V Mystery: The Prophecy of Simeon about Mary and her Son - Part I

And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him.  Luke 2:33

Great surprises awaited Mary at the presentation of her son in the temple. Several times the gospel says that Mary kept everything in her heart. When it came to her son, Mary did not understand many things. She walked her entire life in the faith that everything would turn out well, even when she saw that everyone was turning against him and against her. Her son never ceased to amaze and astonish her, from his conception to his death and resurrection. Mary did not understand all of it, but she accepted it all silently, and faithfully followed her son, near or far.

The presentation of her son in the Temple must have left both a bitter and a sweet taste in Mary’s mouth. The joy of Simeon and Anna, who had so patiently waited for this moment to see the liberator with their own eyes, must have brought joy to Mary's heart as well. The ambiguity of Simeon's prophecy, who presented himself as someone who had good and bad news, must have caused much perplexity and pain in Mary’s heart which, according to Simeon, would be pierced by a sword.

Jesus of Nazareth shook Israel and the world
Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’  Luke 2:34-35

Jesus of Nazareth entered human history like a meteorite striking the ocean, making concentric circles that are felt first where it impacts and then far to the ends of the earth. The strongest impact was felt in Israel two thousand years ago, but his influence spread in time and space in such a way that it is still felt today and will be felt until the end of time, for he himself has said: ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age’. (Matthew 28:20)

Such was the impact of Jesus on the world that he divided the history of mankind into two eras. Before Christ (AC) and After Christ (AD), the Year of Grace of the Lord... Christ is therefore the center of human history, because everything that happens in this world is referenced as happening before Christ or after Christ. Annoyed with this, the agnostics and atheists in the Western world have replaced AC with "before the common era" and AD with "common era".

However, if someone in the spirit of wanting to know, like children in the days when they question everything and bombard adults with questions, the people of the "common era" will have to explain what this "common era" is and why it is common, and when it began. If they are honest, which is not always the case these days, they will have to mention Christ’s name. The "common era" has Christ’s birth as its starting point. It is therefore not arbitrary or unconventional like the Fahrenheit scale for measuring temperature.

Jesus: cause of downfall or a stumbling block for many in Israel
‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.  And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’  Matthew 11:4-6

The Greek word "scandal" means stumbling block. Jesus' words are harsh against the scandalous, but He himself admitted that he scandalized many people in a good way. Many were unable to digest and absorb many of his ideas; even when they were backed by many wondrous deeds. Against facts there are no arguments, the people say. However, the Jews in Jesus' time found arguments even against facts, like when they said that Jesus was casting out demons by the power of Satan. Indeed, "there are none more blind than the one who doesn’t want to see”.

He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God...  John 1:11-12
 
It is not God who judges man, but it is man who judges himself. His judgment is his reaction to Jesus Christ. If when confronted with Jesus his response is positive, he has faith and accepts His love, then he is saved and enters the kingdom of heaven. If, however, he remains still and coldly indifferent, or even actively hostile, then he is condemned, because he has condemned himself.  

With regard to Jesus of Nazareth, one cannot assume a neutral position. Either we have faith in Him and surrender to Him or we are at war with Him. For many, pride will prevent them from choosing the surrender that will lead them to victory.

Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.  John 3:18

In Jesus' time, the Pharisees, the high priests, the rich, the abusers of power, the exploiters of the poor, stumbled upon the stone that is Jesus and thought that by removing the stone from the path, as they did by killing Jesus, they would be freed of Him. But this did not happen, for the same Jesus, in the person of his followers, became a pebble in their shoes to bother them eternally. Once he came into the world, he came to stay.

Jesus: cause of emergence, stepping stone and cornerstone for many in Israel
This Jesus is “the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.”  Acts 4:11

Christ, true God and true man, is the way from God to men and from men to God. In the Bible, Jericho represents sin, so the man who fell into the hands of robbers came down from Jerusalem to Jericho, he fell from grace into sin. Jesus visits Jericho and heals Zacchaeus as he enters the city, and as he leaves, he heals the blind man Bartimaeus who joined the great multitude that was going up with Him to salvation and grace toward heavenly Jerusalem.

The Way, the Truth and the Life, Christ is the role model, the paradigm of human life. Christ, in his words, deeds and personal behavior, is normative, for he embodies 100% humanity. Whoever wants to be authentically and genuinely human, he is to compare himself to Christ and to no other. What is human is Christian, what is Christian is human, because a human ethics that is different from Christian morality does not exist.

