481. Why do we honor Mary? Because the Bible says so: Part One

My mind is taking August off. We’re repeating some of the most popular Posts from previous years, improved just a bit.

Those of you who were raised Orthodox or Roman Catholic cannot imagine how hard it was for most of us former Protestants to accept the Mother of God. I know, because when we try to describe it, you just look at us with puzzled (sometimes horrified) looks on your faces!

For most Protestants Mary is tabu. There’s no other word for it. She is unacceptable, forbidden. Because of fear of idolatry? But we are devoted to our own natural mothers without fearing idolatry, are we not?

In Protestant denominations she is almost entirely ignored. She appears in Christmas “creches”, but that’s about it. When I was a boy the only reason I was given for this was because “that’s what Catholics do”. *

• “Catholics” also believe in Jesus, but I don’t remember anybody taking the argument that far!

At the Methodist seminary I attended in the early 1960s, her Virgin Birth was mentioned only rarely – in some theology and Bible classes. (In some classes professors demonstrated to us that it was not true. *) The rest of the time she received no attention whatever. Certainly not in worship services.

• The present dean of Union Theological Seminary, one of the most prominent liberal Protestant seminaries, says (among many other things) that the Virgin Birth is a “bizarre claim”. If you feel you can handle it, see;  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/opinion/sunday/christian-easter-serene-jones.html

I was blessed to be introduced to the Virgin Mary when I joined an Episcopalian Anglo-Catholic parish. But even then I was in no way prepared for what I heard when I first attended an English-language Divine Liturgy at an Orthodox Church.

The Mother of God seemed to be mentioned every few minutes: “Calling to remembrance our all-holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorious Lady the Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, with all the saints…” And soon afterwards came “Calling to remembrance our all-holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorious Lady the Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, with all the saints…” – but didn’t they just do that? – followed by the same thing again. Soon after that it was “Through the prayers of the Theotokos, O Savior, save us” three times. * And so on.

• Visitors to Orthodox churches hear all this because they come on time! (The preceding was intended to be a sarcastic remark – directed not at visitors.)

There’s more: On Lenten Fridays we sing an “Akathist Hymn” to the Theotokos, where we praise her for about 45 minutes straight. Likewise a similar Paraklysis service to her during the Dormition Fast.  I know a Lutheran couple who were inquiring about Orthodoxy and wanted to get a sample of our worship. So they went to a local Milwaukee church and as they approached the priest, trying to be friendly and helpful, met them outside and said, “Come on in. We’re about to sing a service to the Virgin Mary.” They turned around and fled! They, by the way, are now Orthodox – he a priest, one of their daughters an Orthodox missionary..

Why do even thoughtful Protestants reject devotion to the Virgin Mary? Usually the contention, whether spoken or unspoken, is that it is not Scriptural.

That is Wrong! Wrong! WRONG! as we will demonstrate below.

But before that, three things:

1 I’ll take the New Testament text as written. There’s no assured way to get behind it to find the “real thing”, as some imaginative souls try to do. Most of our popular English texts are already “twice-translated” – Greek to Latin to English – and with Matthew perhaps “thrice-translated”, first out of Aramaic, the language Christ spoke. Linguistic scholars, if you have comments or corrections to add, please do so in the Comments below.

2 “Because the Bible Says So” (above) was only a come-on, so to speak, because the Bible says nothing. Jesus Christ is the Word of God. He is the One who speaks. The Holy Scriptures are the Church’s first written witness to Him. They have never stood alone, “Sola Scriptura”. Their words have to be understood, interpreted, in one way or another. By Arius or by Luther or… or …. Or as they were delivered to us by the Apostles as part of the Christian Way –  the Tradition, we Orthodox call it. This Tradition existed before the New Testament was written, and it is within that continuing Tradition that the Scriptures can still be rightly understood. That is how the Apostles * wrote the New Testament. That is how the Church understands it. That is what I will try to follow here.

• or those who received it from those who were there, like Luke and Mark

3 For something to be considered “Scriptural”, the precise wording need not be in the Bible. For example, the term “Trinity” is nowhere in the Bible. Yet I think most Biblically-minded Protestants accept it because it accurately sums up what the New Testament teaches.

