Mary Archives - Amazing Catechists

What is Your Eternal Job Description? The Lesson of Martha and Mary

The recent gospel story of Martha and Mary (LK 10: 38-42) is one of the most powerful and profound expressions of an eternal struggle many of us face on a daily basis. People grapple with their ‘job descriptions’ every single day, just like Martha was doing.

Quite often our job description is about as secular as it can get. We focus on what we need to focus on to succeed in this world. The next day, however, we sway toward a crooked, but hopefully sincere, struggle to define our ‘eternal’ job as saving our own souls and those of others while serving and loving God and others.

While a certain amount of shuffling between a secular and our sacred, eternal job description is allowed in our daily pilgrimage through this world toward God, we must always take stock and adjust. We need to maintain the overall direction of our efforts – facing due Heaven and not due earth. What are the signs that we are straying toward earth more than toward Heaven in this daily struggle?

Burdens

In Luke’s gospel, Martha feels burdened by her earthly tasks and complains to Our Lord. Whatever earthly loads we may be carrying, feeling burdened certainly seems par for the course regarding all of them. Earthly tasks carry physical, emotional, psychological, social, financial, practical, and many other kinds of burdens. As physical beings, we will certainly feel those burdens on a regular basis.

Our burdens can surely tire, frustrate, and exasperate us. While it is both normal and expected that we will all feel these strains from time to time, there is a high correlation between our eternal job description and just how much and how regularly we are feeling such burdens. Those with an earthly focus will tend to feel more and increasingly burdened by these loads because earthly burdens tend to seem all-consuming and endless.

In fact, earthy burdens sometimes seem insurmountable and pointless. They can overwhelm us. We can feel lost as to how to handle them, and wonder how they can possibly lead us to any good. A couple consumed and obsessed with buying a home, for example, may pull themselves in all directions trying to save for their goal. They can even lose hope that they will ever achieve it in the light of their difficulties.

Isolation and Abandonment

Martha also expressed resentment that Our Lord did not care about her plight. Martha felt she was being left all alone to deal with her burden. Once we become distracted or lost in an earthly focus, however, we measure and judge according to the dictates and standards of this world and not of God. Negative, earthly feelings such as resentment, anger, bitterness, and jealousy creep in. These secular standards and measures tell us that we are getting the short end of the stick and even being treated unfairly by God and others. Ironically, we will feel isolated and abandoned by God and others precisely because our self-obsession and warped self-pity will not allow us to find fulfillment or joy in focusing on the needs of others.

It is easy to see that Martha was only focused on herself in this situation. She was feeling unfairly treated and did not care to see anything other than that view of the situation. Martha even went as far as to judge and question Our Lord’s stance in all of this! Do we not do the same when we pray for something and then resent it when we feel our prayers are not answered?

Enticing Others to Our Mistake

Martha’s resentment and frustration led her to ask Our Lord to make Mary join her in her mistake! I have often read that one of the devil’s greatest delights in pushing us to sin is successfully convincing us to join in his mistake of rejecting God. Misery loves company, and Martha’s self-obsession leads her to demand that Our Lord order Mary to make the same mistake that she has made. This warped delusion of self and righteousness goes as far as pretending that one’s foolishness is actually one’s enlightenment and that others should follow one’s “light.”

Our Lord tells Martha that she is worried and anxious about pointless things that will not ultimately amount to a hill of beans to her eternity. We stray from the path to Our Lord to the extent that we seek our treasure among things that do not lead us to him. Washing dishes and making beds are not inherent evils. Fixing the car and installing a new garage door opener are not inherently bad. Fixing the air conditioning and paying our bills are not superficial and useless tasks. However, while we should focus on and accomplish these things as we can, we must never reach the point of worrying and obsessing over these tasks and duties as if they are all that matters. Such worry and obsession only pushes God to the background for another day.

Where is God to You?

When we become fixated with things of this world over what matters to heaven, we tend to push heaven to the background and even change how, and even if, we see God at all. If you see God as some sugar daddy who will come to your rescue whenever you need Him, you have lost the proper place of God in your life. Frankly, I am not sure which is worse: forgetting God or distorting what God is. If God is not found in your preoccupation or consideration of some issue or burden, then perhaps you are mired in an overly earthly focus.

The story of Martha and Mary reminds us that we have a daily choice to embrace God or this earth. Too many times, we become so wrapped up in accomplishing what this world expects or even what we think this world expects that we forget what God expects from us. While doing our best to fulfill our tasks and duties in this world is important, we can never allow those tasks and duties to displace God as the center of our lives and focus.

Always place God first, place your earthly burdens before Him, and trust that He will guide you through these struggles!

2019 Gabriel Garnica

We Call This Friday Good

By Amanda Woodiel

I have a friend who moved to the United States some twenty years ago. Although she speaks the language fluently, she hasn’t quite lost her accent, and a colloquialism will occasionally still mystify her. That’s how I am with the Catholic church. Twelve years ago I came into the Church as a young woman. Though I feel at home here, I still stumble upon meditations that strike me as so strange that I realize I am a foreigner.