Whoever is not with me, is against me
‘Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you.’ Luke 9: 49-50

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me, scatters. Matthew 12: 30

These two texts seem to be at odds with each other; however, if we look from the context in which Jesus says these two opposing sentences, we will be able understand. Jesus says elsewhere that he has other sheep that are not of this fold, so it is possible that people outside the Church also do good, the so-called Anonymous Christians. Those who, by other ways and without being of our group, contribute to the building of the kingdom of God are Christians even without knowing why their attitudes are Christian or human.

The second statement is made in the context that no one goes to the Father except through me (John 14:6-14). That is, since Christ is the measure of the human and the divine, only those who resemble Him are saved, because, as he says next, whoever does not gather with me scatters, disperses, for there is no other with whom to gather. There is no equally valid alternative to Christ.

Not peace, but the sword
‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. 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 10:34-37

Love divides what was united and unites what was divided. We take as an example the classic love story of Romeo and Juliet. The families of these two lovers were visceral enemies, at war with each other. Before they met, each of the lovers lived in peace, harmony and love with their respective families.

When the spark of love arose between the two, division and discord also arose in their respective families because of the union of what was once divided. The same happens in families where some of their members decide to follow Jesus and others do not. It is in this sense that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, unwittingly, instead of bringing peace brings war and discord into the very families where before Him, love and harmony once reigned.

God's curse?
‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, on the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that on the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you.’  Matthew 11:21-24

The curse of God is an anthropomorphism, that is, a way of understanding God in human terms. God is incapable of cursing; God only knows how to bless. To curse is to turn one’s back on God's blessing. Jesus did many miracles in Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, for they were great cities in Jesus' time. Today only archaeological remains of these cities exist. In contrast, Nazareth and Bethlehem were small and tiny cities then, but today they are great cities.

"He who does not remember God, misses out". In his address to the people after leaving Egypt, Moses placed before the people the blessing and the curse. The blessing for those who accept God and follow his commandments, and the curse ipso facto for those who do not follow God's designs. The blessing comes from God, the curse results from the rejection of the blessing, not from God’s punishment because God does not punish.

‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate.’  Matthew 23:37-38

Jesus weeps in anger, pity, and helplessness over the ruin that was about to fall upon Jerusalem. A ruin caused by the city's own residents who could not recognize in Jesus the Messiah expected by the nations. The political and military messianism of the Jews brought them ruin, from the invasion of the Roman hosts, the destruction of the city and the temple, and the dispersion throughout the rest of the world for centuries, until the emergence of the state of Israel in 1948, by the pity and mercy of the Christian powers that won the war.

Conclusion: Christ being the measure of what is authentically and genuinely human, one cannot be neutral and indifferent to Him; indifference is already, in itself, a rejection.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

IV Mystery: Mary Gives Birth to Jesus, God With Us - Part II

Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”?  John 14:8-9

Begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father
God has only one Son who, as the Creed says, is begotten not made. If the Creed were to speak about us, it would say that we are made, not begotten. (God) destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will… Ephesians 1:5

All men and women are creatures of God and through Jesus Christ, redeemed at the price of his blood, we are made adopted children of God. United by the same human nature, dignity is due to all human beings, without distinction of ethnicity, without exception period.

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.  Romans 8: 17 – According to the Roman law which is fundamentally the law used throughout the world, the adopted child has the same rights to inheritance as the biological child.

Jesus calls God Father, but only within the inner circle of the apostles and never outside of it. What this means is that the divine fatherhood is available only to those who accept Jesus as son of God and as brother, our elder brother, for it is only through Christ, the only begotten son of God, that we are adopted children.

The Messianic Feast
Christmas is the feast that unites mankind with God; it is the feast that unites earth with heaven. The incarnation is a marriage between the Only Begotten Son of God and humanity, and Christmas is a wedding feast that celebrates this indivisible and everlasting union. A marriage is a union of two destinies into one destiny. At Christmas, God the Father marries his Son to Humanity, that is, he unites the nature of the second person of the Holy Trinity to Human Nature.

The union of two natures into one person took place in Mary’s womb. She is, with every right, the Mother of the child to be born, because she not only lent her womb but also contributed her genetic material. God, by the work and grace of the Holy Spirit, is the Father of both the second person of the Holy Trinity and the one incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus of Nazareth who was born in Bethlehem is the result of this union, this inseparable and indivisible union of the two natures: human and divine. God became the son of Man, the only title that Jesus gives himself, so that Man, who is a creature of God, might also become a child of God.

