Transcript

So tonight, in the second hour, we're going to be following up on what we've been talking about with medieval spirituality.

We've been talking about saints and relics and icons.

And now we're going to talk about Mary.

So the rest of tonight is devoted to Mary.

And again, like with the other topics, I hope that you'll see out of this that a lot of the traditions of devotion to Mary aren't as Mary is considered the first Christian because she's the first one to say yes to Christ.

When the angel comes to her and she gives her assent, she says yes and so she's the first one to accept Christ, as it were.

We talk about Mary as the mother of Jesus, and we call her the Virgin Mary because, of course, she's presented in Scripture as a virgin.

Now, you probably know that in Isaiah, the passage that is sort of the background to all of this, Isaiah 7.14, that in the Hebrew, the word for virgin means really just young, But I think too much is made of that because, let's face it, in the ancient world, if you are a young unmarried woman, you are a virgin.

So the question is not, was she a virgin before?

But was she still a virgin after?

That really becomes the question.

Now, in the Septuagint of Isaiah 7.14, virgin means virgin.

And so Matthew is following the Septuagint, as you would expect him to.

The virginity of Mary is important because it demonstrates three things.

The virginity of Mary demonstrates that it is God who creates life.

In other words, very much like the Old Testament stories of barren women who give birth, the story of Mary giving birth to Jesus emphasizes that this is not the effect of regular human relations, that this is a miracle, and that it is God who creates life, and specifically with regard to the Incarnation, That the Incarnation is an act of God.

So the first thing is that God creates life.

The second thing is that the Incarnation is divine intervention.

And then the third thing is that Jesus is unique among humanity.

He is one of us, but He is also unique among us.

And so the point that I'm hoping to make tonight is that what the Church teaches about Mary is really about Christ.

And when we talk about Marian doctrines or Marian devotion, we're really talking Christology on some level.

And you've already seen this with the concept of the Theotokos, that Mary is the God-bearer.

And what that emphasizes is that what Mary gave birth to is not a mere man only, but the divine Christ.

Remember that The early writers also talked about Jesus' birth when they wanted to prove his humanity.

So, the interesting thing is, you would think, okay, virgin birth, the first thing that the early writers are going to do is use that as evidence for Jesus' divinity.

But they really didn't so much.

They used his birth as evidence of his humanity.

In other words, he went through a real human birth with all that that entails.

And so in the birth of Christ, we see both his divine nature and his human nature.

Both natures are demonstrated in his birth.

Mary, as his mother, is the new Eve.

Now remember the typology here, going all the way back to Irenaeus and even before.

Mary is the new Eve, undoing what Eve did, but Not to make Eve out to be evil, but to make Mary Eve's advocate, in a sense.

When Paul talks about Christ as the new Adam, there's the same typology going on there.

Where Adam failed, Christ succeeded, passed the test.

But in doing that, Christ redeems Adam.

Now, I'm not going to use the exact same language for Mary, but there is a bit of a parallel here, in the sense that where Eve failed, Mary succeeded, because Eve said no to God, and Mary said yes to God.

And so, not that Mary redeems Eve, but Mary is, in a sense, Eve's advocate in this typology.

So Mary is the mother of our Savior.

But she's more than just the mother of Jesus, because if we become brothers and sisters of Christ, on some level, she becomes our mother, too.

And so, she's considered the mother of the Church.

Now, if you, I don't know if you've read the book of Revelation lately, but Revelation chapter 12, we read of the woman crowned with the twelve stars, And there's a couple of interpretations of this.

Some interpret the woman as Israel, but I think the better interpretation is that the woman is Mary herself, because the text goes on to say that the woman gives birth to the male child, who is obviously Jesus.

Now, I'm going somewhere with this, but just to sort of emphasize that I think the imagery in the book of Revelation is is about Mary herself, and not simply a symbol of Israel.

Remember, if we accept the authorship of Revelation as John the Apostle, which I do, this is the one to whom Jesus entrusted his mother.

Remember the Gospel of John, Jesus on the cross, and Mary and John are there.

And Jesus says, woman, behold your son, behold your mother.

And so Jesus entrusts his mother to John.

Now, according to tradition, Mary stayed with John, they went to Ephesus.

And we're going to get into that tradition in a minute.

But if that's true, if there's any truth in that, then the author of the book of Revelation is talking about this woman that he was entrusted with.

So, all that is the same.