This was the first Lent since I started praying a daily Rosary, and somewhere along the way it was suggested to me that I pray only the sorrowful mysteries in Lent (except Sundays). So day after day I have meditated on the Agony, the Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, and the Crucifixion.

What has jumped out at me is the juxtaposition of these mysteries with the phrase of the Hail Mary: “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

Blessed are thou among women….said again and again as I contemplated His agony, His body slick with bloody sweat, His face in the dirt he made.

Blessed art thou among women…as I contemplated the whips tearing at his flesh, furious lashes that end only when his executioners have worn themselves out from the effort.

Blessed art thou among women…as I saw her Son humiliated, scorned, spat upon, and struck repeatedly so that the thorns of the grotesque crown impale his head.

Blessed art thou among women…as I watched Our Lady watch her son’s battered, mutilated body stumble under the weight of the cross, a spectacle to the indifferent and an abomination to the contemptuous.

Blessed art thou among women…as she stands by Him crucified, witness to His struggle to breathe, His enduring of the unfathomable torture.

Blessed is she? Blessed? What mom dreams of the day when she will stand beside her son while he is tortured? On the face of it, it seems like a mockery to repeat this over fifty times in the face of His Passion. At any rate, it is a jarring enough paradox that it gave me pause. I knew then that I am still not a native to the church.

Forty days’ meditation gave me time to reflect. That she is blessed, I believe. So, as in so many teachings of the church that I didn’t immediately grasp, it was time to dig deeper.

How can it be that Our Lady is blessed in these days of Holy Week?

We see the world upside down, so writes Father Michael Scanlan in his book Let the Fire Fall. I believe that Mary’s blessedness in the face of the Passion is the right-side-up way to view it. I need to adjust my vision.

As in so many things, I was looking at the Passion in primarily the physical sense. Material being that I am, this body is so present to me that it usually constitutes my first consideration. But what if I were to look at the Passion in primarily spiritual terms? What if I thought about it as Fr John Riccardo presents it in his meditation on the Rosary (found here)–as the world’s greatest athlete gearing up for the single most important competition in history? What if I saw the spiritual implications of the Passion first–Jesus about to save the world from the rule of Satan?

Here, Jesus, though he looks like the defeated, is actually victorious, for he, as a priest said in a meditation I once went to, had enticed the devil to do the one thing the devil could not do–kill God Himself. It was a chess match, and while it looked as though the King had been taken, he had actually set a trap that would end in checkmate against his opponent. It was a daring, heroic, stupendous, awe-some, all-in kind of plan.

Did Our Lady understand the Passion on the spiritual level–as a supernatural match for which the prize was the human soul? Spouse of the Holy Spirit, the woman who will crush the serpent under her heel, the mother of God, I imagine she herself very well may have undergone severe temptations and wrestling with the devil in her own hidden life. She must have been clued into the spiritual realm of the Passion, even if she did not fully know what would happen three days hence.

Blessed indeed was she! She saw her son undergo bodily torture, yes, but through that, she saw him win the war. She saw him, fully human as well as fully God, not recoil from the agony of body and soul but instead stand victorious in the redemption of our human nature.

That one there is my son. The one who is wrestling all of the powers of hell but who stands–bloody, yes–but triumphant. That’s my boy–the one who whose suffering gives historic and eternal witness to the profound love of God. That one hanging there is mine, the one who is willingly giving his very life to save the eternal souls of the human race. Jesus is my son. I am blessed.

Forgiveness Beyond the Grave

By Amanda Woodiel

My father died last week. It was unexpected. He had had health issues the last couple of years and had never seemed particularly robust, but he was never near death, either.

My mom passed away eight years prior. Here I am, in my 30s (barely!) with five small children and no parents. It’s not a common status among my circle of friends, but it could be far worse.

I mention this simply to show that I have a frame of reference when I talk about grieving deceased parents. This isn’t my first rodeo. What is different this time, however, is that my father was, well, a different man than what he seemed to be. Over the last few years we had uncovered surprising details about his life–details that I will spare you, dear reader.

So the grief I feel is an alloyed grief. There is sadness that the opportunity has passed for our relationship to transform coupled with confusion over details that keep popping up (such as the bewildering claim he apparently made that he had been sent on a secret mission for the Department of Defense) commingled with utter dismay that his last note to us–intentionally placed in a spot where we would find it–was as efficient as a corporate memo and as warm as a ransom note.

The question I am left with–aside from the question of what is true regarding his life–is the question of forgiveness. How do you forgive someone who lies in his grave and whose lies extend beyond the grave? (The last sentence of his last note to us was, in fact, untrue.) How do you forgive someone who betrayed his family but who genuinely believed he could fool everyone–and who maybe, in the end, fooled himself?

As I have pondered these questions, a specific path to forgiveness and healing keeps coming to mind. Think back to Cana, the site of Jesus’ first public miracle. The hosts had run out of wine, and Mary, with the compassion of a mother’s heart, knew the embarrassment they would face. Her son is at the same wedding feast, so she hurries to him and tells him the problem. At first, Jesus seems to resist her urging. But she–great Jewish mama that she is–brushes aside his response and turns to the servants. “Do whatever he tells you,” she says with complete confidence in him. Jesus is moved by his mother’s urging and by her faith. Jesus acts, in this instance, because of his mother’s intercession.

