MARY

• Annunciation
• Virginal Conception
• Mary and the Hopes of Israel
• Mary, Model of Christian Discipleship
• Mary and Women
• Mary and the Poor
• Theotokos
• Immaculate Conception
• Assumption
Mary
• Data about Mary in the new Testament are very scarce
• The earliest information about her is the reference to the
annunciation in Luke 1:26-38
Luke 1:26-38
Annunciation
• Revealed fact tells that something happened in Mary’s life at the level
of a deep faith experience
• Main elements of the experience:
• Apparition of the angel
• Reaction of fear
• Announcement of the birth
• Giving of a name
• Inquiry of the one receiving the news (how)
• Giving of a sign
Annunciation
• It is a deep faith experience because no one would think that mary
saw & heard with her bodily senses
• If angels are incorporeal, then they cannot be seen nor can they
possess vocal chords
• Mary received a revelation through a mystical experience (McHugh,
John La Madre de Jesus)
Annunciation
• It is important to note that God did not impose His will on Mary
• He asked for her consent to the work He was about to do
• Mary was not an instrument for the divine plans because God never
deals with creatures in this way (LG 56)
• Only when a common wish emerged from the dialogue did the Son of
God dare to “have his tent pitched among us” (Jn 1:14)
Virginal Conception
• Luke 1:35 and Matthew 1:18 affirm the virginal conception of Christ
• St. Ambrose
• “How could our Lord Jesus choose for his mother a person who dared
profane the heavenly chamber with the semen of a man, as if she
were a woman incapable of maintaining intact her virginal modesty?”
• Meaning of virginal conception:
• ‘the salvation, desired and sought by human kind, cannot emerge
from its natural forces. It will always be a gift from God’
Mary and the Hopes of Israel
• Luke 1:28
• Zec 9:9
• Zep 3:14
Mary and the Hopes of Israel
• Because of the similarity of Luke 1:28, Zec 9:9 ,Zep 3:14, many
authors suggested that Luke wanted to present Mary as the
“Daughter of Zion, “ a sort of Female personification of the people of
Israel.
• It cannot be doubted that Mary belonged to the “poor of Yahweh,”
that is, that small “remnant” of Israel that eagerly awaited the
salvation of God
Mary and the Hopes of Israel
• In Mary, we can see the best of the old Israel; that part that was to
become the Gospel
• When she pronounces her fita, ‘let it be done’, Mary moved – and
made humanity move with her – from the Old to the New Testament
Mary, Model of Christian Discipleship
• Luke presents Mary as the first • Let it be done to me as you have
person who listened to the said
Gospel, Luke 1:38
• Elizabeth greeted her by saying, • Blessed are you who believed
luke 1:45
• Mary appears among the
disciples after the resurrection in
the Acts of the Apostles 1:14
Mary, Model of Christian Discipleship
• Mary’s faith ignored the future that she did not fully understand (Luke
1:29, 34; 2:50)
• But her faith was exemplary for its blind trust(Luke 1:38,45), pervaded
by meditation: “she carefully kept all these things in her heart” (luke
2:19, 51)
Mary, Model of Christian Discipleship
• The acid test for Mary’s faith was Calvary. “in the moment of the
Annunciation she heard the words: ‘he will be great…the Lord God will
give him the throne of David, his father…; he will reign over the house
of Jacob for all time, and his kingdom will have no end.’
• And behold, when she stands by the cross, mary witnesses, humanly
speaking, a total denial of these words.
• Her son is dying on that tree as a criminal. ‘Despicable and shattered
by men, a man of sorrows…, contemptible…’
• This is the dark night of faith
• Yet, she did not falter, she did not waiver, she stood it all
Mary and Women
• At other times, we have proposed as a feminine model Mary’s
modesty, her self-denial, her humble acceptance of God’s will, her
passivity
• When declared herself ‘handmaid of the Lord’, she did not do it as a
woman before a man, but as a creature – of whatever gender –
before its Creator
Mary and Women
• A woman from among the people exclaimed before Jesu: ‘Blessed is
the womb that bore you and the breasts that fed you!’
• With these words she expressed the only glory granted a woman in
the culture of that time not as a woman-person but the functions of
biological fertility
• Jesus replied, ‘Blessed rather those who hear the word of God and
keep it.’
• Jesus restored to her mother her dignity as a person because Mary
kept that Word I her heart (Luke 2:19,51)
Mary and the Poor
• The historical Mary was indeed poor
• The offering she made on the occasion of the presentation of Jesus in
the temple, which were “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons”
(luke 2:24), the offering prescribed by law for indigents (Lev 12:8)
• “God has chosen what the world considers weak to shame the
strong” (1Cor 1:27)
Theotokos
• Theotokos, means mother of God
• The Council of Ephesus (year 431) proclaimed that Mary was the
Theotokos
• The phrase expresses an undeniable truth
• It meant that Mary gave birth to One who was God
• It did not convey at all the idea that Mary, as mother, could have
conceived God
Immaculate Conception
• On December 8, 1854, Pius IX declared that it was a revealed doctrine
that Mary was exempt from original sin because God justified her
from the very moment of her conception
• Although baptism eliminates original sin, there remains in the
baptized the inner division which all of us experience
• Mary, however, because she was exempt from original sin, is the “un-
divided”.
• Only in her could a total receptivity toward God be found as well as a
radical rejection
Assumption
• On November 1, 1950, Pius XII defined as a revealed doctrine that
Mary, “once she completed the course of her earthly life, was taken
up, body and soul, to the heavenly glory”
• ‘Taken up to the heavenly glory’ is equivalent to saying that she as
assumed, taken by God and this happens beyond history.
• The Church did not learn about Mary’s assumption by the testimony
of history, but by the testimony of faith
Assumption
• Jesus, after his resurrection from the dead, went to “prepare a place”
(John 14:2) for those who “die in Christ” (1Thess 4:14), among whom
mary, model of Christian discipleship, necessarily occupied first place
• One day, we too, will enjoy that blessedness
• Mary’s assumption into the side of the Father tells us that some
realities have already taken place, realities which have reached not
only Christ, but also simple human beings such as ourselves