Transcript

What a joy it is to be back in London.

Kimberly and I just landed in London this afternoon.

We had spent spring break this week in Rome where I was teaching a course on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments to about 70 seminarians at Santa Croce, a pontifical university where I have the privilege of, of teaching on a regular basis.

But it really is a special treat for me to be here with her.

As Father Thomas said, we are getting ready to celebrate 40 years, along with six kids, and now 15 grandchildren too.

Uh, that to me matters as much as any of these other things, yeah.

Yeah.

And especially we would ask you to pray for our, two of our sons who are in the seminary, Jeremiah and Joseph, studying for the priesthood for the Diocese of Steubenville, Ohio.

All right, so I'm reminded of how important it is to have a sense of timing, and I'm reminded of that because when we were getting ready to celebrate our fifth anniversary, I was hoping to really celebrate in grand style, except that Kimberly had to go into labor with our second son.

We already had Michael by Cesarean.

We were hoping not to have that with Gabriel, but alas, our fifth anniversary was spent in the hospital.

So five years later preparing for our 10th anniversary, I wanted to be sure to at least sleep in and celebrate in grand style, but we didn't even have a chance to sleep in.

There was a major commotion downstairs, and so when I went downstairs to figure out what was happening, I could hear Michael and Gabriel yelling and acting like anything but archangels.

And Michael looked at me and he said, Dad, you've gotta stop 'em.

And I said, Why?

It's his birthday.

Give the boy a break.

He said, You don't understand, Dad.

He's going around telling everybody that he was born on the same day that you and Mom got married.

And I looked at little Gabriel and he looked up at Dad with pleading eyes, Well, isn't that what you told me?

And I said, No, I said it was the same date.

But to a five-year-old, what difference does the distinction between day and date make?

But for the reputation of his mother, I asked him to cease and desist.

Well, timing is everything, and also motherhood is too, and so it's a great opportunity for me to hear, to be here this evening, to be able to share with you about the Blessed Virgin Mary.

As Father Thomas mentioned, I've now celebrated more than 30 years of being a Catholic, and I'll be honest, looking back, it doesn't feel that long and yet it feels like more than a lifetime of grace that we have experienced since entering the Church.

But when I look back, I also recognize that there were a number of hurdles that were difficult to clear, the Eucharist, the Pope, purgatory.

But all of them put together couldn't really be as difficult as the Blessed Virgin Mary was for me.

The Immaculate Conception, her bodily assumption, and this coronation of the Queen of Heaven were three of the biggest hurdles by far.

Mary, Mary seemed quite contrary to everything that I found in the Bible.

And so in my search for the church that I was discovering, when you read the New and the Old together and see how the New is concealed in the Old, and the Old is revealed and fulfilled in the New, you can see how, in fact, there's a plan that is unfolding from the Father, through the Son, in the family of Israel that becomes a Catholic church.

And I had to admit that there was one thing that was missing, and that was a maternal figure.

But I wasn't quite ready yet for Mary, especially when I didn't see much evidence in scripture.

And I just wanna stop and help you understand this, because I suspect that many of you might be cradle Catholics wondering why non-Catholics really have such a hang-up with the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In my case, I would say that I opposed the Marian doctrines and devotions because they really seemed to, to rob Jesus Christ of His own role in this work of our perfect redemption.

And so for me, opposing these doctrines and devotions just seemed to kind of go with affirming that Christ and Christ alone gives us our redemption in its perfection.

And then as I became a Catholic and I embraced these doctrines and devotions, because I have prayed a rosary with God's grace every day since I came into the Church more than three decades ago, I'd have to say that I embrace the Blessed Virgin, the doctrine, the devotion, but above all, the Mother of God, precisely because she embodies the perfection of Jesus' work of our redemption.

And so I used to think that she sort of robbed the Lord Jesus of all of His glory.

Now, of course, I can see more clearly that she does not rob her Son of the glory any more m- than the moon robs the sun of its glory.

She reflects it more perfectly than any creature.

And so what I want to present this evening is this idea that our relationship with God rooted in a covenant, not a contract, is a family, not a factory, that we're beloved children and not simply servants or employees.

And then when we look at this, we recognize something that is profoundly non-competitive .

that God didn't create the world for His own glory in the sense of getting more glory than He already had because God's glory is infinite.

And so when the Father sent the Son to become a man, to teach, to heal, to minister, to suffer, to die and rise, it wasn't to get more glory than the Son already had because He couldn't add to the infinitude of His own divine glory.

So why go to the trouble of doing all of that if it wasn't to get more glory?

Well, clearly, it's the purpose of God to share that glory with us.

And so once I recognized that, I began to wonder, Well, how much of His glory is He willing to share?

Well, being a perfectly loving Father, you've gotta at least consider the possibility that He might be willing to share all of it.

And then looking at the perfection of Jesus' redemptive work, it's also reasonable to suppose that Jesus was successful in achieving His Father's goal.

But only when you look at the Blessed Virgin Mary do you see exhibit A, the perfect example that really illustrates the perfection of Christ's redemptive work.

That wasn't done for Himself, it was done for us, but more perfectly in her than I suspect in anybody here this evening.

And so as we approach this doctrine of Mariology, as we approach the devotion of the Holy Rosary, as we approach the Mother of God, we recognize that she has been set apart by God the Father and by Jesus, her Son, and the Holy Spirit who overshadowed her, for a very peculiar and powerful role.