You look at Revelation 12, and you look at how it says, okay, there's this woman, crowned with the twelve stars, she gives birth to the male child, the dragon attempts to kill the child.

It's clearly a reference to Herod's attempt at killing Jesus with the baby.

Then it says, when the dragon couldn't devour the child, it turns to her other children.

And you think, wait a minute, who are her other children?

And her other children are the church, the Christians, the brothers and sisters of Christ, spiritually speaking, who are being persecuted at the time that the document is written.

So in other words, what the text of Revelation is saying here is that the same devil who tried to kill Jesus when he was a baby is now trying to kill us with this persecution.

That's the point.

But in saying that, the text calls all Christians, the church, the other children of Mary.

So Mary becomes the mother of the church in that sense.

Mary is also understood to be the new ark.

Remember that the ark of the covenant was the vessel that held the written word of God.

So Moses takes the tablets and puts them in the ark.

The ark is the vessel that holds the written Word of God.

And now Mary becomes the vessel that holds the living Word of God, Jesus Christ.

So Mary's womb is, in a sense, the new ark.

And you'll notice that in the Gospel when it talks about Jesus' conception at the Annunciation, it's described as The Holy Spirit overshadowing her.

The same language is used of the ark in the Old Testament, that God overshadows the ark.

And so, she is the new ark, she is the vessel that carries the Word of God.

Now, okay, so far so good, right?

But here's the thing.

The vessel that brings Christ into the world, it was widely understood, had to be without sin, had to be pure.

In other words, to bring the Savior into the world, the vessel has to be pure and without sin.

So we have, from early on, the concept that Mary herself was born without original sin.

And this is what we refer to as the Immaculate Conception.

That's only in the West, right?

It's only in the West.

I would have to check that.

The Immaculate Conception, a lot of people assume that that is a reference to Jesus and his own virgin birth.

But it's not.

It's a reference to Mary.

Now, remember the Protevangelion of James.

In this 2nd century document, which is meant to be the story of the birth of Jesus, but also the backstory, the prequel to the Gospels.

It tells the story not only of Jesus' birth, but of Mary's birth.

And already in the 2nd century, we have hints at a miraculous birth for Mary.

Not that her mother was a virgin, it's not a virginal birth, it's not the same as Jesus, but more along the lines of what we get about John the Baptist in the Gospels, or something along the lines of Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament, that there is a miraculous aspect to the birth of Mary, and that She has two human parents, but possibly parents who shouldn't normally be able to conceive, and so there's a sense that there's something miraculous going on.

And so the belief is that she was born without original sin.

Born without original sin, and then also committed no personal sin after her birth either.

So again, it's not a virgin birth, it's not the same as Jesus, but there's something miraculous going on, and that she's born without original sin, and that she lived her life without committing any sin of her own.

Now this doesn't imply that she doesn't need a savior.

She does need a savior.

She is saved by Christ as her Savior, sort of retroactively, in anticipation of her saying yes to God.

Now, what I want to point out is, on the one hand, how early this is.

This stuff goes all the way back to the second century.

On the other hand, it's kind of fringy in the second century.

So it's not that this It doesn't exist in the early church and then just sort of pops up, somebody makes it up in the Middle Ages.

Rather, it exists, but it's more on the fringes, more in popular devotion, and it works its way into the mainstream over time.

So that doesn't mean it's wrong, it just means that's how it's laid out.

Officially, though, it did not become a doctrine or a dogma of the church until 1854. So now, this is really fast forward.

It's 1854, so obviously post-reformation, so this applies only to the Roman Catholic Church, but again, you know, what I want you to see is that it wasn't new then, and that, you know, the reformers were either responding to it or accepting it or whatever, but it was already there.

But anyway, 1854, Pius IX Now, think about what was going on in the world of religion at this time.

One of the things that's emerging at this time is the historical critical method, German higher criticism, and the trend of what comes to be called the demythologizing of Christianity.

In other words, there are scholars who are interpreting the New Testament, especially the Gospels, in ways that attempt to demythologize or, in essence, take all the miraculous out.

So, on some level, the affirmation of this as a dogma in 1854, I mean, you could say, well, if this has been around since the second century, why now?

Why in 1854 pronounce it as a dogma that all Catholics must believe?

Because it's in response to this trend of taking the miraculous out of the Gospels.

It's a way of saying, oh, you're going to try and take away my miracle?

I'll give you a miracle.

I'll give you one that's not even in the Bible, right?

So, that is kind of the response by Pius IX. Now, yes, question?

Yeah, well there's a couple ways to deal with that.

The question was, you know, how does the church, or how has the church historically talked about the fact that there are Well, there's pagan myths about virgin births, and some of them are hybrid, you know, deity and human and all this.

But we have, you know, throughout history, we have these stories of other virgin births.

And I think for the most part, you know, the traditional answer would be to say, well, you know, those other ones weren't real.

This one is.

And that, you know, there's something hardwired into the, you know, Why did the Jews reject Jesus as their Messiah?

Well, I'm not sure why the Jews would reject the virgin birth.

It's sort of like, if you're going to accept Jesus as your Messiah, then you would probably accept the virgin birth as part of the whole Jesus package.

If you're going to reject Jesus as your Messiah, there's no reason to accept the virgin birth.

There would be no point to it, so why would they?

There are those who argue that, and that's what I'm saying, is that this kind of dogmatic pronouncement is a response to that kind of argument.

Not only are we affirming the virgin birth of Jesus, we're going to take a step back and affirm the miraculous birth of Mary, too.

And that becomes the response.

Now, I will say that in more recent times, the Roman Catholic Church has accepted the value of the historical critical method.

But back in this time, it dug in heels and saw that as a danger.

How does the Immaculate Conception then address passages in the Gospels where it talks about how Mary found favor with God?

You know, the idea that she was without sin kind of implies that she can't really find favor if she was only kind of free or sane to be favored.

Well, I don't know of any particular interpretations where that question is addressed, but I would assume it would have to do with the idea of just interpreting the word found not as This is not what we would consider an infallible pronouncement, because that doesn't exist yet.

There is a concept within the Catholic Church Well, it's understood as papal infallibility, but papal infallibility is not the infallibility of the person per se, but the infallibility of the office.

And there's a particular phrase that's used, ex cathedra, meaning from the chair, the bishop's chair.

So when the bishop of Rome speaks ex cathedra, from the chair, Speaking on behalf of the whole Church, he is considered infallible.

However, a Pope has only done that once, ever.

Unless you count the first time when this was created.

But anyway, that comes up in 1870, so you see this is before that.

So it's still considered a dogma, but it doesn't count as an infallible pronouncement in that technical sense.

So Mary as sinless, it's interesting that the emphasis on her sinlessness is understood as emphasizing the freedom of her will.

In other words, think back to what we were talking about with Augustine, how if you understand original sin the way Augustine did, people who are born with original sin, their will is not totally free.

Mary, however, having been born without original sin, her will is totally free.

So when she says yes to God, when she says yes to the Incarnation, she is She's completely free, and she's doing this completely of her own free will, more so than any of the rest of us ever could.

But she's not considered a divine being in any sense, the way Jesus is.

But there is a certain sense in which she's considered unique among humanity in that way.

So that's the Immaculate Conception.

Along with this idea that Mary remained sinless throughout her life is the idea that she remained a virgin throughout her life even after the birth of Jesus.

This is the concept of perpetual virginity.

If you go to a Catholic church, you might hear her referred to as Mary ever virgin.

This is the idea that she remained physically a virgin Even after the birth of Jesus.

Now, if you remember reading the Corona Evangelion, did you read that one?

Did I sign that?

Well, anyway, if you read it, there's a point, the point where Jesus is born seems almost docetic, because there's no pain in childbirth, and he emerges from Mary's womb as like, you know, light coming out of a But think back to Genesis chapter 3. Why is there pain in childbirth?

Because of the sin.

Mary has no sin, so no pain in childbirth.

And Jesus emerges from her womb in a way that leaves her physically a virgin, even after the birth.

Okay, so, you know, fair enough.

But that brings up the question, which I'm sure you're thinking, and that is, what about the Gospel passages where it says Jesus has brothers and sisters?

Right, yeah.

So, okay, there's a couple of traditional answers to that, and I'll give you them, and you decide what you want to believe, as always.

But the traditional answers to that question all pretty much assume that whoever they are, they're not Mary's children, biologically.

So, for example, one answer is that they are other kids from the same generation as Jesus, from the extended family, who grew up basically in the same extended household.

And it is true that in Greek you could use words like brothers and sisters to mean cousins.

So they could be Jesus' cousins.

So that's one possibility.

The other possibility that seems to be more prevalent is that they are children of Joseph from a previous marriage.

So, now, you laugh, but look at the artwork.

Look at Michelangelo's holy family.

Fresh-faced Mary, bouncing baby Jesus, and old geezer Joseph.

Why?

Why is Joseph always depicted so much older?

Because he has been married before.

Mary is not his first wife.

In fact, if you track the artwork throughout the centuries, he seems to get older and older.

The answer to the question is that Jesus' brothers and sisters are his half-brothers and sisters.

This would include the authors of the letters of James and Jude in the New Testament.

Now, to be fair, again, go back to the cross in the Gospel of John.

Jesus entrusts his mother to John, which suggests that he has no living brothers or sisters or father.

Because if he had brothers or sisters or a father, there would be no question that Mary would be taken care of by them.

But they're not there.

So, or whatever that's worth.

Now, obviously, Eventually, Mary's perpetual virginity becomes an example for women to join a monastic life.

So she becomes sort of the proto-nun.

And in the Protoevangelion, she is dedicated to a life of lifelong virginity.

And so, again, that's already there in the second century.

In fact, the main reformers, Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, All had no problem with the perpetual virginity of Mary.

They all believed it.

Now, to be clear, though, her virginity is not required for her sinlessness, although some have seen it that way.

You know, there's plenty, historically, who have wanted to connect sin with sexuality.

So, you know, to say that if she's going to be sinless, she must be celibate.

That's not really technically true.

Now, I told you earlier that, according to tradition, Mary did go with the Apostle John.

They went to Ephesus, where John sort of becomes the bishop of the region of Asia Minor.

And Mary lived out her days with John.

Now, at some point, she dies, right?

And there are varying stories about her death.

Her death is referred to as her dormition.

Mary's dormition is the point at which she dies.

Most of the stories, she actually doesn't live very much longer after Jesus' Passion, a few years maybe.

So she's not around anymore by the time John is writing the book of Revelation.

But notice that there's no tomb of Mary that you can visit anywhere.

There are no relics of Mary.

Why is that?

Well, we'll get into that in a minute.

But the earliest church writers don't talk much about her death.

And the earliest stories that we have of her death have a lot of layers of legendary material on them, right?

Some stories started to pop up that said she never died.

Remember Enoch in the Old Testament, right?

He didn't die.

He was just sort of translated into heaven without dying.

And so, there were some stories that started to emerge in the early church that said this is what happened to Mary.

And, ultimately, that's not going to be considered the right answer.

Mary did, in fact, die, but the stories of her dormition, then, are written to emphasize that she did die, like the rest of us, but there are some aspects to her death that are not like the rest of us, right?

So, first of all, Mary is not like Enoch.

She's not like Enoch.

She actually did die.

Some people still want to hold on to the idea that she never died, and the Catholic Church often just remains silent on the issue, but there are official documents that say she did die.

Okay, so, the point is this.

Sin leads to corruptibility.

So when we die, our bodies are corruptible because we're sinners.

Our bodies decay.

Now this is, again, in the thinking of the early church.

Our bodies decay because of our sin.

No sin, no corruption.

So therefore Mary's body cannot decay.

And again, some would go so far as to say she can't even die because of her sinlessness, but the Church doesn't go that far.

Some even question whether she could even get old, because if there's no corruption, can she age?

But again, the Church doesn't go that far.

But Mary's body, remember, Mary's body is the new ark, it's the new tabernacle.

It held Jesus' body within itself.

So, at her death, Because she cannot decay at her death, the belief is that her body was translated into heaven, like Jesus, at his ascension.

But this is not an ascension, because ascension assumes you ascend.

In other words, when Jesus ascends, Jesus ascends.

He's divine, so he has the power to ascend himself.

Mary doesn't have that power.

She's not divine.

So she can't ascend herself.

She doesn't ascend.

She is assumed.

So, Mary being assumed into heaven is the passive version.

She's brought into heaven.

And so this is called her Assumption.

So the documents that describe her death also describe her assumption, body and soul, into heaven.

So that she is raised, it's passive, she doesn't raise herself, but she is transitioned into heaven, body and soul.

So like Jesus, her humanity, her body, is in heaven also.

Now, there are several versions of the story of Mary's Dormition and Assumption.

And I'm going to give you kind of a synopsis of the general order of events.

You're going to read one version of it.

The earliest stories of Mary's death go something like this.

So just go with this.

You don't need to write this all down unless you want to.

But it basically goes like this.

Mary has become the leader of a community of celibate women.

So, in other words, she's become a nun, a monastic, she's sort of like an abbess of a community of celibate women.

And by the way, after she dies, her successor is Mary Magdalene.

So, she's become the leader of this community of celibate women, and she's given the heads up that her death is near.

She's going to be dying soon.

And this is somewhere around 35 or 36 CE, so again, only a couple of years after Jesus.

When she dies...

Now, again, I didn't make this up, so don't kill the messenger for the anti-Semitism that's in here, but this is how the story goes.

When she dies, a mob of angry Jews plot to steal her body and desecrate it and burn it.

So she dies, and the apostles, who remember have gone to all ends of the earth spreading the gospel, the apostles are all miraculously transported to her bedside right before her death, from all over the world, so she is able to say goodbye to them.

When she dies, Jesus arrives, To transport her soul into heaven.

So her soul goes to heaven first.

And in fact, there's a great mosaic in one of the churches in Rome, where it shows her body laying out dead, and there's Jesus holding the tiny version of her, which is her soul, just before he takes it into heaven.

So Jesus arrives to transport her soul into heaven.

Her body remains on earth where it emits miraculous light and sweet odors.

Garments from heaven float down and her body is wrapped in these garments from heaven.

And she is transported along on her funeral procession when the mob of angry Jews shows up and tries to take her body.

And one of them grabs the stretcher that she's on and as soon as he touches it, His hands shrivel up, dry up and fall off, and stick to the stretcher.

Now, what does this remind you of?

Exactly, 2 Samuel chapter 6. The guy who, very innocently, because the thing is tipping, tries to, you know, right it and touches the thing that's carrying the ark, right?

And what does he do?

He drops dead or something like that.

But again, clear parallel.

Why?

Because Mary is the new ark.

So she's the ark.

So, the guy's hands fall off, the rest of the mob of angry Jews is blinded, they all call out to the apostles for help and healing, they are healed, they all convert to Christianity.

So there's that happy ending.

Mary's body is placed in a tomb, but, remember, it can't stay there because there can't be a tomb of Mary anywhere.

Because the body would be interrupted.

So after being placed in the tomb, Jesus returns with her soul from heaven.

Her body and soul are reunited and taken up into heaven with Jesus.

So that's the synopsis of how these stories tend to go.

Did you get the idea?

So that is the Dormition and the Assumption of Mary.

So notice, Mary is not only the first Christian, But she's the first to experience the resurrection after Christ.

For the rest of us, we wait for the return of Christ to experience the resurrection of the body.

And at that point our spirits are reunited with our bodies, whatever that means.

But Mary's body and spirit are already united in heaven.

And so she has also experienced the resurrection.

Now, This was declared a dogma of the Church in 1950. So again, the idea has been there forever, but it wasn't made an official dogma of the Church until 1950. And in 1950, Pius XII used the official ex cathedra pronouncement to declare The Assumption of Mary to be an official dogma of the Church.

The Feast of the Assumption of Mary is August 15th.

It's based on a prior Feast of Mary that goes back at least to the 5th century, but it's been celebrated on August 15th since at least the 6th century.

So again, not like it was invented in 1950. But the idea is that it's been around forever, but it becomes only official in 1950. So, again, notice this papal infallibility thing.

The idea of the ex cathedra pronouncement has only been used the one time, ever.

Unless you count 1870 when it was created, then it would be two.

But apart from that, it's only been used the one time.

Alright.

Yes, questions?

Real quickly, what would you say about the documents that say that Mary had to become a male to go into heaven as well?

I know what the church would say, it would say it was heresy, but...

If I understand that right, it's not saying she had to become a male to be assumed into heaven, but that upon entering heaven, she would be like I mean, I see that as very similar to the monastic idea that living the monastic life is like living the life of an angel, because it's asexual in a sense.

So she transcends her sexuality, so if you are likely to think that females represent the weaker sex, she has transcended that and overcome that.

But again, that's the Gospel of Thomas, it's not like it's... I was just wondering what your...

Last thing I wanted to touch on is the Rosary.

A lot of people wonder about that.

I'll talk about that for a few minutes and then we'll be done.

Any questions about what we've talked about so far with regard to Mary, though?

Very quickly, the Rosary.

Many religions have used prayer beads Throughout the ages, beads are a reminder of things to pray for, or a reminder to pray in the first place.

At some point in the Middle Ages, people began to use strings of beads to count their prayers.

