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New: "Marian Veneration: Firm Foundations" by Francis Cardinal Arinze

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Marian Veneration: Firm Foundations

by Francis Cardinal Arinze

The Blessed Virgin Mary is venerated by many followers of Jesus Christ as an important part of their practice of the faith. Believing that she is the Mother of God because her Son is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who for our salvation took on human nature, Christians of both East and West honor Mary in various ways. They strive to imitate her as a great model of Christian discipleship.

Cardinal Arinze wrote this book for both those devoted to the Blessed Mother and those who do not yet know or understand her. Based on the Scriptures, the teachings of the Church, and the sacred liturgy, the cardinal provides a solid foundation for Marian veneration—one that can benefit all Christians, regardless of their church affiliation.

Cardinal Francis Arinze, the former Prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship, is a highly regarded prelate, teacher and churchman. He has written numerous books on theology, spirituality and prayer, including Meeting Jesus and Following Him, Radical Discipleship, The Layperson's Distinctive Role, and his biography, God's Invisible Hand, all published by Ignatius Press.

"An extraordinary blend of rigorous scholarship and filial devotion, Marian Veneration gives all the reasons for why the Virgin Mary is – and will always be – at the heart of Christianity.  This book will serve as a reference work for generations to come!"
— Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC, Author, Champions of the Rosary: The History and Heroes of a Spiritual Weapon

"To praise the art is to praise the artist. Mary is the greatest work of art ever created by God. Cardinal Arinze helps us to see the pierced Hand of the Master holding the brush that created Mary, his greatest Icon of the Church."
— Mark P. Shea, Author, Mary, Mother of the Son

"The Second Vatican Council urged theologians and preachers to present the authentic image of the Virgin as it is given us in the Scriptures, the sacred liturgy, and the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church. That is precisely what he does in this excellent work."
— Fr. Michael Gaitley, M.I.C., Author, 33 Days to Morning Glory

"Simply the best book of its kind in print today. Cardinal Arinze not only masterfully provides the essential foundation for the veneration of Mary but also dispenses with manifold errors concerning Marian theology and devotion both inside and outside the Church."
— Tim Staples, Director of Apologetics and Evangelization, Catholic Answers

Mary was no ordinary woman: An anthropologist unearths the life of Jesus’ mother

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 6, 2016 – For the first time ever — and just in time for Advent — a new release presents an archeological and historical biography of the most adored and remarkable woman in history: MARY OF NAZARETH: History, Archeology, Legends, by author Michael Hesemann, digs into the heart of the life lived by Mary, the mother of God. From her earliest days as a small child, to the Annunciation and her life raising and loving Jesus, the most beloved, along with the lesser known chapters in the Blessed Mother’s life, Mary is examined in new and impressive detail in Hesemann’s book. Popular legends are explored, ground unearthed and contemporary sources scoured.
 
Hesemann, an accomplished author of 38 books who studied history and cultural anthropology in Germany, is uniquely situated to tell this important story of the Blessed Mother. He has participated in archaeological excavations in the Holy Land, and has helped to date discoveries in Nazareth as well as several Christian relics. Hesemann has advised and participated in TV programs for the Discovery and History Channels as well as EWTN.
 
The author’s impressive background is on display in MARY OF NAZARETH, as the reader is taken on a virtual expedition to the places where Mary lived or traveled. Included in the book are vivid, color images of the places described and investigated by Hesemann, including the Advocata icon (the oldest known Marian image), the interior of the Holy House of Loreto, Mary’s Well (the scene of the Magnificat), Mary’s tomb in the Kidron Valley and many more that bring to life in a special way the locations that played important parts in the daily life of Mary.
 
MARY OF NAZARETH provides the millions of Marian follower’s new insight into the fascinating woman who was the Mother of Jesus and the context for and the answers to many long-held queries about Mary. Hesemann also delivers the truth behind the real Christmas story, including the Three Wise Men and the Star of Bethlehem, just in time for the Advent season.
 
Says Paul Thigpen, Ph.D., author of A Year with Mary: Daily Meditations on the Mother of God: “Through historical, archaeological and textual research, Hesemann takes us on a lively adventure that sheds fascinating new light on the mother of Jesus. His personal devotion to the Virgin shines through his extensive scholarship to create a delightful and enchanting portrait of the Mother of God.”
 
For more information, to request a review copy, or to schedule an interview with Michael Hesemann, please contact Kevin Wandra (404-788-1276 or [email protected]) of Carmel Communications.  

"The Blessed Virgin in the History of Christianity" by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

The Blessed Virgin in the History of Christianity | John A. Hardon, S.J.

Christianity would be meaningless without the Blessed Virgin. Her quiet presence opened Christian history at the Incarnation and will continue to pervade the Church's history until the end of time.

Our purpose in this meditation is to glance over the past two thousand years to answer one question: What are the highlights of our Marian faith as found in the Bible and the teaching of the Catholic Church?

New Testament

The first three evangelists were mainly concerned with tracing Christ's ancestry as Son of Man and, therefore, as Son of Mary. St. Matthew, writing for the Jews, stressed Christ's descent from Abraham. St. Luke, disciple of St. Paul, traced Christ's origin to Adam, the father of the human race. Yet both writers were at pains to point out that Mary's Son fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah about the Messiah. He was to be born of a virgin to become Emmanuel, which means "God with us." Luke gave a long account of the angel's visit to Mary to announce that the Child would be holy and would be called the "Son of God" (Luke 1:36).

St. John followed the same pattern. He introduced Mary as the Mother of Jesus when He began His public ministry. In answer to her wishes, Christ performed the miracle of changing water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana in Galilee. What happened then has continued ever since. Most of the miraculous shrines of Christianity have been dedicated to Our Lady.

It is also St. John who tells us that Mary stood under the Cross of Calvary as her Son was dying for our salvation. Speaking of John, Jesus told His Mother, "This is your son." To John, He said of Mary, "This is your Mother." The apostle John represented all of us. On Good Friday, therefore, Christ made His Mother the supernatural Mother of the human race and made us her spiritual children.

Mother of God

In the early fifth century, a controversy arose in Asia Minor, where the Bishop of Constantinople claimed that Mary was only the Mother of Christ (Greek=Christotokos). He was condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431, which declared that "the holy Virgin is the Mother of God (Greek=Theotokos).

St. Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, was mainly responsible for this solemn definition of Mary's divine maternity. It was St. Cyril who thus composed the most famous Marian hymn of antiquity. It is a praise of Our Lady as Mediatrix with God:

Through you, the Trinity is glorified.
Through you, the Cross is venerated throughout the world.
Through you, angels and archangels rejoice.
Through you, the demons are driven away.
Through you, the fallen creature is raised to heaven.
Through you, the churches are founded in the whole world.
Through you, people are led to conversion.

Every other title of Mary and all the Marian devotion of the faithful are finally based on the Blessed Virgin's primary claim to our extraordinary love. She is the Mother of God. She gave her Son all that every human mother gives the child she conceives and gives birth to. She gave Him His human body. Without her, there would have been no Incarnation, no Redemption, no Eucharist; in a word, no Christianity.

Mary's Virginity

Logically related to her divine maternity is Our Lady's perpetual virginity. From the earliest days the Church has taught that Mary was a virgin before giving birth to Jesus, in giving His birth, and after His birth in Bethlehem.

