Transcript

Thank you.

The tiny village of Pontmont occupied a vulnerable place during the Franco-Prussian War.

Though insignificant in size, it lay between the advancing German army and the French city of Laval.

The news from the front wasn't very encouraging.

The Germans were meeting little resistance in northeastern France, and by the end of 1870, most of the country was under their control.

Paris was besieged, and the people of Pontmont reconciled themselves to the inevitable conquest.

Like most families in France at that time, the Barbadettes had many worries.

Cesar and Victoire had one son away in the army and two young ones still at home.

They knew that the arrival of the Prussians was just days away.

Nonetheless, they had to go about the business of their daily life, and so they did.

On January 17, 1871, the two boys, 10-year-old Joseph and 12-year-old Eugene, were helping their father with work in the barn.

Now, Eugene took a break and walked to the door to gaze at the first stars in the evening sky, and he saw a lot more than he expected.

She was beautiful, smiling, and dressed like a queen.

Her gown was blue and studded with stars, and she wore a golden crown over a black veil.

Eugene was soon joined outside by his father and brother, and he told them what he saw.

And his brother saw it too, but his father couldn't see anything.

A neighbor came and then the boys' mother, but none of the adults could see the beautiful lady.

The family sent to the local school teacher, and she brought two other children.

None of the adults could see the apparition, though the children, one after another, insisted they could.

The crowd got bigger as the evening wore on, and the people began to pray the rosary and sing hymns.

The apparition lasted three hours, and the content of the vision changed over time, often in response to the prayers of the people.

The children saw banners that bore a simple message: "But pray, my children, God will soon answer you.

My son allows himself to be moved."

Because of this message, the people came to call the apparition of Pontmont, Our Lady of Hope.

Indeed, God vindicated the hope of the people of Pontmont.

The Prussian army suddenly halted its advance, and the war soon ended.

Eventually, all four of the children who saw Our Lady at Pontmont entered the service of the Church.

The two Barbadette brothers became priests, and one of the girls entered a convent.

The other girl became a devoted housekeeper at the parish led by Father Eugene.

What can we learn from this apparition?

Again, it's no more and no less than the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

What the grown-ups couldn't see in that night sky in France was plain as day to the children who looked up to heaven.

And why is that so important?

Because we have truly become God's children in baptism.

We are children of the Eternal Father, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.

Jesus looks at every beloved disciple just as he did from the cross at Calvary.

And he says to each and every one of us, "Behold your mother."

And then he says to his mother, "Behold your child."

What better cause could we find for hope than the message those little children long ago received at Pontmont?

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 12 stars.

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.

If you recall, those words come from Revelation 12:1 and 12:5, and they describe a vision seen by the Apostle John.

Previously in the Bible, in the Virgin Mary, we saw how this vision is tied to the image of Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant.

Well, it also seems to depict Christ as a newborn king, destined to rule on a throne.

Why, however, is the woman who gave birth to him depicted as a queen?

Why is she crowned with stars and arrayed in glory?

Well, the answer is found in a long tradition that runs right through the Old Testament and on into the New.

Over the past sessions, we've seen how the authors of the New Testament rely on images and persons from the Old Testament to show us who and what Mary, the mother of Jesus, is, and who and what Jesus Christ is.

Thus far, we've looked at how Mary's motherhood was foreshadowed by the miraculous motherhood of women such as Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah.

We've also seen how Mary is the new Eve, the mother of all who live in Christ.

And we've studied how Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant, who bore, within her own body, the very flesh of God.

John's vision and revelation of a woman clothed with the sun also illuminates another important image of Mary.

It's an image of Mary as queen.

And like the other images we've talked about so far, the New Testament writers use it to tell us the truth about Mary and about Jesus Christ.

In this session, we're going to unpack the meaning of that image.

We're also going to look at that image's relationship to Mary's title, Mother of God.