And what is it?

To be our mother.

But just as Jesus didn't simply die for those who are presently Catholics, but for all, so the Blessed Virgin is not just the mother of those who happen to be members of the Catholic Church tonight, but for all those for whom her Son bled and died.

So what I wanna do in beg- in the beginning of my presentation this evening is just to give you two or three simple steps that will help us build bridges instead of erecting walls that would divide us from our separated brothers and sisters who don't yet see that Mary is our mother, but also theirs as well.

So the first thing I would like to just emphasize is how we begin with the Bible, and how we can see especially in the scriptures how above all, the Blessed Virgin is a model disciple, the paradigm, the perfect example for us to follow.

We can see it especially in ch- in Luke 1:38, when the word of the Lord reaches her through the Archangel Gabriel, Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum, be it done unto me according to thy word.

How often I hesitate when I get a sense that God is calling me to something difficult.

Without a moment's hesitation, she gave her consent from the heart.

She gave her whole body and soul to the Lord in an act of total entrustment.

And not just because she won the lottery, but because as Saint Augustine said, She had conceived the word in her heart even before she conceived him in her womb.

And so what we see here is the perfect model for us to follow, that she is the model disciple.

And I think that's an ideal starting point, because she is not some exceptional instance that doesn't represent something that all of us can follow, but precisely the model that we can follow.

The second basic step that I think we can help non-Catholics to take is to recognize that this woman is more than just the perfect follower of Jesus, the model disciple, she is also what her kinswoman, Elizabeth, declared her to be in Luke 1:28, and that is the Mother of God.

So when you read Chapter 1 of Luke from 28 all the way to 43, you can see the Visitation.

And when she arrives at the doorstep of her kinswoman's house, what does Elizabeth say?

Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

And the Blessed Virgin Mary did not correct her and say, Oh, no, I'm not the mother of the Lord.

I'm just the mother of his humanity.

As we learn back in the 5th century, in the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431, she is declared to be Theotokos, the Mother of God, because women don't bear natures, they bear persons.

And this person happened to be divine.

And so I would say that here again in scripture, we have not only the model disciple but also the Mother of God, the mother of our Lord.

And this is another principle that unites Christians whether they're Catholic or not.

But the third and final principle that I would like to propose that you oughta share with others, that she is, in fact, the masterpiece of Christ, the redemptive artist.

What do I mean?

Well, all of us are works in progress.

Christ is the artist of my redemption and yours, and we entrust ourselves to Him.

But if we wanted to figure out how perfect His redemptive work was, we wouldn't see the perfection on any of us, but we would see it, as I mentioned before, in her.

And so if you go to an art exhibit, a gallery, where you have, uh, an exhibition of a famous painter's, all of his work, and if this artist happened to show up, he wouldn't feel threatened or slighted in the least if instead of staring at him, you were looking at all of his works and spending the most time appreciating his masterpiece.

Just like every artist wants to really devote his talent and his time and energy to one great work, so the Blessed Virgin Mary does not detract from the work of Christ.

She refracts the light of the world more perfectly than anyone.

So the model disciple that we can all imitate, the mother of God that we can see as the one who bore Jesus to the world, and the masterpiece of Jesus Christ, the artist of our redemption.

These are ways that we can reach out and build bridges so that people can see that what we're not doing is worshiping Mary.

Now I wanna weave some life experience into this presentation tonight, and not just simply give a theological lecture.

Because for me, the discovery of the Blessed Virgin took about two and a half to three years of serious study, especially in scripture, and drawing a lot from the early church fathers in the first four or five centuries.

But what really came home to me was something that happened when, after I'd come into the church that very first year, my mother encouraged me to mend the fences that were broken because of me poping, as she put it.

And so she encouraged me to reach out to my siblings, to, to our family members, and so we did.

Kimberly was not yet Catholic, but she agreed with my mom that I had to do whatever I can to, to reach out and to show them that I, I wasn't a mutant, I hadn't denied the faith.

And so on one occasion, we drove out to Pennsylvania to visit family.

And in this case, a dearly beloved member of my family, my sister, and her husband, and we had a wonderful time.

But before we got there, Kimberly had extracted from me a promise not to debate my brother-in-law.

And apparently my sister had extracted from him a similar pledge, that we were going for the sake of peace.

Well, since he was also a student of scripture, and a great student at the seminary where I had studied, and since we had studied the Bible together and we had looked into the old and the new, I was really kind of hoping that somehow we could do it anyway.

And so when we were there for the first evening at dinner, I noticed my brother-in-law getting up from the table to go over to take out these two bags of, of, of garbage, taking them out of the bin.

And he had two hands.

They weren't that heavy.

But he looked at me and he said, Can you help me?

Can you take one of these garbage bags?

And then he winked.

Oh yes, I can help you.

And so I picked up one of them and we walked out to the garage, we stuffed them in the, the bins, and then we walked back into the basement.

What are we doing?

He said, Well, we've gotta be sly about this, but, uh, let's go down to my office.

And so we walked into his office instead of going back to the kitchen, he closed the door.

Now we've gotta be a little quiet, but I, I, I do wanna ask you, what have you done?

What have I done?

I've become a Catholic.

Yeah, I can't even imagine that.