The Assumption" by Monsignor Ronald Knox

The Assumption | Mgr. Ronald Knox | From Pastoral and Occasional Sermons | August 15th | Ignatius Insight

A cave Jeremias found there, in which he set down tabernacle and ark and incense-altar, and stopped up the entrance behind him. There were some that followed; no time they lost in coming up to mark the spot, but find it they could not.—2 Machabees 2:5-6.

After this, God's heavenly temple was thrown open, and the ark of the covenant was plain to view, standing in his temple.—Apocalypse 11:19.

The Son of God came to earth to turn our hearts away from earth, Godwards. The material world in which we live was, by his way of it, something immaterial; it didn't matter. We were not to be always worrying about our clothes being shabby, or wondering where our next meal was to come from; the God who fed the sparrows and clothed the lilies would see to all that. We were not to resent the injuries done to us by our neighbours; the aggressor was welcome to have a slap at the other cheek, and when he took away our greatcoat he was to find that we had left our coat inside it. Life itself, the life we know, was a thing of little value; it was a cheap bargain, if we lost life here to attaIn the life hereafter. There was a supernatural world, interpenetrating, at a higher level, the world of our experience; it has its own laws, the only rule we were to live by, its own prizes, which alone were worth the winning. All that he tried to teach us; and we, intent on our own petty squabbles, our sordid struggle for existence, cold-shouldered him at first, and then silenced his protest with a cross.

His answer was to rise from the dead; and then, for forty days in the world's history, that supernatural life which he had preached to us flourished and functioned under the conditions of earth. A privileged few saw, with mortal eyes, the comings and goings of immortality, touched with their hands the impalpable. For forty days; then, as if earth were too frail a vessel to contain the mystery, the tension was suddenly relaxed. He vanished behind a cloud; the door of the supernatural shut behind him, and we were left to the contemplation of this material world, drab and barren as ever.

What was the first thing the apostles saw when they returned from the mount of the Ascension to the upper room? "Together with Mary"—is it only an accident that the Mother of God is mentioned just here, by name, and nowhere else outside the gospels? The Incarnate Word had left us, as silently as he came to us, leaving no trace behind him of his passage through time. No trace? At least, in the person of his blessed Mother, he had bequeathed to us a keepsake, a memory. She was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, the new Eve of the new Adam. That body of hers, still part of the material order of things, had housed and suckled God. As long as she lived, there would still be a link, a golden link, between this lower earth and Paradise. As long as she lived; and even if it was God's will that she, Eve's daughter, should undergo the death that was Eve's penalty, the penalty she had never incurred, her mortal remains would still be left with us, an echo from the past, an influence on our lives. We men, since we are body and soul, do honour even to the lifeless bodies which have housed the dead; Napoleon rests in the Invalides, Lenin at Moscow. The day would come when there would be pilgrimages from all over the world to the shrines of Peter and Paul at Rome, of James at Compostela. Was it not reasonable to hope that somewhere, at Jerusalem, perhaps, or at Ephesus, we should be privileged to venerate the mortal remains of her through whom salvation came to us? Or perhaps at Bethlehem, Bethlehem-Ephrata, this new Ark of God would rest, as the ark rested of old; "And now, at Ephrata, we have heard tidings of what we looked for" [1] —the old tag from the Psalms should still ring true.

God disposed otherwise. Jewish tradition recorded that when Jerusalem was destroyed by the armies of Babylon, the prophet Jeremias took the ark of God away from the city, and buried it in some secret cleft of the rock; it was never seen again. Never again, except by St John, in his vision on the isle of Patmos; he saw the ark of God, but in heaven. And so it was with this new Ark of God, the virgin body that had been his resting-place. When and where she passed away from this earth, or in what manner, nobody can tell us for certain. But we know where she is. When Elias was carried up into heaven, the sons of the prophets at Jericho asked Eliseus if they might go out in search of him; "it may be", they said, "the spirit of the Lord has carried him off and left him on some hill-top or in some cleft of the valleys." He consented grudgingly, and when they returned from their fruitless errand, greeted them with the words; "Did I not tell you not to send?" [2] So it is with the body of the blessed Virgin: nowhere in Christendom will you hear the rumour of it. So many churches, all over the world, eagerly claiming to possess the relics of this or that saint; who shall tell us whether John the Baptist sleeps at Amiens, or at Rome? But never of our Lady; and if any of us still hoped to find that inestimable treasure, the Holy Father has called off the search, only the other day. We know where her body is; it is in heaven.

Of course, we knew it all along. For myself, I have never doubted the doctrine of the Assumption since I heard it preached forty-four years ago, in an Anglican church over at Plymouth. You see, we get it all wrong about body and soul, simply because our minds are dominated by matter. We think it the most natural thing in the world that soul and body should be separated after death; that the body should remain on earth and the soul go to heaven, once it is purged and assoiled. But it isn't a natural thing at all; soul and body were made for one another, and the temporary divorce between them is something out of the way, something extraordinary, occasioned by the Fall. In our blessed Lady, not born under the star of that defeat, human nature was perfectly integrated; body and soul belonged to one another, as one day, please God, yours and mine will.

Long ago, in those fields of Bethlehem, Ruth had gleaned in the footsteps of her beloved; and he, secretly, had given charge to the reapers to drop handfuls of corn on purpose, so that she might fill her bosom the sooner. So he, whose reapers are the angels, would leave for his blessed Mother a special portion of those graces that were to enrich mankind. The child-bearing which brought, to us others, redemption from the fault of our first parents should bring, to her, exemption; the empty tomb, which assures us that our bodies will rise at the judgment, was for her the earnest of an immediate resurrection; Christ the first-fruits, and who should glean them, but she? For that, heaven is the richer, earth the poorer. We can go to Lourdes, and offer adoration in the place where her feet stood; we cannot press with our lips some precious reliquary containing the hand that swaddled Christ. In a world so dominated by matter, in which matter itself seems to carry the seeds of its own destruction, there is no material object left that can link our destinies with hers.

And yet, is the loss all loss? When the dogma of the Assumption was defined a friend of mine, a very intelligent Mohammedan, congratulated me on the gesture which the Holy Father had made; a gesture (said he) against materialism. And I think he was right. When our Lord took his blessed Mother, soul and body, into heaven, he did honour to the poor clay of which our human bodies are fashioned. It was the first step towards reconciling all things in heaven and earth to his eternal Father, towards making all things new. "The whole of nature", St Paul tells us, "groans in a common travail all the while. And not only do we see that, but we ourselves do the same; we ourselves although we have already begun to reap our spiritual harvest, groan in our hearts, waiting for that adoption which is the ransoming of our bodies from their slavery." [3] That transformation of our material bodies to which we look forward one day has been accomplished—we know it now for certain-in her.

When the Son of God came to earth, he came to turn our hearts away from earth, Godwards. And as the traveller, shading his eyes while he contemplates some long vista of scenery, searches about for a human figure that will give him the scale of those distant surroundings, so we, with dazzled eyes looking Godwards, identify and welcome one purely human figure close to his throne. One ship has rounded the headland, one destiny is achieved, one human perfection exists. And as we watch it, we see God clearer, see God greater, through this masterpiece of his dealings with mankind.

(A sermon broadcast from Buckfast Abbey, Devon, on the Feast of Our Lady Assumption, 15 August 1954.)

