Who Is Mary? Or How The Old Testament Instructs Catholics About Mary.
I’ve been “asked”…challenged is a better word…to show how what Catholics believe about Mary comes from Sacred Scripture in order to prove that these are not “man-made doctrines.”
As a non-Catholic, I was completely oblivious to what scriptures taught about Mary because I was looking for trees and missing the forest. What Sacred Scripture taught about Mary became clear when I switched the process, I looked at the forest and suddenly I could see the trees with clarity. The Catholic Church teaches that Sacred Scripture is a unity. People and events in the Old Testament prefigure events and people in the New Testament. As a non-Catholic, I understood clearly how the liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt prefigured our own salvation, but for some reason I never looked too far beyond that. What is only dim shadow when looking at only the words of Sacred Scripture, becomes quite clear when you take a few steps back and look at what the people and events of the New Testament as the fulfillment of what is prefigured in the Old Testament implies in its fullness. The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks to the unity of the Old Testament and the New Testament and in my opinion, this is was a crucial change in perspective for me with regard to understanding the Catholic Marian Doctrines….although not JUST those.
The unity of the Old and New Testaments
128 The Church, as early as apostolic times, and then constantly in her Tradition, has illuminated the unity of the divine plan in the two Testaments through typology, which discerns in God’s works of the Old Covenant prefigurations of what he accomplished in the fullness of time in the person of his incarnate Son.
129 Christians therefore read the Old Testament in the light of Christ crucified and risen. Such typological reading discloses the inexhaustible content of the Old Testament; but it must not make us forget that the Old Testament retains its own intrinsic value as Revelation reaffirmed by our Lord himself. Besides, the New Testament has to be read in the light of the Old. Early Christian catechesis made constant use of the Old Testament. As an old saying put it, the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.
130 Typology indicates the dynamic movement toward the fulfillment of the divine plan when “God [will] be everything to everyone.” Nor do the calling of the patriarchs and the exodus from Egypt, for example, lose their own value in God’s plan, from the mere fact that they were intermediate stages.
So with the concept of ‘typology’ in mind, what do Catholics see revealed about Mary in the Old Testament?
1. Mary is the New Eve. Jesus is a New Adam (Romans 5:14; 1 Corinthians 15:45) and Mary is the New Eve. Eve was tempted by the words of a fallen angel bringing words of death. The obedient angel Gabriel brought words of life to Mary and her obedience is the source of New Life for the world. Through Eve’s disobedience, sin and death entered the world. In Genesis 3:15 it is prophesied:
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.
It is the Son of the woman who will crush the serpent’s head (and calls to mind the number of times in the NT where Jesus refers to His Mother as “Woman”). If it is Jesus who crushed the serpent’s head, and I think that most Christians would agree that this is true; then, the woman must be Mary. Throughout the OT we are reminded of women (types of Mary) who crush the heads of Israel’s enemies (types of Satan). In Judges 4:17-22, Jael drives a tent stake through the skull of Sisera and in Judges 5:24, we see her describes as “most blessed of women.” (Foreshadowing the words of Elizabeth to Mary in Luke 1:42). In Judges 9:50-55 a woman drops a millstone on King Abimelech. In Judith 12-13, Judith beheads the Assyrian commander-in-chief and is praised in Judith 13:18:
“Blessed are you, daughter, by the Most High God, above all the women on earth; and blessed be the Lord God, the creator of heaven and earth, who guided your blow at the head of the chief of our enemies. Your deed of hope will never be forgotten by those who tell of the might of God.”
But Jesus and Mary together (just as we must work TOGETHER with the saving Grace of Our Lord) crush the serpent’s head and David (who prefigures Jesus) cuts off Goliath’s head with Goliath’s own sword (nice touch in my I-think-God-does-vengeance-really-well sort of opinion) in Samuel 17. Note also that the place of the crucifixion is called skull-place in all four gospel accounts. And again I will call to your attention that Jesus refers to his mother from the cross as “Woman.” Mary is the “woman” of the Genesis prophecy, the “woman” on John 2 when Jesus begins his public ministry, and the “woman” of Revelation 12 who with her Son is victorious in the battle against the Serpent.