And then he went on to explain his distress precisely because he was assuming that I was now a worshiper of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

And I assured him, No, that was a heresy condemned back in the fourth century.

That was the Colloridian heresy.

You can't worship Mary.

She's a creature, however exalted she is.

Oh, okay.

And so he said, But where do you find it in the Bible?

Find what?

Well, he said, the Immaculate Conception for one thing, the bodily assumption for another, and this notion of her heavenly queenship.

These were the three biggest hurdles that I had to clear as well, so I could understand why he was bringing these up.

And I said, Do you remember in that last year of seminary together where we were delving into not just the New Testament, not just the Old, but how the new is concealed in the old and the old is revealed and fulfilled in the new?

What we call typology?

He said, Yes.

And I said, I just went deeper and deeper in the subsequent years after I graduated, because I found that in the Old Testament, there are at least three mountain peaks of salvation history.

Creation, when the world comes into existence and Jesus is prefigured in Adam, as Saint Paul describes Jesus as the last Adam in 1 Corinthians 15, or Adam as a type of Jesus Christ in Romans 5:14.

He said, Yes, of course, I remember that.

And I said, Likewise, the second mountain peak is the Exodus, when Israel came into its ex- existence and came to its freedom.

And then Jesus as the new Moses who gives the new law of the new covenant, not to abolish but to fulfill, especially in the Passover that he fulfills as the lamb of God.

He said, Oh yes.

This was some of the, the most enriching study for both of us, and for others too.

And I said, And the third mountain peak was the Kingdom of David, when Israel was established as a kingdom over all the other nations and the son of David was declared to be the adopted son of God who built the lord a temple.

And Jesus, of course, as the son of David, is greater than Solomon, who builds the new temple.

And so creation, Exodus, and the kingdom.

The new Adam, the new Moses, and the new and greater Solomon.

He's like, I don't understand why you're going back over familiar ground.

What does that have to do with Mary?

And I said, Because in each and every instance when you go back to these events, when you look at the sources in sacred scripture, what I discovered, and then I also found out that the early church fathers were also tapping into this treasure, was that it's not just Jesus being prefigured.

It's also the Blessed Virgin Mary.

And you could tell he wasn't following, and so I said, Well, take a look at Genesis 1 and 2, which we know so well, and I would suggest we compare it to John 1 and 2, because in Genesis 1 and 2, we hear 'In the beginning,' and then God creates through the power of His word, 'Let there be light, let there be this, let there be that.' And on the sixth day, we hear, 'Let us make man in our image,' and he creates man, male and female .

you turn the page and you can see that man is made male first, and then after he awakens from the deep sleep in Genesis 2, he sees the female and he says, Woman, and the two become one.

So the primordial form of the covenant in creation is this marital bond of Adam and Eve.

And he's like, Okay.

And I said, Well, you can see how both of them were formed by God in this covenant back in creation, and they were preserved from original sin until they voluntarily fell into it.

And I said, When you compare John 1 and 2 to Genesis 1 and 2, you will find what I found and what the fathers also found that I discovered in their homilies and in their hymns and in their prayers.

Because how does John 1 begin?

With the same phraseology as Genesis 1:1.

'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' And in the first five or six verses of John 1, there are at least a half a dozen words, phrases and images drawn straight out of Genesis 1 as well.

But it doesn't just end with John 1 in the first five or six verses.

It continues on.

In John 1:29, The next day.

In John 1:35, The next day.

In John 1:43, The next day.

The next day, the next day, the next day in John 1, just as in Genesis 1. And then when you turn the page and you look at J- John 2, the first verse begins, On the third day, there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee.

And I said, If you back up and look at this, you realize what John is doing with his narrative.

'The next day' would lead us to day two.

The second time the phrase 'the next day' occurs is day three.

The third time that phrase occurs, 'the next day,' is day four.

And then on the third day, there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee.

Four plus three equals seven.

So as the seventh day, the Sabbath, climaxes the first creation, so likewise the new creation.

And so Jesus and the mother of Jesus were there, but we don't know the name of the bride or the groom or anybody else.

The only two characters identified by name in John 2 are Jesus and Mary.

But, uh, he doesn't call her Mary, he doesn't call her Mom.

What does he call her?

Woman.

, the same term you find in the Septuagint there in Genesis 2. So, you can see how it works, that the old creation, the old covenant in Genesis 1 and 2 is prefiguring a new covenant, a new creation, and a new Adam, who we believe was formed without original sin.

But how fitting it would be for the new covenant that unites a new Adam to a new Eve, that he would give to her that which he merited, that is, this preservation from original sin.

And that's really what we believe about the Immaculate Conception.

It isn't proof texting, but it is reading scripture in its context.

And it reminded him of what our, one of our professors said back in seminary, that to take a text out of context in order to use it as a proof text is a pretext.

And we all kind of chuckled when we heard the professor say that.

But I reminded my friend that we also squirmed because we recognized that's sort of what we did as Protestants.

We would look for proof texts.

But when you read the Bible in context and see the new concealed in the old, and the old revealed and fulfilled in the new, then you can see how John 1 and 2 is an echo of Genesis 1 and 2. And how, in fact, this new covenant ush- ushering in a new creation reveals a new Adam and a new Eve.

And this is what you find not only in St. Paul, but in Justin Martyr, who describes Mary as the new Eve, who unties the knot.