ENDNOTES:

[1] Psalm 131:6.
[2] 4 Kings 2:16, 18.
[3] Romans 8:22-3.

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Related IgnatiusInsight.com Links:

• IgnatiusInsight.com Author Page for Monsignor Ronald Knox
• The Modern Distaste for Religion | Ronald Knox
• The Mind of Knox | David Rooney
• The School of Ronald Knox | An Interview with David Rooney
• The Monsignor and the Don | An Interview with Fr. Milton Walsh
• Monsignor Ronald Knox: Convert, Priest, Apologist | An Interview with Fr. Milton Walsh
• Experience, Reason, and Authority in the Apologetics of Ronald Knox | Milton Walsh | From Ronald Knox As Apologist
• The Four Marks of the Church | Ronald A. Knox
• Review of The Belief of Catholics | Carl E. Olson
• Ronald Knox, Apologist | Carl E. Olson
• A Lesson Learned From Monsignor Ronald A. Knox | Carl E. Olson
• Converts and Saints | An Interview with Joseph Pearce

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Monsignor Ronald Knox (1888-1957) was the son of the Anglican Bishop of Manchester and it appeared that he, being both spiritually perceptive and intellectually gifted, would also have a successful life as an Anglican prelate. But while in school in the early 1900s Knox began a long struggle between his love for the Church of England and his growing attraction to the Catholic Church. He converted to Catholicism at the age of twenty-nine, became a priest, and wrote numerous books on spiritual and literary topics, including The Belief of Catholics, Captive Flames: On Selected Saints and Christian Heroes, The Hidden Stream: The Mysteries of the Christian Faith, Pastoral and Occasional Sermons, and many more. Visit Knox's IgnatiusInsight.com author page for more information about his life and work.

"The Assumption" by Monsignor Ronald Knox

The Assumption | Mgr. Ronald Knox | From Pastoral and Occasional Sermons | August 15th | Ignatius Insight 

A cave Jeremias found there, in which he set down tabernacle and ark and incense-altar, and stopped up the entrance behind him. There were some that followed; no time they lost in coming up to mark the spot, but find it they could not.—2 Machabees 2:5-6.

After this, God's heavenly temple was thrown open, and the ark of the covenant was plain to view, standing in his temple.—Apocalypse 11:19.

The Son of God came to earth to turn our hearts away from earth, Godwards. The material world in which we live was, by his way of it, something immaterial; it didn't matter. We were not to be always worrying about our clothes being shabby, or wondering where our next meal was to come from; the God who fed the sparrows and clothed the lilies would see to all that. We were not to resent the injuries done to us by our neighbours; the aggressor was welcome to have a slap at the other cheek, and when he took away our greatcoat he was to find that we had left our coat inside it. Life itself, the life we know, was a thing of little value; it was a cheap bargain, if we lost life here to attaIn the life hereafter. There was a supernatural world, interpenetrating, at a higher level, the world of our experience; it has its own laws, the only rule we were to live by, its own prizes, which alone were worth the winning. All that he tried to teach us; and we, intent on our own petty squabbles, our sordid struggle for existence, cold-shouldered him at first, and then silenced his protest with a cross.

His answer was to rise from the dead; and then, for forty days in the world's history, that supernatural life which he had preached to us flourished and functioned under the conditions of earth. A privileged few saw, with mortal eyes, the comings and goings of immortality, touched with their hands the impalpable. For forty days; then, as if earth were too frail a vessel to contain the mystery, the tension was suddenly relaxed. He vanished behind a cloud; the door of the supernatural shut behind him, and we were left to the contemplation of this material world, drab and barren as ever.

What was the first thing the apostles saw when they returned from the mount of the Ascension to the upper room? "Together with Mary"—is it only an accident that the Mother of God is mentioned just here, by name, and nowhere else outside the gospels? The Incarnate Word had left us, as silently as he came to us, leaving no trace behind him of his passage through time. No trace? At least, in the person of his blessed Mother, he had bequeathed to us a keepsake, a memory. She was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, the new Eve of the new Adam. That body of hers, still part of the material order of things, had housed and suckled God. As long as she lived, there would still be a link, a golden link, between this lower earth and Paradise. As long as she lived; and even if it was God's will that she, Eve's daughter, should undergo the death that was Eve's penalty, the penalty she had never incurred, her mortal remains would still be left with us, an echo from the past, an influence on our lives.

Fairest Daughter of the Father: On the Solemnity of the Assumption

Fairest Daughter of the Father: On the Solemnity of the Assumption | Rev. Charles M. Mangan 

The Solemnity of the Assumption, celebrated annually on August 15, presents a golden opportunity to reconsider the person of the Ever-Virgin Mary and her singular mission in the Church. We often contemplate the relationship between Mary and her Son; this reflection will focus on the relationship which Our Lady enjoys with the First Person of the Most Blessed Trinity. 

Mary has been hailed as the "first-born" daughter of the Father. This reality is evident if one remembers that God--and in a specific way the Father--has created Mary, just as He has created us. She is "one of us" because she is fully human. We are children of the Almighty in a similar vein in which she is His daughter. As we rely on God for our very existence, so, too, does our Immaculate Mother. 

What do the Father and His sinless daughter share? Venerable Pius IX (1846-1878), in his Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus (December 8, 1854) in which he once-and-for-all defined the truth of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception, wrote: "To her did the Father will to give His only-begotten Son--the Son Whom, equal to the Father and begotten by Him, the Father loves from His Heart--and to give this Son in such a way that He would be the one and the same common Son of God the Father and of the Blessed Virgin Mary." 

The Father gave many overwhelming spiritual riches to Mary to strengthen her in her inspiring vocation as the Mother of His Son. Yet, He gave no greater gift than that of the Lord Jesus. Mary, in turn, imitated the Father in raising Jesus from before infancy to manhood. Jesus knew well the best of all gifts which His Mother faithfully imparted: the boundless love of His Beloved Father. Now, as the Son of Mary, Christ came to experience the love of His Mother which was patterned after that of His Father. 

One may rightly assert that Jesus Christ is the link between the Father and Mary. We often claim that children receive much of their identity from their parents. Eye color, physical build and even disposition are often traced from the child back to its parents. Truly, the offspring rely on their father and mother for multiple and varied things. (And, of course, the Messiah willed to come forth from Mary and be dependent on her and Saint Joseph.) However, the Holy Family of Nazareth is a different case. Mary and her loving husband discovered their purpose in the Divine Child. In Jesus, they found their identity--unto everlasting life!

Mary, true Seat of Wisdom and true Mother of the King, presents the Redeemer of all peoples

"St. Juvenal Triptych" (1422) by Masaccio [WikiArt.org]

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, January 4, 2015, The Epiphany of the Lord | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Isa 60:1-6
• Psa 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13
• Eph 3:2-3A, 5-6
• Mt 2:1-12

Pope Paul VI, in the Apostolic Exhortation, “Marialis Cultus” (Feb. 1974), emphasized that the “Christmas season is a prolonged commemoration of the divine, virginal and salvific motherhood of her whose ‘inviolate virginity brought the Saviour into the world.’” This is so much the case, he wrote, that “on the Solemnity of the Birth of Christ the Church both adores the Savior and venerates His glorious Mother.”

He then stated the following about today’s great feast: “On the Epiphany, when she celebrates the universal call to salvation, the Church contemplates the Blessed Virgin, the true Seat of Wisdom and true Mother of the King, who presents to the Wise Men, for their adoration, the Redeemer of all peoples (cf. Mt. 2:11).”

