A couple of months ago I spoke at Mass here about the Holy Eucharist, based on a book I’d recently read by an American scholar called Brant Petre. That book was called “Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist”. Well, since then I’ve read another book by the same author, called “Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary.” So now I’m proposing to lean on that as I try speak about Our Lady assumed into heaven.
As in the other book, Petre’s approach is to look at our Catholic doctrine via the literature, beliefs and expectations of the Jews of New Testament times. His studies in all that led him to 3 main conclusions. First: that all our Catholic beliefs about Our Lady are deeply rooted in ancient Christianity. Second: that these beliefs flow directly from what early Christians believed about Jesus. And thirdly: that ancient Christians got their beliefs about Mary from the Old Testament, and from Jewish tradition.
Omitting of course a very great deal, let me mention here four Titles of Mary that Petre discusses. These are: Mary as the New or Second Eve; Mary as the new or Second Ark of the Covenant; Mary as Mother of the King; and Mary as the new or Second Rachel. Interestingly, each of these themes can illuminate something of the symbolism involved in St. John’s vision of a mysterious Woman, as we read in Apocalypse Chapter 12.
Who is this Woman? Of course the image is complex. It must refer to Mary, though not merely to Mary. It must also refer to the Church, or Israel, or the People of God, but can’t merely be these. Petre, in typical fashion, points to multiple verbal and structural links between this text and the Greek text of Genesis Chapter 3. Once you see it, you have to agree: that the war between the Woman and the Dragon of the Apocalypse clearly evokes the war in Genesis between the Woman (Eve) with her offspring, and the deceiving Serpent. That little Genesis account ends with the oracle about striking heels and crushing heads (Gn 3:15). An interpretation of this oracle as a cryptic prophecy of the Messiah occurs already in the inter-Testamental Jewish literature, as well as, almost ubiquitously, in the early Church Fathers. So from the early second century we have Church Fathers insisting that Mary is a Second Eve. As St. Jerome in the late 4th century would sum it up: “Death came through Eve, but life has come through Mary.”
Mary is a new Eve: then also she is a new Ark of the Covenant. The original Ark was a box, which contained the Tablets of the 10 Commandments, a jar of Manna, and the miraculously budding Staff of Aaron. The details of its construction were dictated by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, and it was regarded henceforth as the dwelling place of God among his people. But Jesus, the Word of God, is himself the new law; he is also the Bread of Life, and he is our supreme High Priest. And Jesus was contained for 9 months in the womb of Mary. So, as many early Church Fathers insist, the Ark must be a symbol of Mary.
If she is a new Ark, what about the old one? In New Testament times the inner sanctuary of the Temple was completely empty, because the Ark had been lost. But a strong stream of Jewish tradition held that it would one day return. Our first reading at Mass from the Apocalypse happily begins not at Chapter 12 verse 1, but at Chapter 11 verse 19. For St. John’s vision begins with a glimpse of the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple. But precisely this is not Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem: it’s the Temple of heaven. And the Woman also is there. Why? Because just as King David brought the Ark of the Covenant up with him into his newly conquered Royal City, so the new David must have brought his holy mother, symbolised by pure gold and incorruptible acacia wood, up into the Temple of his glory.
This leads us naturally to the next image: our Lady as Queen. The vision of Apocalypse 12 is replete with royal images: the robe, the crown, the throne. But as Petre demonstrates, according to Israelite tradition, the Queen who stands or sits enthroned at the right hand of the King, and whose intercession with him is all-powerful, is never his wife, but always his Mother. But we say, evoking the cry of Elizabeth at the Visitation, Mary is “Mother of my Lord” (Lk 1:42): she is truly the Mother of God. So her place in heaven is uniquely close to God’s throne. So the honour we give her is different from - more than! - what we give to any other Saint or Angel. On the other hand, the honour given to Mary is always radically different from the worship given to God. We never offer her sacrifice: because like us she is only a creature, and with us she is a recipient of the salvation won by her Son.
Our final image. Petre, as always citing abundant supporting evidence, links John’s vision of this Woman giving birth with 2 passages in Isaiah, both taken by contemporary Jews as Messianic prophecies. First of all, Isaiah 7: the virgin who conceives and bears a son, who is called Emmanuel, God with us. But then, very importantly, Isaiah 66: the woman who gives birth to a son without any pain or labour (66:7).
The Greek word our version translates as “agony” is never used for birth pains in the Bible, or anywhere else in any contemporary Greek literature. It means “torment” or “torture”. John uses it several times in this sense elsewhere in his Apocalypse. Petre demonstrates that it cannot refer here to the historical birth of Jesus, which all of tradition insists must have been without pain. What it refers to then must be the pain Mary endured at the foot of the Cross. For as Jesus is the Man of Sorrows, so also Mary is the Mother of Sorrows.
And so we come to the image of Rachel, beloved wife of Jacob. Once again, once you have spotted this it’s obvious: St. John’s Woman clothed with the sun evokes the dream of Joseph (figure of Jesus) in Genesis. According to Joseph, the sun is Jacob, the moon Rachel, and the stars are his brothers (Gn 37:9). As for Rachel: she died while giving birth to Benjamin (cf. Gn 35:36). Her “hard labour” is the only one described in the Old Testament. Already by the time of Jeremiah, Rachel had come to be considered as the mother of all Israel. So according to Jeremiah she weeps for her children killed or carried away into exile by the Babylonians (Jer 31:15). This text is quoted by St. Matthew in context of the massacre of the Innocents at Bethlehem.
But Rachel’s son Benjamin was always specially loved and favoured: he was known as the Beloved Son. An easy step, then, to the Beloved Disciple. As a first fruit of Mary’s anguish at the Cross, Jesus with his dying words names the Beloved Disciple Mary’s Son. Of course he is John the Evangelist. But he is not named, for he stands for each one of us. I am the beloved disciple of Jesus, and Mary is my Mother. She is also Mother of all God’s children, and Mother of the Church.
According to the 3rd century Church Father Origen: “No one can understand the Gospel of John who has not leaned on the breast of Jesus, and taken Mary to be his Mother.”
I really should stop. But let me just conclude:
Mary is the second Eve because Jesus is the second Adam; she is the Ark, because in Jesus God himself came to dwell amongst us; she is Queen, because Jesus is King, and Messiah; she is Rachel, because Jesus formed a new Israel, of which she is the Mother, and for which she both weeps and intercedes. And: Mary has been assumed body and soul into heaven, because Jesus is there, and we all hope to be there with him, one day, too.