This intercessor was given to us from the cross when Jesus gave her to John. John stands there in history as the faithful disciple but also stands in for us when Jesus gives Mary to his care: “behold your mother.” She is our mother as well, our dear compassionate mother, who is also, in evangelical parlance, a “prayer warrior.” Mary, just as she was at Cana, is a compassionate intercessor for those of us who face complicated situations.

Mary is known by many names. One such name comes from a meditation by St Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in the last quarter of the second century and a Church Father. Drawing out a comparison between Eve and Mary, he noted:

“And thus also it was that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary” (Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter 22).

Man’s fall from grace due to original sin–what knot could be more complicated than that? Original sin, endured since our first parents, was loosed by the obedience of Mary to the will of God when she gave her fiat to become the mother of the Holy God. And so she is known as “Mary, Undoer of Knots.” Mary, undoer of the knot of original sin. Mary, undoer of whatever knot is in your life and the big knot that is in mine.

I once had a lovely little card that had printed on it “The best way out is always through.” The best way out of the pain is to walk through it. And so I have been given the answer to my question of how do I forgive: pray a daily Rosary alongside Mary, Undoer of Knots, for my father’s departed soul and for my wounded one.

What does this prayer do? Two things. When we pray in good faith for someone who has hurt us we cannot help but love that person more. It is hard for us to love the person whom we do not know. I have only done this prayer for the last week, and already I am looking at my father through more compassionate eyes than ever before; somehow, it is giving me more knowledge of him.

Secondly, praying the Rosary has a way of showing us who we are. Contemplating the mysteries of the God-Man being scourged or crowned with thorns gives me pause to think about the ways in which I have unleashed my own contempt for my Savior. The prayer becomes, then, less about offender (dad) and victim (me) and instead becomes two sinners contemplating God’s passion and his love and mercy.

And then, of course, the prayer is the outpouring of hope that God will and does redeem all things. Everything else in my life–my mother’s terminal brain disease, for example–has shown itself to be a gift. Perhaps the gift is a severe mercy, but there is always mercy. There is always the great Divine Act of turning evil on its head to bless–witness the crucifixion itself.

Praying a daily Rosary for those who have wounded us alongside our great mother and intercessor is ultimately an act of hope, an act of humility, and an act of love. By focusing daily and for a sustained time on the life of Jesus in the company of Mary, Undoer of Knots, I have confidence that I will find healing and peace.

Being “Little Marys”

By Maureen Smith

As I was driving with Jesus buckled into my lap in His pyx, on my way to preside over a Communion service this past Sunday, I was trying to prepare some thoughts for the reflection after the Gospel.

Although I had just gone to Mass that morning, the readings and homily seemed a vague memory, as it had been pre-second cup of coffee. What was it that the priest said? What was the Gospel again? Something about the Body of Christ, probably…

What do I say to residents on Corpus Christi Sunday, whose holiness and devotion far exceeds my own? Well, since I am no expert, I thought, I must consult the saints!

Of course Our Lady came to mind. But then, along with that thought, a much older and much more vivid memory than that morning’s homily popped into my head. I recalled how my mom told me that my name, Maureen, means “little Mary.”

Never did I find my name among the turnstiles of souvenir pens or plaques with it’s meaning and origin, which so often populate gift shops and craft fairs. I used to search fruitlessly among the Marissas, Megans, Michelles, but no Maureens. My mom, however, told me she named me Maureen for a few reasons, one of which was because it meant “little Mary.”

This happy thought called to mind an image of the Visitation, as I imagined how Mary carried Christ inside her body.

As I prayed with this image, the Lord reminded me that this phenomenon is not unique to Our Lady, since we do this whenever we receive Christ’s Body and Blood. We all become “little Marys,” bringing Jesus to all of the corners of the world.

This reality remained with me throughout the day, long after the Communion service.

What a privilege it is to be a Christ-bearer like Our Lady. And how blessed we are to have such a model and guide as we seek to reveal Him in our daily lives! It is easy to think that we must feel His Presence or seek Him and take Him in in order to become a Christ-bearer. But by nature of our Baptism, the light of Christ shines from within, not from without, and is amplified and fortified each time we receive the Sacraments.

I often wait for Christ to come to me, and wait to love or do ministry until I feel prepared by His Grace, thinking myself to be too weak. But it is precisely then, when we are empty, when we are least full of ourselves, that we are disposed to carry the One who can do all things.

May we all be like Mary, carrying Christ to all around us. Every human person suffers and we get to be healers of divine love. It is easy to forget that Christ’s presence dwells with us long after we have consumed the Eucharist. We may feel His throne is vacant within us at times, as Mary surely felt the pain of his absence during Christ’s apostolic years, and most certainly at the Cross. Yet, she and so many before us trusted and hoped in His fidelity.