Mary’s presentation of her Son to the wise men was another demonstration of her mysterious and maternal role in salvation history. It was mysterious—not magical—because Mary, sinless from conception by the power of the Holy Spirit, conceived the sinless Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Her faith is that of a disciple—but not just any disciple, for she is the first and perfect disciple of her Lord.

Her role, then, is truly maternal, for she is both mother of the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, but also mother of the Church, the mystical body of Christ. Mary, although not divine by nature, is at the heart of the culmination of divine revelation: the coming of God in the flesh.

And so the Solemnity of the Epiphany is a celebration of the epiphaneia—that revelation and manifestation—of God become man, Jesus the Christ. The feast, going back to the early centuries of the Church, has focused on three key events, related to one another by virtue of being revelatory in nature: the visitation of the Magi, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, and the turning of water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana.

Each manifests the astounding, transforming truth of the Incarnation. Each, in turn, opens up further the mystery of God and calls us to worship and adore the Messiah.

Consider that Mary and Joseph did not have to receive the magi. We also recognize that Mary did not have to accept God’s invitation to be the mother of the Savior, nor did Joseph, the foster father of Christ, have to obey the directives given to him by angels. Mary and Joseph were not stock characters or tools used by an impersonal force, but real people who accepted the call and the word of God with free will and full faith. Then, in turn, they opened up their hearts and home to those seeking the Word who is the way, the truth, and the life.

The magi represent those who earnestly desire the fullness of truth and who yearn to see the face of God. I am struck again by how Matthew’s account presents, so simply but powerfully, the four actions or responses of the magi. First, they were filled with joy upon recognizing the star and being brought to the home of the Christ child. Secondly, they entered into His home and into communion with Him and His Mother. Third, they worshipped Him. And, finally, they offered Him the finest gifts they possessed.

The readings from the prophet Isaiah and from Saint Paul to the Ephesians draw out this fact about the magi: they were not Jews. The Kingdom of God is offered to and includes peoples from all nations; it is not for a people united by ethnicity or geography, but by grace and the fullness of revelation. Thus, the magi represent the first of a vast number of Gentiles brought into the family of God through the Christ-child, who is the King of the Jews and the King of kings.

And Mary, the true Seat of Wisdom and true Mother of the King, continues to open the doors to her Son so we can see him, know him, and worship him.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the January 8, 2012, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

The Blessed Virgin in the History of Christianity

The Blessed Virgin in the History of Christianity | John A. Hardon, S.J. 

Christianity would be meaningless without the Blessed Virgin. Her quiet presence opened Christian history at the Incarnation and will continue to pervade the Church's history until the end of time.

Our purpose in this meditation is to glance over the past two thousand years to answer one question: What are the highlights of our Marian faith as found in the Bible and the teaching of the Catholic Church?

New Testament

The first three evangelists were mainly concerned with tracing Christ's ancestry as Son of Man and, therefore, as Son of Mary. St. Matthew, writing for the Jews, stressed Christ's descent from Abraham. St. Luke, disciple of St. Paul, traced Christ's origin to Adam, the father of the human race. Yet both writers were at pains to point out that Mary's Son fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah about the Messiah. He was to be born of a virgin to become Emmanuel, which means "God with us." Luke gave a long account of the angel's visit to Mary to announce that the Child would be holy and would be called the "Son of God" (Luke 1:36).

St. John followed the same pattern. He introduced Mary as the Mother of Jesus when He began His public ministry. In answer to her wishes, Christ performed the miracle of changing water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana in Galilee. What happened then has continued ever since. Most of the miraculous shrines of Christianity have been dedicated to Our Lady.

It is also St. John who tells us that Mary stood under the Cross of Calvary as her Son was dying for our salvation. Speaking of John, Jesus told His Mother, "This is your son." To John, He said of Mary, "This is your Mother." The apostle John represented all of us. On Good Friday, therefore, Christ made His Mother the supernatural Mother of the human race and made us her spiritual children.

Mother of God

In the early fifth century, a controversy arose in Asia Minor, where the Bishop of Constantinople claimed that Mary was only the Mother of Christ (Greek=Christotokos). He was condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431, which declared that "the holy Virgin is the Mother of God (Greek=Theotokos).

The Spirit of Christmas and the Spirit of Islam

Pope Francis kisses a figurine of the baby Jesus after celebrating Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican Dec. 24, 2013. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

The Spirit of Christmas and the Spirit of Islam | William Kilpatrick | CWR

How much do Christians and Muslims have in common? Plenty of clues can be found in the celebration of Christmas.

“The man that hath no music in himself/ Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds/ Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils” –William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Every year around this time, Ibrahim Hooper, the spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), sends out a Christmas message to Christians. The gist of the message is that Christians and Muslims have much in common because “Muslims also love and revere Jesus as one of God’s greatest messengers to mankind.” And to prove it he quotes from chapter 3, verse 45 of the Koran:

Behold! The angels said: “O Mary! God giveth thee glad tidings of a Word from Him. His name will be Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and in (the company of) those nearest to God.

The Catholic authors of Nostra Aetate probably had this verse in mind when they declared that Muslims “revere” Jesus and “honor Mary.” Statements like this, along with the fact that Muslims esteem prophets and martyrs and engage in prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and pilgrimage, are seen by many Catholics as proof that Islam and Christianity are very similar religions. Christians would do well, however, not to take too much comfort in these apparent similarities. Although Christians and Muslims share some similar texts and similar practices, the two faiths are separated by a wide gulf.

A close examination of texts will reveal the chasm, but another way of grasping the crucial differences between Islam and Christianity is to note that the two faiths have a completely different “feel.” When we talk about a “gut feeling” or “getting a feeling” for a new activity, we mean that we understand something in an intuitive, experiential way. It’s one thing to read an instructional manual on tennis, and another thing to play it.

Christmas: A Point of Reference

One way to appreciate the different “feel” of the two religions is to think about Christmas. It means a lot to Christians. They decorate Christmas trees, set up mangers, exchange Christmas cards, sing carols, and celebrate solemn yet joyful liturgies. On the other hand, although Muslims celebrate a number of religious holy days, Christmas is not one of them—which, when you think about it, is a bit strange. Muslims, according to Hooper, “love and revere Jesus,” but they studiously ignore his birthday.

Muslims have the Christmas story (or, at least, a truncated version of it), but they don’t have Christmas. Why? Well, essentially because there’s nothing to celebrate. To Muslims, Jesus is not the redeeming savior of the world, but simply a prophet whose main job, it seems, was to announce the coming of Muhammad.

Not only does Islam lack Christmas, it lacks many of the humanizing elements that we associate with Christmas.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

"The Mystery of His Nativity"

"Nativity with the Torch/La Nativite a la Torche" by Le Nain brothers (c.1599-c.1648) [WikiArt.org]

"The Mystery of His Nativity" | Fr. James V. Schall, SJ | Catholic World Report

While secular courts deny what is obviously true and call it "law," Christianity joyfully proclaims that Truth can be both known and never exhausted

The phrase “the mystery of His (Christ’s) Nativity” is taken from the Preface of the Masses immediately before Christmas. This wording struck me for several reasons. One has to do with the notion of “mystery”. We actually know quite a lot about the Nativity of Christ. We know the place and the circumstances. We know the parents. We know the names of rulers and emperors around at the time. Much enterprise over the centuries has gone into denying these facts. Why these denials? Clearly, it is because, if those facts are true to careful and responsible investigation, as they are, we cannot maintain that here is just another birth of some unimportant Jewish child during the reign of Caesar Augustus.

