III Mystery visitatiom of Mary to her cousin Elisabeth - Part II

The Annunciation evokes listening to the Word of God – The Visitation evokes incarnating that Word
At the Annunciation, Mary is attentive to listening to the Word of God transmitted to her through Angel Gabriel. This is the attitude of the true disciple, like Mary of Bethany at the feet of the Lord, choosing, according to the Master, the better part. At the Annunciation, Mary has the same experience as the prophet Jeremiah, for whom the word of God is sweet to the palate, as sweet as honey.

The Visitation is the attempt to incarnate the Word, of putting it into practice, so that we are not only disciples of the Master, but also close relatives of his and of his mother’s, who went through the same process, as well as his brothers and sisters. Whoever hears the Word and does not make it a daily behaviour, does not incarnate it, or does not put it into practice, will be like the person who built his house on the sand. (Matthew 7: 24-27)

The Word reveals to us God's will for us; to put it into practice is to do God’s will, which was already for Jesus his lifeblood, and so it must also be for us. The Word, as the Bible says, is life-giving and effective; it is in its practice that it becomes life and effectiveness.

‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.”’ Matthew 7: 21-23

“Lord, open to us”, then in reply he will say to you, “I do not know where you come from.” Then you will begin to say, “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” But he will say, “I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!” Luke 13: 25-27

Commenting and paraphrasing the above texts, “Lord, Lord” is the equivalent to listening to the Word of God. Whether the Lord knows us or not depends on the practice of the Word of God. God does not know us from our religious practice in the church, but from the way we behave in the streets. The above text of Matthew is followed by the metaphor of building a house either on sand or on rock. The one that puts the word into practice built it on rock, and the one who does not practice what he says he believes built his house on sand.

It is not when we say "Lord, Lord" that Jesus knows us, but it is when we visit him in our neighbour, in the needy, in the weakest, where He is hidden. Paraphrasing St. John, in listening to the Word we love God whom we do not see, in visiting our neighbour we see God whom we love.

If the Annunciation evokes the seed and the sowing of the Word – The Visitation evokes the ground where the Word falls and bears fruit
In the parable of the Sower, the Word of God is compared to a seed of quality which has within itself the potential to bear good fruit; a seed that may even be as small as a mustard seed, but which can grow into a tree large enough for the birds of the air to nest and mate, thus generating more life.

The seed is the Word of God and the Sower is Christ; it depends on the ground whether this seed will bear fruit or not. It is not the fault of the seed nor the sower, but of the ground on which the seed falls. The wheat that God sowed in Mary's womb became for us the bread of eternal life.

If the Annunciation evokes faith and hope – The Visitation evokes charity
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe – and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith without works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. James 2:14- 24

This is an issue that divides Protestants and Catholics and which I believe is a great equivocation. Saint Paul in his writings overlooks many parts of the gospel, especially Matthew 25 regarding the final judgment which is about works and not about faith. All the questions that were asked in this judgment are concerning love of neighbour, not love of God.

In my understanding, when St. Paul speaks of the works that by themselves do not save us, he is referring to the works inspired or done by formal obedience to the law of Moses, that same law which the Council of Jerusalem decided not to impose on Christians coming from paganism. The Pharisees thought that they were saved by formal obedience to the law of Moses; whereas what saves a Christian is being like Jesus, practicing works of mercy, even if he does not believe in Him.

Based on this passage of the scripture, if we had to choose between loving our neighbour and loving God, we should choose loving our neighbour, for by loving our neighbor we are loving God indirectly; by loving God alone we are certainly much deceived, for the God we think we love is the Father of our neighbour whom we ignore. The surer way to salvation then, is by loving God not directly but indirectly through our neighbour.

Loving God without loving our neighbour is the sort of religion that Karl Marx calls the opium of the people. It is a faith without verification or confirmation, because we see our neighbour and we do not see God. In this way, we have a false image of God since it does not lead us to love our neighbour. If faith is the account, charity or love of neighbour is the litmus test or confirmation that this account is accurate; therefore, only by works can we verify that the faith is real.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end, as for tongues, they will cease, as for knowledge, it will come to an end. (…) And now faith, hope and love abide, these three and the greatest of these is love.  1 Corinthians 13:8, 13

If the Annunciation evokes freedom – The Visitation evokes fraternity and equality
At the Annunciation, Mary was praying, in contact with God and exercising her love for God above all things. She was, therefore, exercising the human value of freedom on which rests the individual life of every human.

We are only truly free when we love God above all things and all people. When we worship Him, that is, when we submit ourselves only to Him, when He alone is the Lord to whom we pay homage and servitude, when this happens, we are truly free from everything and everyone.

The idea that comes to our minds when freedom is mentioned is that of living independently and autonomously, without constraints. Freedom, in the sense of autonomy, is inherent to all types of life or organic matter; it is doing things for oneself, being autonomous and self-contained like a cell, or like a tree that produces its own food through the process of photosynthesis.

Much more than for animals, freedom is a "condictio sine qua non" of human life. Animals or plants do what nature has predestined for them, they do not go outside of these molds, so they have no power over life itself, they have no power of choice.

Human beings, by contrast, are not predestined by Nature, nor does Nature exercise power over them. Human beings do not have strictly a "habitat", an environment conducive to human life, that is, a single place where human life is possible. Instead of adapting to Nature, human beings have the ability to adapt Nature to their needs.

Today the word "artificial" has a negative connotation, it connotes not natural, fake, man-made, harmful to health... However, the word at its origin has a good meaning, it comes from the Latin "ars facere” which means to make art. For humans, the artificial is natural, the natural is artificial. What is natural in human beings is the creativity to use Nature to their advantage.

Animals are alive; the human being is not only alive, but he also lives because he can make of his life and with his life whatever he wants, direct it as he wants and even end it if he so decides. The human being has his life in his own hands, not because he possesses it but because he has the ability to manage it as he wishes, to direct it, to spend it all on a project, a fundamental option to which he has talent and feels called. This is what Beethoven did when he dedicated his life to music, Picasso to painting, Gandhi to gaining India’s independence without violence.

In the Visitation, Mary is in contact with her neighbour, exercising her love of neighbour in the person of her cousin Elizabeth. She was being the good Samaritan because she was helping her cousin even without being asked, as she did at the wedding feast in Cana later on. Without anyone asking her, she solved the problem of the wine running out: she probably realized before the bridegroom that such a problem existed, and in an act of great empathy with the bridegroom and his family, she solved the problem by involving her Son and his power to make all things new.

Freedom as the first value of the French Revolution concerned the relationship between individual and society; as its second, it concerned the relationship between individuals within society. The human being is a personal, individual being, but he is not an island: he is always part of a family, a clan, a tribe, a nation.

As we have already reflected in a previous text, the human being is one and triune, just like God and his creation. It takes two human beings to give birth to one, so one does not exist, but coexists with two others. If the basic value of a human being as a personal and individual being is freedom, the value on which the human being as a social being is based is equality.

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord. Leviticus 19:18

There is no better definition of equality in the world than this verse. The other person is an alter ego, that is, he is another ‘I’; not a ‘you’, an external entity, strange, foreign, distant, but my neighbour, so close that he is another ‘I’, an alter-ego, from where the word altruism comes from.

What is due to me is due to him, because he is a human being like me and we all come from the same common root, born in the Rift Valley 5 million years ago. Equality and coexistence in society are based on the principle that my rights are my neighbour’s duties and my duties are my neighbour’s rights.

‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For, with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.’ Matthew 7:1

* It is a divine exhortation to equality not to put ourselves above others, judging them, because we are all equal. No one made us judges, and we would only be judges, we could only throw that first stone, if we had not sinned. But we have all sinned, and we often judge others for the same sins and defects that we ourselves have, so our judgment is hypocritical.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  Galatians 3:28

*Jesus healed foreigners and often exalted their faith. He treated men and women as equals, he was the only Rabbi who had female disciples. In the parables he told, he sought a balance between men and women as protagonists. He fought the cliché that women should dedicate themselves exclusively to domestic work, having as their sole vocation to be mothers. In this way, 2000 years ago, Jesus was already in favor of integrating women into the world of work, alongside men. (Cf.  Luke 10:38-42, Luke 11:17)

Mary's visits
We explain and justify that Mary is a mediatrix and intercessor in Heaven with the episode of the wedding feast of Cana (John 2:1-11), in which she presents the needs of the guests to her Son, while exhorting them to do whatever He says. Then why not explain and justify Mary's visits with the episode of the visitation to her cousin Elizabeth? (Luke 1:39-45)

In her visits, Mary does not bring a new gospel, a new message, but like the Holy Spirit whose Spouse she is, she recalls the forgotten parts of the message (cf. John 14:26) of her Son and reinterprets them in the "here and now" of human history. In fact, one of the important factors in the genuineness of these messages is their agreement with the gospel.