Let us be strengthened by the witness of the Saints who recognized their own powerlessness and at the same time the power of the presence of Christ in our souls. From one Christ-bearer to another, I pray that God blesses you each time you receive His Sacred Body and Blood, and that you receive a special gift of His Grace this Friday on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart – the proof of His Love for you.

Embrace the Journey and Seek The Destination

By Gabe Garnica

As a child, I knew a little girl who had a little problem with her family’s vacations. She always loved the different places they would visit, but she never enjoyed the journey getting there. She hated long car drives, was afraid of flying, did not care much for trains, and was simply very impatient and even paranoid about taking too long to get to their destinations. Simply put, she loved where she was going but did not love the different ways she could get there. As odd as this might seem, many of us are the same way about a far more important trip- our earthly journey to our eternal destination.

What Matters

We can all agree that what really matters is that we save our souls and that of as many people as God puts before us to help. Ending up in heaven is the ultimate success story regardless of what stories we wrote here on earth. The most successful person on earth is not a success if he or she loses heaven forever. Conversely, the biggest earthly loser is the ultimate winner if he or she gains heaven forever. That being said, one has to wonder why so many of us worry so much about our journey rather than our destination.

Luggage over Location

Mother Angelica used to wonder why we all worry so much about our earthly journey, this pilgrimage to our heavenly home, when it is simply a path to what really matters. I think that there are a few reasons why we get bogged down in these concerns. First, we end up thinking that the journey is what really matters thanks to this world. Everywhere we go, people pretend that this life is all we have, and that we better make it work the way the world wants it to work. Imagine that you only have $ 5,000 for a trip and you spend $ 4,900 on travel alone. You won’t have much fun once you get to your destination with $ 100 in your pocket. Instead of spending most of your resources on travel, you should embrace the travel level you can use and focus on enjoying your destination instead. I am not suggesting that you go to Mexico on a donkey, but maybe First Class with extras is not very smart if you are on a budget.

Second, I think that many people convince themselves that there is no real destination worth dreaming about anyway. How sad for those who, consciously or not, come to believe that this life is all we have. Knowing much better, we have no excuses to ignore or deny that we are indeed going somewhere eternally of our own earthly choosing. Lastly, many of us lose sight of our destination because we do not keep our eyes, minds, hearts, and souls on it. If we spend most of our time focused on our present trek without looking at where we are headed, we may not end up where we originally intended to go.

Ingredients to The Ultimate Dish

When we cook or bake something, we go out and get the right ingredients and put them together as dictated in a recipe to end up with the desired dish. In order to do this, we need to first buy the right ingredients and then put those ingredients together in the right way. Nobody will suggest that we simply use any ingredients we have at home no matter what because we will not end up with the right dish. Likewise, nobody suggests that we simply buy the right ingredients and throw them on a table because our desired dish must be prepared correctly using these ingredients in the right combination.

In the same way, we must determine what gifts God has given us and how we might combine them in the best way to serve and love God and others. If we do this, we will have the correct recipe to end up with our desired result of eternal salvation. If we do not determine our ingredients or bother to put them together for God and others, we will never end up with our desired eternal result.

Conclusion

Joseph and Mary rode a donkey through treacherous areas on more than one occasion to go where God wanted them to go. They trusted God and knew that He would guide them to the right place. Similarly, we must accept whatever journey God provides us to the place that really matters- heaven.

2017 Gabriel Garnica

She is Our Mother, in the Order of Grace

By Elizabeth Tichvon

August 15, 2015 – Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

(Gospel Reading at the Mass during the day)

“And how does this happen to me that the Mother of the Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43)

“With Elizabeth we marvel, ‘And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?’ Because she gives us Jesus, her son, Mary is Mother of God and our mother; we can entrust all our cares and petitions to her: she prays for us as she prayed for herself: ‘Let it be done to me according to your word.’ By entrusting ourselves to her prayer, we abandon ourselves to the will of God together with her: ‘Thy will be done.’ (Catechism, Para. 2677)”

Can you recall a time when the Mother of our Lord came to you?

For me she came often and by way of my own Mom, who’s always had a remarkable devotion to Our Lady. In fact while growing up, I don’t think a day passed without her proclaiming, “Mother Mary, with your Son, bless us each and every one.” She knew that the demands of raising five children would take the divine help of our Lord, but what she didn’t know was the effect the prayer was having on me, and how her constant reliance upon Mary’s grace would become a stronghold for us both in years to come.

In writing this, I’d spent too much time searching the Catholic websites for the author of that prayer. Finally, I called my Mom to see if it had been written by one of the saints.

“It’s my own prayer,” she shared. “I’ve been saying it as long as I can remember.”

I was surprised and delighted to know that the author of the illustrious prayer was my Mom – a prayer that was answered repeatedly and assisted us in all our needs. Each time the little prayer would pass my Mom’s lips, Mary would show herself a Mother and lead us to her Son. As children, we relied on her deep faith as she abandoned herself to Mary, and we knew for certain our Lord was with us.

Now, the Mother of our Lord visits me regularly through my personal prayers and, without ever having ceased, through the daily, faith-filled petitions of my own devoted Mother.