Yet, with all the data, we still sense a “mystery”—something more is there.

The more important part of this “mystery” concerning this birth includes the issues of time, place, and circumstances, but it goes beyond them. “Mystery” does not mean something wholly unknown. It means rather knowing actually and accurately, but realizing more is there to be known. Indeed, no “mystery” may be seen by many in these facts of the time and place of Christ’s birth. Yet, they happened “in the fullness of time”, as if to say they involve a plan, an order, an intervention. That a child with a name was born of Jewish parents from Nazareth is intelligible. But in Bethlehem when Palestine was under Roman rule, when the “whole world was at peace”, is that not provocative?

The birth of any child is something of a “mystery”. Why, after all, do any human beings exist in the first place? They do not cause themselves to come to be or to be what they already are. Still, if we look at what is said and handed down about this particular Child, it becomes more complicated, more mysterious. His very name, or one of them, is “Emmanuel”, which means “God with us”. How can “God” be with us? Why would He want to be? The parents are aware that His origins are more than usual. His disciples come to associate Him with the Word of God.

He is “made” flesh. He dwells amongst us. He was from the “beginning”, we are told. In Him all things are “made”. We hear of the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. In the “Four Quartets”, T. S. Eliot wrote: “In my beginning is my end”. How can this be true of all of us unless it be true that the beginning and the end are ordered to each other?

At His birth, Christ’s conception becomes, as it were, public to shepherds, to the world. We wonder about the difference between a child’s initial conception and his birth nine months later.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Hail, Mary! Tabernacle of God and the Word!

Detail from "The Cestello Annunciation" (1489) by Sandro Botticelli (WikiArt.org)

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, December 21, 2014, the Fourth Sunday of Advent | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• 2 Sm 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16
• Ps 89:2-3, 4-5, 27, 29
• Rom 16:25-27
• Lk 1:26-38

“Hail! tabernacle of God and the Word. Hail! holy beyond all holy ones. Hail! ark gilded by the Holy Ghost. Hail! unfailing treasure-house of life.”

These words from the ancient Akathist hymn, a great sixth-century song of praise for the mystery of the Incarnation, poetically summarize the Marian themes in today’s readings. The Theotokos—the Mother of God—is the dwelling place of God, the “container of the Uncontainable God,” and “the womb of God enfleshed.”

Many of the early Church fathers spoke of Mary as the new ark of the covenant. “Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling,” the Catechism remarks, “is the daughter of Zion in person, the ark of the covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells” (par. 2676). The ark of the covenant, described in Exodus 25, was a gold-plated wooden chest containing holy objects, including some manna, Aaron’s rod, and a copy of the covenant between God and Israel (Heb. 9:4-5). Its lid, the mercy seat, was made of gold and adorned with two cherubim, representing the throne of God.

For a long time the ark was kept in a mobile tabernacle. Eventually, as we hear in today’s first reading, King David desired to build a permanent house, or temple, for the ark. In responding to David, the Lord made clear that the only one who could build an everlasting house for God is God himself; he promised to eventually “raise up” an heir who would establish an everlasting throne and kingdom.

The raising up of an heir was realized in the coming down of the Son through the mystery of the Incarnation—“the mystery kept secret for long ages,” in the words of Saint Paul. The King of kings and Lord of lords rested within the throne of a womb; the Creator of all things visible was carried, invisible, within the Virgin; the Conqueror of sin and death was kept and concealed within the Blessed Mother.

“Hail! O you who have become a kingly Throne. Hail! O you who carries Him Who carries all! Hail, O Star who manifests the Sun. Hail! O Womb of the Divine Incarnation!”

Mary, created without sin, finding favor with God, and accepting in faith the call of the Lord, became a living, breathing ark of the covenant. “Full of grace, Mary is wholly given over to him who has come to dwell in her and whom she is about to give to the world” (CCC 2676). As God once dwelt in the tabernacle among a nomadic people, he now comes to dwell, through a singular woman, among men—pilgrims journeying toward their heavenly home. “For the first time in the plan of salvation and because his Spirit had prepared her, the Father found the dwelling place where his Son and his Spirit could dwell among men” (CCC 721).

David longed to build a temple and his son Solomon did build the temple, but only God could and did create a sinless, human temple.

Only God, because of his power and love, could become so small and humble so that he might save us. It is God who reaches out, who dwells among man, who becomes flesh and blood for our sake. Nothing, the angel Gabriel explains to the young Jewish virgin, “will be impossible for God.”

“May it be done to me according to your word.” With those words, Mary demonstrated the proper response to God, bursting with quiet faith and trusting reception. Opening herself to God’s word, she was filled with the Word who is God. Filled with the Holy Spirit, she became the throne of God.

"Behold,” exclaims the Akathist hymn, “heaven was brought down to earth when the Word Himself was fully contained in you! Now that I see Him in your womb, taking a servant’s form, I cry out to you in wonder: Hail, O Bride and Maiden ever-pure!” During Christmas we cry out in wonder at the work of God and the faith of his mother.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the December 21, 2008, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

A Silence about Mary

Madonna with Child, Carlo Maratta, c. 1660.

A Silence about Mary | Fr. Charles Kestermeier, SJ | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Mary is very central to the Gospel’s infancy narratives, but after Cana she almost disappears: we see her in the “Who are my mother and my brothers and my sisters?” passage, at the foot of the cross, and as being present at the Pentecost event, but after that, nothing. Why does Scripture progressively ignore her in this manner, and what are we to make of it?

The first time we meet Mary, Luke describes her as “filled with grace,” and I think it is possible that we do not take that description in a sufficiently strong sense, at least in terms of her lifetime as a whole: the Annunciation is a moment when the Holy Spirit changes her life completely and in a most profound physical sense, but what would her prayer life have been before and after this visit? I don’t think that we could classify her as a mystic—I doubt that she fits any such categories—and yet, she had to be in some sort of constant awareness of God, living in some sort of profound presence to him, at the very least, after this event, and, almost certainly, before it. To judge from the Magnificat, she was clearly filled with at least the scriptural presence of God in the best possible way, but how does she change afterwards?

The infancy narratives give us some idea of who she is as a young mother, at least from the outside. After that, just about anything we might say about her would be pretty much all speculation—but let me offer some ideas anyway.

In the episode of Jesus discussing with the doctors in the Temple, when he is supposedly “lost” there (Lk 2:41-50), note Mary’s expectation that, even at that age, Jesus would still act like a son and would have at least mentioned to her and Joseph that he was leaving home. At this point, the Perfect Man is acting like a perfect teenager; he still needs some polishing. And then, without any other recorded words from Mary or Joseph, we see Jesus simply return to Nazareth with them.

There he grows in “age, wisdom, and grace” until he is about 30, when he begins his mission and shows a completely different kind of awareness, knowledge, and wisdom than he did in the Temple (it is not easy to describe this new mindset in two words). He begins his real mission, not in the Temple with the doctors of the Law, but fairly far from that place in every sense of the word, far from all the activities and attitudes which that site implies, among the common people instead. He has indeed grown, humanly and spiritually, under the tutelage of Mary, and, for at least much of that time, Joseph. They were exactly what Jesus needed as parents.