2. Mary is the New Ark of the Covenant. In the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant carried Aaron’s rod (symbol of the Aaronic Priesthood), the written word of God in the stone tablets of the law, and a container of manna. In the New Testament Mary carried in her womb, the living word of God, the Eternal High Priest, and the Bread of Heaven. Mary is clearly shown to be the New Ark of the Covenant in Revelation 11:19-12:1-18. The OT Ark of the Covenant was made of incorruptible acacia wood and plated inside and out with gold. Even touching the Ark of the Covenant carried the death penalty executed by God himself (2 Samuel 6:6-7)
Catholics believe that the language and description of the NT writers of Mary further develops the parallels between the OT Ark of the Covenant and Mary as the New Ark of the Covenant. In the OT we see in Exodus 4:34-35 and Numbers 9:15 a cloud of glory covering the Tabernacle. In the Luke 1:35 we are told that ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.‘ The OT Ark of the Covenant spent three months in the house of Obededom (2 Samuel 6) and in the NT Mary spends three months in the house of Zechariah (Luke 1). In 2 Samuel 6:9, King David asks “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” and in Luke 1:43 Elizabeth exclaims “And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Finally David in 2 Samuel 14-16 leaps and dances in the presence of the Ark of the Covenant just as John the Baptist leaped in the womb of Elizabeth in the presence of the Mary (Luke 1:44)
Solomon, the son of David, built a temple that housed the Ark of the Covenant. Jesus, the son of David, also builds an eternal Temple which houses the New Ark of the Covenant in Heaven. (Revelation 11:19-12:1-18)
3. Mary is the Queen Mother. In many respects, the Old Testament kings prefigured Jesus who is called the King of Kings (Revelation 19:16) in the NT. Even the imperfect kings in David’s line especially prefigure Jesus’ perfect Kingship. In 1 Kings 2:19-20 we the importance of the King’s mother:
Then Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him for Adonijah, and the king stood up to meet her and paid her homage. Then he sat down upon his throne, and a throne was provided for the king’s mother, who sat at his right. “There is one small favor I would ask of you,” she said. “Do not refuse me.” “Ask it, my mother,” the king said to her, “for I will not refuse you.”
The king’s mother, not his wife, had an official position in Israel. We know this from historical records, but we also see it reflected in 1 Kings 15:13.
He also deposed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother, because she had made an outrageous object for Asherah. Asa cut down this object and burned it in the Kidron Valley.
NT Jewish Christians who understood Jesus to be the promised King of the Jews would naturally have understood Mary to be the Queen Mother. The typology Mary as Queen Mother would have led them to seek her intercession with the King just as we see Adonijah do. We see this reinforced at the Wedding of Cana where Mary’s intercession is sought. And finally we see in Revelation 11 & 12 the culmination of the OT, the Gospels, with Mary as the Queen of heaven. She is the Ark of the Covenant in 11:19 who gives birth to the son who will “rule all nations” and together they defeat the serpent. She is crowned with 12 stars giving further credence to her as Queen of Heaven.
The cultural expectation of the Jews and the teaching of the typology of Sacred Scripture makes what were formerly shadows to me as a non-Catholic, explicit statements statements indeed about Mary and her role. When you combine what Sacred Scripture teaches us through the typology of Jesus and Mary in the Old Testament with the other implicit statements of Sacred Scripture (and I will get to those on another day) what the Catholic Church teaches about Mary becomes quite clear. In fact, rather than say that Sacred Scripture, doesn’t say something explicitly enough I am left with the expectation that unless Jesus or the New Testament writers gave an explicit exception to the typology that the only appropriate understanding of implicit statements is that which fully harmonizes with the typology of the Old Testament.