Mother of Jesus, be a Mother to my Mother. Amen.

Elizabeth Tichvon

https://elizabethtichvon.wordpress.com

Arkeology

By Christian LeBlanc

Every year in our journey through the Bible and the Mass, the kids learn about All the Arks. Like everything else in our Salvation History curriculum, I cover them as they come up in the Bible. But the theme of Arks teaches a useful Catholic lesson that can be covered in a single class period like this:

Prelude: the Garden of Eden.

Per Genesis 2 and 3, Eden isn’t the whole of the Earth, but a distinct, separate place:

“And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.”

[I draw a quick picture of God, Adam, Eve, the Tree, and the Snake; and show them contained within the Garden.]

God dwelled in Eden in some physical way with Adam and Eve:

“And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

So even though Eden is not an ark, it prefigures arks:

a. God is present in Eden in a way that he is not present outside of Eden. In more general terms, what’s inside of Eden is better than what’s outside of Eden.
b. Eden is relatively small, and holds precious things inside: God’s Stuff. That is, the Tree of Life; and Adam and Eve before they sinned.
c. It’s protective.

1. Noah’s Ark

“God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh; for the earth is filled with violence through them; behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.”

[I draw the Ark with people and animals sticking their heads out.]

Right off I ask the kids what an ark is. Someone will say a boat, which is the starting point for looking at what an ark is, because it’s not always a boat. In the case of Noah’s ark and Moses’ ark, the Hebrew word is tebah. Tebahis only used in these two cases, but no-one is sure of its meaning. To keep it simple in class, I say tebah means container. And if the container floats, then it must be a boat. Then we discuss the Ark’s ‘arkiness’. It contains God’s Stuff, precious things, i.e., Noah’s family and the animals; things are better inside the Ark than outside; it protects; and it separates the relatively good inside from the sinful outside.

2. Moses’ Ark

Exodus 2 says “1 Now a man from the house of Levi went and took to wife a daughter of Levi. 2 The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. 3 And when she could hide him no longer she took for him an ark (Hebrew- tebah) made of bulrushes, and daubed it with bitumen and pitch; and she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds at the river’s brink. 4 And his sister stood at a distance, to know what would be done to him. 5 Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, and her maidens walked beside the river; she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to fetch it. 6 When she opened it she saw the child; and lo, the babe was crying.”

The kids will jump all over this Ark because they already know about Noah’s Ark: baby Moses is precious; he’s God’s Stuff; he’s better than what’s outside of the Ark; he’s protected. The Ark floats so it must be…a boat, yes, but in general an ark is just a container.

3. The Ark of the Covenant

Before getting to this Ark, the kids have to know about Moses and the Israelites’ exiting Egypt, and becoming nomads for 40 years. Being nomads, they live in tents. So if God is going to dwell among his people again, he needs a tent, too; what in Latin is called a tabernaculum, a little house:

“And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. 9 According to all that I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it.”

[I draw the outline of a big tent, just walls and roof. Then as I continue to read, inside the tent I draw the ark; the rings and poles; the seat; and the cherubim and their wings.]

“They shall make an ark of acacia wood; two cubits and a half shall be its length, a cubit and a half its breadth, and a cubit and a half its height. 11 And you shall overlay it with pure gold, within and without shall you overlay it, and you shall make upon it a molding of gold round about. 12 And you shall cast four rings of gold for it and put them on its four feet, two rings on the one side of it, and two rings on the other side of it. 13 You shall make poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with gold. 14 And you shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark, to carry the ark by them. 15 The poles shall remain in the rings of the ark; they shall not be taken from it. 16 And you shall put into the ark the testimony which I shall give you. 17 Then you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold; two cubits and a half shall be its length, and a cubit and a half its breadth. 18 And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. 19 Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end; of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. 20 The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. 21 And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark; and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you. 22 There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are upon the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you of all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.”

Now we learn the contents of the Ark: a pot of Manna, Aaron’s staff, and the Commandments. The kids once again can explain the arkiness: only God’s Stuff goes inside; the Stuff is protected; it’s better than what’s outside the Ark; it’s separated from the sinful stuff outside. If your kids don’t know about the contents already, you’ll have to give them some background before you start on the scripture bits above. We learn a new Hebrew word arown, which means chest, and the word always used to denote the Ark of the Covenant. I point out it’s another word for container, kind of like tebah. (You can skip the Hebrew if you want to.)

Time permitting, I’ll draw how Solomon’s Temple placed the Ark in a cube-shaped Holy of Holies, a box-in-a-box concept of sorts.

4. The Ark of the New Covenant

[I draw Mary and Gabriel]

“In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Hail, full of grace, * the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. …And Mary said to the angel, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?” 35 And the angel said to her, “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.”

[I add a dot to Mary’s tummy.]

