Transcript

Thank you.

The people of Ireland's County Mayo had much to suffer in the middle years of the 19th century.

Famine followed upon famine, leading to widespread economic hardship, displacement, eviction, homelessness, and immigration.

The Irish people kept the faith in spite of the anti-Catholic pressures of their British overlords.

1879 was a particularly difficult year.

The famine that year was reminding many old-timers of the infamous famine of the late 1840s.

On the evening of August 21st in 1879, two women, both named Mary, were walking home in the rain as they passed their parish church of St. John the Baptist.

Though it was raining, they stopped in their tracks because of what they saw.

There, standing in the air at the south wall of the church, was a woman they immediately knew to be the Blessed Virgin Mary.

She was accompanied by two other figures, whom they identified as St. Joseph and the Apostle St. John.

Beside John stood an altar, and on the altar stood a lamb, which the visionaries understood as a representation of Jesus, the Lamb of God.

Angels were visible in the air around the saints.

Though it was raining hard, the two Marys stood watching, and they summoned passersby too to join them.

Before long, there was a small crowd gathered, including women, men, teenagers, small children, even elderly people, and they all saw the same vision bathed in white light.

The Blessed Virgin wore a gold crown and a white gown.

One of the visionaries went forward to kiss her feet, but felt nothing but the wall.

Those who witnessed the apparition stood in the pouring rain for two hours reciting the rosary.

The ground beneath their feet turned to mud, yet the ground around the figures remained completely dry throughout the apparition.

There were no words, no messages associated with the vision at Knock, only the constancy of the image.

It was as if heaven opened itself up to a suffering people, just as we see in the New Testament.

There was Heaven's altar.

There was the Lamb of God.

There was the Queen of Heaven attended by angels.

In the aftermath of the vision, many people in the area claimed to have experienced miraculous cures from debilitating illnesses.

The word went abroad and reporters soon arrived from newspapers across the globe.

The local bishop launched an investigation and identified 15 people as eyewitnesses.

After gathering their testimony, the bishop judged it to be trustworthy.

Devotion spread quickly.

People traveled to Knock looking for miracles, and many left tokens of their cure, crutches or canes or eye patches.

Over time, it became customary for every diocese in Ireland to sponsor an annual pilgrimage to Knock.

And in 1979, Pope St. John Paul II made a pilgrimage to Knock too.

He celebrated Mass there and prayed at the apparition wall.

In the vision of Knock, ordinary Christians saw what John the Seer beheld in his vision while still in exile on Patmos.

They saw that Christ is present among his people at the altar in every Mass.

They saw that the saints looked after their brethren still living on earth.

They saw the angels who beheld the face of God even as they ministered to his people on earth.

They looked into the eyes of a loving mother, a mother who is omnipotent in her intercession.

Even if there were no words spoken at Knock, still the message resounds loud and clear.

Welcome back to the Bible and the Virgin Mary.

Last time we began our discussion of Mary's role as the Queen Mother, how she was foreshadowed by the great Gebirah, the Queen Mothers of the Davidic Kingdom, who advised their royal sons.

She also acted as intercessor for the people, so she brought their needs before the King.

And we focused a lot on the Davidic kingdom because it's key to understanding the kingdom of Christ.

Remember, Jesus is identified as the son of David, so he's the heir to the throne, which means that Mary is the queen mother in the new kingdom established by Christ.

And St. Matthew picks up this idea of a royal mother in the second chapter of his gospel.

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?

For we have seen his star in the east, and have come to worship him."

When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.

They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea.

For so it is written by the prophet, '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.'"

Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star appeared.

And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him."

When they had heard the king, they went their way, and behold, the star which they had seen in the east went before them, till it came to rest over the place where the child was.

When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy, and going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother.

And they fell down and worshipped him.

Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.

And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

In that passage, we see distinguished visitors from the East come to pay their respects to what, for all appearances, seems a tiny child born into an ordinary working-class family.

The visitors, however, see things a little differently.

They've traveled across the desert to see the newborn king of the Jews.

What do they find when they arrive?

A child with Mary, his mother, says Matthew.

As we saw in Solomon's court, when the king is in state, receiving visitors who have come to pay tribute to him, his mother is by his side.

And that's exactly what we have here in Matthew.

Appropriately, these visitors to the infant's humble court come bearing gifts, much as the visitors to Solomon's court would have.

And note what these gifts were.

Gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Golden spices were tributes regularly paid to Solomon by royal visitors.

