To Jesus Through Mary

By JOE SIXPACK

God commanded Moses to build the Arc of the Covenant. In it was placed the stone Commandments, written by the finger of God Himself on Sinai. It also contained Aaron’s rod and a jar of manna. Most of all, everywhere the Arc was, there was the presence of God Almighty.
The Arc was declared by God to be so sacred that the Israelites were forbidden to touch it. Indeed, God had commanded that, because of the holiness of the Arc, if anyone touched it he would die. On its sides were rings, through which the Israelites slid wooden rods so they could carry the Arc when it needed to be moved.
The Arc had once been captured by the Philistines, but King David defeated them and recaptured the Arc. He ordered it brought back to Bethlehem and had a new cart built so oxen could carry it in a triumphal return to the City of David. Along the way, the oxen stumbled and one of the escorts reached out to stop the Arc from falling off the cart. As soon as he touched it, God struck the man dead because he had touched that which was so holy — even though he did so out of love and devotion. God is serious about His commands when He tells us what to do and what not to do.
The Arc of the Covenant was a prefigurement of Jesus and Mary. The New Covenant, of course, was (is) Jesus. The Arc of the New Covenant is the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Arc of the Covenant carried the presence of God, but the Arc of the New Covenant carried God Himself! This Arc of the New Covenant, the Blessed Virgin Mary, carried God Himself in the human form of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Just as the Israelites went to God through the Arc of the Covenant, so do we go to Jesus through Mary. Scripture plainly declares in many passages that the Blessed Virgin is the Mother of God.
“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
“He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end….
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:32-35).
The saintly Elizabeth greeted Mary with the words: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43) St. Paul writes, “God sent forth his Son, born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4).
The Apostles’ Creed, which was written near the end of the first century while St. John the Apostle was still alive, professes our belief “in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.” This belief was so firmly accepted as divinely revealed that the Council of Ephesus in AD 431 made it the standard of orthodoxy, excommunicating the Nestorian heretics who denied it.
Non-Catholics who make Mary only the mother of Jesus do so because they don’t accept the true doctrine of the Incarnation; that is, that Jesus Christ possesses a divine and human nature in the one divine Person. Jesus was never a human person. He was (is) a divine Person who assumed our human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary. She was (is) the mother of the second Person of the Holy Trinity, and therefore the Mother of God!
As our mothers aren’t called the mothers of our bodies, but simply our mothers, because the soul directly created by God is united with the body in a human person, so the Blessed Virgin isn’t called the mother of the human nature of Christ, but simply the Mother of God, because the divine nature, eternally begotten of the Father, is united with the human nature in the divine Personality of Jesus Christ. This is called the hypostatic union.
Most Protestants don’t know that their founders, Luther and Calvin, admitted the dogma of the divine maternity. Luther wrote: “There is no honor, no beatitude, capable of approaching an elevation which consists in being, of the whole human race, the sole person, superior to all others, unequaled in the prerogative of having one Son in common with the Heavenly Father.” Calvin wrote: “We cannot acknowledge the blessings brought us by Jesus without acknowledging at the same time how highly God honored and enriched Mary in choosing her for the Mother of God.”
The Catholic Church has always paid special honor to the Blessed Virgin, because God honored her above all creatures by bestowing the highest honor He could confer — the divine maternity! The Bible tells us that Jesus honored her by living with her under the same roof at Nazareth for thirty years until He began His public ministry, that He honored her requests as at the wedding feast at Cana, and that He demonstrated His love for her from the cross when He entrusted her to the care of His most beloved disciple John.
How can anyone call Mary an ordinary woman and at the same time pretend to be a student of the Bible? Would God choose an ordinary woman to be the Mother of His only Son, when He had millions of women to choose from? The prophet Isaiah spoke of Mary centuries before her coming (Isaiah 7:14), and God sent an angelic ambassador to announce her super-eminent dignity (Luke 1:26), and another to comfort St. Joseph in his moment of doubt (Matt. 1:20). Both the angel and St. Elizabeth called her “blessed among women” (Luke 1:28, 43), and her own prophecy that “henceforth all generations shall call me blessed” (Luke 1:48) is fulfilled every day by Catholics all over the world.
The devout client of Mary is always the strong defender of the divinity of Jesus Christ, her Son. The divine maternity as the Council of Ephesus clearly recognized, has always been the standard of orthodox belief in the true doctrine of the Incarnation.
Love for Mary, who is God’s masterpiece of creation, by its very nature leads us to the love of Christ her Son. Jesus can’t be jealous of the praise we give her, as every one of her privileges and prerogatives are His own free gift to her. Is the artist jealous of the praise you give his masterpiece? Is the author jealous of the praise you give his book? Rather than be jealous of the praise and devotion we give to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Jesus wants us to love her as He loved her — thus imitating Him as Scripture says we should.
Without Mary there could be no Jesus. It isn’t possible for us to go to Jesus unless we go through Mary. Just as the shepherds and the wise men had to go through Mary to see Jesus at the Nativity, so we must go through her to see Him today.
If you have a question or comment you can reach out to me through the “Ask Joe” page of JoeSixpackAnswers.com, or you can email me at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com.
Hey, how would you like to see things like this article every week in your parish bulletin as an insert? You or your pastor can learn more about how to do that by emailing me at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com.