The Gospel texts show Mary as present to Jesus only twice after that, before she appears at the foot of the cross.

Continue reading at www.HPRweb.com.

The Joyful, Particular Scandal of Advent

"Madonna of the Magnificat" (1480) by Sandro Botticelli (WikiArt.org)

The Joyful, Particular Scandal of Advent | Carl E. Olson | CWR

Readings:
• Is 61:1-2a, 10-11
• Lk 1:46-48, 49-50, 53-54
• 1 Thes 5:16-24
• Jn 1:6-8, 19-28

There is something offensive to many people about Advent and Christmas. It is what Apostle Paul described as a “stumbling block” to Jews and Gentiles alike (1 Cor. 1:18-25). Eastern Orthodox philosopher Richard Swinburne calls it “the scandal of particularity.” It is the belief that God became man at a particular time and in a particular place, and that the God-man, Jesus Christ, is the unique Savior of mankind. 

“Belief in the true Incarnation of the Son of God,” the Catechism states, “is the distinctive sign of Christian faith” (par. 463). It’s hardly news that this belief is often disparaged or dismissed by some non-Christians. Far more perplexing are attempts by Christians to deny the mystery of the Incarnation by rejecting the singular character of Jesus of Nazareth. 

A few years ago, a Catholic priest in Australia posted online a manuscript he had written intending “to allow the man Jesus to be more authentic, and to make our Catholic religion more relevant.” He glibly dismissed the Incarnation, writing, “God is big. Real big. No human being can ever be God. And Jesus was a human being. It is as simple as that!” He then took this denial to its logical conclusion. “For a Christian,” he wrote, “to state that the fullness of redemption and salvation is to be found in Jesus Christ is not an acceptable statement for other faiths or religious traditions.  And it is offensive to proclaim it as universal truth.”

Yes, it is offensive. And it is also true! Today’s readings present two great saints who not only proclaimed the truth about Jesus Christ but also gave offense—and continue to give offense—by being faithful to Him. They share in the “scandal of particularity,” for they are closely united to Jesus, by both love and by blood.

The first is John the Baptist, who is always a central figure during Advent. Today’s Gospel reading places a very Johannine emphasis on testimony, or witness. The Greek word—martyria—for “testify” or “witness” is also the root word for “martyr,” and it appears over 25 times in the Fourth Gospel, as well as several times in the Book of Revelation.

This testimony “to the light” is a sure declaration of truth by one who has seen what he gives witness to. The Apostle John, in his first epistle, wrote about “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life,” and then stated, “we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us.” He had seen Jesus Christ in person. But John the Baptist had not only seen and known the Savior, he had recognized him while still in the womb (Lk. 1:41). He gave witness not only by word but also by deed: first, through preaching and baptism, then through martyrdom (Mk. 6:17-29). 

The second saint is the Theotokos, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She causes scandal to some by her humility and her willingness to accept, in faith, an astounding message from God. She is a stumbling block to many because she, a lowly Jewish maiden, is the Mother of God; her womb was the Tabernacle of the Most High. Her proclamation, the Magnificat—part of it heard today during the responsorial—is the testimony of the perfect disciple: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior.” 

Many people believe that religious doctrine—especially dogmas about Jesus Christ—leads to narrow-mindedness, bigotry, and even violence. In reality, it is the wellspring of joy, as Mary’s canticle amply demonstrates. It is not enough to simply believe, or to proclaim—we are also called to rejoice and to worship. “Rejoice always,” Paul writes to the Christians in Thessalonica, “Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks.” Why? “For this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.”

Such is the joyful, particular scandal of Advent.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the December 14, 2008, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

A Delectable Fruit of the Cactus for the Eagle

A Delectable Fruit of the Cactus for the Eagle | Paul Badde | Chapter One of María of Guadalupe: Shaper of History, Shaper of Hearts 

With wood from the Santa Marla, Christopher Columbus built the first house in America. Hernán Cortés conquered Mexico. The growling of dogs on the beach and the dawn of the modern era lie heavy over the cities of New World and Old.

On the morning of August 3, 1492, sails billowing in the first wind, Columbus sailed from Andalusia in the Santa María, together with the Niña and the Pinta, in order, as he confides in the ship's log, to search for a westerly sea route to Jerusalem. If the names of his ships had been listed in another way, they would have made the phrase "Holy Mary (Santa María)paints (pinta) the girl(niña)". In itself, this would have been striking. However, this was only the beginning of the incredible story of the dark Lady, who, five hundred years after the discovery of America, still waits to be discovered by Europe, Asia, Africa and other parts of the world.

Historians say that, on Christmas night, 1492, theSanta María ran aground on a sandbar off of Haiti. Columbus decided to dismantle the grounded flagship and "build a fort out of what was salvaged". However, some years ago on the docks of the port of Barcelona, I saw an exact reproduction of the caravelSanta María. I doubt that with the planks and masts of this nutshell anyone could have managed to construct a fort. Two or three huts, perhaps, or a house—or even a small barricaded chapel. There was not enough material for more. The one thing that seems sure is that from the remains of the Santa María the first European house was raised in the New World. A year later it was pulled down and reduced to ashes.

Twenty-seven years later Hernán Cortés, a native of the city of Medellin, in Spain, disembarked from the Santa María de la Concepción onto the shore of the American continent. It was Good Friday of 1519, in the area of what would later become the port of Veracruz. A small expeditionary flotilla accompanied theSanta María de la Concepción . Two days later, Cortés asked two Franciscans, Diaz and Olmedo, to celebrate Easter with a high Mass on the beach. "The Spaniards planted a cross in the sandy ground", writes Francisco López de Gómara in his history of the conquest of Mexico. "They prayed the rosary and the Angelus as a bell was rung." To anyone familiar with Catholic liturgy, this seems somewhat confused. But there is no doubt that, after the liturgical service, Cortés, in a brief speech, took possession of an immense territory in the name of the Spanish Crown. Needless to say, the king of Castile was totally ignorant of who Cortés was and what he was doing there. The "Captain General" had taken on himself the responsibility of a royal commission.

"The Assumption" by Mgr. Ronald Knox

The Assumption | Mgr. Ronald Knox | From Pastoral and Occasional Sermons | August 15th | Ignatius Insight

A cave Jeremias found there, in which he set down tabernacle and ark and incense-altar, and stopped up the entrance behind him. There were some that followed; no time they lost in coming up to mark the spot, but find it they could not.—2 Machabees 2:5-6.

After this, God's heavenly temple was thrown open, and the ark of the covenant was plain to view, standing in his temple.—Apocalypse 11:19.

The Son of God came to earth to turn our hearts away from earth, Godwards. The material world in which we live was, by his way of it, something immaterial; it didn't matter. We were not to be always worrying about our clothes being shabby, or wondering where our next meal was to come from; the God who fed the sparrows and clothed the lilies would see to all that. We were not to resent the injuries done to us by our neighbours; the aggressor was welcome to have a slap at the other cheek, and when he took away our greatcoat he was to find that we had left our coat inside it. Life itself, the life we know, was a thing of little value; it was a cheap bargain, if we lost life here to attaIn the life hereafter. There was a supernatural world, interpenetrating, at a higher level, the world of our experience; it has its own laws, the only rule we were to live by, its own prizes, which alone were worth the winning. All that he tried to teach us; and we, intent on our own petty squabbles, our sordid struggle for existence, cold-shouldered him at first, and then silenced his protest with a cross.