The Virgin Mary in the New Testament

Let’s begin like this:

Q. How often is Mary mentioned in the Gospels?  A. She is all over the place. Other than Jesus Christ Himself, who is mentioned most often in the Gospels? His Mother Mary.

Let’s just list the passages here. In the next section we’ll look at their meaning.

1 Her Annunciation by the Archangel Gabriel and his words: “Hail *, full of grace. The Lord is with you.” Luke 1:26-38

• or “Rejoice!” or, as the Jewish New Testament has it, “Shalom!”
• or according to The Message Bible (I’d never heard of it) the translation is “Good morning!” I’ve been trying, without success, to imagine Catholics reciting over and over on their Rosary beads: “Good morning, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you….”, but maybe I’m just old and stuffy.

2 Her visit to her cousin Elizabeth, which includes Elizabeth’s greeting: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” And the Song of Mary which is sung daily at services in both Eastern and Western Christianity: “My soul magnifies the Lord…  all generations shall call me blessed.” Luke 1:39-56 

3 Her Virginal Conception, Joseph’s angelic visitations, Jesus’ birth. Matthew 1:18-2:23

4 Joseph leads the Virgin Mary to Bethlehem, Jesus’ birth, the visit of the shepherds.  Luke 2:1-21

The icon below tells the entire Nativity story.

This takes us a little off track, but let’s take a close  look at it. In the center in the cave (not a “stable”) are Christ and His Virgin Mother, with the animals. Above in the center is the Star, connected to Heaven, the Holy Spirit of God presiding over it all. Left above are the Wise Men approaching. Above are the angels, including one instructing the shepherds, right, to go to Bethlehem.  Left below is Joseph, feeling “out of it”. Right below is the newborn Baby Jesus being washed up by a midwife. The impossible shapes of the hills tell us that something super-natural is happening here: God in Person “was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made Man.”

5 The visit of the Magi who found “the Child and His Mother Mary”. Matthew 2:1-12

6 The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and Simeon’s prophecy to Mary that “a sword shall pierce your heart.” Luke 2:22-39

7 Joseph guides “the Child and His Mother” into exile in Egypt, then returns them to Nazareth. Matthew 2:13-23 

8 Mary “pondered these things and treasured them in her heart” – Luke 2:19, 51. In other words she remembered them and told them to Saint Luke.

9 At the Passover in Jerusalem the boy Jesus ran away, and when they found Him in the temple His Mother scolded Him – God Incarnate! Luke 2:41-51

10 The wedding at Cana of Galilee when she pushed her Son into changing water into wine. John 1:1-12  If her words carried some weight with Him then, surely they still do. It is true to the Scriptures to believe that Mary intercedes with her Son. Below, notice her whispering to Him. 

11 The people of Nazareth reject Jesus, thinking He could not be Messiah because He had grown up there; they knew “His mother Mary” and the rest of His family. Matthew 13:53-48

12 She and His brothers went to see if He was alright, and He was told, “Your mother and your brothers are here.” Matthew 12:46-50

13 As she stood with courage and love beneath the Cross with John, Christ said to her, “Mother, behold your son”, and to John, “Son, behold your mother.” John 19:26-27

Proceeding into the rest of the New Testament:

14 “The women along with His mother Mary and His brothers” were part of the earliest Church. Acts 1:14

15 The Mother of God has been glorified in Heaven, of which we’ll say a lot more later. Revelation 12

Have I missed anything? Is the point made?

How can those who read the Gospels not see Mary? How can anyone who loves Jesus not love His Mother? I don’t understand.

What does the New Testament teach about Mary?

First, let’s be clear that the Church believes more about her than what we’ll speak of here. For example, the names of her parents Joachim and Anne, as well as some stories about her childhood are found in very early books not included in the Scriptures. Other parts are based on our experience with her over the centuries. Father Alexander Schmemann wrote a little book called The Presence of Mary. His point was that if you hang around the Church for a while, you’ll just know that she is here. What the New Testament says about her has been “amplified” and developed in the Church over the centuries.