Through guided discussion/ Q&A the kids sort out:

The dot is Jesus. Jesus is contained in Mary’s tummy. He will dwell in Mary for 9 months. [I show Jesus growing bigger inside Mary.] Jesus is way precious, more valuable than just God’s Stuff- Jesus is God Himself. If Mary is containing Jesus then we might refer to her as an Ark, the Ark of the New Covenant. Because Jesus has no sin, and lives in Mary, connects to her through his belly-button, Mary has no sin either. She and Jesus are separate from the rest of the world in that way.

5. The Tabernacle

[I draw the east end of a church interior, basically an altar, some candles, and a big crucifix.]

I get the kids to quickly tell me Jesus’ story in stages: Jesus was born, became an adult, founded his church, died for our sins, resurrected, and went to heaven. But Mary’s not the last Ark, nowadays we have one in every church. If the kids can’t guess what it is, I re-read this bit of Exodus: “And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. According to all that I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it.” They then can connect the tabernacle, the little house in that Exodus passage, to the tabernacle in the Church. [I add the tabernacle to the picture, and always show it as a little house with a gable-roof.] We see how they are related, and also how like Mary, the tabernacle isn’t just a container for God’s stuff, but a little house for Jesus to dwell in. It’s close to how God and Adam and Eve dwelled in Eden together, but Jesus doesn’t talk or walk around in the afternoon like God did in Eden. If a child asks why we don’t call the Tabernacle an Ark, I remind them a house is a container that people live in. So Jesus’ container is called a tabernaculum, Latin for little house, or tent, like the one God dwelled in among the nomadic Israelites.

6. The New Jerusalem

But remember as we say at Mass, the Church is a pilgrim church, which means it’s on a journey. At the Second Coming, we will have reached our destination, and we won’t have the Church anymore. In the Book of Revelation, St. John says: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; 3 and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them.”

So what sort of place will this be, where a few billion of us (one hopes) will dwell with God? Let’s see: “And in the Spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, 11 having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal…The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its breadth; and he measured the city with his rod, twelve thousand stadia; its length and breadth and height are equal. 17 He also measured its wall, a hundred and forty-four cubits by a man’s measure, that is, an angels. 18 The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass.”

Kids don’t know what a stadion is. Now I draw and talk, “Let’s see how big this New Jerusalem is…a stadion is is about 1/10 of a mile long, so it’s about one thousand two hundred miles long…and this dot is a person…and “its length and breadth and height are equal” like so…and the kids figure out as I draw that the New Jerusalem is a huge cube. Why, it’s just a big container, a huge…Ark! So at the end of our long journey from Eden, we’ll live with God in a big Ark, where all of us can fit. We won’t be separated from God ever again.

Then we do a quick review of all the Arks. If the board is big enough I don’t have to erase, so I can point to all of them. And I remind the children to always think of all the Arks whenever they think of one of them.

8-minute audio here.

God’s Mother, Our Mother

By Elizabeth Tichvon

Too often I need to remind myself that in my struggles I must turn to Jesus first, for He is my greatest consolation.

On this Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, I’m especially reminded of Mary’s suffering as she stood at the Cross of Jesus. How could she give the violence of her sorrow to her dying Son while He endured His own agonizing Passion?

Mary viewed her Son’s suffering with intense grief, yet in it she saw our salvation. Our Lady’s sorrows are embodied in the prediction and fulfillment of today’s Gospels; first, in Simeon’s prophesy of a sword piercing her heart, and second, in Jesus’ words to her and the beloved apostle, John, “Behold your son.” (John 19:26) “Behold your mother.” (John 19:27)

When Jesus gave Mary to John, He gave her to us as well. Now we, as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, share God’s Mother as our own – a Mother whose obedient and loving heart was pierced for the deliverance of our souls.

Elizabeth

https://elizabethtichvon.wordpress.com

Mary in the Catechism: The Four Marian Dogmas

By Pat Gohn

The more I get to know her Mary as my Mother, the more I love her. True love of someone is based on knowledge of him or her. With that in mind, this might be a good opportunity to refresh our knowledge of the person of Mary, as recorded doctrinally in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

(Note: This article might be longer than you’d normally read on Amazing Catechists, it’s more like 4 articles in one given its subject. But it’s purpose is to collect all this information in one place.)

All four of the Marian dogmas divinely reveal something of Mary’s personhood. Each truth helps us understand her role in salvation history.

The dogmas, in the order that they were declared as truth by the Church, are: Mary as the Mother of God, Mary as a Perpetual Virgin (“ever-virgin”), Mary’s Immaculate Conception, and the Assumption of Mary, body and soul, into heaven.

Growing up Catholic, I never doubted the validity of these dogmas. That is to say, until I met well-meaning Christians who just couldn’t buy what the Church was selling about Mary. In other words, I began to have my doubts about her too.

Sometimes those kinds of challenges are what we need to set us in the right direction. For me, I thought since the Church held most of these ideas for thousands of years, it might be worthy of some investigation. (And this was years before we had the Catechism in the form we have it today.) I needed to get to the truth of what was taught about Mary, the real person behind the serene-looking statue.