Mary continues to visit those of whom she is a mother at pivotal moments in her children’s history, to help embody in these moments and places the eternal Word of her Son.

Guadalupe – Support for evangelization
How were the indigenous people in 1531 Mexico going to willingly accept the religion of the Spanish conquistadors, explorers and murderers, if Mary had not appeared to an indigenous person. In fact, the natives until that time were reticent to Christianity, converted en masse after the Marian apparitions.

Lourdes – Confirmation from Heaven
An important part of the Lourdes' message is the confirmation from Heaven in 1858 of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception instituted by Pope Pius IX four years earlier in 1854.

Fatima - "Penance and Prayer" are the solution
Between two world wars, Mary proposed in Fatima, among other things, “Penance and Prayer" as a means to face militant atheism, then and now.

Conclusion: After the total giving of herself to God at the Annunciation, Mary gave herself in equal measure to her neighbour when she visited her cousin Elizabeth.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

III Mystery: Visitation of Mary to Her Cousin Elizabeth - Part 1

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry:

‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believes that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’  Luke: 1:39-45

The news that her cousin Elizabeth was already in her sixth month of pregnancy was announced by the angel as proof that to God nothing is impossible. Upon hearing it, however, Mary made no further comment but kept it in her heart, and as soon as her encounter with God’s messenger was over, she left for Ein Karen, a village about 145 km from Nazareth where her cousin lived. The trip was made by caravan, in the company of other travelers, which must have taken between 7 to 10 days.

From the encounter with the angel and the words of Elizabeth to Mary, the first half of the prayer much loved and recited by Catholics is formulated – the Hail Mary prayer. This first part is composed of the words of the angel, followed by the words of Elizabeth and ends with Jesus who is the center of this prayer, as he has always been the center of Mary's life.

The second part of the prayer reflects what Mary is to each of us individually and her role in the Salvation History of the human race as a whole. That is why we ask her to pray to God for us "now", in the every "now(s)" of our lives and especially in that ultimate "now" of our passage from this world to the Father. As she stood at the foot of her son's cross in his passion, so she accompanies us in ours.

Annunciation/Visitation
There is a dialectic between the angel’s annunciation to Our Lady and Our Lady’s visitation to her cousin Elizabeth, which makes these two mysteries both joyful and Marian, inseparable from each other, that is, they cannot and should not be understood individually, but always in relation to each other.

In these two mysteries and in what they can mean and evoke, the entire life of a Christian is reflected, that is, they synthesize in themselves the life of a Christian. That is why Mary is for us a model of Christian life; in fact, she was not only the mother of the Lord, but she was also his disciple -- mother because she was a disciple, disciple because she was the mother (Luke 8:21). So, therefore:

If the Annunciation evokes the "Ora", the prayer, then the Visitation evokes the "Labora", the practice of good works

One day, a great king visited his spiritual master and asked him, "How can I attain Union with God? I want you to answer me in one sentence, because I'm a very busy man." The master said to him, “I can answer you with just one word." "What is the word?" asked the king. "Silence, " replied the spiritual master. "And how can I achieve silence"? "Through prayer." "And what is prayer?" "It's silence, " replied the master.

In the silence I find myself within me and I find God within the depth of my being. In the clatter I lose myself and I lose to God. The prodigal son did what he did because he went about divorced from himself but when he came to his senses, he went back to God; therefore, being with God implies being with oneself and vice versa. Whoever is outside of himself is outside of God. Because, as St. Augustine said, "Deus interior intimo meo". God is deeper than my innermost self, He is beyond my inmost self, that is, I cannot reach God without going pass myself.

The "know yourself" philosophy of Socrates is not possible without prayer. Without a time dedicated to prayer, as Mary and her son did, we do not get to know our talents, our virtues, and our flaws and limitations. A life that is not self-reflective, as Socrates also said, is not worth living. For it is in self-awareness that we can exercise control over our impulses and bad instincts. Without self-awareness, there is no self-control.

The Gospels often present Jesus, especially in the decisive moments, withdrawing alone to a place far from the crowds and his own disciples, in order to pray in silence and to live out his filial relationship with God. Silence is able to carve out an inner space within ourselves, as Pope Benedict XVI said, for God to live in it so that his Word may remain in us, and our love for him may take root in our minds and hearts so to animate our lives.

Therefore, the first step is to relearn silence, the openness to listening, which opens us to the above, to the Word of God. As Karl Rahner, the great 20th century Jesuit theologian, pointed out: the Christians of the future are either mystics or they are not Christians.

People used to say that the life of a Christian takes place between the Church as the temple and the square or marketplace. In the temple, the Christian is in prayer and contemplation of God and of himself; in the marketplace, the Christian is living out his faith in charity and love of neighbour. Even contemplative monks who devote much time in prayer "Orat", also devote much work to God, "Laborat".

Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labour we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you.

This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.  2Thessalonians 3: 6-13

For St. Paul, there are no professionals of prayer or of proclaiming the Gospel. This must be the job of everyone. He himself, as the text states, worked and earned his living as a tent maker; he lived neither at the expense of prayer nor of evangelization. He lived therefore contrary to the traditional division of social classes in the Middle Ages, in which the clergy prayed, the nobles protected the people, and the people worked to support the clergy and the nobles. Even during the Middle Ages, those who were very dedicated to prayer like the Benedictine and Cistercian monks, were already working not only for their own sustenance, but also for the sustenance of the neighbouring villagers, to which they taught agricultural practices.

If the Annunciation evokes "loving God above all things" then the Visitation evokes "loving one's neighbour as oneself"
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when your rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Jesus told the Samaritan woman that the time was coming when God will be worshipped neither on Mount Gerizim where Jacob had built a Bethel shrine, nor in Jerusalem where Solomon had built the temple. God is to be worshipped in spirit and truth. And elsewhere in scripture, Jesus even says that anyone who wants to pray, is to go to his room. In prayer we exercise our love for God. It is true that we love him at all times, but prayer is the manifestation of this love that we feel at all times.

To all intents and purposes, the Creator always knows more about the creature than the creature knows about himself. Also, the Creator loves the creature more than the creature loves himself. The Creator knows everything about the creature, his past, present and future, therefore better than the creature, God can defend the creature’s interests.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  Matthew 10:37

All the creature can and must do is to surrender himself into the hands of the Creator, just as a toddler without any hesitation throws himself into arms of his father. Thus, we can understand this classic text of love of God, which is the creed, that every Jew recites when he wakes up in the morning. Love of God is above all things, above all people, total and absolutely exclusive, and above the love we have for ourselves.

God only loves those who love him
When you enter the home, give it your blessing. If it turns out to be a worthy home, let your blessing stand; if it is not, take back the blessing. Matthew 10: 12-13

Often in sermons, to get the attention of those who are half asleep, I throw a grenade in the middle of the audience by saying, "God loves only those who love Him." Then those in the audience who consider themselves theologians object and say no, that God loves everyone equally, and even quote the Bible to me, that He makes the rain fall on the just as well as the unjust.

And it is true that in theory God loved Hitler as well as Francis of Assisi. However, the lives of these two men could not have been more different; if the two had the same quantity and quality of God's love, why were they so distinct? That is because Francis accepted God's love, he echoed it by loving God back; Hitler did not. The sun, before reaching our planet and warming and illuminating it, passes through the outer space where the temperature is minus 300 degrees Celsius. Why? Because it is empty, there is nothing in it that echoes and touches that light and that heat. The only way to echo God's love is to love him back.

"Love is paid with love" – As scripture says, God loved us first and he always loves us, but if I do not echo His love in me, it is as if He does not love me. Only with love can we echo God's love in us. To love, either we respond with love or we are indifferent to love. Therefore, although in theory God loves everyone equally, only the ones who accept this love, only those who are open to God's love, feel the effects of this love. The act of accepting God's love, of being open to God's love, is loving God.