And really what was going on here is that the monks, some of the monks, were using a devotional practice of reciting the Psalms.

And so there are 150 Psalms, and ideally what you did was you memorized them, and you recited them all.

But if you couldn't memorize all 150 Psalms, a substitute for that would be to simply say the Lord's Prayer 150 times.

But you could lose count, right?

So what do you do?

You tie 150 knots In a rope.

And the rope with the 150 knots was called a paternoster.

From our father in Latin, paternoster, our father.

So in other words, the string of beads or rope with knots was simply called Our Fathers, because you're going to say 150 Our Fathers.

Somewhere in the late Middle Ages, a collection of prayers came into use, and the collection of prayers was referred to as a little rose garden, like a little rose garden of prayers, and each prayer was a flower or a rose.

So a little rose garden, or rosarism in Latin, is where we get our word rosary.

So the rosary is a string of beads that is meant to remind one or help one count prayers.

And there is a tradition that the rose itself, as a flower, is Mary's flower, is a symbol for Mary.

And so what you have with a rosary is a circular string of beads marked off in bunches of ten beads, called decades, And it became a devotional aid to help one remember the rose garden of prayers.

But again, what if you don't want to memorize all the prayers?

Just like with the Pater Noster, the Rosarium could be used to just say a few prayers over and over again.

And the prayer that came to be most associated with the Rosary is the Hail Mary.

Or, the Ave Maria in Latin.

I say this because light bulbs go off over people's heads.

A lot of people don't realize that Ave Maria is Hail Mary.

So when you hear the Ave Maria song, the person is simply singing the Latin words to the Hail Mary prayer.

The Hail Mary is a prayer based on Scripture is the enunciation from Luke, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.

And then, skip a page, when Mary meets Elizabeth, blessed are you among women, blessed is the fruit of your womb, and let's name him Jesus.

So that part of the prayer comes right out of the Gospel.

And then the second part of the prayer is a petition, or asking Mary to pray for, to intercede.

Pray for us sinners now at the hour of our death.

When I say Hail Mary, you should definitely imagine in your mind that scene from The Godfather, right?

Where Fredo finally gets whacked.

Because he says, it's very obnoxious, he says Hail Mary, Pray for our sinners now and at the hour of our death.

Bang.

You haven't seen The Godfather?

It was just playing all weekend.

Well, he's the older brother who messes up a lot.

There's a lot of great religious imagery in The Godfather.

There's that whole scene where Michael is The Godfather, for his nephew who's being baptized, and there's this great juxtaposition where they're asking him the question of baptism, do you renounce Satan?

And he says yes, and at the same moment he's having people killed.

Okay, so basically, The idea of the rosary with the Hail Mary prayer seems to come into use as an alternative to this memorization of the Psalms or memorization of another group of prayers.

And so what you do is there are usually five groups of ten beads.

So you say the Hail Mary prayer ten times on each one of the beads, and then there's an in-between prayer like the Lord's Prayer, and you go around the circle.

That's about it.

And the idea is actually to meditate on the mysteries of Christ.

So, like, while you're doing a decade of ten beads, you're theoretically meditating on, let's say, the incarnation, the birth of Christ.

You have to be able to kind of multitask to do that, but that's the idea.

Traditionally, the Rosary is associated with St. Dominic, as though sometimes it's said that he invented it, but there's no real evidence of that.

But he did encourage its use.

But really, the Rosary was already in use by the end of the first millennium.

St. Dominic came along, encouraged people to pray the rosary, preached praying the rosary as a way of calling heretics and other fallen away Christians back to Christ, and it actually became a kind of a wartime prayer aid.

during the Crusades and during the Reformation as well.

In 1572, a feast was declared for the Holy Rosary.

The feast of the Holy Rosary was established for October 7th.

So anyway, that's the Rosary.

But actually, the Rosary is not just for Catholics.

I mean, there are other systems For praying on a rosary, so a person could use a rosary to pray a prayer that one is not comfortable with the Hail Mary prayer, there are other ways to use it that are not specifically Catholic.

But anyway, so that's all I need to say about that.

A lot of people are curious about it.

I guess I'll just wrap up by saying that, I know I already said this, but the role of Mary in the church is the same as her role in the story of the wedding of Cana.

In other words, Mary also is not an end in herself, but she is the one who points to her son and says, do whatever he says.

Alright, so let's see if there are questions or discussion at this point.

None?

Okay, seeing none, let's shut it down.