Mary as Mother of God

One of the first attacks made on Mary by the naysayers I encountered was that, indeed, Mary was the mother of Jesus… but certainly not the Mother of God. Little did I know that this was exactly the heresy the Church was trying to combat way back in the fifth century (431 AD) at the Council of Ephesus, when it declared Mary, the “Theotokos”, or “God-bearer”, hence, “Mother of God.”

The Council of Ephesus, while correcting this heresy, was confirming what was already revealed in the New Testament writings, which reveal Mary as the Mother of God. Luke 1: 31, 35 give us Gabriel’s words to Mary at the Annunciation:

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus… therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. [Emphasis mine.]

Other scripture passages reveal Mary as the mother of Jesus, who, we know to be the God-Man. (See Mt. 2:13, Jn. 2:1, Acts 1:14.) And St. Paul vividly describes Mary’s role in the Incarnation inGalatians 4:4:

“But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman…” [Emphasis mine.]

Even before Ephesus, Tradition formulated the words of the creed that declared: “[Jesus] was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary.”

When the Council of Ephesus decreed Mary as the Mother of God, it reaffirmed the two natures of Christ found in one Person: that Jesus is both human and divine. (Later known as the “hypostatic union.”) Anything outside of that unity makes Jesus into two persons, one human and one divine, which is heresy. So we see in this instance, how a Marian doctrine actually flows from and protects the truth about her Son!

You can read more about this in CCC 466 and 495, but it all summed up rather nicely in CCC 509:

Mary is truly “Mother of God” since she is the mother of the eternal Son of God made man, who is God himself.

You may recall this overarching guideline regarding “all things Mary” from CCC 487 and Part 1 of Mary in the Catechism:

What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.

Mary, Ever-Virgin

The dogma about Mary’s perpetual virginity maintains that Mary was ever a virgin, before, during, and after the birth of Christ. It is often here that Mary’s critics take exception, given our modern understanding of biology and human reproduction.

A virgin before birth. The prophet Isaiah 7:14 foretold it:

“Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be Emmanuel.”

And the New Testament (Luke 1: 26-27) confirms it:

“The angel Gabriel was sent from God… to a virgin betrothed… and the virgin’s name was Mary.”

And then there is the dialogue between Mary and the angel at the annunciation that leads to the miraculous “overshadowing” of Mary by the power of God. (Luke1:35.)

Tradition also reaffirms this in the Apostles’ Creed: “Born of the Virgin Mary.”

A virgin during the birth. CCC 499 reiterates, what the Second Vatican Council had previous taught:

The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.

Put another way, the birth of Jesus was a miraculous birth, just as his conception miraculous. The “integrity” of Mary’s sinless body was never violated by this birth. This idea was held from the time of the early Church Fathers. Later, the Council of Trent (16^thcentury) used this analogy to describe Christ’s birth: The newborn Christ came forth from the womb of Mary “as rays of the sun penetrate the substance of glass without breaking or injuring it in the least.”

It also follows that Mary’s childbirth would be exempt from pain, since she was a sinless creature (see “Immaculate Conception” below), and laboring in childbirth is a result of Original Sin (Gen. 3:16).

A virgin after the birth. Many people take issue with the idea of Mary’s perpetual virginity, given New Testament accounts that mention the supposed “siblings” of Jesus (Cf. Mk 3:31-35; 6:3; 1 Cor 9:5; Gal 1:19). The Catechism replies in paragraph 500:

Against this doctrine the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus. The Church has always understood these passages as not referring to other children of the Virgin Mary. In fact James and Joseph, “brothers of Jesus”, are the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom St. Matthew significantly calls “the other Mary” They are close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression.

Then, there are the words of Jesus from the cross giving Mary into the care of John (John 19:26-27). If Jesus had siblings, especially brothers, would not Mary’s care be entrusted to them? Instead, John takes Mary in.

I admit this one was a tough one for me to fully believe, at first. I could understand that Jesus was Mary’s only son, but I was not so sure about the lack of marital relations between Joseph and Mary. Wouldn’t a holy marriage be consummated? Not necessarily, so I learned.

I admit my sensibilities, formed in part by modern culture, had trouble understanding this idea of a holy marriage without the marital act. I needed more information. And I found it, in learning the importance of mutual understanding and consent in a marriage. Our modern catechism teaches that marriage is first based on an exchange of consent, and then, only then, it may be consummated physically. (See CCC 1639-1640.) But the consent is the heart of the marriage bond, not the consummation.

While the Catechism does not go into detail on this exact point of Mary and Joseph’s marriage, I offer this helpful explanation from Dr. Mark Miravalle’s Introduction to Mary, reflecting on their marital union:

Finally, some would argue that if the marriage between Mary and Joseph was never consummated, then it would not have been a true marriage or would have been unnatural. However, the essence of the marriage bond between husband and wife is their complete and unconditional gift of self and union of the heart, of which the physical union is a concrete sign. If for a good and holy reason husband and wife should choose to refrain from relations, either for a time or permanently (under exceptional circumstances), this would not invalidate a marriage or affect its true bond, which is rooted not in the physical but in the spiritual union of the spouses.

There are numerous examples in Scripture where God asks married couples to renounce [or abstain from] relations.