His answer was to rise from the dead; and then, for forty days in the world's history, that supernatural life which he had preached to us flourished and functioned under the conditions of earth. A privileged few saw, with mortal eyes, the comings and goings of immortality, touched with their hands the impalpable. For forty days; then, as if earth were too frail a vessel to contain the mystery, the tension was suddenly relaxed. He vanished behind a cloud; the door of the supernatural shut behind him, and we were left to the contemplation of this material world, drab and barren as ever.

What was the first thing the apostles saw when they returned from the mount of the Ascension to the upper room? "Together with Mary"—is it only an accident that the Mother of God is mentioned just here, by name, and nowhere else outside the gospels? The Incarnate Word had left us, as silently as he came to us, leaving no trace behind him of his passage through time. No trace? At least, in the person of his blessed Mother, he had bequeathed to us a keepsake, a memory. She was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, the new Eve of the new Adam. That body of hers, still part of the material order of things, had housed and suckled God. As long as she lived, there would still be a link, a golden link, between this lower earth and Paradise. As long as she lived; and even if it was God's will that she, Eve's daughter, should undergo the death that was Eve's penalty, the penalty she had never incurred, her mortal remains would still be left with us, an echo from the past, an influence on our lives. We men, since we are body and soul, do honour even to the lifeless bodies which have housed the dead; Napoleon rests in the Invalides, Lenin at Moscow. The day would come when there would be pilgrimages from all over the world to the shrines of Peter and Paul at Rome, of James at Compostela. Was it not reasonable to hope that somewhere, at Jerusalem, perhaps, or at Ephesus, we should be privileged to venerate the mortal remains of her through whom salvation came to us? Or perhaps at Bethlehem, Bethlehem-Ephrata, this new Ark of God would rest, as the ark rested of old; "And now, at Ephrata, we have heard tidings of what we looked for" [1] —the old tag from the Psalms should still ring true.

Fairest Daughter of the Father: On the Solemnity of the Assumption

Fairest Daughter of the Father: On the Solemnity of the Assumption | Rev. Charles M. Mangan

The Solemnity of the Assumption, celebrated annually on August 15, presents a golden opportunity to reconsider the person of the Ever-Virgin Mary and her singular mission in the Church. We often contemplate the relationship between Mary and her Son; this reflection will focus on the relationship which Our Lady enjoys with the First Person of the Most Blessed Trinity.

Mary has been hailed as the "first-born" daughter of the Father. This reality is evident if one remembers that God--and in a specific way the Father--has created Mary, just as He has created us. She is "one of us" because she is fully human. We are children of the Almighty in a similar vein in which she is His daughter. As we rely on God for our very existence, so, too, does our Immaculate Mother.

What do the Father and His sinless daughter share? Venerable Pius IX (1846-1878), in his Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus (December 8, 1854) in which he once-and-for-all defined the truth of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception, wrote: "To her did the Father will to give His only-begotten Son--the Son Whom, equal to the Father and begotten by Him, the Father loves from His Heart--and to give this Son in such a way that He would be the one and the same common Son of God the Father and of the Blessed Virgin Mary."

The Father gave many overwhelming spiritual riches to Mary to strengthen her in her inspiring vocation as the Mother of His Son. Yet, He gave no greater gift than that of the Lord Jesus. Mary, in turn, imitated the Father in raising Jesus from before infancy to manhood. Jesus knew well the best of all gifts which His Mother faithfully imparted: the boundless love of His Beloved Father. Now, as the Son of Mary, Christ came to experience the love of His Mother which was patterned after that of His Father.

One may rightly assert that Jesus Christ is the link between the Father and Mary. We often claim that children receive much of their identity from their parents. Eye color, physical build and even disposition are often traced from the child back to its parents. Truly, the offspring rely on their father and mother for multiple and varied things. (And, of course, the Messiah willed to come forth from Mary and be dependent on her and Saint Joseph.) However, the Holy Family of Nazareth is a different case. Mary and her loving husband discovered their purpose in the Divine Child. In Jesus, they found their identity--unto everlasting life!

Now available: "The Seven Sorrows of Mary" by Romanus Cessario, O.P.

Available through Ignatius Press:

The Seven Sorrows of Mary

by Romanus Cessario, O.P.

In this beautiful book of meditations, illustrated with full-color reproductions of Giotto's famous Scrovegni chapel Frescos (c.1305), discover the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and contemplate with her how the mysteries of Christ's life answer the deepest questions of our lives.

A deep contemplation of Christ's passion through the eyes of his Blessed Mother, and a profound and lively reflection on the Seven Sorrows of Mary, this book is an invaluable companion to pray and meditate with during Lent and a beautiful resource you will return to throughout the year. It is also an ideal gift for Catholics and for those who wish to understand the mystery of our own salvation and is well-suited for adult catechetical instruction and RCIA.

Bring "Mary of Nazareth" to your parish or school and get the DVD before its released to the public

Bring Mary of Nazareth to a parish or school near you! Fresh from an extremely successful sponsored theatrical release and seen by tens of thousands in theaters across North America, the highly acclaimed MARY of NAZARETH, an epic motion picture on the life of the Blessed Mother from her childhood through the Resurrection of Jesus, is now available to be shown in your own church or school!   IGNATIUS PRESS is pleased to announce the MARY of NAZARETH Parish Screening Program.   Now you can bring the life of the Mother of Christ to the “Big Screen” in your own facility to entertain, evangelize, educate, change hearts and even raise funds for your own worthy cause!   Father Donald Calloway MIC, considered one of the foremost experts on the life of Mary, had this to say about the film, “Mary of Nazareth offers the best presentation of Our Lady I have ever seen. Mary of Nazareth is an absolute theological and Mariological masterpiece!  It will make you want to love her more than ever. Mary's beauty is pure and ageless; her feminine mystery filled with wonder and virtue, and her divine motherhood is both tender and captivating.  Without a doubt, this is the most stunning portrayal of the Virgin Mary on film!”     Packages will include the following: Site License – allows licensee to show the movie unlimited times at one venue for 12 full months from date of purchase. License cannot be shared with another church, school, individual or organization. Mary of Nazareth DVDs to sell (MSRP $29.95) or gift. Each DVD case contains two discs – one is the Mary of Nazareth movie in English with Spanish and English subtitles. The exciting contents of the second bonus disc includes an interview with Alissa Jung, who starred as Mary; an interview with Fr. Donald Calloway MIC, author and Marian expert; “behind the scenes” footage; a film photos slide show; segments from Mary: Mother of God, part of the acclaimed “Footprints of God” DVD series; “Pieta” song by M.J. Poirier; and testimonies from the San Francisco premiere of Mary of Nazareth. Plus, there is a 24-page collector’s booklet with study questions included in each case. Mary product brochures to give out with each DVD. One additional Mary of Nazareth DVD for screening purposes 13x19 full-color promotional posters with write-in space for event place, date and time full-color souvenir tickets 1 full-color 24 x 36 souvenir poster Downloadable event planning guide and other downloads will be available at www.MaryFilm.com Packages are available in 10-, 25-, 50-, and 100-DVD sets and, for a time until mid-October, license holders will have exclusive sales of the DVDs.   To see a trailer of this film, package contents and prices, endorsements from prominent Catholics and much more, check out the www.MaryFilm.com website.   Bring this incredible movie to your community for the first time or bring it back! Many are asking where they can see it again!   For more information, please go to www.MaryFilm.com or contact Diane Hanson, [email protected], toll free 866-431—1531 x 5, or direct 734-455-1973.   This program is only available in the United States and Canada. Share Tweet Forward Facebook Twitter Copyright © 2014 Ignatius Press, All rights reserved.