And Irenaeus in a similar way later on in the second century.

It's not a matter of debate.

These men were celebrating the mystery of faith that you can see not only in Jesus, but also in the Blessed Virgin Mary.

And he looked at me and he thought, he, he said something like, That, that was clever.

I, I thought so myself, you know?

But what about the bodily assumption?

And I said, Well, here again, it's not a proof text, but it's reading the Bible in context and seeing how it is that if you look at the old and see it fulfilled in the new, you can look in Exodus and see how Moses is prefiguring Jesus, but how something else does as well, namely the Ark of the Covenant.

And he said, What are you talking about?

And I said, Well, when they arrived at Mount Sinai, there was something even, even holier, and that was the tabernacle, and the Holy of Holies.

And what made the Holy of Holies so holy was the Ark of the Covenant.

And so in Exodus 40, you read about how it was that Moses dedicates the tabernacle, and how the Spirit of God comes down upon the Holy of Holies and overshadows the sanctuary where the Ark of the Covenant is.

And what is the Ark?

Well, it's made of acacia wood for durability, but it's overlaid entirely with gold to kind of symbolize the presence of God.

But what really makes that ark so holy is that it contains the word of God in tablets of stone, as well as the manna that fed wi- fed Israel in the wilderness.

And so as you continue to, to follow the trajectory of the Ark of the Covenant, you begin to recognize that something is going on here.

Because even after Moses dies, the Ark is still out there, front and center.

When Joshua takes over from Moses, how does he begin the conquest?

By having the Levites take the Ark down to the bank of the Jordan, and the water does for Joshua what the Red Sea had done for Moses, and so they cross over.

And the very first act of this conquest consists of the Siege of Jericho, which in a certain sense was a, a bad strategy because you ought to build up to a, a city that strong.

You oughta learn some battle strategies before you tackle one of the strongest cities of all.

You know, I- I- I reminded him of what we had heard in Old Testament class, that Jericho was a wall, uh, was a walled city and the walls were layered and the walls were so thick that a chariot could ride on top of each wall.

And so how in the world does the Lord expect Israel to take on the City of Jericho?

Well, first, you know, of course, the, the air force, then the artillery, and then the infan- no.

The strategy was so strange because as you read in scripture, if the battle is the Lord's then the weapons are spiritual, and so the first thing that Joshua is told is take the Levites and have them carry the ark in a liturgical pres- procession with Israel following and go around the entire city once on the first day, once on the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days.

Then on the seventh day, they are to carry the ark in a liturgical procession seven circuits around the city, at the end of which they blow the trumpets and all of the people shout a cry of thanksgiving and praise, wondering for what?

Just do it and you'll see.

And then of course they did, with the ark out in front and the defenders of the city walls probably thinking, These Israelites have been too long out in the hot desert sun.

What are they doing?

And then when the trumpets are blown and the shout of command is heard, the walls came down.

Seismologists and archeologists can't even really figure out what happened to this day.

But I said the ark was what was really the key to their victory, but of course they took credit for it so they were cut to ribbons the next battle.

Over and over again, they had to learn to trust the Lord and to find the ark and follow it, and so this conquest that could've taken one generation took several, and ultimately it was only because David, a man after God's own heart, found the Ark of the Covenant in the Judean Hill Country.

As we read in Second Samuel 6, Bill, you remember that, in fact, this was at long last the finish of the conquest of the Promised Land.

But how does it, how does it happen?

How does the Old Testament describe this event?

And this is what I found so helpful myself when I shared it with him, because what you find with the Ark of the Covenant is a set of parallels with what you read in Luke 1 and 2, and so I pointed out how it was that in Second Samuel, when David brings the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem to complete the conquest of the Promised Land, we read a sequence of actions.

So for example, in Second Samuel 6:2, David goes into the Judean Hill Country.

You read chapter one of Luke's Gospel, Mary arose and went into the Judean Hill Country.

Just like David had done.

In Luke 1:42, you hear about Elizabeth exclaiming, Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

Just as when David found the Ark of the Covenant, he said, Who am I that the ark of the Lord should come to me?

And then in Luke 1:43, upon Mary's arrival, Elizabeth is filled with such a sense of awe, How was this granted to me?

David exclaims the same thing, How is this granted to me?

And so likewise, this joyful response of Elizabeth is matched with John the Baptist leaping for joy in utero, just as you read in Second Samuel 6, that when David found the ark, he's leaping for joy in front of the ark in the presence of all of Israel.

Just as David responds to the ark being found with a song of thanksgiving, so does the Blessed Virgin in the Magnificat, and just as the ark remained there in the Judean Hill Country for three months, how long does Our Lady stay with Elizabeth there in the same locale?

For three months.

I went down about a half a dozen or more parallels between the ark narrative in Second Samuel and the ark narrative of the, the Blessed Virgin to show that this is how in the early church the fathers could see and celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary as the ark of the new covenant, because what is she but she is immaculate humanity overshadowed by the Holy Spirit.

In fact, I pointed out how in Luke 1:35, the proclamation, the annunciation, The Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

We both had studied Greek, so I said, Look at the term for o- overshadow, .

It's a very rare verb, but it's used with regard to the Spirit overshadowing the ark in the old and the glory of the Lord overshadowing the Blessed Virgin Mary here in Luke chapter one.