As the scripture reading quoted above (Matthew 10: 12-13) suggest, the blessing bounces back to you when it is not well received. So it is with the love of God that does not encounter a heart to receive and acknowledge Hi s love.

To Love and to be Loved
To love and to be loved is the first human need, after physical ones. There is no human life without love; to live is to love. All our life we will have this need. Therefore, because it is a human need and because there is no authentic human life without love, to love is both a duty and a right.

As a need, it is inherent in human nature and in the dignity of the human person; all human beings have the right to be loved and the duty to love. As children, the priority is to be loved, for it is by being loved unconditionally that we learn to love unconditionally. As adults, the priority is to love; if an adult has as priority to be loved more than to love, he is not a mature adult. He is one of those types of adults that we see in soap operas, who use a thousand and one tricks to gain someone's esteem and do little or nothing to love someone.

At the educational level, love is a duty of adults toward children, an inherent and innate right of children in relation to adults. Outside the educational sphere, the need to love and be loved remains for the rest of one’s life, so it is always both a right, even if we do not claim it, and a duty, even if we do not exercise it.

But God will continue to ask us "where is your brother?" (Genesis 4:9). To answer that we are not our brother's keeper is not an answer that satisfies God or our conscience. It is also worth remembering that what matters at the Last Judgment is the same as what matters in life: love. If you have loved then you have lived; If you did not love then you did not live, you were a living dead, that is, the body was alive, but the soul was already dead. With the death of the body, you return to the nothing from which God created you to make something out of you; but you did not collaborate with His grace.

Conclusion: If in the Annunciation Mary manifests her love for God, then in the Visitation to her cousin she manifests her love of neighbour. In these two Joyful and Marian mysteries, the life of a Christian is summarized.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

II Mystery: The Angel's annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’

Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her. Luke 1:26-38

This second mystery is known as the first Joyful Mystery. However, we are in the context of the prehistory of Jesus of Nazareth, so it is a mystery that is profoundly Marian. The angel Gabriel is the herald of the New Age that is about to begin. God will visit his people again as he did in Egypt, but this time the deliverance is more spiritual than physical and more encompassing, that is, not only for his people, but for all peoples. The dream and prophecy of Isaiah (25:6) of a banquet for all peoples in Jerusalem is coming true.

Gabriel and the nature of angels
In the beginning, Hashem made three types of creatures, the angels, the beasts, and the human beings. The angels, He made from His pure word. The angels have no will to do evil. They cannot deviate for one moment from His purpose. The beasts have only their instincts to guide them. They, too, follow the commands of their maker. The Torah states that Hashem spent almost six whole days of creation fashioning these creatures.

Then, just before sunset, He took a small quantity of earth and from it He fashioned man and woman. An afterthought? Or His crowning achievement? So, what is this thing? Man? Woman? It is a being with the power to disobey. Alone among all the creatures we have free will. We hang suspended between the clarity of the angels and the desires of the beasts. Hashem gave us choice, which is both a privilege and a burden. We must then accept the tangled life we live.  Anton Lesser: Rav Krushka in the movie: Disobedience (2017)

The words cited above are put in the mouth of an old rabbi. Hebrew theology does not grant angels freedom, or freewill, they are not free to choose good or evil. They live like animals, beyond good and evil. The difference is that unlike animals, angels have no desires because they do not have a physical body like the animals. Being purely spiritual beings, they only possess a form of thought from which freewill has been removed, that is, the difference between good and evil. They are a pure extension of God's thought, and cannot deviate from these thoughts.

They have some of God’s attributes, they are God’s companions in Heaven, they relate to God and God to them as a master to his beloved dog or cat, or any other pet, not like, as we have said, beings with a physical body, but beings with a spiritual body.

Angels by not having freewill, then the extra-biblical story of the genesis of the devil or demon makes no sense. There has never been an angel who disobeyed God's plans, because angels, an extension of God's thought, live happily subjugated to their creator, like a pet to its owner, without the ability to diverge, discern, choose or say no. Therefore, Gabriel, God’s messenger, presents himself with a message addressed to Mary, that he cannot change, a human being, who has power to say yes or no to God's plans.

A virgin will give birth...
Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. Then Isaiah said: ‘Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.  Isaiah 7:11-14

Context of the original prophecy
In the 8th century B.C., the kingdom of Judah was about to be invaded by the northern kingdom (Israel) and Syria in order to force King Ahaz of Judah into an alliance with these two kingdoms against the powerful Assyria.  

In Isaiah 7:10-12, God, through the prophet, exhorts King Ahaz to ask Him for a sign. King Ahaz, fearing that God's will was different from his own, since he had already thought of forging an alliance with the mighty Assyria, refuses to ask God for a sign, citing Deuteronomy 6:16 as an excuse.

God, on his own initiative, gives the sign anyway, but the recipient is no longer the individual person of King Ahaz, but the dynasty to which he belongs, the house of David. Proof of this is that this dynasty is mentioned in verse 13, which means that the "you" in the following verse 14 does not refer to the king as a person, but to the dynasty to which he belongs, the house of David. The Hebrew term, "lakem", translated as "to you" is in the plural form and it means that the sign is "given to you, but not you as a singular person, that is, it will not be fulfilled during your reign, but much later".

Trying to interpret "you" as referring to the person of King Ahaz, some rabbis stated that this character, Immanuel, was Hezekiah, the son of King Ahaz himself. However, done properly using the reigns of the contemporary neighboring kingdoms, when the prophecy was announced Hezekiah was already between 12 to 14 years old so the “you” cannot be him.

Prophecies have no date of fulfillment, nor do they have a label where the expiration date is stipulated. They are the Word of God which is eternal and they can be announced long before they are fulfilled. This is implied in the enigmatic and unusual characteristic of this prophecy, as well as in the ambiguity of the term "virgin".

The term "Virgin"
The Greek language translated "almah" which in Hebrew means maiden (a young girl) as "párthenos" which means "Virgin". In Hebrew culture, virginity is not generally a value, and if it is, it is at the service of motherhood. However, it is correct to use the term "virgin" as best fitting this message the prophet wants to convey.

That is, if it is a divine sign, it must necessarily be extraordinary; in the case of a maiden giving birth, there is nothing extraordinary about it; it has always been and always will be normal and routine. On the other hand, the one to be born is not just any human person, but Emmanuel, that is, a person through whom God is with us. Finally, the text speaks and only mentions Emmanuel’s mother, not the father, so it is assumed to be God himself.

Conclusion: The angel of the Lord announced to Mary that she was the custodian and the fulfillment of the promise that God made to King Ahaz eight centuries earlier, through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah (7:14). A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, whose name shall be Emmanuel, God with us.

                                            Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

I Mystery: The Immaculate Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary - Part 2

In the eleventh century in England and Normandy, a feast day was set aside to laud the conception of Mary, for on this day the miraculous fact that Anne who was barren conceived. It has been said by Saint Anselm that Mary was preserved from sin. In 1439, at the Council of Basel, this mystery was considered a truth of the faith and Pope Pius IX proclaimed it a dogma in 1854.

Origin of sin and the original sin
God created man in his own image and likeness; with sin we lost our likeness to God, while still maintaining his image. We are no longer as God created us; the sin of our parents spread through space and time, profoundly altering human nature. Man has built his own hell, typified by the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The flood – destroying everything and starting over – with Noah's family, was the first plan to save the human species. But Noah’s descendants soon went back to the sin of their ancestors.

The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge, (Jeremiah 31: 29). Without knowing Mendel's laws of inheritance, the Hebrews were already aware that certain evils are passed down from parents to offspring. In fact, the sin of Adam and Eve corrupted them, not only at an existential level as individuals, but also at a genetic level, so the consequences would be suffered by the entire human species.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man (Adam), and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned…  Romans 5:12

The original sin caused a genetic mutation in our genes and turned into a cancer, a dominant hereditary disease, that is, it is impossible that anyone born of a man and a woman not to have it. Evil has thus become a second nature that is already present from the moment of our conception.