Jesus' time among us corresponds to the messianic banquet prophesied many centuries before by Isaiah 25, and declared by Jesus in one of his parables in Matthew 22:1-14. Because it is the time of the messianic banquet, it is a fact that Jesus' public life began with a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee and ended at the Eucharistic banquet on Holy Thursday in Jerusalem, in which He was the food. Between these two banquets, Jesus participated in many others with his disciples and many of his sayings were delivered in the context of a meal.

Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.’  Matthew 9:14-15

Because it is the time of Jesus among us, the time of the messianic banquet, his disciples, that is, the bridegroom's friends, should not fast, but should celebrate. It is a time for feasting, a time of celebration, not a time for penitence or sadness.

In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. John 14:2-3

The days of fasting will come when the Bridegroom returns to the Father’s house, taking with Him our human nature redeemed in his person and by his person, sitting at the right hand of the Father.

And the Word became man and dwelt among us
After leaving his family at the Church for the Rooster Mass, a Canadian farmer returned home, fleeing from the incoming snowstorm. His wife’s insistence that he attend the Mass with the family had fallen on deaf ears. For him, the incarnation of God made no sense. As he slept in the warmth of the fireplace, he was startled by the clash of geese at the door and windows. Driven by the storm from their migratory trajectory to the South, they were completely disoriented and bewildered.

Moved with compassion, he opened the gates of the large barn and began to run, squawking, whistling, shouting and hooting for them to take shelter in the barn until the storm has passed. However, the geese flew in circles, without understanding the meaning of the open barn and the dramatic gestures of the desperate farmer (who had not even convinced them with the breadcrumbs scattered in the direction of the barn). 

Defeated in his attempt to save the poor creatures, he sighed, "Ah, if only I were a goose! If only I could speak their language!" Upon hearing his own lament, he recalled the question he had asked his wife: "Why would God want to become a man?" And, unintentionally, he muttered the answer: "To save him!" ... And it was Christmas.

There have always been people with special sensitivity to communicate with God. In biblical tradition, prophets were the catalysts of God's designs for the people and of the people's petitions to God. Communication, however, was not without difficulties: just as in the field of telecommunications, there were many "interference". The prophet's personality and character, defects and prejudices, filtered the message, which did not reach the recipient as it had left the sender. On the other hand, these prophets often understood that Heaven was closed and God was shrouded in silence.

These prophets never truly managed to establish a bridge of communication between the divine and the human. This is because the Word of God, being transmitted by them (men with their personal characteristics and inserted in a certain sociocultural context), ended up being influenced by many mediating variables (personality, prejudices, stereotypes, social patterns), thus losing the meaning of the original message. 

There is gold in the river sand, but not all river sand is gold. Hence, we need to sift through the sand to find the gold nuggets. The Word of God is also in the Bible, but not everything in the Bible is God's word. Since the Bible is the encounter of God as He is with Man, there is in the Bible much that is human, many anthropomorphisms, that is, examples of how to understand God in the way of man, even though in this same Bible it says, "my thoughts are not your thoughts, says the Lord" ... 

In sifting through the Bible to find the word of God, we have to identify the personality of the author of the book in question, his beliefs, prejudices, stereotypes, social patterns, etc. to find the Ipsissima Dei Verbum. 

Because of all this, it was necessary that God incarnates to speak directly to man without interference and, more than speaking, to demonstrate with his life and works how human beings should live in order to regain the likeness of God that was lost with Adam and Eve. 

Opportunity to regain the likeness of God
It was for this reason that the Word of God became Man so that Man might become Son of God. Saint Irenaeus of Lyon

Since Christianity is the religion with the most followers, and Christmas is the most popular public holiday in the Christian world, we can easily conclude that Christmas is the most celebrated holiday of all the holidays celebrated on this planet. It is undoubtedly the one that brings together more people worldwide, not just in the Western society.

Jesus of Nazareth is the way by which God comes to us to speak in our ears, to speak to our hearts on an equal footing, not from above to below, but from brother to brother, from man to man. The creator makes himself a creature to speak from within the human nature; to speak with authority, as the men of Jesus' time have noticed, because he spoke and he did, because he spoke and he fulfilled, because he spoke and things happened.

As truly man, Christ is our opportunity to regain the likeness we had with God before the sin of Adam and Eve. Whoever wants to be authentically and genuinely human measures himself to Christ, because He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, He is the model, the prototype, the paradigm of humanity. No one in the entire history of mankind has more humanity concentrated within himself than Jesus. 

John 15:16 – You did not choose me – As they say in theology, ours is not a religion, because it is not the effort that man makes to reach God, but rather it is a revelation, because it is God who first comes to us, and reveals himself to us. This is why Jesus can say to the apostle Philip, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father". 