Again, it's not a proof text taken out of context, but when you read the new in the context of the old, you can see w- why it wasn't a matter of debate and controversy, but why the image of the Blessed Virgin as the ark of the new covenant is simply appropriated in the hymns and in the prayers and in the homilies in the first four or five centuries.

He's like, Okay, you touched the Immaculate Conception, the bodily assumption.

Wh- what about the idea of Mary's queenship?

And I said, Well, we saw creation, the second mountain peak of the Exodus, the third one is the kingdom itself because in First Kings, we read in chapter one of how David was getting ready to die, but before he died, he wanted to oversee smooth succession, so what did he do?

He appoints Solomon to be his successor, and so you see how it is that Solomon rides into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and all of the people are shouting to him like they did with Jesus.But then you also recognize in 1 Kings Chapter 2 that on the day of his coronation, on the day that he was anointed, on the day that Solomon is enthroned, in verse 19, as everybody's bowing and prostrating themselves before the new king, Solomon the son of David, verse 19 tells us how Solomon issues a decree to have a throne installed at his right hand where his mother will be seated and enthroned as the Gebira.

In Hebrew, that's the queen mother.

If you're wondering why not Solomon's wife, well, that would have been tricky since he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

The most they could hope for maybe would be f- for a queen for a day.

But he had one mother, and she was the wife of his father, who oversaw the smooth succession and who operated as a kind of counselor, giving him wisdom.

But it wasn't just for a day.

It was for her lifetime.

And in the succession of Davidic kings that lasted more than four centuries, every time you have a new Davidic heir appointed to the throne, you have the queen mother identified as well.

When you have the prophet like Jeremiah giving the word of the Lord in oracle, Hear the word of the Lord, O King, and to the queen mother.

And I pointed out to Bill that the only chapter of the Hebrew Bible written by a woman, Proverbs 31, was written by none other than the queen mother of King Lemuel to help the king find a, a godly and virtuous wife.

And so what you see in John 1 and 2, with Jesus as the new Adam and Mary as the new Eve, what you see in Luke 1 and 2, with Jesus, the new Moses, bringing about a new exodus but through Mary as the ark of the new covenant, you can also find in Matthew 1 and 2. Because when you turn to Matthew's Gospel, what's the first verse that confronts you?

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David.

And then what follows in Matthew 1:2-16 is that genealogy that's so hard for lecturers to read because of all of those names that are difficult to pronounce.

But what you see in the genealogy of Matthew is Jesus' royal pedigree, his Davidic genealogy.

It's divided up into three sets of 14, Bill.

So from Abraham to David, one set of 14 generations, from David to the exile, the second set, and then from the exile to Joseph and Mary is the third set.

And why?

Because every Jewish reader of Matthew knows that David's name consists of three letters.

And in Hebrew, you don't have numbers.

It's a lot like Latin where you s- assign numerical values to certain letters.

So if you see in Latin L-I-V, it could be live, it could be 54.

When you see D-V-D, Daleth, Vau, Daleth, in Hebrew, three letters that spell out the number 14.

And so Matthew is impressing upon us the fact that Jesus is the heir to the Davidic dynasty, the throne, the kingdom of David.

But then Matthew concludes this by showing how through a miracle, a grace of God, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be Emmanuel, which means God with us.

You go back to Isaiah 7:14, and the oracle of Isaiah is given concerning a king in the line of David and the virgin would be the queen mother, as many biblical scholars have pointed out.

So not only is Jesus the son of David in Matthew 1 and 2, but this makes the Blessed Virgin Mary the queen mother of the son of David.

And this wasn't debated either.

This was just received and celebrated in the first three, four, five centuries of the early church, the idea of Mary's coronation, the idea of Mary's queenship.

This is just a part of the tradition that you find because you're not looking for proof texts, you're reading scriptures in context, and all of this is found there, but most especially do you find creation, exodus, and kingdom.

Do you find new Eve, the ark of the new covenant, and the queen mother?

All three are triangulated.

All three are, are sort of braided together in Revelation 11:19, going all the way into Chapter 12:17.

So we got out our Bible and I showed him where in Revelation 11:19, John the seer suddenly sees up in heaven the Ark of the Covenant.

But not the Ark of the Old Covenant, it's the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple of God.

Now as soon as he said that, Jewish Christians would've gasped, Bill, because why?

Because back in the first century, the Ark of the Covenant had been missing for centuries.

In fact, the Ark of the Covenant wasn't found, well, until Harrison Ford in that movie, you know- found it in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I mean, the movie is based upon the fact that when you hear in 2 Maccabees about how Jeremiah was inspired by the Holy Spirit to go into Jerusalem, into the temple to take out the ark before the Babylonians could come and demolish the temple, they wouldn't get to desecrate the ark.

He took it back into the Judean Hill country and tucked it away in a cave where it was hidden and missing for centuries.

And when the new temple was built, the second temple, by Zerubbabel, going all the way into the first century, this is the Temple of Jerusalem, but instead of the real presence of God being symbolized in the sanctuary by the Ark of the Old Covenant, there was a real absence because they never found the ark.

So when John announces that he has seen the Ark of the Covenant, but not in the earthly Jerusalem, but in the Temple of God, the Jewish Christian readers would've said, Tell us where it is.

What condition is it in?

How can we fetch it?But John doesn't go on to describe a box.