And the only other time in Scripture when myrrh and frankincense are mentioned together is in the Song of Songs, when they're part of the pageantry of Solomon's wedding day, a day when Solomon's mother places the crown on his head.

Again, in detail after detail, Matthew paints a picture of the child Jesus, the perfect son of David, holding court in the same way Solomon, the original son of David, held court.

Matthew is not the only New Testament writer who attests to Mary's place as Queen Mother.

Luke does it as well.

At the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she will give birth to a royal son who will rule from the throne of David.

Now in saying that, he all but spells out that he's addressing the new Queen Mother of the new Davidic kingdom.

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.

A few verses later, in his account of the visitation, Luke shows us someone else recognizing Mary as the Queen Mother, Elizabeth.

And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

That title, Mother of My Lord, is full of queenly significance.

In ancient Israel, the king was addressed as My Lord, which would make the queen mother the mother of My Lord.

So by using that title in her address of Mary, Elizabeth recognizes her as the new queen mother.

Our final glimpse of the Queen Mother in the Bible comes in the passage we read at the beginning of the last lesson, the famous symbolic vision of a woman in the book of Revelation.

Many of the symbols in that book, of course, can be hard to interpret.

And over the years, there have been various interpretations of just who exactly that woman clothed with the sun is.

Well, in the Catholic understanding, the woman represents Mary as well as Israel and the Church.

Signs and symbols, because they're signs and symbols and not literal representations, are allowed to mean more than one thing.

But because this study is on Mary, we're going to focus on that particular meaning of this woman clothed with the sun.

So, why does the Church ascribe the meaning of that symbol to Mary?

For starters, the great sign is a woman giving birth.

That recalls Isaiah's prophecy that the sign of the kingdom's restoration would be a woman giving birth.

Likewise, the child to be born is described as one who will rule all the nations with a rod of iron, which is exactly how the Messiah is described in Psalm 2, 7-9. In Revelation, the woman clothed with the sun wears a crown of 12 stars.

Now, those stars are another symbol.

They represent both the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles.

And in the Old Testament, not surprisingly, the Queen Mother wore a crown.

Jeremiah 13:18 tells us as much.

Say to the king and the queen mother, take a lowly seat, for your beautiful crown has come down from your head.

Revelation shows us the Queen Mother.

She's enthroned in heaven with her son, the King, the perfect fulfillment of the promise of the restored kingdom.

Revelation shows us Mary, crowned and enthroned as Queen Mother.

And that enthronement no more detracts from her son's, the king's glory, than the enthronement of the queen mother in ancient Israel detracted from the glory of Israel's kings.

In fact, it's just the opposite.

It's because the king is glorious that his mother is also glorious.

Her glory is a participation in his glory.

She's honored as a way of honoring him.

The image of Mary as Queen Mother is directly related to two of the Church's most important teachings about Mary.

The New Testament writers' understanding of Mary as the Queen Mother in the restored and transformed Davidic Kingdom shaped the way the early Church understood Mary's role in salvation history.

In turn, their understanding formed the Church's official teachings about Mary.

In our last two sessions, we'll explore the relationship of this image to the doctrine of Mary's Assumption and coronation as Queen of Heaven, as well as to Marian devotion.

We're going to conclude this session, however, by focusing on the title's connection to the first official Marian dogma defined by the Church: Mary's status as Mother of God.

Of all Mary's many titles, that one, Mother of God, well, it might be the one we use the most.

After all, every time you pray a rosary, you say it at least 50 times.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

Every time we pray that prayer, we echo the words of Elizabeth at the Visitation in Luke chapter 1. Recall how she greeted Mary with the queenly title, Mother of my Lord.

That essentially means the same thing as Mother of God.

The Greek word for the title is Theotokos, which literally means God-bearer.

That title, Mother of God, is not only the most commonly used of Mary's titles, it's also one of the oldest.

We can find examples of Christians using it in the very first centuries of the Church.

The early Church Fathers, including St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and St. Alexander, all called Mary Mother of God, or the equivalent, Mother of My Lord.

The title also appears in one of the oldest known Christian prayers, the Subtuum.

Prayed by Egyptian Christians, this prayer dates at the absolute latest to 250 AD, and it's probably a whole lot older than that.

Now that prayer, which will sound familiar to a lot of you, goes like this: We fly to your patronage, O Holy Mother of God.

Despise not our petitions and our necessities, but deliver us from all dangers, O ever-glorious and blessed Virgin.

So we see that the first Christians called Mary the Mother of God without any hesitation.

After all, there was scriptural precedent, the words of Elizabeth.

Also, it just seemed the logical thing to do.