But to understand what the book of Revelation reveals, we need to once more go back to the Old Testament.

In fact, a good place to start is King Lemuel's chapter at the end of the book of Proverbs, chapter 31. Open your mouth, judge righteously, maintain the rights of the poor and needy.

Now, a king almost always has advisors telling him what he should do.

And that's part of what it is to be a king.

Oftentimes, of course, the advice he receives isn't aimed at benefiting him or the kingdom.

It's aimed at benefiting the advisor.

At other times, what sounds like advice is really just flattery.

But in the passage we just read, the person advising the king tells him to take care of the poor and the meek, the people who have no one else to defend them or care for them.

Now, who could speak freely enough to the king to give him that kind of advice?

The first verse of King Lemuel's chapter in Proverbs gives us the answer.

The words of Lemuel, king of Massa, which his mother taught him.

Well, that makes perfect sense.

Only the king's mother could speak to him that way.

As a king, he might be her ruler, but he was still her son.

This chapter also records some of the other bits of wisdom Lemuel's mother passed along to her son.

That wisdom includes tips such as don't fall in love with loose women, don't drink too much, and find yourself a good wife.

Now that's advice any good mother would give her son.

But because this son also happens to be king, his mother also has to remind him of his duties as a ruler.

He must be the voice of the defenseless, a power for the powerless.

His kingdom must be for the poor and the meek.

A flattering courtier could never say anything like that to the king.

Which is why it's not surprising that in ancient Near Eastern kingdoms like Israel, the queen mother, the mother of the king, was traditionally looked upon as a friend of the poor.

She was the intercessor between the king and the people.

And when we consider that the book of Proverbs ends with the Queen Mother's advice, we can see just how importantly inspired writers considered the wisdom of the Queen Mother to be.

Any ruler, or any person for that matter, who heard the book of Proverbs read would be left with the Queen Mother's words ringing in his ears.

So who was this King Lemuel?

And who was his wise mother?

Well, we're not exactly sure.

King Lemuel is never mentioned in any other place in Scripture, only here in Proverbs 31. One ancient Jewish tradition, however, says that Lemuel was actually a pseudonym for Solomon, who was the son of David and Bathsheba and the heir to David's kingdom.

As the heir, Solomon was the prototypical son of David, inheriting all the promises of a glorious kingdom that God had made to David's line in 2 Samuel 7. He's also famous for having asked for and received great wisdom from God.

In fact, he was so wise that people came from all over the world to seek his advice and hear him speak.

But even with his great wisdom, he still listened to his mother's advice.

In fact, one of the first things we hear about Solomon's reign is the important part that his mother played in it.

So Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him on behalf of Adonijah.

And the king rose to meet her and bowed down to her.

Then he sat on his throne and had a seat brought for the king's mother.

Okay, this is interesting.

Let's review what just happened.

When Bathsheba enters her son's court, he bows to her.

And then he has her seated on a throne at his right hand.

Importantly, no subject other than the king's mother ever earned that honor, not during the reign of Solomon and not during the reign of any other Old Testament king.

So, what happens after Bathsheba takes her seat?

Then she said, "I have one small request to make of you.

Do not refuse me."

And the king said to her, "Make your request, my mother, for I will not refuse you."

She said, "Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah, your brother, as his wife."

Here, Bathsheba acts in her traditional role as intercessor for the people.

She puts a request made by one of Solomon's brothers before her son.

Although Solomon told his mother he would grant her anything she asked, he actually doesn't this time around, which was a pretty wise decision.

His brother was asking to marry one of David's concubines.

And in ancient Near Eastern cultures, marrying the king's concubine or wife was tantamount to declaring yourself king.

What's important here, however, is not whether Solomon did as his mother asked.

What's important is that he acknowledged her right to ask, even something like this.

By placing the queen mother in such an exalted position, Solomon shows his court, and us, that the queen mother has the right to intercede for others.

Ultimately, however, it's the king who is the final judge.