Instead, the very next verse he says, Then a sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, crowned with 12 stars.

And Jewish Christian readers have been, Uh, we wanna hear about the woman, but, but rewind, go back, where is the ark?

What condition is it in?

How can we fetch it?

But he wasn't talking about the Ark of the Old Covenant.

He was talking about the Ark of the New Covenant.

So when he goes on to identify this heavenly woman clothed with the sun and the moon is under her feet and she's crowned with 12 stars and she's attacked by the ancient serpent, what can you see?

Well, what you can see is what the ancient serpent saw, and that is she is the new Eve giving birth to the new Adam.

Only this time instead of his victory, they triumph over the ancient serpent.

The new Adam and the new Eve together usher in a new creation.

And likewise, the fact that you're seeing the Ark of the New Covenant in the new Jerusalem shows us that she has been taken up into heaven.

She's not like the souls of the faithful departed who are souls but without their resurrected bodies.

The woman is clothed with the sun.

The moon is under her feet.

She's crowned with 12 stars.

She's got a body as well as a glorified soul.

So you have the new Eve, you have an Ark of the New Covenant, but you can also see the Queen Mother because she's giving birth to the man who's to rule all of the nations with a rod of iron.

That's taken straight out of the Psalm of David, Psalm 2. And the fact that she has what?

A crown of 12 stars.

That's not the zodiac.

Those 12 stars, Bill, those are the 12 tribes of Israel.

She's the queen mother of the son of David over all of Israel only in heaven, the heavenly Jerusalem.

She's the new Eve.

She's the Ark of the New Covenant.

She's the queen mother.

He's like, You gotta get quiet.

And I realized I was getting worked up more and more.

And all of a sudden, I got quiet, and sure enough, I'd given it away.

You could hear the pitter-patter of two sets of footsteps coming down the stairs.

They're down here.

And so when they opened the door, we were caught red-handed.

Just as I was about to deliver a knockout blow, these referees are taking these two prizefighters into our respective corners.

And I'm like, Come on, just a little more time.

You promised.

I'm like, Okay, but he started it.

Like two little kids, you know?

So we went upstairs.

We behaved ourselves for the rest of the evening.

We talked about newborn babies and diapers and nursing and all kinds of things that my wife and my sister wanted to talk about, but not what we wanted to finish up.

And so dutifully, you know, I went to bed.

I got up the next morning, and today's date was August 15th.

Well, the cradle Catholics here know what that means.

I was a brand new Catholic that year, so I remember that this is a holy day of obligation.

I had never been to the Feast of the Assumption, but I knew I had to go now that I was a Catholic, and this is gonna be really awkward.

And I said, I don't know if it'll be like 25, 30, 35 minutes or an hour, so I don't wanna make you wait.

This is back before we had cell phones.

And he said, You know what?

I'll just come.

I'll join you.

And, you know, if I had even asked him to consider join, I would've been in hot water.

But I'm like, Okay, sure.

And so right before noon, he drives me to Our Lady of Victory.

I had never been to this before, so when we sat down, suddenly he's just hitting me with his elbow.

What is it?

He said, You didn't happen to choose these readings, did you?

And, and I was tempted to say, You know, every year the Pope calls up a convert and asks him what readings to I said, Bill, I have never been to this feast before.

I had no idea what the readings would be.

He looked at me with this skeptical look like, yeah, sure.

And I sat there quite sure I had no idea of what the readings would be.

Quite sure that I had come up on my own as a graduate student diving into the scriptures with the Greek and the Hebrew and all of the patristic sources, the Greek and the Latin fathers, that I had kind of put all of this together on my own only to discover that anybody who goes to celebrate the Mother of God on the Feast of her Assumption will find out how our mother, the church, has been reading the scriptures for the last 2,000 years.

You don't need a doctorate.

You don't even need a master's degree.

Just go to mass on that day, like the other feast days, and just stay half awake.

You're gonna hear how the new is concealed in the old and how the old is revealed and fulfilled in the new.

And as we left and drove back, I'm like, Is there anything you wanna talk about?

He said, Not really.

So we didn't.

Pray for this dear friend of mine, because what I have discovered not only then but many times since is that this is how we read the Bible from the heart of the church.

And how not only the old and the new come together, but the scripture and the liturgy come together.

That the readings from scripture are the preparation for the celebration of the Eucharist.

That this is the word inspirated and that he is the word incarnated.

And that for 2,000 years, it isn't an academic exercise.

It isn't professional Biblical exegesis.

It is the children of God receiving the word of God from God the Father through the Son and by the Spirit who overshadowed the mother of Jesus, who becomes our mother.

This is who we are.

This is what we do.

And this is why we don't feel threatened when it comes to the opening up of the scriptures.You know, your first year as a Catholic convert is s- sort of like an extended honeymoon, at least mine was.

A few months later, I was, uh, traveling up to Boston to attend a conference of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

I was a new member since I was a new Catholic.

The conference was over on Sunday morning, but my flight was only scheduled for Monday afternoon.

So, I said to, to Dr. D., You know, I happen to be in town.

I, I've been at this conference.

Can you think of any- Oh, come on up and stay with us.

And I'm thinking, He must not have heard what had happened to me earlier that year, or he wouldn't be so eager to host me.

That I had poped, that I had swam the Tiber.