Most parents do not teach children to lie or steal, and yet even with some years of good and superb education, both in example and in word, parents catch their dear children stealing a few coins from their wallets or lying blatantly. Evil does not need to be learned; we are naturally inclined towards it. Christ himself recognized this fallen nature of the human being when he said:

There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. (…) And he said, ‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person. Mark 7:15, 20-23

Usurpation of the criterion of good and evil
The pseudo-emancipation of man, in wanting to be like God and having usurped from God the prerogative of good and evil, was the origin of sin or the original sin that has been passing down from generation to generation, because it had altered the DNA of the human species. Evil has established its roots within the human species in such a way that, as Jesus said in Matthew 15:11, "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." It is not, therefore, bad education that leads man to do evil; the evil is already inside of him.

While the criterion of good and evil remained at the center of the Garden of Eden, and belonged exclusively to God, the earth was the Kingdom of God; there was peace, unity, consensus, because everyone submitted to a single criterion. When man, in wanting to be like God, put himself at the center by stealing the prerogative of good and evil, then division, war, subjectivity, arbitrariness, relativism, discord came into the world. Every individual wants to be the center. Since there can't be two centers, so if I have the criteria of good and evil, you don't have it or I don't acknowledge that you have it.

No one does evil thinking they are doing evil; by killing 5 million Jews, Hitler thought he was doing humanity a favor; suicide bombers who carry out massive murder of innocent people say that they are sacrificing themselves for the greater good; Muslim extremists kill in the name of God....

We are apples with bugs
Parents who take great care in their children's education are caught off guard when they start lying, stealing, and doing other mischiefs they were never taught. Evil is within us and does not need to be learned. As the psychologist Jung would say, evil belongs to the collective unconscious of humanity. Every evil act that an individual carries out, settles in this collective coefficient in such a way that individuals born afterwards, are born with the ability to perform it again without needing any learning.

Many people seeing an apple with a small hole think that the hole was made by a bug that went into the apple, but what actually happens is the opposite: it was made by a bug coming out of the apple. The bug was born from an egg that an insect deposited inside the apple during flowering. We are all apples with bugs: evil is inside all of us and it only needs a certain circumstance to reveal itself.

It is not, therefore, as the proverb says "The situation makes the thief". Everyone, sooner or later, is faced with situations in which he or she can steal; from the outset, we are all capable of stealing. To steal or not to steal will depend on the degree of education, on human values, that we have at the moment of temptation. Only this degree of education on human values can counteract the innate tendency in all of us.

From Eva to Ave
There are two reasons why God came to us in human form: the first is to tell us, in a definitive way, what God is like, and the second is to tell us what human beings are like and how they should be like. Christ is in fact the measure of the human being, the benchmark of humanity, the one to whom all individuals must measure themselves, for He is the norm, He is the model, the paradigm. Christ is the man God created in Adam before the latter disobeyed. In fact, Jesus shows, by word and deed, that he remains, all his life, obedient to God.

As Christ is the second Adam, so Mary is the second Eve. Ave is, in fact, Eve in reverse. Christ, the son of the Most High God, could not have Eve after sin as his mother; therefore, at the moment of her conception, the moment when Joachim’s half-cell of united with Anne’s half-cell, God acted, preventing the genes that, from the sin of Adam and Eve had passed down from generation to generation, from also passing down to Mary. Mary was conceived without original sin because she was destined to be the mother of the Son of God. It makes no sense that God would incarnate with the human nature that Adam and Eve had stained with sin. Therefore, Mary who was going to be the mother of the Lord was preserved from this negative inherited trait, common to all mortals.

In Ethiopia, there is no negative connotation attached to the figure of stepmother. Often, one is the biological mother and the other is the mother who raises and educates the child. She is called the “Ingera enat", or the bread mother. When I was studying theology, I had a classmate who called his biological aunt mother and his biological mother aunt. My classmate had been rejected by his biological mother and was taken in by her sister who raised him. Their love for each other was so great that when she was already sick, terminally ill with cancer, she did not die until she saw her son (biologically her nephew) ordained a priest.

Eve is the biological mother of all human beings; Mary is our bread mother, of this Eucharistic bread that is her son born in a town called Bethlehem, which literally means house of bread and whom she laid in a manger, a container where one eats, so that we could feed on him.

Eve is our progenitor, but she has abandoned us to our fate; Mary is the one who provides for our needs, just as in Cana when she said, "They have no wine" (John 2:2).

Eve is the one who taught us to do evil; Ave or Mary is the one who educates and teaches us to do good by pointing us to her son and saying, "Do whatever he tells you" (John 2:5).

Nativity of Mary
We cannot recognize the blessings that Jesus brought us, without recognizing at the same time how immensely God honored and enriched Mary by choosing her for the Mother of God.  (John Calvin," Comm. Sur l'Harm. Evang.",20)

Nine months after the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the Church celebrates the nativity of Our Lady on 8 September. In a biblical context of so many births of same circumstances, from Isaac, Samuel, Samson, etc., according to tradition, Mary was born to elderly and barren parents, named Joachim and Anne. In response to their perseverance and constancy in prayer, these parents were blessed by God with the gift of a baby girl.

Some people place them as residents of Nazareth, but the most reliable tradition places them in Jerusalem, living next to the pool of Bethesda, where pilgrims purified themselves before entering the temple and where today stands the Basilica of St. Anne, very close to one of the main entrances to the Temple and the present-day Lions’ Gate in the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem, leading into the Muslim Quarter.

The girl was given the name Miriam which means seer, sovereign lady. It was most likely an Egyptian name because, as we know, Miriam was the name of Moses' sister. There are those who think that it derives from the Sanskrit name Maryá which literally means purity, virtue, virginity; the Latin translation is Mary. Like Samuel, she was also offered to the Temple of Jerusalem at the age of three, and remained there until she was twelve years old, when she was given in marriage to Joseph.

As we know, the canonical gospels tell us nothing about Mary's birth. The basis of tradition, however, is quite ancient, as it comes from an apocryphal writing of the second century, the Protoevangelium of James, written around the year 150.

Conclusion
Eve is our progenitor, because she is the one who gave birth to us; Mary is our mother, because she is the one who provides for our needs as at the wedding feast of Cana, and she educates us when at the same wedding she tells us, "Do whatever He tells you". Finally, it is she who prays for us at every moment of our life and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

I Mystery: The Immaculate Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary - Part 1

Mary is the new Eve, as Christ is the new Adam, that is, man and woman as God conceived them before the Fall. Sin is not part of the original nature of the human being. Therefore, when God the Father thought of sending His Son into the world, He could not be born from man's sinfully modified nature, but from the original nature in which He created it. The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is also the beginning of Mary's redemption, as it is of ours.

"Solus Christus Sola Fide Sola Scriptura"
This is one of Luther's lapidary phrases, whose intention was to deny the value of tradition, valuing only the faith of the individual without the community, and the Bible as the word of God. This statement is a misconception and is totally false: first, it is hypocritical, because Luther himself, in his writings, accepted all the dogmas that tradition had defined, the identity of Christ as true man and true God, the Trinity in which God is one and triune, as well as all the Marian dogmas. The dogmas or definitions of faith are the result of centuries of reflection by the Church, that is, they have their origin in tradition.
 
But even the Bible is a child of tradition. First there was the Church, and only later the Bible, as far as the New Testament is concerned. Christ wrote nothing apart from what he wrote in the sand when a woman caught in the act of adultery was brought to him; about him during his lifetime, only Pilate wrote the cause of his condemnation on the sign placed on top of his cross. The 12 apostles, none of them wrote anything, they dedicated themselves solely to preaching after Christ’s Resurrection. It was the Church, when it was already well established, in the second generation after the apostolic one, that gave birth to the scriptures.

First, there were Paul’s letters, which were truly letters because on the envelope, so to speak, they had Paul as the sender and, in fact, he began each letter by introducing himself. In the place of the address was the Christian community of a particular city, the one of Rome in the letter to the Romans, the one of Philippi in the letter to the Philippians, the one of Thessalonica in the letter to the Thessalonians, the one of Ephesus in the letters to the Ephesians, or specific individuals like Titus and Timothy, or even other communities, like the anonymous letter to the Hebrews, etc.