1 John 4:10 – In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Love is repaid with love, says the people; our love for God is a response to divine love, the only answer, for there is no other. Therefore, because the initiative comes from God, ours is not a religion but a revelation.

Jesus: the way by which men go to God
No one comes to the Father except through me.  John 14:6

If Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of God, He is the only way by which God has come to us. For this reason, there can be no other way by which man can go to God. It would make no sense for one to be the way by which God comes to us, and another to be the way by which man goes to God. All paths are round trips, so if God came to us through Christ, then through the same Christ we will go to God.

The purpose of God’s incarnation can be read in Jesus’ entrance into and exit from the city of Jericho. Jericho is the oldest city in the world, at 8 000 years old, and is also curiously the lowest city on earth, at 500 meters below sea level. Because of these two characteristics, in the Bible Jericho represents the world in sin. This is even suggested in the parable of the Good Samaritan; the man who was assaulted by thieves and evildoers, came down from Jerusalem to Jericho, that is, he went from grace down to sin.

Jesus enters Jericho, that is, he enters the sinful world and goes to stay in the house of Zacchaeus, that is, of a sinner. Jesus stayed in the sinful world, called sinners to himself, lived with them, ate with them, and treated them with the dignity of children of God (Luke 19:1-2). When he left Jericho, a great crowd followed him on the way up from sin to grace in Jerusalem (Mark 10:46-52). Thus the reason of the incarnation was fulfilled: God, through Christ, came into the world so that the world, by the same Christ, might come to God.

Conclusion: Through Christ God came to men, through Christ men go to God. Whoever lives in Christ, is authentically human like Christ, because He is the only reference and paradigm of humanity.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

IV Mystery: Mary gives birth to Jesus, God with us - Part 1

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest. (...) ‘Come,’ my heart says, ‘seek his face!’ Your face, Lord, do I seek.  Psalm 22:2; 27:8

Religion and Revelation
The people of Israel were never satisfied with this communication, so deficient, and lived in a continuous restlessness. Religion, from the Latin "religare", means relationship with God and with one’s neighbour. Ever since the human being gained self-awareness, he believed in the possible existence of a superior being, transcendent to everything and everyone, because He is the Creator of everything and everyone. At all times and in all places, man has sought to communicate with this superior being, God, in order to obtain his blessing.

Cell phone, television and radio waves cross our space and we don't hear or see them, but we know they exist because when we have the right instruments, we can capture these waves. In a similar way, God also sought to communicate with man, and man with God. But this communication is also not accessible to everyone, one needs to have a special sensitivity to enter into this communication.

‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.’  John 3:17-18

Christianity is not a religion, because it does not represent only man's effort or attempt to reach God. On the contrary, Christianity is a revelation because it is God who seeks man and reveals Himself to him. As Jesus says in the Gospel, you did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. (John 15:16)

At Christmas, we celebrate the great truth, that God is not wrapped in silence, but in cloths and laid in a manger. With the birth of Jesus, God breaks the silence, eliminates the distance, and undoes the inaccessibility. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, at our side, a travelling companion throughout our lives, as he was with the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

Son of God versus last prophet
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, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.  Hebrews 1:1-2

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways, summarizes all religions; however, in relation to Christianity, this occupies only the Old Testament of the Bible. Unlike all other religions that talk about prophets sent by God, Christianity no longer presents a prophet, but God himself who comes to us, Emmanuel.

Islam accepts as valid the Jewish religious tradition described in the Old Testament which they also consider their own. Therefore, to the Muslims, Mohammed is the last of the prophets that God sent into the world, Jesus being the second last.

If mankind survives another 10,000 or 20,000 years, what sense does it make that the last prophet came in the year 524? The world and humanity have changed more since the year 524 than in all the millions of years before; why were the prophets sent with frequent succession prior to 524, and then after 524, they suddenly stopped coming and were no longer needed?

In the case of Christianity, even if humanity survives until the year 20,000, it still makes sense that the revelation took place in year zero. As the author of the letter to the Hebrews explains, "the one sent" is no longer a prophet, but God himself who came to live among us.

There is a qualitative leap here; prophets bring messages for a time, while the word of God is eternal for all times and all places, because God does not need to speak twice. On the other hand, Christ is not only a spoken word, he is a lived word and one lives only once.

What is the meaning of the last prophet then? Is it because Islam has a more refined doctrine and an ascending path where we have already reached the summit? But the peak shows a closer association to Christianity rather than Islam, with a much more humane and humanizing narrative, such as love of enemies. Islam in its practice and doctrine even resembles the Old Testament more than the New, when we think that Muslim women are still being stoned today when Christ was already against it in his day.