So when he met me at the Salem station, I got in the car, he turned to me, he said, Hi.

And the first, the next words out of his mouth were, So, is it true?

I'm like, Is what true?

You know what.

Am I a Catholic now?

Yes!

Yes, I am.

And he said, Okay, I, I promised my wife that we wouldn't get into it until we got back.

Because like your wife, my wife has her master's in theology and she is really curious about this move of yours.

And so, we got back to the house and she had set up, you know, crackers and vegetables and all kinds of things.

It was just a lovely spread.

She didn't wanna miss any part of the conversation in preparing dinner.

So, around 2:30 in the afternoon, we begin.

First with the Pope, then purgatory, then the Eucharist.

Then we go on to bishops, then we go onto all these other things and honestly, it felt like batting practice.

It, it, it felt like, you know, they were giving to me all of the questions that I was hoping they would 'cause it was just like, I'm gonna knock him out of the park.

I'm gonna And I did.

I mean, I was on a roll with the Pope, with purgatory, with the, the saints, with the sacraments, and all of these sorts of things.

We went right through six o'clock, seven o'clock when we would've had dinner, 8:30, nine o'clock, and I'm on a roll.

I just keep winning argument after argument.

I mean, my head was getting- bigger and bigger.

I don't remember exactly when it was, but it was after 9:00 PM when he turned to me and he said, Okay, I want patristic sources in the first three or four centuries for the assumption of Mary.

And I'm like, Okay, now let's just step back a second, um, and I felt my weariness, and I just felt my brain was drained.

I'm like, I, um, I can't think of anything.

And he pulled out some papers and he said, You know, I can't find anything.

And I said, Well, for one thing, you know, in the first 300 years, you're not building big libraries because it's a period of persecution.

And so, a lot of what the church believed only surfaces later on.

He said, Come on now, that's an argument from silence.

You would not accept this.

Can you, can you give me some documentary evidence?

I said, Well, after the fourth century, yes.

But you're asking before?

And he said, Can you give me a book that I can look at and read?

'Cause you as a teaching assistant always had great bibliographies.

And I said, I can't even think of a single title.

And he said, Can you give me some journal articles that I can look at?

Because this is dogma that was defined back in 1950.

You gotta believe this on the pain of mortal sin!

You know, I- and you can't give me patristic documentation for this?

And I'm looking down at my watch and it's a little bit past 10 and, you know, I, I'm feeling like I had been so puffed up with pride in my success and now suddenly, I am falling flat on my face and fumbling.

And I'm like, I, I can't even think of a single journal article.

And at that moment, he stood up and he said, Well look, you know, I, I appreciate your efforts to convince me, but if you can't even sin- cite a single source, you know, I, I think it's probably time for bed.

I'm like, Oh, don't do that.

You know?

And he was respectful and he was kind, but he was sure that I was kind of caught short-handed.

And so, they were so hospitable.

They let me sleep in the next morning.

And when I came down, I'm halfway through breakfast, I look at the calendar and it's December 8th.

And I'm like, Oh no, not again.

So I, I said to Robin, I'm gonna have to find a place to get to mass before I fly out of Logan Airport this afternoon.

And she said, Oh, you're in luck.

St. Paul's is right through our backyard.

I'm like, When are there masses?

She's like, How would I know?

She called them and they were done for the day.

She proceeded to call six, eight, 10 other parishes in the area, and they were all done for the day.

She looked in the Yellow Pages and she found this Carmelite chapel at a shopping mall about 14 miles away.

She called them and she found out that they had a noon mass.

And so, I drove down to the Peabody Mall and I saw all of these Christmas shoppers coming down these stairs, filling up this chapel for a noontime mass for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

And we all watched this old priest in his mid to late 70s slowly saunter out of the sacristy and stand behind the altar.

We begin in the name of the Father- and of the Son and of Like, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, get on with it, Father, you know?

We got more shopping to do.

You could just feel the impatience.

And so, we all sat down, the lector got up, and the readings were the same perfect match once again.

And I was in awe.

And then we saw this aging priest get up and we're thinking, Okay, he will be brief.

But he wasn't.

As soon as he got up, you could see this big smile and a twinkle in his eye.

He said, Today, we celebrate the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God.

And people out there wonder why we still believe in that.

And if they were to ask you, 'Why do you still believe in the Immaculate Conception?', what would you say?

And I'm thinking, This is good homiletical technique, to start with a question .

and I wanted to see how he would answer.

And he just opened up.

He's like, Here's what you ought to tell him.

Ask him, 'If you could have created your mother and preserve her from the corruption and the stain and the pollution of original sin, what do you think you'd have done?

Well, you didn't because you couldn't.

Jesus did because he could.' And that's what we're celebrating, the work of Jesus.

And this guy went on like Monsignor Billy Graham- like a Baptist Carmelite, for 5, 10, 15 minutes, nobody looking at their watches.

This guy was preaching up a storm.

And by the time he was done, every heart was lifted up.

And by the time the mass was done, every Catholic was heading out, you know.

And after like 90 seconds, I was the only one left.

I walked into the back, you know, into the sacristy, and I said, Father, do you happen to have like a minute?

No, I don't.

Do you have a second?

Okay, what?

And I said, Well, you were so good on the Immaculate Conception.

Last night, I was really bad on the bodily assumption of Mary.