However, for our purposes now, we’ll stick closely to passages from the New Testament.

1 The stories of the Annunciation, the trip to Bethlehem, the birth of the Lord, the visit of the shepherds and more – where did these come from? I’ll add some italics here for emphasis: Saint Luke explains clearly that his project was “to write… an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus [whoever that may have been], that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed… just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us.”

Who was the foremost of these “eyewitnesses”? Luke could not be clearer. He tells us twice so we can’t miss his point. Only one person was there “from the beginning“, and who had “kept all these things and pondered them in her heart ” (Luke 2:19), had “kept all these things in her heart”. (Luke 2:51) The stories came from the Virgin Mary. (This is so obvious. I am amazed that so few commentators remark on it. I am amazed that it took me so long to see it.) Who else could some of the stories have come from? I mean, how many people were present at the Annunciation?

There is an early tradition that when Luke “interviewed” Mary, he painted the first icons of her – that’s an angel guiding his hands – which explains why depictions of her from earliest times in all places have been virtually identical. Only in modern times have “creative” artists tried to depict what they fancy she should have looked like.

2  Should we praise Mary? Should we “address” her personally? Is that Scriptural? Yes. She directed it: “All generations shall call me blessed.” That’s pretty hard to do if we ignore her. Read these words in context. Elizabeth has just “called” her blessed, right to her face: “How is it that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?… Blessed are you among women.” Mary surely means that all generations will do exactly what Elizabeth had just done: Say the same thing to her, address her, tell her, “call me blessed”. Dear Mary, Mother of my Lord, “Blessed are you among women.”

A side issue which troubles some Protestants:

Are people alive after death, before the General Resurrection, so we can talk to them? Revelation 5:8 describes the “saints” now praying in heaven. However, this wasn’t a big issue when most of the New Testament was written, since not many Christians had died yet.

However, the Church’s post-New Testament reflection on the work of Jesus Christ has provided the answer. Christ has united heaven and earth in Himself, has broken down the walls between this world and the next. His Church is a family that encompasses both Heaven and earth. We ask the prayers and help of loved ones and holy ones on the this side of death. Why ever should we not do the same of those on the other side? Jesus Christ has conquered death. Death has no more  lasting power. Furthermore, our “balanced” Orthodox experience with the saints over the years has brought us closer to God, not turned us away from Him. It has led us to love Him more.

Be careful here: Don’t take the “spiritualist” route, trying to summon up the dead for a private conference unrelated to God. That’s dangerous, not because it’s impossible but because you never know what you’re getting: your departed Aunt Hattie or someone or something pretending to be Aunt Hattie.

The digression is over. Now back to the subject.

3 Is the “Hail Mary” Scriptural? – whether in Eastern or Western form? Yes. Most of it is a collation of the words of Gabriel and the words of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth. If it’s good enough for an Archangel and a Saint, it should be good enough for us,

 Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos, Mary full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, for you have borne the Savior of our souls.

4 The title “Theotokos” – Θεοτόκος, “Birth-giver of God”, “Mother of God”. * Is that Scriptural? Yes. The word itself is not in the Bible, but (like the word “Trinity”) the reality of it certainly is. For the Virgin Mary carried, gave birth to and is Mother of Jesus who is God, God Incarnate. The title was adopted by the Fourth Ecumenical Council to counter 1) any who disbelieved in the divinity of Christ, and 2) those who said that Mary had somehow inexplicably given birth only to the human side of Christ, that Jesus Christ was not a single Person, both God and Man indivisibly united. The Virgin Mary is the great defender of the reality of Incarnation.

• By which, of course,  we do not mean she is the eternal Mother of the eternal God. That would be absurd.

Oh, here we go again: I intended this to be a single article, but I’ve got so caught up talking about the Theotokos that we’re going to have to stop now and finish next week.

So Next Week: We’ll pick it up with “Does the Bible teach that Mary is Mother of Christians?” (The answer, of course, will be Yes.)