[See Ex 19:15; 1 Sam 21:15; 1 Cor 7:5.]

These scriptural examples show that when men and women are near what God has sanctified, it can be also appropriate for them to respond by giving themselves directly and undividedly to God. If in these cases it was fitting that men and women should remain abstinent, it can hardly be surprising that present before the great miracle of the Incarnation, Mary and Joseph chose to remain permanently virginal as well.

CCC 506 alludes to Mary’s faith and undivided heart here:

Mary is a virgin because her virginity is the sign of her faith unadulterated by any doubt, and of her undivided gift of herself to God’s will. It is her faith that enables her to become the mother of the Savior: [St. Augustine taught:] “Mary is more blessed because she embraces faith in Christ than because she conceives the flesh of Christ.”

The Immaculate Conception

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception was finally promulgated in 1854… but the seeds of it are found much earlier in a careful reading of scripture. When the Angel addresses Mary at the Annunciation, he does not address her by her name. Instead, he uses the title “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” This title might as well be her name, for it describes Mary’s true nature; her person is full of grace. Notice that she is addressed as “full of grace”, even before the Angel announces that she will be asked to be the Mother of God.

Know anyone that fits that description? Nope. She’s the only one. The rest of humanity is fallen.

Mary’s detractors what to know what makes her so special? If she is human, she should be subject to all the pitfalls of humanity, and just as sinful are the rest of us, right? Not quite. There’s more to Mary’s story, and it takes a very careful reading for Scripture to parse it out. Not to mention 2000 years of biblical interpretation and theological reflection.

What’s sooooo special about Mary is her Immaculate Conception. And it means this: Mary was redeemed by the merits of her Son Jesus at Calvary – who is God – at her conception, so she never received a fallen nature. The nature she received was like that of Eve’s before the Fall. And recall, that after the fall, the Immaculate Conception is implied, theologians say, in this verse from Genesis 3:15, that speaks of a woman to come:

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

This is why we have references to Mary as the “new Eve.” And why St. Jerome (4^th century) taught this about Mary: “Death through Eve, life through Mary.” CCC 508 states:

From among the descendants of Eve, God chose the Virgin Mary to be the mother of his Son. “Full of grace”, Mary is the most excellent fruit of redemption: from the first instant of her conception, she was totally preserved from the stain of original sin and she remained pure from all personal sin throughout her life.

Mary, we might say, is the first person redeemed, by an application of the grace of Christ’s victory over sin and death on the Cross. And her sinless, loving heart, allowed her the perfect response to God’s call on her life: “Yes!”

Blessed Duns Scotus (d. 1308) called it “preservative redemption.” Preservative redemption addressed this question of Mary’s redemption taking place before her Son was even born. Huh? The short of it is this: God, the Creator of time, is also Lord over time, and can work outside of time. And God can apply his graces throughout history (time) as He deems fit. Therefore, God, in his divine plan of salvation, willed that Mary would be saved first, in her humanity, by the application of the graces won on the Cross for humanity by her Son, Jesus… providing a perfectly pure temple for the Holy Spirit to later “overshadow” and allow the Son of God to take on flesh in a sinless womb.

Whew! Got all that?

This is what the Catechism says in CCC 491 and 492:

Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:

The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.

The splendor of an entirely unique holiness by which Mary is enriched from the first instant of her conception comes wholly from Christ: she is redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son. The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and chose her in Christ before the foundation of theworld, to be holy and blameless before him in love.

Mary’s Assumption

(If you are still reading this far, especially after trying to understand the depth of the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption is almost easy to understand!)

We start back to Genesis 3:15 (above) where the enmity between the woman and the serpent represents the past (Eve) and the future (Mary) who will share in the victory of her Son over the Devil.

As we know, the effects of Original Sin were sin and death. Jesus, by his Cross and Resurrection has set us free from both. And by his merits, we see this perfected in the person of Mary. First, her Immaculate Conception shows how Jesus conquered sin, and by his grace, preserved her from Original Sin. Second, we see how Mary’s Assumption, is a particular grace awarded to Mary, so she, who is sinless, does not undergo bodily corruption at the end of her earthly life.

The Assumption of Mary is a natural consequence of the Immaculate Conception. And, it is a unique privilege that the Son affords his Mother.

CCC 966 teaches:

Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians.

Finally, Mary’s assumption serves as an eschatological sign (pointing to things to come in the afterlife)… she reminds us of the perfected Church we will become in heaven, as she is an icon of the Church both now and in the future.

CCC 972 states:

The Mother of Jesus, in the glory which she possesses in body and soul in heaven, is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise she shines forth on earth until the day of the Lord shall come, a sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim People of God.

Mariology (the study of Mary) is a discreet field of study within theology. There is so much more that could be said on all these dogma. Today’s lesson is but a taste.

But I pray that you will come to love Mary in a deeper way, as you see just how intimately her life is bound to the life and grace of her Son, Jesus. Mary has no power in and of herself, save what comes to through Jesus. By way of a final analogy… if Jesus is the sun, Mary is the moon… always reflecting Him!