Islam is in itself violent by nature, because it is not about loving God who loved us first, it is not "love is repaid with love"; God in Islam is the Lord of the Old Testament who commands submission. As a matter of fact, Islam means submission, one submits to God, one does not love God who no longer calls us servants, but friends. In fact, the historical way Islam expanded was not through missionary work or catechesis, but by armed force and submission or by trade.

Christmas, feast of the Father
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ John 3:16

Since the Church has reserved the Sunday after Pentecost to celebrate the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, the union and communion of the three divine persons, it is fitting that she should have a solemnity for each of the three divine persons. Seeing that Pentecost is clearly the celebration of God the Holy Spirit, I wanted to see in the other two, Easter and Christmas, the celebrations of the Father and the Son, but I ran into the problem that both Christmas and Easter seem to be celebrations of the Son, leaving the Father without His own feast day.

It doesn’t seem right that two feast days were allocated to the Son and none to the Father, so I thought which one to give to the Father and by what criteria; it could be Easter, because Jesus dies doing the will of the Father (Luke 22:42) or it could be Christmas, by the fact that Jesus himself says in his dialogue with Nicodemus: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…’ (John 3:16-21).

To solve this dilemma, I turned to grammar and what it tells me about active and passive voice. At Easter, it seems that Jesus is the one who directs the action when he says, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18). At Easter, Jesus is the main actor, no one has greater love than he who lays down his life for his friends (John 15:13). There is no doubt then that Easter is the feast of the Son, because He is the protagonist.

The same is no longer the case for Christmas, Jesus is not the protagonist of Christmas, because grammatically he is a passive person, Jesus is not giving birth, he is born. Because of this, I have never liked the formulation of the third Joyful mystery which in all languages says "we contemplate the birth of Jesus". As if Jesus had fallen from heaven by parachute or as if He himself had caused his own birth. This mystery should say: "In the third Joyful mystery, we contemplate Mary giving birth to Jesus".

Christmas has two great protagonists, one divine and the other human. God the Father is the divine protagonist and Mary is the human protagonist. The action begins in God the Father who sends his only begotten Son into the world. Although there is no order of importance between the Father and the Son, from a grammatical and human point of view, it is more important the one who sends than the one who is sent; the one who sends causes the action, the one who is sent suffers the action.

Mary, the human protagonist, is not passive, she is also active; she represents all mankind that says "Yes" to God's plan. A free "Yes" because it was said with much thought and without any coercion from God who proposed it; a "Yes" that, being freely given, could have been a "No". Just as important is the one who sends as the one who receives. If a King sends a messenger to another King, the latter is free to receive or not receive the sent messenger.

The Character of Santa Claus
"Jesus is the reason for the season" (Protestant churches' Christmas slogan)
Jesus is not the reason for the Christmas season, the Father is. On this feast, Jesus is born: the verbs that refer to Jesus in this season come in the passive voice. Christmas, as an encounter between God and humanity, has a human protagonist, a mother, Mary, who received Jesus in her womb and contributed for it with her genetic material; and it has a divine Father, God.  

In another time, I too used to criticize the importance that the civil society gives to the mythical figure of Santa Claus. Today, I understand that it is one of those cases of the "voice of the people, the voice of God". Santa Claus represents God the Father who sent his Son into the world. He is a venerable old man who does not hide his age or tries to look younger, and overflows with kindness by giving gifts to children, caressing them and sitting them on his lap. In everyone’s imagination, God the Father is always represented as an old man with white hair and beard. Santa Claus coincides with this collective imagery.

His suit is red like that of a bishop because, historically, Santa Claus is associated with Bishop Saint Nicholas, which is why he is called Santa Claus in English or just Santa. He lives in the North Pole, a place away from everything and everyone, in a white region, in a pure world that appeals to the collective imagery of how Heaven is conceptualized, God’s home.  

He visits us during the night, because it is said that nighttime is a time of salvation. He is never seen, but speaks through his works which are translated into the graces and gifts that we, as children and his children, ask of him. Being able to enter through windows or doors, he always enters through the chimney because he flies from place to place, he comes from above and enters through the only part of the house that is always open and on watch, signalling that we must always be in prayer, open to the Most High, looking upwards from where help comes to us.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’ (…) The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. Luke 2:13-14, 20

Conclusion: Christmas, because it is the feast of God the Father, was celebrated in Heaven by the angels saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest’, and on earth by the shepherds who returned from Bethlehem glorifying and praising God.

                                            Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

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