The Gospels appeared later, each written by a different author in order to present the facts about Jesus of Nazareth to a different group of people. Mark, the first author, wrote his Gospel in Rome for the Romans; to this end, he was inspired by Peter's preaching. Matthew, a Jew who used the name of the apostle Matthew, perhaps because he was inspired by his preaching, wrote for the Jews. Luke, a Greek medical doctor and a disciple of Paul, was inspired by his preaching to write for the Greeks. John’s Gospel is more of a historical reflection than a narration of facts, and he had no particular group of people in mind.

Even the expression "Solus Christus" is a fallacy because we do not have a pure Christ without tradition. We have a Christ of John, another of Mark, another of Luke and still another of Matthew. The true Christ is the sum of all of them, but even on the figure of Christ we cannot set aside the tradition of the Church. Tradition and Bible in the Catholic Church intertwine like the two spirals of DNA. Tradition gives birth to the Bible, but the Bible then inspires the subsequent tradition throughout history, because tradition is modifiable, the Bible is not.

The Bible, once the canon was closed, is the essence; the tradition is the accidents. The Bible is fixed, the tradition is changeable. Tradition is an updating of the Bible over time.

Similarity to the amendments of US Constitution – Many countries, in finding that their Constitution has become outdated, revise it or write a new one. This does not happen in the United States, a country with an unchanging Constitution, as if it were a Gospel, which cannot be rewritten or modified, causing serious problems, such as the authorization to carry firearms.

But even in the United States the reality is changing, there are amendments to the Constitution that, in order to be valid, must be drafted in light of the Constitution, but are an interpretation or update of it, or an adaptation of the Constitution to modern times.

Similarity to the dinosaur – No one has ever seen a live dinosaur, for while they walked on earth, the human race did not yet exist. However, we know of their existence because here and there bones of these huge reptiles have been found. We started putting these bones together to tentatively reconstruct these extinct animals and, like a puzzle, we arrived at the final result; then it was a matter of covering the bones with flesh and skin to obtain an almost exact image of how they looked alive.

Never have all the bones that make up the body of one of these animals been found in one place. In the spaces that were left empty in the puzzle, artificial bones were fabricated to complete the puzzle. Granted that the added bones are not real, just as tradition is not scripture, but tradition follows in the sequence of the scriptures, and it agrees and harmonizes with it. The dogmas of the identity of Christ, of Mary, of the one and triune God are like the missing bones in the skeleton of the dinosaur, but which can be logically deduced from the real bones present.

Immaculate Conception of Mary
“It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus, from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin.”  (Martin Luther, Sermon on the Day of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, 1527)

All the great Protestant reformers like Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, accepted all of the Marian dogmas. The indifference, contempt and almost hatred of Mary that certain Protestants manifest today do not come from these reformers but from fanatics after them.

The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, a solemnity that the Church celebrates on December 8th, close to the Lord's Christmas, is another way of beginning anew. It is the replacement of the flood that destroyed the sins of the old to begin anew. In Mary, God relinquishes the destruction of the world. That is why Mary is a "non-destructive flood" because, little by little, with the Kingdom of her son, she will flood the world with the divine Grace that kills sin. Mary is, therefore, the new ark of Noah that saves humanity from sin because she contains the Saviour who is Christ, her son.

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.  Hebrews 1:1-2

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman...  Galatians 4:4

Mary is not the beginning of the salvation history: this began with Abraham and was continued from generation to generation by the prophets, judges, kings, and other leaders of the chosen people. Mary is the culmination of this history, she is, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews points out above, the last days or, as St. Paul says, the fullness of time.

The history of salvation deals with people who pass from generation to generation the germ of Good, in the midst of a world that lives the history of Evil. However, this germ of Good coexists in the same person with Evil. Those who carried the germ of Good or the testimony of Good in this relay race, were not perfect people, as we know from the Bible, where their flaws and sins are well documented, from Abraham, Moses, David to so many others who were, as St. Augustine would later say in defining man, "simul justus et peccator”, at the same time righteous and sinful.

Mary is the last link in this chain of Good. Through Mary, God put the final touches to eliminate every trace of evil in preparation for the Incarnation of His Son. It stands to reason that if God was going to take on human nature to speak to men, he was not going to take on a fallen human nature, he was not going to take on the decaying sinful human nature of our fathers, but rather the human nature that He had created in the beginning. That is, he was going to take on the nature of Adam and Eve before the Fall. This is why it is said that Mary is the new Eve and Christ the new Adam.

The moment the genetic material from the half-cell of Joaquim joined the genetic material from the half-cell of Anne to form a new genetic code, Mary's DNA, God intervened in genetic engineering and replaced the genes spoiled or corrupted by sin that had been passed down from generation to generation since Adam and Eve, with the new genes, the ones that Adam and Eve themselves possessed before they ruined human nature by sinning. In other words, He replaced the damaged pieces with the original pieces.

When the Angel Gabriel visited Mary, he recognized in her the new Eve by pronouncing this very name backwards as a greeting (Eva/Ave), Mary is the work of God's genetic engineering; Mary is God’s re-creation by virtue of his direct and intentional intervention in human history. Because Mary, in communion with the same God, will generate, produce the vaccine against sin, that is Christ His Son. Mary is not only the beginning of salvation for the world but in her Immaculate Conception, as a preparation for the coming of Jesus, she is also the first to be saved.

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. John 3:14-15

The son of Mary is the one who will replace the serpent raised up in the desert by Moses, the saviour of the Jewish people, to heal everyone from the bite of the ancient serpent that poisoned Eve, Adam, and their descendants from generation to generation.

Conclusion
If Christ is like us in everything except sin, he must be the son of a woman who, by special privilege,  was also like us in everything except sin, that is, she must be created in the image and likeness of God. Mary is the second Eve, the Eve who did not sin and who never lost her resemblance to God.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Marian mysteries of the Rosary

Why Marian mysteries? Because the Marian mysteries are as much a part of Jesus' life as the Joyful, the Luminous, the Sorrowful and the Glorious. Mary's life is intimately linked to the life of Jesus, one cannot explain or write a biographical history of Jesus without mentioning Mary, as the Protestants would have it. She was at the origin of Jesus, during his public life, at his death and resurrection, and at the coming of the Holy Spirit and the beginning of the Church. She existed before and after the incarnate Word.

The Marian mysteries are about Mary in her relationship with Jesus. They follow Jesus closely; they are about Mary's role in the salvation history of her Son. They are about Jesus from Mary's point of view or perspective. I have a sister who kept a diary for years of her experiences with her son, from conception to adulthood. The Marian mysteries are Mary's diary, they are what Mary silently and secretly kept in her heart.  (Luke 2:16-21)

I do not pretend to say indirectly that Mary is a co-redeemer, a dogma that the Pope John Paul II thought of instituting.  Mary is at the service of salvation history although her role is more important than any of the 12 apostles, for she was and is a mediator of all graces and therefore of the main grace which is the coming of Christ into the world. This, however, does not make her a co-redeemer next to her son. She herself was redeemed, only that her redemption began earlier at her Immaculate Conception. If she was redeemed, then she cannot be a redeemer.  

Despite her very important role in the salvation history, Mary was not indispensable, not then and not now. If she had answered ‘no’ to the angel, God would have thought of another person or another way of incarnating into humanity, for nothing is impossible for Him, as the same angel said to Mary. Only one person was and is indispensable in the history of humanity: Jesus of Nazareth.

To those who laugh at me or question who am I to create these mysteries, "you are not the pope or even a bishop", I answer that the Holy Spirit is democratic, He does not respect ecclesiastical hierarchies, He blows where and on whom He wants (John 3:8). The copyright of the Holy Spirit belongs to no one. After all, there has been times when He has come very well into the Church through lay people, and not so well through popes and clerics.

The 12 Marian Mysteries
A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads.

His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne…  Revelation 12:1-5

We already have mysteries in the holy Rosary that are purely and technically Marian, the first three Joyful and the last two Glorious. In fact, the first time the Marian mysteries came to my mind, it was precisely these five, recited on Saturdays, the day especially consecrated to our heavenly Mother. Later, seven others came to my mind, seven being a perfect number in the Bible and then finally 12 in total, inspired by the woman in the book of Revelation.

The twelve stars on Mary’ crown represent the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles, the new Israel, the Church, the 12 contributions to the history of redemption of Jesus Christ, her son according to the flesh. Mary is crowned with these twelve stars, twelve attributes, twelve jewels of the redemption of mankind.

