All about Mary, Swimming the Tiber Part 3

​What’s with all this stuff about Mary?

I remember thinking that a lot as my journey into the historic Church deepened. This was several years into the journey and I was beginning to hit some walls. Ecclesiastical structure (the episcopate) had fallen pretty quickly. I mean, any serious reading of the 1 Timothy text in the Greek and the subsequent structure of the early Church just destroys any objection to the episcopal structure of the Church.

But I hit this snag with the Marian dogmas. I look back on it now and can’t really pinpoint why I was so uncomfortable with this, why I fought it so much. I honestly believe it had to do with several things. I had, as I’ve mentioned, been raised in a Protestant home. But it wasn’t just that I was raised Protestant. I was raised in a Protestant home that taught that the Catholic Church was literally evil and idolatrous. I mean, I remember at one point being told that the Pope was probably the Anti-Christ. It’s kind of sad to me now that I look back on it.

So I think that had a lot to do with it. But it was also, in my mind, illogical. I know that makes me sound really arrogant and, to be honest, I really was. I guess I thought that if it didn’t make sense to me, then it must not be right. Can I be brutally honest with you right now?
I suspect you have the same problem. I suspect we all have the same problem. We won’t say it out loud but, in practice, we act as though, if it doesn’t “make sense” to us, then it must not be true…or at very least is suspect. We moderns are pretty narcissistic and really lack humility. But that’s another post for another time.
So I think for me it was all the background noise of the Catholic Church being evil and my own hubris.

But, back to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Let’s define the Marian dogmas really briefly. I want to emphasize that this is very brief. I can’t really do justice to these in a limited space like a single blog post. So, very quickly, the Marian dogmas are:

1. Divine Motherhood

In other words, Mary is the Mother of God. Jesus is the Son of God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and is therefore God. Mary is His mother. Therefore, Mary is the Mother of God. Pretty straight forward and I didn’t have a real problem getting there (see the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD).

1. Perpetual Virginity

Now this one is hard for most people, Protestants and even some Catholics. This one basically says that Mary remained a virgin for the remainder of her life after giving birth to Jesus. A lot of the push back you get from this one is that people will say, “But the Bible says Jesus had brothers and sisters.” So let me address that objection with two things. First, there is a tradition that Joseph, the husband of Mary, was quite a bit older than Mary. He had been married before and had children by his first wife (who had died). Those children were the brothers and sisters of Jesus. I think it’s important to note that, of those “brothers and sisters” of Jesus, not one of them is called “Mary’s child” in Holy Scripture.
A second thing to note on this objection is the Hebraic understanding of “brothers and sisters.” The Hebrew understanding of family was quite different than our own western understanding. We hear family and most of us think “nuclear family.” In other words, we only think of family and use the terminology of brother and sister for our immediate family. The Hebrew understanding was a bit different and included other relatives. In fact, from what I understand, the same word for “brother” in Hebrew was also used to mean cousin etc. So you can see how that language is imprecise.
A final answer to this objection is another Hebrew understanding. It was the duty of Jewish children to care for their aging parents. In the case of the Blessed Virgin, it would have been the responsibility of the eldest son to care for his mother after the death of the father. So, in this case, Joseph had presumably died (almost all scholars agree on this) and now Jesus, at His crucifixion, was also dying. He had to pass on care of His mother to someone in the family, a brother or sister. But there was no one there to pass that care on to and so Jesus passed that on to the Apostle John. You may say, “Yes but the Bible says that Jesus’ brothers and sisters didn’t believe in Him being the Messiah.” While that is true, it would not have removed their covenantal duties under Jewish law to care for their mother, had she been their mother.

1. The Assumption of Mary

This is the teaching that the Blessed Virgin was assumed, body and soul, directly into heaven. Whether she died and this happened or whether she was assumed is not directly addressed, although most tradition says she died and was assumed. Again, you may say that Holy Scriptures say nothing about this. That is true, it does not directly address it. However, this has been part of the Church’s teaching for centuries and can at least be implicitly implied from Holy Scripture and her role in salvation history.
I would also note that there is biblical precedence for this type of occurrence. In the Old Testament we have both Enoch and the prophet Elijah who are assumed into heaven. On a logical note, I ask you this. If we know the locations of the tombs of certain saints and even of the Saviour and we venerate those sites, don’t you think that we would know where the Blessed Virgin was buried? Don’t you think we would have some type of church building or statue built there?

1. The Immaculate Conception

This is the one I got really stuck on. Specifically, the dogma states that “the most Blessed Virgin Mary, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege from Almighty God and in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, was kept free of every stain of original sin."
It took me a long time to wrap my head around this. In fact, I’ll be honest. It was literally only yesterday that God opened my heart to see some things in Holy Scripture that sealed this for me. I had accepted this as a historic teaching of the Church and was willing to submit to it. But yesterday something happened that I can only describe to you and let you decide.
I was driving home from work last night, listening to a podcast on my drive. It was a conversation between Dr. Scott Hahn and another guy (Lawrence Feingold I think) about what they called the “integration” of the Old Testament and New Testament. In other words, you cannot understand the New Testament apart from the Old, nor the Old Testament without the New. In other words, what St. Augustine said. If you don’t know what that is, read my last post. As I was listening to this conversation, it was like a light switch flipped in my heart and I said out loud, “And Adam named the woman Eve because she was the mother of all the living, just as Mary is the mother of all those who have new life in Christ.”
So when we read the OT, we must understand that many things that we see there are prefigurements, foreshadowing, whispers of what is to come in the NT when the Messiah is revealed. In light of reading Holy Scripture this way, we see some things (and the Church has seen some things) about the Blessed Virgin.
 
She is:
The new Garden where the faithful find perfect peace with their Creator.
The new Eve, the mother of all those who live by faith as the Church.
The new Ark of salvation who carries those who have faith in God through the floods of this world to the new world of God’s new creation.
The new Tabernacle where God dwells.
The new Sarah who carries in her womb the true and better Israel.
The new Rachel who weeps for her children in their pain.
The new Ark of the Covenant who bears the Word of God.
The new Hannah who rejoices in her miraculous conception.
The image of the Church who says to God, “Be it done unto me…”
The mother of all the faithful at the foot of the Cross when our Lord says, “Behold your Mother.”
The Queen Mother of heaven crowned with the stars of heaven who gives birth to the Messiah.
The one who gives birth to the seed of Eve who will and has crushed the serpent’s head!
(Credit to Ben Harris for this litany)
 
Can you see it? Can you see the scope and beauty of what God has done in becoming flesh and choosing His vessel? Can you see her as God has given?
 
Behold thy Mother, Church!
Behold the one who, in her flesh, has born the incarnate Word of God, who now calls you brother and sister!
Behold thy Mother, through the Son, who is given from the Father in the unity of the Spirit before all time!
 
Behold and worship Christ the Lord!