Beauty and Biblical Interpretation: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Response to Modern Biblical Studies

by Luke Murray | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Key to Balthasar’s response to modern biblical studies is his concept of beauty … Balthasar links beauty to human perception, and the way human beings gain knowledge.

Over the past 100 years—amidst the confusion and darkness surrounding the Church’s attempt to evangelize a post-Kantian world—few figures have aided the Church more than Hans Urs von Balthasar. At his death, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn described him as a “thoroughly Catholic figure” with an “incomparable reverence for the Word of God” who found “a sure path between the reductionism of a one-sided use of the historical-critical method and the dangers of fundamentalism.” Schönborn praised his approach to Scripture because Balthasar recognized the “inner unity of ecclesiality and spiritual experience.” 1 Pope Emeritus Benedict (then Cardinal Ratzinger) also confirmed Balthasar’s works, saying that in extending him the honor of becoming a Cardinal, “the Church, in its official responsibility, tells us that he (Balthasar) is right in what he teaches of the Faith, that he points the way to the sources of living water … (he was) a witness to the word which teaches us Christ, and which teaches us how to live.” 2 Finally, St. John Paul II also described Balthasar after his death as “an outstanding man of theology and the arts, who deserves a special place of honor in contemporary ecclesiastical and cultural life” and whose person and life’s work were held in “high esteem … by the Holy See.” 3 While there are certainly controversial areas of Balthasar’s theology (especially his position on Christ’s “abandonment” by the Father), this essay will examine one reason why he was praised by such eminent Catholic theologians. It will examine how the first volume of his series, The Glory of the Lord, entitled Seeing the Form, can help the Church respond to the crisis in modern biblical studies, by appealing to our encounter with beauty. By incorporating the insights of modern historical studies into a hermeneutic of faith, Balthasar provides the light necessary to overcome the problems of the historical-critical method. Furthermore, his project of “theological aesthetics” reveals that Mary should be the model of the Church’s biblical interpretation.

The Problem of Modernity: The Legacy of Immanuel Kant

Few people have influenced modern society more than Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Building on the work of Bacon, Descartes, and Hume, Kant sought to reconcile empiricists and rationalists in their search for knowledge. While he wrote many things, Kant is best known for establishing the foundation of modernity by absolutizing the split between the person and reality, between the thinking subject and the external object. While an adequate summary of Kant’s philosophy, and the influence of the Enlightenment on modern society, is not possible in this essay, a brief treatment is helpful in understanding how Balthasar’s project responds to Kant, and aids the Church’s biblical hermeneutic in the modern world.

Kant’s legacy is evident whenever one encounters the modern dogma that humanity is cut off from genuine knowledge; that our mind’s innate concepts and categories constitute reality as they impose themselves on an unintelligible reality, like sunglasses shading and constituting our view. According to Kant, man is stuck within the categories of his own mind, and unable to know reality in itself, or what he called the “noumenal” realm. One consequence of this was that the traditional notion of “truth,” as the mind’s conformity with reality, was dismissed as naive conservatism. According to Balthasar, two main traditions in biblical studies developed after Kant.

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"Sola Shea": Mark Shea interviews Mark Shea about "By What Authority? An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition"

Sola Shea | Catholic World Report

Mark Shea interviews Mark Shea about By What Authority? An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition

Editor's note: I've known Mark Shea for many years, having first met him in person about ten years ago in Seattle, just a few hours up the road from where I live. A few years ago, I interviewed Mark about his Marian trilogy, published by Catholic Answers. As I thought about interviewing Mark about the revised and expanded edition of his book, By What Authority? An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition (Ignatius Press, 2013), I thought, “I need someone who can really get into Mark's head. Someone who know him better than most and who can ask the difficult, even awkward, questions.” And then I realized who would be the perfect interviewer. What follows is that the interview of Mark Shea by Mark Shea, or of “Mark” by “Shea” for those who cannot tell them apart.

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There is only one drawback for me to this interview: having to interview that guy, whose faults are particularly well-known to me. I grew up with him and there are plenty of stories I could tell you. He is a guy who has spent more time eluding my salient criticisms and critiques—sometimes living in denial, sometimes promising reform and then skipping out when the kitchen got too hot, always slow to serious action—than anybody else on planet Earth. Abrasive, opinionated, quick to see the speck in the eyes of others and slow to see the log in his own eye. He has a juvenile sense of humor and a thin skin. He is notoriously prideful and childishly vain. He is, shall we say, “portly” and not what you would call a champion at self-restraint. He has a talent for making enemies and a certain listlessness when it comes to attending to the work that he needs to be doing. Nor does he have any particular academic training beyond his tepid BA in English.

Essentially, he has a big mouth and a bunch of opinions and yet somehow managed to persuade a lot of people that saying them aloud is sufficient reason for them to listen to him. There are any number of people who can’t stand him, me among them many days of the week, and I have to restrain myself from letting my hostility to him bleed into the conversation. However, I think I mostly managed it.

Mark: So. There are fifty jillion conversion stories out there. Why would you ever imagine yours is so important that it needs to be read by anybody else? What’s the big deal about By What Authority? and why does it matter that you just revised and expanded the book when it has been in print since 1996?

Shea: Well, when you put it that way, I didn’t really think of the book as a conversion story, but as an argument: one conducted (in my head) with friends from my old church and constructed—very consciously—along the lines of a sort of mystery story.

Mark: Not a conversion story?

Shea: No. Not really. By What Authority? deals with a single thread out of a whole tapestry of thoughts, emotions, struggles and problems I grappled with as I was coming into the Church. I have never really written up what I would call my conversion story, though I have told it and you can hear that story (if you like) by getting hold of a four-CD set that I did ages ago for St. Joseph Communications called Making Senses Out of Scripture. Three of the CDs are a seminar I did on my book of the same name. The fourth is my conversion story. The question of Sacred Tradition and the canon of scripture plays a role in that story, but lots of other things come in as well.

Mark: So are you saying that By What Authority? is not really giving the reason you converted?

Shea: No. I’m saying By What Authority? is describing only one of the reasons I converted. People seldom convert for a single reason, at least not when the conversion is a healthy one. Rather, you come to see that, as von Balthasar put it, “Truth is symphonic”. It’s not just that you realize that Sacred Tradition points toward the Church, or that Scripture points toward the Real Presence, or that the Magisterium and papacy make sense, or that Marian devotion is obviously apostolic and ancient. It’s that, eventually, everything starts pointing to the Faith like the spokes on a wheel. You reach a tipping point at which you realize the question is no longer “Why be Catholic?” but is rather “Why not be Catholic?” You start to realize the Church doesn’t tell this truth and that truth, but that it is a divinely constituted truth-telling thing, even when its member may be liars and scoundrels. And you are hard put to it to find good rebuttals to its teachings.

Mark: So you decided to grace the Church with your presence?

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