everlasting covenant.

And we see this promise of messianic nuptials with increasing intensity in the writings of the prophets, in certain psalms, and in other Old Testament writings like the Song of Songs.

For example, in Jeremiah 2, Israel's love for the Lord is compared to the love of a bride.

In Ezekiel 16:32, Israel is described as an adulterous wife who has betrayed her husband, the Lord, for the false gods of other nations.

In Isaiah 54:4-7, God tells Israel, "For a brief moment, I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you."

The Old Testament prophet Hosea gives perhaps the clearest description of God's intentions.

There, in language that's reminiscent of Genesis, God promises a new covenant with creation that will be capped by his marriage to Israel.

I will espouse you in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.

And in that day, says the Lord, I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth.

In Hosea and elsewhere, the messianic blessings of the new covenant are accompanied or symbolized by new wine.

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed.

The mountain shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.

I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them.

They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.

That same type of imagery appears in the Song of Songs, which symbolically depicts the wedding of God to his people.

At Cana then, John presents Jesus as the promised bridegroom.

He's the one who will provide the new wine at the wedding feast of the new covenant.

Again, our interpretation is helped by looking at John's Revelation, which concludes with a cosmic wedding feast.

It's the marriage supper of the Lamb, the marriage supper celebrating the union between Christ and his bride, the church that we read about in Revelation 19, 21, and 22. There, too, this feast marks the pinnacle of a new creation.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

These depictions of Christ as the Lamb and the bridegroom in the book of Revelation echo John's Gospel.

There, Jesus is also identified as the Lamb of God and as the bridegroom.

John also shows us at Cana, The firstborn of the new creation.

And that implies what St. Paul makes explicit when he calls Jesus a type of Adam and the new or last Adam in 1 Corinthians 15. Likewise, at Cana, John reveals that Mary is the bride of the new Adam, the new Eve, the mother of the new creation.

There's also another little interesting aspect of this whole episode.

It is significant that the only vow spoken at this wedding is what Mary says to the servants: "Do whatever he tells you."

In Mary's words, we hear a distant echo of Israel's covenant traditions.

We find essentially the same phrase used to describe Israel's ratification of the covenant at Mount Sinai, the covenant God made through Moses with Israel after bringing them up out of Egypt.

There, Israel vowed, "All that the Lord has spoken, we will do."

That phrase is also used in accounts of Israel's renewal of that Sinai covenant in Joshua and Nehemiah.

So the words Mary speaks at Cana, "Do whatever he tells you," are a sort of a covenant vow on behalf of the servants and the disciples.

They express their acceptance of Jesus and their willingness to live by faith in his word.

And that the servants share her faith is reflected in their response to Jesus.

Told by him to fill the jars, they filled them to the brim, says John 2:7. And that, of course, is the response to which Mary still calls all disciples.

It's the response to which Mary calls you and me.

As the new Eve, she's the mother of all who live in Christ.

She's our mother, telling us to obey Christ in faith.

At the Annunciation, Mary stood in the place of Israel, daughter Zion, hearing the words God's chosen people had longed to hear.

The Messiah is coming.

Similarly, at Cana, Mary stands in the place of the Church.

She's the bride of Christ, the woman consecrated completely to God and the helpmate of the new Adam in bringing about the promises of the new creation.

At Cana, there's no rebuking of Mary by Christ as some anti-Catholics would have people believe.

Rather, at Cana, we see Christ honor his mother by beginning his public ministry at her request.

At Cana, the place of Mary in salvation history as mother, bride, and intercessor is made clear.

Next time we'll look a little more closely at another very important type or foreshadowing of Mary depicted in the Old Covenant, the Ark of the Covenant.

Now the Ark of the Covenant was the very throne of God, the great symbol of his presence that resided in the most holy part of the tabernacle and temple.

What we're going to see is how both St. John and St. Luke make the startling claim that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant.

Now, as a Protestant who had a difficult time with Mary during my conversion, all the parallels we're going to discuss were huge in my discovery of Our Lady's role in salvation history.

So, this next session is one of my favorites, and I promise there's going to be some very interesting stuff.

Until then, God bless you.