What are these twelve mysteries?

1. We contemplate the Immaculate Conception and the Birth of the Virgin Mary.
Mary is the new Eve, as Christ is the new Adam, that is, man and woman as God conceived them before sin. Sin is not part of the original nature of the human being. Therefore, when God the Father thought of sending his Son into the world, He could not be born from man’s altered sinful nature, but from the original nature in which He created him. The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is also the beginning of Mary's redemption, as it is for us at our baptism.

2. We contemplate the Angel's Annunciation to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary.
Common with the first Joyful mystery, but which, as we said, is purely Marian. The Angel Gabriel is the herald of the New Age that is about to begin. God is going to visit his people again, as he did in Egypt, but this time the deliverance is more spiritual than physical and more encompassing, that is, not only for his people, but for all peoples. The dream and prophecy of Isaiah become a reality.

3. We contemplate the Visitation of the Virgin Mary.
From being with God and with oneself, to being with one’s neighbour, this is the life of the Christian that Mary exemplifies very well throughout her life. As soon as she heard that her cousin needed her help, she got up and left her pleasant contemplation of the divine, her peace and quietude, to go and take care of the needs of others. From the time Mary visited her cousin, she has not stopped visiting us whenever we are in need: Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima and so many others, are all proofs that Mary knows about our lives and what we need in due time.

4. We contemplate Mary giving birth to Jesus.
The Joyful Mystery speaks of the birth of Jesus, forgetting who gave birth to him. Contemplating the birth of Jesus without contemplating the one who gave birth to him is, to me, a somewhat Protestant formulation of this mystery. Not least because the protagonist of Christmas is Mary, not Jesus, from a grammatical point of view: Jesus is given birth to, Mary gives birth.

5. We contemplate Simeon's Prophecy about Mary.
Except for "A virgin shall conceive and bear a son" (Isaiah 7:14), all the prophecies are about Jesus. The prophet Simeon prophesies about Jesus, but also about his mother. Jesus' coming into the world came at a price and part of that price was paid by his mother who suffered for Him, from the conception of her son until his death.

6.  We consider the life of the Holy Family.
The second person of the Most Holy Trinity was already part of a family in Heaven; on earth he is also part of a family: Mary, Jesus himself and his adoptive father Joseph. The human being is a social being because he is a familiar being; outside the family, there is no human life. The divine family of the Holy Trinity is certainly a model for humanity, but it is far from us. In Jesus, the Most Holy Trinity establishes in the world a family to be a model of love and harmony for our families.

7. We contemplate Mary’s Mediation at the wedding in Cana of Galilee.
Mary launches her son into life, not holding him back for herself, as many mothers selfishly do. She initiates him into his public life when Jesus was thinking of starting later. Jesus gives in to his mother's request as he always gives in to any of her requests. In this mystery, Mary becomes the mediator of all the graces given by her son, she who was already the mediator of salvation, because the saviour of the world came to us through her.

8. We contemplate the Motherhood and Discipleship of Mary.
Mary is a mother because she is a disciple, she heard the word and put it into practice. According to the gospel, we too can be part of Jesus’ intimate family, his brothers and sisters, if like her when we hear the word and put it into practice.

9. We contemplate Mary who becomes our mother at the foot of the cross of her son.
Jesus always took care of his mother, and at the end of his life he made sure that she would not be like the widow of Nain, for not even the widow of Nain was left alone without her son. On the other hand, Christ who had already given us everything, also gave us his mother, so that she would also be ours forever on earth as well as in heaven.

10. We contemplate Mary who becomes the mother of the Church at Pentecost.
Already our mother, Mary as an expert in things of the Holy Spirit, for through him she conceived, she becomes the mother of the Church, mother of Jesus’ disciples, the instructor in things of the Holy Spirit, a catechist of the Holy Spirit, and prepares the Church for Pentecost and the disciples for their Confirmation.

11. We contemplate the Dormition and Assumption of Mary.
This is the second last glorious mystery that in itself is already Marian, because it is exclusively about Mary, even though it is through Jesus that she ascends to Heaven in body and soul, not by her own merits in any way.

12. We contemplate the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth.
The Queen Mother is a beloved figure in all monarchies; Saint Helena was the queen mother who greatly influenced her son, Constantine. If Jesus is King of the Universe, then Mary is the Queen of Heaven and Earth.

Conclusion
As the Mysteries -- Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious -- are not only about Jesus, so the Marian Mysteries are not only about Mary. The lives of Jesus and Mary are interwoven together like the two backbone strands of DNA. The Marian Mysteries tell how the life of Jesus spills into the life of Mary.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Mysteries of the Rosary

It is called the "Rosary" because the 150 (now 200) Hail Marys, intertwined in groups of 10 with the Our Father, the Glory Be and the meditations on the mysteries of the life of Jesus and our redemption, form a "crown of roses" that is offered to Mary, Mother of the Lord and our mother. The twenty mysteries of the Lord's life are divided into four series of five mysteries each. In each Rosary, we pray only the five mysteries of one of these series:

The Joyful Mysteries
In the Joyful Mysteries, we meditate on the beginning of the redemption of humanity, from the annunciation to Mary and the incarnation of the Son of God in her womb until the end of Jesus’ childhood.

FIRST – In the first Joyful Mystery we contemplate the Annunciation of the angel to the Blessed Virgin Mary – Through Archangel Gabriel, the messenger of the Good News, God decides to intervene in the history of humanity, as he has done so many times throughout the history of Israel.

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…  Hebrews 1:1-10

The communications of the prophets of ancient times were always imprecise, imperfect, and incomplete. Through His Son, God decides to come Himself, to show us step by step, as in a video, how human life should be lived.

SECOND – In the second Joyful Mystery we contemplate the Visitation of Mary Most Holy to her cousin Saint Elizabeth – If at the Annunciation Mary is in prayer, then in the Visitation Mary is in action; if at the Annunciation Mary is listening to the word of God, then in the Visitation Mary is putting that same word into practice, as her son so often exhorts; if at the Annunciation Mary is loving God above all things, then in the Visitation she is loving her neighbor as herself. If at the Annunciation Mary has an experience of God as a disciple, then at the Visitation by singing her Magnificat, bearing witness to her experience of God, Mary is being a missionary by witnessing to her cousin to that same experience and of all that God has worked in her.

In these two Joyful Mysteries, the whole Christian life unfolds; for this reason, Mary is for us a model of discipleship, of missionary and Christian life; all the virtues that a Christian must cultivate in his life are concentrated in her. Mary is therefore for us not only the mother of Jesus and Our Mother, but she is also our model for following Christ.

THIRD – In the third Joyful Mystery we contemplate the Birth of Jesus – “And the Word became flesh and lived among us…” John 1:14 – God the Creator incarnated in a creature. For many religions it seems impossible that God would incarnate in a human being, that the sea could enter into a puddle of water. If we only think of God’s transcendence then yes, it will seem impossible, illogical, improbable, even though nothing is impossible to God.

But God is not only transcendent, he is also immanent, he already exists in the here and now, in the heart of everything and every person. Deus intimior intimo meo applies to all things; God is the heart of matter of material entities and of spiritual beings. Therefore, God is already here, and thinking of his immanence, it becomes easier to understand the fact that He acquired a human form.

God encamped among us, set up his tent among us as he once did when he journeyed for 40 years in the desert with the people he delivered from slavery. This tent, where Moses, representing God's people, met God in dialogue, was called the tent of meeting. Jesus of Nazareth, the Emmanuel, God with us, is the new Tent of Meeting, for in Him God meets Man and Man meets God. Through Jesus, God comes to man, and also through Jesus, man goes to God.

As they were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him (Jesus).  Matthew 20:29
God became man so that man might become God. Saint Irenaeus

Jericho is both the oldest city, with 8,000 years of existence, and the lowest city on our planet, at about 500 meters below sea level. Jericho in the Bible signifies sin; in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jerusalem represents grace while Jericho represents sin.

The man who fell into the hands of robbers fell into disgrace because he was going down from Jerusalem, 800 meters above sea level, to Jericho. He journeyed from grace to sin; as the people say, he who does not remember God lacks all good. To save Man from sin, Jesus also goes down to Jericho, but he does not stay there; he leaves Jericho and a great crowd follows him, going up from the sin of Jericho to the grace of Jerusalem.