You see, I- I'm a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Seminary, but I just became a Catholic earlier this year, and I'm back visiting a former professor who I used to serve as a teaching assistant, and I just came up short on the assumption of Mary.

I'm just wondering, could you recommend a title that I could give to him on the subject?

And he said, Well, there's a good reason why you came up short.

And by the way, you know, I used to teach at that seminary.

I'm like, No, Father, you don't understand.

It's an evangelical Protestant seminary.

No, young man, you don't understand.

It was a Carmelite seminary.

I taught there, then we sold it to you.

Okay, I'm sorry.

He said, No, that's fine.

We sell them the seminary, they give us the graduates.

It seems like a perfect deal to us, you know.

Great exchange.

I'm like, Very funny, Father.

He said, Well, on the assumption, there's actually only one book in English on the subject, and it just went out of print last week.

And I'm like, Wow, you really do you know your Marian bibliography.

He said, Well, I should.

I'm the author of the book.

You know, and I, and I felt like I was stepping into the Twilight Zone.

It felt so surreal.

I'm like, You're the author of the only book on the Assumption of Mary in English, in print, and it just went off?

You wouldn't happen to have like one or two copies of that book?

He said, Ah, I have two copies left.

And he opened up this cover, he said, Okay, what is this man's name?

And so he dedicated one of these books to Dr. Dee and to his wife, and then he put, To Jesus through Mary.

I'll leave it in Latin and let them figure it out.

And then he signed his name Father Killian Healey, Order of the Carmelites.

And he said, Okay, what's your name?

What's your wife's name?

Toscotinke You didn't learn much Latin there in seminary as a Protestant, did you?

I'm like, Not much at all.

I'll leave it in English for you and her.

And then he gave me his last two books and he said, Now be off.

I got back, he's getting out, he's, he's leaving the front door, he's getting into his car to go give a final exam.

I'm like, Not so fast.

Remember last night?

You were asking about a book or an article?

Well, there's only one book in print, and it just went out of print, and I just came from mass where the author of that book gave me a copy for you.

And his eyes got wide, his jaw just hung open.

And I should never have enjoyed that moment as much as I did, you know.

Like, Here's that book, you know.

And he was a little bit late for the final exam, so he took off, and his wife looked at me and she said, There is no way that just happened.

I'm like, Yeah, at the Carmelite Chapel in the Peabody Mall.

And she's like, I'm gonna make sure he reads it, and then I'm gonna read it too.

They're now Episcopalians.

They're on their way, you know.

But when I got down to the airport, I didn't need a plane to fly home.

I was flying so high, you know.

The night before, I had felt so ashamed.

You know, my head was so puffed up, if you had put me a pin, I would you know, it was like a balloon.

But suddenly that night before, I, I was so ashamed of how proud and argumentative I was, and then the next morning, Our Lady shows me that it's not about academic arguments.

It really is about the family of God, the family that God is fathering, where Jesus is the firstborn among many brothers and sisters, that through the gift of supernatural grace, we who are sinners are transformed and regenerated into sons and daughters.

But what seemed to be missing is not missing.

There is a mother, and like no other.

The mother of Jesus, the mother of God, the masterpiece of our redemptive artist becomes our mother.

Not just the mother of millions, but the mother of each and every one of us.

And she knew what I needed the night before, my ego to come down a few miles, and she knew what we both could use the next day.

I wanna share with you all of these things, not, not just out of, you know, a desire to share my personal experience, but this is our experience as brothers and sisters in Christ, as members of the Catholic Church, where the fullness of faith is found in the family of God, and we simply can't take any credit for it.

This is the work of God, and all of us are works in progress.

Transforming bread and wine into Christ's body, blood, soul, and divinity is truly miraculous.

But an even greater work of God is transforming sinners like me into saints.

And for that, we need a mother.

We have to be humble enough to acknowledge that we're not self-made saints.

There never was one, and she wasn't either.

She is the fullness of grace.

Full of grace is what the Angel Gabriel said.

And I could show you a perfect passive participle.

She's completely perfect and probably already was and al- always was.

But it's not about the arguments, as, as helpful as they might be-It really is about the humility that needs to come to us through the grace of childlikeness.

And I want to propose to you that this place, St. Dominic's Priory, this church, the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, is meant to become a spiritual center, not just in London but throughout all of England, a center for evangelization, the new evangelization, the renewal of culture, beginning with marriage and the family.

Because that's what Jesus wants to do through Mary and Joseph.

I am convinced that God loves us more than we can possibly imagine.

He allows hard times to come so that we'll overcome our own smug self-sufficiency and turn and realize we have a mother because we need a mother.

Let's go to her together now in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Almighty God, our Father in Heaven, we thank You once again for the gift of Your eternal Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and in His name, we pray for the Holy Spirit to come upon us once again as the Holy Spirit came upon the Blessed Virgin, overshadowing the most, the power of the Most High.

But we ask You especially that You would enable us to faithfully and humbly entrust ourselves to Her Immaculate Heart, to consecrate ourselves, our marriages, and our families to the Holy Family, and to open ourselves up to the fullness of grace that She was given, that She wishes to share with us, to transform us from sinners to saints.

Dear Father, we ask that You would do this for the honor and glory of Jesus, who taught us to pray Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

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

Amen.

St. Dominic.

Our Lady of the Rosary.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Thank you so very much.