After Solomon's death, the queen mother continued to be one of the distinctive features of the Davidic kingdom.

And while we don't hear about her very often, every time we do, it's clear that she has great influence.

In Jeremiah 13, 18, God's instructions to Jeremiah begin with these words: "Say to the king and the queen mother."

And the prophecy of doom that then follows would not have been addressed to both the king and his mother unless they were both powerful leaders in the kingdom.

Eventually, Jeremiah's prophecy came true.

The Babylonians destroyed the kingdom, and their emperor Nebuchadnezzar took away all the important people of Jerusalem.

And he carried away Jehoiakim, the king, to Babylon, the king's mother, the king's wives, his officials, and the chief men of the land.

He took into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon, says 2 Kings 24:15. Note that the king comes first, and then his mother, and then his wives.

That tells us that the Queen Mother is next in importance to the king and more important than his wives.

And mother-in-laws all over the world are nodding their heads and saying, "Yes, of course, this makes perfect sense.

I've been saying this for years."

All through the history of the Davidic kingdom, the Queen Mother occupied that place, second only to the king.

There was even a special word for the Queen Mother in Hebrew.

She was called Gebera, which means "great lady."

All right, let's review the duties of the Queen Mother that we've talked about so far.

First, as we saw in Proverbs 31, she advised the king as nobody else could.

Of all his subjects, she was the only one to whom he owed any kind of obedience.

Second, she interceded for the people before the king.

Interestingly, this was the role of the Queen Mother in many other ancient kingdoms of the Near East, not just in the Davidic kingdom.

As far back as the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the most ancient literary works we know of, the Queen Mother filled the role of intercessor for the people.

Now, she also had one more function.

She was a visible sign of the king's legitimate rule.

Remember, she wasn't just the king's mother.

She was also the former king's wife.

Her motherhood of the king was a testimony to his descent from the previous king.

These are the things that made the Queen Mother uniquely important among all the subjects in the kingdom.

The king may have had many wives, but he only had one mama.

That gave her an essential and unrepeatable place in the government of the kingdom.

Now, the last king and queen mother we see in the Old Testament is the pair who were led off into Babylon.

But they aren't the last king and queen mother that we hear about.

Remember, when God established his covenant with David, he promised the young king that his kingdom would last forever.

But when Nebuchadnezzar led the Davidic king and his subjects away into exile, some 400 years later, it seemed as if God had gone back on his promise to David.

But God doesn't go back on his promises.

He just fulfills them in ways that we don't necessarily understand or expect.

The Jewish people knew that.

They knew that God's promise was unconditional.

And they believed in the words of the prophets.

Words that told of the day when the kingdom of David would be restored.

Those prophecies about the restoration of the kingdom, however, weren't just about the future king.

They were also about his mother.

For example, in a time of great distress, Isaiah told King Ahaz to look for a sign.

Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel, says Isaiah 7:14. Earlier in that passage from Isaiah 7, we learned that this sign was meant to reassure Ahaz of God's continued commitment to the house of David in the face of foreign threats and intrigues.

Another Old Testament prophet, Micah, even more explicitly prophesied about a coming ruler from the house of David.

In Micah 5, verses 1 to 3, he tells us that this ruler would be born in the city of David, Bethlehem.

And like David, he would be a shepherd.

Micah also mentions the future ruler's mother, referring to she who has labor pains, who is brought forth.

So, once again, we have a prophet telling us that the sign of salvation is a future king who will be born of a woman.

Now, at first glance, there may seem nothing unusual about that.

After all, aren't all future kings born of a woman?

I mean, what else are they going to be born of?

Perhaps to us 21st-century folks, it might not seem that unusual for prophets to talk about a king being born of a woman.

But to the ancient Israelites a few thousand years ago, it was very unusual.

Notice that Isaiah and Micah say nothing about the father of this future king.

That's the unusual part.