FOURTH – In the fourth Joyful Mystery we contemplate the Presentation of the child Jesus in the temple and the ritual purification of Our Lady – Jesus does not break with the traditions of the past but submits himself to the laws of the land where he lived and of the people where he incarnated as man.  However, in obeying or satisfying these laws, he makes them pass through his moral conscience, because the law was made for man and not man for the law.

Mary, being after Jesus the purest among all living beings, also submits herself to the tradition, of the ritual purification. Those who refer to this second part of the mystery must include the word "ritual", because Mary was always pure: before, during and after childbirth.

FIFTH – In the fifth Joyful Mystery we contemplate the loss and the encounter of the child Jesus in the temple among the doctors of the law – Many exegetes consider it an exaggeration that Jesus was in dialogue with the doctors of the law, as an equal. I don't understand why this couldn’t have happened; Jesus was probably a child prodigy like so many that have existed and exist in all times and places. If Mozart, Beethoven and others were child prodigies, why couldn't Jesus have been one?

The Luminous Mysteries
In the Luminous Mysteries, we meditate on the most important moments of Jesus' public life, from his baptismal investiture to the institution of the Eucharist as a memorial of his passion. It is in the years of his public life that Jesus truly reveals himself as the Light of the World (Jn 8:12), by his attitudes in the most diverse life situations in which he found himself, by the doctrine he taught and by his actions.

FIRST – In the first Luminous Mystery we contemplate the Baptism of Jesus – “Libris ex libris fiunt" or books come from books. Jesus consecrated himself to a movement that probably began with the monks of Qumran, located very close to the place where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, a monk who offered forgiveness of sins, as was done in Qumran through an ablution of water. Jesus continues this movement and takes the forgiveness of sins beyond the Jordan River and beyond the symbol of water.

SECOND – In the second Luminous Mystery we contemplate the Wedding at Cana – In Cana of Galilee, Mary sees a need and tries to solve the problem by pushing Jesus into his public life, when He had not yet planned to begin. Jesus, obedient to the Father in Heaven, also obeys his Mother, even as an adult. This obedience is important to us because it institutionalizes Mary, his mother, as the intercessor of all graces.

THIRD – In the third Luminous Mystery we contemplate the miracles worked by Jesus as proof of the presence of the Kingdom of God among us – This is how I write this mystery dedicated to the thaumaturgical activity of Jesus, as proof that the Kingdom is already among us, although not yet in its fullness.

FOURTH – In the fourth Luminous Mystery we contemplate the Sermon on the Mount as the magna carta of the Kingdom of God – If in the previous mystery I mentioned the works of the Kingdom, in this one I mention the doctrine that inspires them, the Sermon on the Mount, as the fine print of all that Jesus told us and taught us. I think this is more important than the Transfiguration.

FIFTH – In the fifth Luminous Mystery we contemplate the Institution of the Eucharist – Without the Eucharist there is no Church, without the Church there is no Eucharist. The Eucharist is first and foremost the gathering of Christians or this association founded by Jesus and called the Church, as members of the Body of Christ to celebrate the life, death and resurrection of Christ, just as he has commanded us.

The Sorrowful Mysteries
In the Sorrowful Mysteries, we meditate on the process, the passion and the death of Jesus, from his agony in the Garden of Olives to his last breath on top of the cross. When we say that Jesus died for our sins, it means that he paid in full the debt we were unable to pay; but it also means that the sins of those who intervened in his death are still being committed today, so we can conclude that it was the sin of all humanity that killed Jesus.

FIRST – In the first Sorrowful Mystery we contemplate the Agony of Jesus in the Garden of Olives – Jesus was tempted all his life, not only at the beginning; one of the last temptations took place here, when he considered the possibility of not drinking from the chalice that was in front of him, his passion and death. All he had to do was to climb a short way up the hill and go down into the Judean desert, hide in one of the deep valleys and no one would ever find him again. But Jesus chose to pay the price for his ideals against a corrupt and degenerate world. If he had saved his own skin, he would have been lost as the savior of the whole world.

SECOND – In the second Sorrowful Mystery we contemplate the Scourging of Jesus tied to a pillar – If Pilate had condemned Jesus to death directly, Jesus would not have been scourged. Flogging was the punishment given to those whose lives were spared. Pilate thought that after seeing Jesus badly scourged, the people would pity him and let him go, but this did not happen; the hatred of the scribes, the elders, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees for Jesus was so great that they were not stricken with compassion even after seeing Him so terribly scourged.

THIRD – In the third Sorrowful Mystery we contemplate the Coronation of Jesus with a crown of thorns – It was when he was already in a very difficult situation that Jesus recognized and accepted the title of King, though not of this world, for the kings of this world do not ride on donkeys as he did nor are crucified as he was, and wear a crown of gold and not one of thorns as he did.

FOURTH – In the fourth Sorrowful Mystery we contemplate the Condemnation of Jesus to death and the walk to Calvary with the cross on his back – By consenting to put Jesus to death, Pilate also cancelled his previous transgressions. There already had been so many in the past that now, despite being convinced that Jesus was innocent and seeking a ploy to save Him, Pilate failed to save him: the charges against him were already many in Rome, that he could not afford one more added to the list.

FIFTH – In the fifth Sorrowful Mystery we contemplate the Crucifixion and Death of Jesus – Abandoned by his people in general, by his fellow disciples and apostles, crucified in the midst of two criminals, he felt in the end that even God had abandoned him, perhaps because the sin of humanity weighed so heavily on his shoulders. Even so, he hoped in God and did not despair, since to the same God who had abandoned him, he surrendered his spirit.

The Glorious Mysteries
In the Glorious Mysteries, we meditate on Jesus' triumph over death with his Resurrection. Death has been conquered, as has the sin that caused it. After Jesus’ Resurrection, death is no longer the final destiny of mankind, but a passage to eternal life. The life of Jesus, which begins with Mary's "Yes" to God's plan, now ends with the glorification of the One who is, for us all, a model of Christian life.

FIRST – In the first Glorious Mystery we contemplate the Resurrection of Jesus – The Resurrection of Jesus is God having the last laugh, the Resurrection of Jesus proves that evil does not have the last word, as seen in almost every movie in which good ultimately wins over evil. Not even death has eternal power over life. After the Resurrection of Jesus, death is no longer the end of life, but a passage to a life in God for those who lived with God and for God.

SECOND – In the second Glorious Mystery we contemplate Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven – Jesus in his glorious body did not ascend immediately to his Father, as he himself told Mary Magdalene, but stayed for some time with his disciples, appearing to comfort them from the scandal of the cross and to give them the final instructions before ascending definitively to the Father.

THIRD – In the third Glorious Mystery we contemplate the Coming of the Holy Spirit – As he had promised, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit soon after he went to heaven, so that we would not be left orphans, to be the Soul of the Church and the center of our being, to be with us, to be God within us who inspires, comforts, guides and gives us strength and courage to face an adverse world.

FOURTH - In the fourth Glorious Mystery we contemplate the Assumption of Mary, body and soul, into Heaven – In the Dormition or Assumption, Mary goes to heaven to be by her son’s side just as she has always been by his side on earth. We too like her will be received into heaven, where Jesus, her son, has gone to prepare a place for us.

FIFTH – In the fifth Glorious Mystery we contemplate the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth – Mary's earthly life as Mother of the Saviour began before Jesus and ended after Jesus. After becoming the mother of the Church because she was the mother of the Church’s founder, she now reigns in heaven and on earth as the Queen Mother alongside her son who is the King of the Universe.

Conclusion:
The mysteries of the Rosary are about the salvific acts of Christ on earth, the path he walked with us, as he did with the disciples at Emmaus, to explain the scriptures to us, and to plant in the world the seeds of the Kingdom of God.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Rosary, a Contemplative prayer

The Rosary is at the same time a Marian prayer and a prayer centered on Christ – Christ-Centric – because we repeatedly invoke Mary as Mother of God and our mother and ask her to join us in our prayer to the Father as we recite the Our Father, and to the Most Holy Trinity as we recite the Glory Be. We ask her to help us to meditate and contemplate the mysteries of the life of her Son, our older brother and Savior, of which she is also a part.