If Jesus was God and Mary was his mother, then that made her the Mother of God.

That sort of logic depends on a principle called the communication of idioms.

According to that principle, whatever one says about either of Christ's two natures can be said about Christ himself.

That's because his two natures, the divine nature and the human nature, were united in him.

He's one divine person.

So, even though the Trinity is eternal, with no beginning and no end, we can still say that God the Son was born in Bethlehem and died on the cross at Calvary.

Now, for hundreds of years, no one said as much as boo about calling Mary the Mother of God.

But in the 5th century, that began to change.

Some people back then raised the same objections that some anti-Catholics raise today.

They argued that the title Mother of God implied that Mary was the originator of God.

Those objectors said that they could accept the title Mother of Christ, but not Mother of God.

Now, at the heart of those objections was another objection.

It was an objection to the unity of Christ's two natures.

Mary, they claimed, gave birth only to Christ's human nature, not his divine nature.

Well, the church, led by Pope Celestine I and St. Cyril of Alexandria, vigorously disagreed.

As St. Cyril pointed out, a mother gives birth to a person, not a nature.

Accordingly, Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ, who was and is a divine person.

Although Mary did not originate or generate God, she certainly did bear him in her womb and give birth to him.

She was God's mother.

The controversy over Mary's title as Mother of God was addressed in 431 AD at the Council of Ephesus.

The Council was actually called by Pope Celestine I to settle this whole Mother of God debate.

Now, it might seem a little strange to us to call this big ecumenical council and ask of the bishops of the ancient world to make a perilous journey across land and sea just to settle a simple question about whether or not Christians could call Mary the Mother of God.

But again, there's a whole lot more at stake than just Mary's title.

The Christian teaching about Christ's two natures, that was the real issue.

And the church wanted to settle, once and for all, the question that was raging across the ancient world.

Was Jesus one or two persons?

Now, the idea that Jesus was both a human person and a divine person was being taught by a man named Nestorius.

And his teachings were leading many people astray.

The Council of Ephesus roundly rejected Nestorius' teachings and confirmed the ancient teaching of the church.

They declared that Jesus is one divine person with two natures.

He's got his mother's human nature and his father's divine nature.

Mary didn't give Jesus his divine nature or his divine personhood.

Those he possessed from all eternity as the only begotten son of the Father.

But she also didn't just give him his flesh.

She gave birth to the whole person.

She gave birth to Jesus Christ, both God and man.

And, of course, that's what we confess every time we say the Apostles' Creed.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.

Now, let's be honest.

None of us would think much of a mother who wouldn't do everything in her power to protect her child.

That's part of what it means to be a mother.

Well, on a supernatural level, that's what Mary is doing for her son, Jesus, by possessing the title Mother of God.

She's protecting her son, or at least protecting the truth about her son.

To reiterate what we talked about in an earlier lesson, every truth about Mary says more about Jesus than it does about her.

Just as Mary's virginity reinforced that Jesus was both human and divine, so too does Mary's title, Mother of God, reinforce that Jesus is one divine person.

He was one man, not two.

He was not a human person who received divine guidance.

He wasn't a divine person who took on the appearance of a man.

He didn't slap on some kind of a human suit over divinity.

He was one person born of a woman who possessed two natures.

He's all God and all man.

That's why the title Mother of God is so important.

And that's why we're in no way taking any honor away from Christ when we use it.

Nor are we making any claims that Mary is greater than Christ or that somehow she's the originator of God.

We're simply stating a truth that must be stated in order to protect an essential truth about Jesus Christ.

And in a similar way, that's what all of Mary's queenly predecessors did for their sons.

If you recall, one of the three essential tasks of the queen mother was to be a sign of her son's legitimacy.

So she was the link between his father, the former rightful king, and her son, the present rightful king.

Likewise, Mary as the virginal mother of God is the link between her son's humanity and divinity.

She's the sign that he's both God and man, the long-awaited son of David who can rule over a kingdom that's heavenly, not earthly, that is everlasting, not temporal.

In our last couple of sessions, we'll explore the implications of Mary as the Queen Mother in even more depth, and see how it forms part of the foundation for Catholic devotion to Mary.

Before we can do that, however, there's one more dimension to the biblical portrait of Mary we've still got to flesh out.

We need to examine Mary as the all-holy mother of God, who was conceived without sin.

In other words, we're going to talk about the Immaculate Conception, perhaps the most misunderstood and certainly one of the most contested of the Marian dogmas.

And I'm betting you're going to hear some things that surprise you.

Until then, God bless you.