In the Bible, not to mention other ancient documents from the Near East, it's the father who almost always gets the mention.

The father is the person who figures prominently in any references to a son or a king, while the mother is often not mentioned at all.

Think, for example, of David, son of Jesse, or Solomon, son of David, as examples.

But not in these prophecies in Isaiah and Micah.

In them, all we hear is, king, son of a woman.

That, at least in part, is what clues us into the importance of this woman in God's plan.

Now, perhaps you've noticed that throughout this lesson, we've been talking a whole lot about the kingdom of David.

That's not just because the Queen Mother was a part of that kingdom.

It's because the kingdom of David is the key to understanding the kingdom of Christ.

All the New Testament authors make it clear that Jesus, born of a virgin in Bethlehem and a shepherd of men, is the son of David.

Jesus' kingdom is the promised restoration of the kingdom of David.

From the very beginning, the apostles and the early Christians spoke about how Jesus fulfilled the prophets' promises about the son of David.

We see this in the opening chapters of Acts, when on Pentecost, just days after Jesus' ascension into heaven, Peter and the apostles are evangelizing in Jerusalem.

For David says concerning him, "I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.

Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced.

Moreover my flesh will dwell in hope.

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption.

You have made known to me the ways of life.

You will make me full of gladness with your presence."

Brethren, I may say to you confidently of the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.

Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.

This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses.

Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear.

For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies a stool for your feet."

Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus is the promised King, the King whose coming was long ago foretold by the prophets.

It also makes it clear that his kingdom is the Davidic kingdom restored and transformed.

And of course, if Jesus is the king and his kingdom is the restored Davidic kingdom, that means Mary is the queen mother.

And that's exactly what the New Testament shows us.

For example, Matthew's Gospel begins with a genealogy of Jesus Christ, and lectors all over the world dread having to read it.

But it's a really fascinating passage to study because what seems at first to be merely a list turns out to be a masterpiece of literary craft.

To start with, Matthew divides the whole genealogy into three groups of 14 generations.

The fact that there are three groups is significant because in Hebrew, the number three is considered a symbol of perfection, which makes sense when you consider that God consists of three persons.

The fact that there are 14 ancestors listed in each group is also significant.

In Hebrew, numbers are represented by letters.

They're like Greek and Latin.

So think Roman numerals with I representing 1 and the V representing 5. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the numerical value of the letters that spell out David is 14. So together, the letters add up to 14. In Hebrew, there are no vowels.

So you would write David's name as DVD. D equals 4, V equals 6, and D equals 4. So if you add 4 plus 6 plus 4, you get 14. So just by the numerical pattern of Matthew's genealogy, he shows us that Jesus is the perfect son of David.

And at the end of this genealogy, we find Mary.

It concludes with Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

Notice how Matthew's words recall the words of Isaiah and Micah.

Also notice how Joseph is there because of Mary.

Unlike any other man in that genealogy, he earns his place in it through his wife.

He's not called the father of Jesus.

Rather, it's the mother who is emphasized.

She is the one of whom the promised king is born.

She is the queen mother foretold by the prophets.

And another unusual thing is present in Matthew's genealogy.

Four women are named.

Now this is a striking departure from normal Hebrew genealogies, which list succession through the father.

There is, however, one significant Old Testament exception to this norm.

The genealogies of the Davidic kings of Judah in 1 and 2 Kings list the Queen Mother alongside their royal sons.

And the last of the women before Mary in Matthew's genealogy is Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon.

She was the prototypical Queen Mother, just as Solomon was the prototypical son of David.

And her place in the genealogy identifies her as a forerunner or a foreshadowing of Mary.

All right, that's all we have time for right now.

In our next session, we're going to continue our discussion of Mary as the Queen Mother and see how it's related to one of the Church's most important teachings about Our Lady, her role as the Mother of God, a role entitled with a fascinating backstory.

Until then, God bless you.

So, so thank you.