In Fatima, as in the other Marian apparitions, Mary does not draw attention to herself, but exclusively to her Son. Her contentment comes not from us praising her, but from us praising her Son. As the proverb says, "Whoever my son kisses, my mouth sweetens."

While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’  Luke 11:27

You can’t love the son without loving the mother, so all the love directed to the child is indirectly directed to the mother. Just as all the praises given to the mother is directed to the son, as happened to that woman who, among the crowd, raised her voice to say to Jesus, "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!"

The Rosary is not a prayer of thanksgiving, nor a prayer of petition, it is not even a prayer of lamentation like some psalms in the Bible. The Rosary is basically a prayer of meditation and contemplation. In fact, we proclaim and enunciate each Mystery by saying "in this Mystery, we contemplate..."

The story goes that one day someone confessed to Pope John XXIII his difficulty in praying the Rosary because he often gets distracted by the mechanical and repetitive recitation of the Hail Marys, to which the Pope replied, "What good is the Rosary if it is not to distract us?" (Distraction in neo-Latin languages has also the meaning as amusement).

Being a contemplative prayer, the repetitive recitation of the Hail Marys in the Rosary has the same purpose as the mantras in Buddhist spirituality: they occupy the mind, preventing it from jumping from one thought to another, thus allowing and facilitating contemplation of the Mysteries of the Lord's life. 

Hail Mary as a mantra
Contemplative prayers were fashionable in the sixties, just as Lectio Divina is today. Well-known figures of monastic life, such as Thomas Merton, traveled to the Far East, while others, like the Indian Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello, tried to bridge the gap between Eastern religions, such as Buddhism, and Christianity.

To attain contemplation at the technical level, we can certainly learn from Buddhism. However, contemplation has always existed in the Church from the desert fathers, the Benedictine monks, the Carmelites, Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, and even at the level of diocesan clergy at all times, like the Holy Curé of Ars exemplifies so well.

After exchanging beautiful words and poetry with each other, the lovers remain silent for hours on end, holding each other, saying nothing, doing nothing. In silence, contemplating a beautiful ecstatic landscape, both are examples of contemplation.

In a contemplative prayer there are no words and no thoughts. There is a feeling of emptiness of mind, a realization of self, a heightened sense of being present in oneself, centered in one's own body, without ramblings of the mind. This mind, which St. Teresa of Avila calls the madwoman of the house, is like a monkey that jumps from branch to branch.

To prayer through silence, to silence through prayer. It takes time and a lot of practice to be able to silence the mind. It is achieved by not consenting to thoughts the moment we are aware of them; in this way, little by little, we reach the emptiness of mind that reaches a high degree of self-awareness. It is at this moment that we open ourselves to the divine and experience His presence. Deus intimior intimo meo. God is nearer to me than my innermost being. In fact, in contemplation we seek union with God, the beatific vision, Heaven on Earth.

In the initial states of contemplation, to silence the discursive, imaginative and fanciful mind, the mantras are used, which are short phrases that are repeated continuously to entertain the mind with something and prevent it from wandering from thought to thought. The Russian pilgrim even repeated his mantra hundreds of times a day to achieve continuous prayer, the dream of all hermits.

In the Most Holy Rosary, the Hail Mary prayer repeated 50 times, 10 times for each mystery, is intended to keep the mind from being distracted from contemplation of the mystery. The purpose, therefore, is not to put our attention on each Hail Mary and Our Father that we pray, but to occupy the mind with these prayers as if they were mantras and thus jump into the contemplation of the divine.

How to pray the Rosary
Because it is a contemplative prayer, we must enunciate each mystery by inviting the faithful who pray it with us to contemplate that Mystery; for example, in the first Joyful Mystery we contemplate the Annunciation of the angel to the Blessed Virgin. The phrase "we contemplate" in the proclamation of each Mystery is important and should always be said, never omitted or implied precisely because the Rosary is a contemplative prayer; it is the contemplation on the mysteries of our salvation from the hands of Mary, praying with Mary as her son's disciples prayed with her on the night before Pentecost. (Acts 1:12-14)

For each day of the week, we meditate on different mysteries. Thus, on Mondays and Saturdays we meditate on the Joyful Mysteries, on Tuesdays and Fridays the Sorrowful Mysteries, on Wednesdays and Sundays the Glorious Mysteries, reserving the Luminous Mysteries for Thursdays.

There are several ways of praying the Rosary, but most people begin with the sign of the cross, followed by the Creed, one Our Father, three Hail Marys and one Glory Be. After these introductory prayers, the first mystery is announced accompanied or not with a short meditation, and followed by one Our Father and one decade of Hail Marys.

After the tenth Hail Mary of each decade, the Glory Be is prayed, followed by several interjectory prayers, depending on the place and the people praying, ending with the prayer that Our Lady of Fatima recommended to the little shepherds to pray after each mystery: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need (of Thy mercy).”

In the original Fatima prayer, this final statement (of Thy mercy) is missing, therefore grammatically it is understood that all souls need heaven. All countries have added this final expression in the sense that those who are furthest from God are the ones who are in most need of his mercy.

Hell is eternal death not eternal fire, which means eternal torture. God created us out of nothing so that we could do something with the life He gave us; those who do nothing with it, those who do not use the talents received from God for the benefit of their brothers and sisters for the greater glory of God, return to nothingness from which they were taken, for their lives were nothing and many, in fact, do actually believe that they came from nothing and will return to nothing.

Why does hell appear in the Bible as eternal torture? Because we are naturally more afraid of suffering than of death itself. The one who dies no longer suffers, we say, and the one who is being tortured begs for death as mercy. So often the badly injured friend asks the other friend for death as mercy. The fear of God does not mean to be afraid of God, and we should not choose God for fear of hell. This was a childish pedagogy in which children were educated. But today not even children should be educated in this way; reason should be the basis of all education, not irrational fear.

It is for the simple reason that the little shepherds could not imagine hell in any other way that this prayer of Fatima and the vision of hell did indeed involve fire. Our Lady showed them see hell as they understood it, as they conceived it, not least because nothingness has no graphic representation.

Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur – This maxim from scholastic philosophy can explain this point: whatever is received, is received in the manner of the receiver. The sea has plenty of water to give, but my bucket is limited in its capacity to receive; the same goes for our mind. The little shepherds saw hell as the Bible represents it and according to their capacity to understand it.

Finally, three Hail Marys are prayed for the intentions of the Holy Father, so that we may be united to all Christendom represented by him, and it ends with the Salve Regina preceded or not, according to the time available, by the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Our Father — The Our Father, which intersperses each Mystery, is much more than a simple prayer the Lord has taught us to recite occasionally. It contains what is the most important of the Gospel in a summarized form; it is, in this sense, a complete pocket Gospel because it contains what we should know and practice.

Since it is made up of several statements, unrelated to each other, it can be viewed as a list, like the shopping lists we make so not to forget the most important things. This list concerns the protocol of our relationship with God, that is, how our prayer should be structured; how we should address God, how to praise Him, what we should ask for, in what order, when and how. Therefore, more than a prayer, it is fundamentally a practical guide to prayer and life.

The Hail Mary – It is divided into two parts: the first is biblical and is composed of the greetings from the Angel Gabriel and Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, and the second originates from the faith of the Church, it is not known how or when or where it began to be used. Consequently, the Hail Mary prayer represents the perfect union between the Bible as the Word of God and the Church as a community of believers.

In an ascending movement, the first part, taken from the Bible, consists of 5 stairs that go up to Jesus. In a descending movement, the second part also consists of 5 stairs but this time going down to human reality, our death.

It cannot be understood by the advocates of the "sola fide sola scriptura solus christus", because there is a harmonious union between the Scripture, the Word of God, described in the first part, and the Tradition, that is, the history of the faith of the Christian community down through the ages, shaped in the second part. Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end and the center of history, is the core that unites the two parts.

The Glory Be – This is the invocation of God as One and Triune. One divinity in three different persons united in a triangle of love. It is the solution in the light of the dialectic of Greek philosophy between the one and the multiple. This prayer also reminds us that, made in the image and likeness of God, the human person is also one and triune: he does not exist or subsist outside the family.

Conclusion: As the apostles prayed with Mary before Pentecost, the Rosary today, reunites us with Her in prayer and contemplation of the Mysteries of her Son's life.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC