 So this talk will be on Mary in the Old Testament. So Mary prefigured in the Old Testament. For those of you who were in the previous talk, previous workshop, we spoke about typology in general. And that's how the events in the Old Testament in the life of Israel were molded by God to point to future realities in Christ, the church, the Christian life, and the last things. And a beautiful part of that providence of God so that events in the Old Covenant point to events in the new are those figures in the Old Covenant that point to our Lady. So Mary is deeply present in the Old Testament. And so that's what I'd like to look at in this talk. Now Protestants, obviously many Protestants have a problem with Mary. And so it's very useful to be able to point to Mary and her place in scripture, not only in the New Testament, but also in the Old. And in fact, Catholic understanding of Mary is very largely influenced by those prefigurements of Mary in the Old Covenant. So that's again what we wanna look at today. So Protestants complain that Catholic Mary and doctrine is insufficiently scriptural. But that's because they're not seeing what we're gonna look at here. And then a totally different complaint, feminists. Feminists often complain that the Bible, and in particular the Old Testament, is insufficiently feminist, is too patriarchal. That Judaism and Catholicism are patriarchal religions in which the feminine doesn't have a sufficient place. Now we've all probably heard that kind of objection. And so that objection can be answered in the same way by pointing to how Mary is profoundly present in the Old Testament. And therefore there's a feminine strand in the Old Testament that is not marginal, but is deeply central to God's revelation through Israel. And so again, that's what I'd like to look at. And then another point of this talk is that many, many Catholics who maybe hold the truth that the Catholic Church profess about Mary don't are totally unaware of their biblical foundation. And so we also wanna address that ignorance by looking at Mary prefigured in the Old Testament. So Mary has a crucial role as the mother of God, as the mother of Jesus, in the connection between the Old and the New Covenants, Israel and the Church. Mary is at one and the same time the perfect daughter of Zion, the perfect daughter of Israel, and the mother of the Church, precisely being the mother of the Messiah. And so Mary knits together the Old Testament and the New, the Old Covenant and the New. She's the fulcrum and because she's the mother of Christ who's the complete fulcrum. And so Mary, we could say, is the summary, the recapitulation of the whole faith of Israel. In Mary, all of Israel's faith and life comes to perfection. And of course, she's the model of all the life of the Church. And she's the model of the life of heaven. She's the perfect model of everything. And so the link. The Christian tradition speaks of Mary as the morning star that comes before the dawn. Pope Benedict ends his encyclical on hope with a beautiful hymn to Mary as the morning star. The star of hope and the mother of the Messiah. We could say she's the immediate link between mankind and our Redeemer. She's the virgin soil in which the humanity of Christ the new Adam is created. The scripture Isaiah speaks about the shoot of Jesse. Jesse being the, for father of Christ through being the father of David, the shoot of Jesse. And so Mary, we could say is clearly has a central role in salvation history by being the mother of the Messiah. And therefore we should expect to find her throughout and we do. Now, obviously we want to stay at the outset that Mary's role is subordinate and it's fair to say infinitely subordinate to her son because her son is God and she's a creature. And so every creature compared to God is infinitely subordinate. So we make no bones about Mary being infinitely subordinate to her son. But nevertheless, as the link between mankind and the son of God, her role is absolutely central to salvation history. And so we're gonna look at Mary as present in three ways in the life of Israel here. In one way, well, she's present in the figures of heroic women. We'll look at Esther and Judith. We'll look at Sarah, the great mothers who were barren and are given miraculous fruit. She's present in prophecy, the prophecy of the mother who will, the virgin who will give birth to a manual. And she's present by summing up the whole mission of Israel. And so wherever we find Israel, in a sense we find Mary because their missions are one and the same. Israel's mission is to be the people in whom God becomes man. And thus, Israel was prepared by God in a unique way to be the people in which God takes on flesh. Mary is the woman in whom God takes on flesh. And so she has to be prepared in that people with the perfection of that people's mission because it's in her that Israel's mission comes to fulfillment. So Mary sums up the mission of Israel. And further, we can say Mary exemplifies the response of creation to the word of God. And we see that in the enunciation. Let it be done unto me according to thy word. Mary's yes is the, we could say the archetypical yes, the model of every yes to God's calling. And therefore, we could say she exemplifies the response that all of creation and every one of us are to give to God in his word. She's creation's pure yes to the creator, right? And that yes enabled the word to take flesh. With regard to Christ, St. Paul says all the promises of God find their yes in him, right? He is the yes. And that's why we are likewise to be truthful in our words. So Christ is the yes, but that yes of Christ was made possible by a prior yes, the yes of Mary, the let it be done unto me according to thy word. And so let's look at the parallel between Israel and Mary. So God, being God, perfectly prepares for his works. And that would mean that the greatest work ought to have the greatest preparation. Well, creating the universe, that was, didn't need any preparation, made that out of nothing. And the greatest of all God's works is God himself becoming man in the midst of history to redeem mankind. And so that greatest of all, and that work, by the way, if we just think about this, not only is it the greatest work that God has done, God becomes man, but it's the greatest work that God could do in any possible universe. God could make better universes than this one. He could make better bodies than we have. He could make all kinds of better things. But he couldn't do anything, even God couldn't do anything better than God becoming a creature. I'm not, I shouldn't say that. Taking on a creative nature, a human nature, to save his creation by totally giving of himself. God has nothing more to give than himself. And so in the incarnation, God gives all that he has to give. And so it's the greatest of all conceivable works of God. And therefore the preparation for that work of becoming man, we should think, would be the greatest preparation. All right, so what's God's preparation? It's the life of Israel. He calls Abraham out of Mesopotamia to be the father of the people in whom God will become man. So God starts preparing for the incarnation in a more proximate way, 2,000 years before the event with the calling of Israel. Obviously God had been preparing before then, right from the beginning. We see that in Genesis 3.15. There's a first promise and prophecy of the incarnation. But it's above all in the calling of Israel that God prepares in earnest for becoming man. And we saw that preparation culminates in Mary. And so the preparation for the incarnation begins with Abraham and culminates in the annunciation to Mary. And so both Israel to receive the incarnation and Mary to receive the incarnation who whom required a preparation. And that preparation was the gifts of holiness that God gave to Israel. And that's all the glories of Israel. St. Paul speaks about it in Romans 9, verse 4. The glory, the ultimate glory is God becomes man in that people. But there's the glories of the sonship. God adopts Israel as his firstborn son. There's the glory of the promises given to Abraham that he will bless that people and bless all those who bless Israel. The gift of the promises of the Messiah above all. The gift of the law, right? The gift of the Torah, a great gift of God and given to Israel to prepare it for receiving the Messiah. The gift of a worship mandated by God. So other peoples were left to worship God according to human symbolism in the different natural religions of the world. But Israel was given a worship by God himself through Moses. And so these are the glories of Israel to prepare Israel for receiving the Messiah. And then all the prophets and the Psalms, scripture. And so Israel was prepared in this way. If Israel was prepared in so many ways for receiving the Messiah, the woman in whose womb he was to be born in Israel should have been still more prepared. And so this is a very important biblical argument for, among other things, Mary's immaculate conception. And the unique holiness of Mary. That God, if he's to be coherent with himself, if he prepared Israel in such a way, how could he fail to prepare in a still more perfect way she who was to receive the word incarnate in her own womb? And we can draw in other parallels. Think of the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant is just a type of Jesus. The Ark of the Covenant had the tablets of the law, the mona from the desert, and Aaron's rod signifying the priesthood. All of those, those are three types of Jesus. He's the living law. He's the true bread that comes down from heaven. He's the eternal high priest according to the line of Melchizedek. And so he was prefigured by those three things that were in the Ark of the Covenant. The tablets of the law, the mona from the desert and the rod of Aaron. But those were ultimately dead things. But think how carefully the Israelites had to keep those things. The Ark of the Covenant could only be touched by Levites, those who were set aside and consecrated by God for the service of the Lord. And if somebody else touched them, God struck them dead. Oh, and that happened in a terrible way in the glorious procession that David organized to bring the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem and when it was recovered from the Philistines. And two men who were not Levites were leading it on the oxen and the oxen swerved and the Ark was gonna fall and they stuck out their hands to catch it. And their hands were unconsecrated and God struck them dead. And we think, ah, how could God do that? But that was to teach us something about reverence for what is holy. So if consecrated hands could only, only could touch the Ark of the Covenant, but that Ark of the Covenant was just a type, dead things that were a type of the real holy thing, which is God himself who becomes a man in Mary's womb, what would be the purity that Mary would have to have to be the real, the true Ark of the Covenant, the Ark of the New Covenant, the holiest place in the universe. And we could go further, Mary's womb, not only is the holiest place in the universe, but in any conceivable universe because God couldn't do anything more than give himself totally by becoming man for us and dying for us and becoming man for us in Mary. St. Paul puts Israel and Mary together in one of the few places in which he speaks about Mary, Galatians 4-4. He says, when the time had fully come, in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, right? Right there, born of a woman, Mary, born under the law, born in Israel. Those are, that's the double preparation for his coming into the world. Born under the law, the preparation that went on for 2,000 years, and born of a woman, Mary's preparation, right? So, and contact with the Lord requires holiness. And so, Mary had to be supremely sanctified to do that. Let's look at them. There are two great prophecies of Mary in the Old Testament. So, let's just briefly look at them. Genesis 315 and Isaiah 714. Genesis 315, often called the proto-evangelium, meaning the first gospel, because it's the first announcement of the Redeemer, given to mankind, right after the fall. And so, you can imagine Adam and Eve could be tempted to fall into deep despair after what they'd done and its consequences, tasting its bitter consequences. And so, immediately, God gave a promise of a Redeemer in which the woman figures very prominently. So, let's look at that. And it's very interesting that this promise, Genesis 315, is given, is actually directed to Satan of all people. So, after the fall, we know there were three protagonists of the fall, Adam, Eve, and the serpent that tempted them, the serpent being a figure for Satan. So, Adam, Eve, and the serpent are all given a penalty by God for their sin. And we know the consequences with regard to Adam and Eve. Eve was given to bring forth in labor the pain in childbirth and to suffer an unjust dominion by the man. Adam was given the penalty of the sweat of the brow to, in other words, nature would resist human work. Work was already there in the garden, but it was a work without nature's resistance. After the fall, nature resists, and we work with the sweat of the brow. And to dust, you shall return, right? So, that's the penalty given to Adam. What about Satan? What's his penalty? And that's given to us in Genesis 315. God says to him, I will put enmity between you, Satan, and the woman. In other words, what's Satan's penalty? The woman. Who's the woman? Mary. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise, crush your head, and you shall bruise, crush his heel. So, that's the first messianic prophecy. The son of the woman will crush Satan's head, but his heel will be crushed in the process. And what does that mean? We can see that as a reference to the passion. Christ crushes Satan in dying for us on Calvary, but in his dying for us, Satan is crushing something in him, his sacred humanity. And so, there's a double crushing. Christ's body crushed in his crucifixion, but that very crushing of his body is what crushes Satan's power. We look out in the world and it seems that Satan still has some power. But Christ's passion merited the grace to be given throughout human history and the grace that will be completed on the last day in which Satan's power will be finally extinguished. So Christ's passion crushes Satan's power not immediately, but in God's time, in God's plan. But what about the woman? That's strange. I will put enmity between you and the woman and we think immediately of Eve. That's her, Eve is the woman, but this can't be Eve because Eve is tragically not in enmity with Satan, but has become Satan's ally in giving into temptation and leading Adam into temptation. So the woman is someone else, but is in some relationship with Eve as being the woman. So we can speak of the woman here as a new Eve by opposition and contrast. Eve, the first Eve, the mother of all the living, who came into alliance with Satan and brought about our ruin, another woman, mother of those who live by grace, mother of all the living in a higher spiritual way, who is in complete enmity with Satan. What does that mean, enmity with Satan? When we sin, we bring ourselves into alliance with Satan. And so enmity with Satan, taken in the full sense, would be someone in whom there is no sin. That's yes, her son, Jesus Christ, but it's also the woman. And so this is also alluding to Mary as immaculate in total enmity with Satan, and therefore Satan's punishment, one in whom Satan has no hold or part. Magnificent prophecy. And it also shows us a beautiful thing. As Adam and Eve together brought about our fall, Adam being the head, Eve being his associate, Adam had the proper responsibility, right? It's through Adam's sin that we have fallen, but Eve was his associate and she cooperated in the fall. So we see here in Genesis 3.15, shows that the restoration likewise involves a couple, the woman and her son, right? Not a married couple, but a woman and a man, a new Eve and a new Adam. Now obviously, just as Adam was the head of the human race at the beginning, and thus brought about our fall, we're restored by the new Adam, Jesus Christ. But as the original Adam had an associate given to him, because it's not good for him to be alone, so too the new Adam has an associate given to him in that enmity with Satan and that is our lady, right? The woman. And the fathers of the church make this explicit. St. Paul doesn't. St. Paul brings out that Christ is the new Adam in Romans 5 and other places. He doesn't develop Mary as the new Eve, but he gives us the material to do so and the fathers of the church do this starting in the mid-2nd century. So Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus, developed this parallel between Eve and Mary. It's both likeness and opposition at the same time. Likeness in that there's a headship there, right? So Adam being the first head, Christ the new head. Opposition, Adam brings death, Christ brings life. Likewise with Eve and Mary. Eve being the mother of all the living, Mary being the mother of the life, right? Jesus is the life, Mary is the mother of the life, and through her son, the mother of all the living, those who are inserted into Christ, mother of the church. And then by opposition, Eve brought death through disbelief, lack of faith, and lack of hope and love, and so Mary brings life through her complete faith at the Annunciation, and even more so at the foot of the cross, right? So the beautiful parallel of Mary and Eve. So I've given you the text here. And Justin Martyr and St. Irenaeus. And St. Irenaeus says that the knot of Eve's disobedience, this is the top page five, if you're following, was loosed by the obedience of Mary, right? So Eve, through her unbelief, didn't believe God, preferred to believe the serpent, tied a knot, as it were, blocking our salvation. That was loosed by the obedience of Mary. What the Virgin Eve bound fast through unbelief, the Virgin Mary set free through faith. In other words, Mary's role in our redemption isn't simply biological, that she was the biological mother of the Son of God. And she was first the mother in her heart. So the fathers of the church say that Mary conceived her son first in her heart before in her womb. So her faith in God's plan, at the Annunciation, is what made possible her womb receiving the word of God. In other words, she had to receive the word of God first in her heart, believing Gabriel, before she could conceive Jesus in her womb. And we might think it's, well, what was so hard about believing the angel Gabriel? Well, think about it for a second. The angel Gabriel basically said to her that there would be a double miracle, right? That the Holy Spirit would overshower. She would give birth virginally. That had never happened before, right? So that would be what happened to Sarah when God said to her that this time next year you'll have a son. And she was barren and too old, right? She laughed, and that's why Isaac is called Isaac, means laughter. But Mary was promised something more difficult. Not only that it could naturally happen, but that it would happen without any human cooperation at all, that she remaining a virgin would conceive and bear, right? That is a greater miracle. But that was nothing compared to the second miracle that the angel Gabriel spoke to her of. That that son who would be virginally conceived, who would he be, right? The holy one, the son of God. God made man. And it's one thing to think, yes, we all believe in that. But we believe in it tragically, all too often, in too abstract a way. Yes, good. But Mary was asked to believe that in the most concrete possible way, that in her womb, the maker of the universe would become a fetus, would become totally dependent on her. And so her yes is a heroism of faith, greater than that of Abraham and Sarah. We'll come back to them in a minute. Her faith at the foot of the cross was greater still. And so Mary, her role as associate of her son is not just biological, but is through an intimate cooperation in his work of redemption through faith, hope and charity. Let's look at the second prophecy, the virgin birth. Just briefly, there's tons written on this and we can't go into it. But Isaiah 714 gives us a prophecy given to King Ahaz, King of Judah, unworthy descendant of David. And he was in great anxiety about an attack, an imminent attack from the King of Syria, aligned with the Northern Kingdom against Judah. And their plan was to cut off the entire line of David and put someone else on the throne, a certain Tabeel who was not of the Davidic line. And so Ahaz was probably thinking of this in a personal way. He's gonna endanger of losing his throne. But God's involved because God promised to David that his line would not fail and that his throne would be an eternal. There would be offspring ruling forever, realized in Jesus Christ. So what was at stake is the very messianic promise given to David, that in the line of David, in his descendants, there would be an eternal King. All right, so that's what's at stake. Isaiah comes to him asking him to ask a sign that God would protect him and not permit that to be realized. And Ahaz answers in a seemingly pious way. I don't wanna tempt the Lord. But God asked him to ask for a sign and when God asks you something, what should you do? You should obviously do it. And so the Lord wasn't pleased. But offers a sign anyway. And the sign is strange because it seems not immediately connected. But when we think about it, we see the connection. The sign is the prophecy of the virgin birth. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Emanuel. Emanuel meaning God with us. So it's a prophecy of God entering this world, dwelling with us in a way greater than he had already in the temple of the incarnation and a virgin birth. So precisely the two things that Mary had to believe at the enunciation, that she would conceive virginally, but that's nothing compared to the second, that the one she would conceive would be God himself. And both of those things are contained in this prophecy. A virgin shall conceive and bear, but who will that child be? Emanuel, God with us. So a perfect prophecy of the incarnation. Now there's all kinds of controversy about the word Alma translated here as virgin, but many contend it means young woman, and that's true, but always if we look at the usage, it refers to a young still unmarried woman, a maiden would be the proper English equivalent, which also implies virginity. And it was translated into Greek with the clear word for virgin, Parthenos. And it doesn't make any sense and because it wouldn't be a sign, a young, I'm gonna give you a great sign that you wouldn't even dare to ask, a woman will conceive and bear a son. That would not be a sign. It's a sign because it's a virginal birth and it's still greater because the one born is Emanuel. Okay, let's look at, so those are two prophecies of Mary, but Mary is present in all kinds of other ways in the Old Testament, and those are more likely to be missed. And those are the figures of Mary in the great women of the Old Testament. And so these are types, and if you wanna read something on this, a beautiful book on this is by Ratzinger, Joseph Ratzinger, before he became Pope, called Daughter Zion. And it's a short little book, and it's a treasure. And it has a beautiful discourse on the typology of Mary in the Old Testament, the figures of Mary. And one of the things he focuses on, he begins with, is the steam of the woman who's barren and conceives miraculously, right? So Sarah, being the first type of this, but also Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah, the mother of Samson, and then finally in the New Testament, St. Elizabeth. All of them are women who were barren, and in Sarah's case, too old, and Elizabeth's likewise, but who can conceive a child through a special intervention of God. And that child is then plays a key role in salvation history. In the case of Sarah, it's Isaac, right? Through whom passes the messianic promise. Rebecca, it would be Jacob, and then Rachel, and that would be Joseph, who's sold into Egypt and saves his people, a Christ figure. Hannah is the mother of Samuel, and then Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. So all of those are figures, the sons are figures of Christ, and the mothers are figures of Mary. But we can ask ourselves, why this pattern? It's interesting, why so many women, maybe not so many, but playing such key roles in salvation history who are barren and conceive miraculously? To prefigure Mary, but not only that. To show that it's not simply nature at work. Why does God choose the barren? He could have chosen lots of other women to be the mother of Israel, but he chose Sarah, who had two obstacles. She's not, she's barren, and she's past menopause. And so he picks one who is doubly unfit by nature to be the mother of a people that can't be counted, right? And it's to show that the power is his. And so that's the recurring theme, that God chooses what is weakened and of no account in this world, to show that it's his doing rather than our own. And so the infertility of the woman is part of the meaning of the event, right? And that comes to completion in Mary. In other words, why a virgin? God, I mean, certainly God could have become man in a non-virginal womb. But then we might think, well, it was just natural, right? It was our, it was St. Joseph's work, or Mary's work, rather than God's work. And so God chooses what is naturally incapable to show that he's at work. And then another reason why he does this is to give a trial of faith, right? So Mary is, I'm sorry, Sarah is chosen to be the mother of this great people, having that double obstacle, also not only to show that the power is God's, but to give to Sarah a trial, a trial of faith. She was asked to believe something very difficult, and it's true, she laughed, but she did believe, and we see that she believed from Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter is a beautiful chapter speaking about the heroes of faith in the Old Testament, and Sarah is one of those heroes of faith, because she did believe, even though at first she laughed. And so God chooses what's naturally incapable so that we can have the merit of believing in God's fidelity to his word despite the human incapacity, and these things are humanly impossible, but we can have the merit of believing that God can do it. And if that's true of Sarah, it's even more true of Mary, right? Mary had the merit of believing that God could realize this, even though she remained a virgin, and that her son would be not a mere man, but the son of God. And so that natural incapacity made possible a merit of faith that is a key part of God's plans. Another beautiful figure is Hannah. So we read about this in one Samuel chapter one and two. Hannah was married to a man who had two wives, his other wife, Panina, was blessed with children, but Hannah was childless. And so she comes before the Ark of the Covenant and weeps there, asking for a child, and she ends up conceiving and giving birth to Samuel, the great prophet who then anoints Saul and David, the last of the judges, and she sings this magnificent canticle, which is the prototype of Mary's Magnificat, and it's the same theme. It's the theme that God raises up the lowly, those who are naturally infertile and makes them supernaturally fertile, right? There's a reversal of roles. It's what Jesus speaks, the last shall be first and the first last. And so God chooses the last place to bring about the first. And so Hannah's a beautiful type of Mary in that. And so Ratzinger has a beautiful passage on that in his book, Daughter Zion. He says, a theology of grace was developed from this reversal of values in the song of Hannah, echoed in Mary's Magnificat. The Lord raises the humble from the dust, he lifts the poor from the ashes. He bends down to the humble, the powerless, the rejected, and in this condescension, the love of God which truly saves shines forth, both for Hannah and for Mary. In the remarkable phenomenon of unblessed, blessed women, naturally unblessed, supernaturally blessed, right? The mystery of the last place, the exchange between the first and the last place, the reversal of values in the Sermon on the Mount, the reversal of earthly values built on hubris, that's human pride, the Greek word for pride. And here we find the theology of virginity. It's first hidden formulation. Earthly infertility becomes true fertility. Why does the consecrated virgin choose virginity for the kingdom? In other words, one gives up a great good, human fertility, natural fertility to take in away the last place, but to make possible a spiritual supernatural fertility of given in the transmission or the winning of graces for others. And so consecrated virginity for the kingdom becomes a great means of supernatural maternity, paternity. And so a priest in giving up his natural paternity becomes a father of souls, right? And the none likewise who gives up that natural maternity exercises a spiritual maternity on a huge scale. And of course, all of us are called to that spiritual maternity paternity, even if we also have a natural maternity paternity. And that's the reversal of values, we could say. And Mary is the archetype of that, right? Renouncing the fathers of the church in the annunciation when the angel announces that to Mary, that she will be the mother of the son of God, she makes, she poses a question, how shall this be since I do not know man? And that's a strange question, because she's betrothed to Joseph. And he's in Israelite marriage, there were two moments, there was the betrothal, which is the marriage proper, and then the bringing into the husband's house, right? And we see that the annunciation takes place between those two events. There was the betrothal, which was properly the marriage, but Mary hadn't yet been brought into Joseph's house. So Mary asked this question, how shall this be since I do not know man? The only meaning that could have is that she foresaw some obstacle to her having relations with Joseph. And what obstacle could that be? The fathers of the church see in this evidence that she had made a vow of virginity to the Lord, presumably with St. Joseph's consent, before the annunciation. And so she had chosen that last place as it were, in other words, renouncing earthly fertility for the kingdom, but God chose precisely her to have this supernatural fertility to be the mother of the life, the way, the truth in the life. And so thus she's the model of all consecrated virginity in the life of the church, as well as being the model of all mothers in the life of the church. Another beautiful shift gears a little bit, another type of figure of Mary is women of valor. So not mothers here, but widows or unmarried women, well, women of valor. And so this would be above all Judith and Esther. So let's look at first at Judith. The story of Judith takes place after the return of Israel from the Babylonian exile. In some ways it's a kind of synthesis of the whole life of Israel. And the name Judith also obviously is symbolic. It means Jewish. So she's, her very name indicates that she's a kind of archetype of Israel. And it's Israel exiled, humiliated, threatened, left in the dust. And the woman Judith is a widow. And that also has a meaning. The widow in Israel was of low status. She had no one to care for her, especially a childless widow. And so Judith, by being that, we could say the exemplar of Israel naturally reduced to the last place, but with this spiritual strength. The army of the Assyrians led by Holofernes and besieged her town, cut off its water supply, and the town resolves to surrender. And Judith hears about the resolve to surrender and she's outraged, where's your faith that the God of our fathers will save us? And so she concocts a plan to save her town and through saving her town to block the Assyrians from going down to Jerusalem. She prays, she puts on sackcloth and ashes, prays for, and then goes out to carry out her plan and that is to seduce the Assyrian general Holofernes and to cut off his head and bring his head back to the Israelites and thus to defeat them. And so, and she does this. So she presents herself to the general. He believes her story that on the fourth night, he gets drunk, he brings her into her tent and in his drunken state, she cuts off his head, she puts it in this basket that she had brought with her and she marches out of the camp, unsuspected and brings his head back to her city and the next morning, the Assyrians see their enemy dead, I'm sorry, their general dead. The Israelites come and attack them and they're routed and so she saves her people and at the end of the book of Judith, there's this magnificent praise given to Judith. You are the exaltation of Jerusalem. You are the great glory of Israel. You are the great pride of our nation. You have done all of this single handed, right? It was her plan entirely. No soldiers were involved. You have done great good to Israel and God is well pleased with it. May the almighty Lord bless you forever and all the people say, amen. And that's included in the liturgy of the church on Marian feasts and it's applied to Mary. So Judith here is a magnificent figure of a different aspect so we should see it in connection with Genesis 315. The woman is involved in the crushing of Satan's head and Judith here cuts off Holofernes head and Holofernes is the kind of figure of Satan being the enemy general. And so the cutting off of the head would be a type of what Mary does in a spiritual way and then there's the aspect of her beauty and a key element in what made Judith's plan succeed was she was so beautiful that the enemy general would fall for her and bring her into that intimacy that enabled him her to cut off his head. And in both of those things, Judith is a type of Mary involved in associate with her son in crushing Satan's power, standing at the foot of the cross and her beauty before God seducing God as it were into giving the ultimate gift of the incarnation to mankind. We see something similar in the story of Esther. So let's look now at the book of Esther. Queen Esther is, so the book is set in the exile in Persia and so the Jewish people again are in the last place now and Esther is an orphan, so she's not a widow but again another one of those members of Israelite society that would be of least regard. No one to take care of for her an orphan and so Mordecai takes her in and then she's chosen on account of her beauty to take the place of the shamed queen of the Persian king. And so she's, now that might seem like a great thing but in reality she's simply brought into the harem of the king. And so she's one of his many, many, many wives. But it gave her an opportunity to intercede for the Jewish people in a time of great need. So you probably know the story, the villain of the peace is Haman, the prime minister and his pride is offended by Mordecai and so he wants to get revenge by having the king publish an edict that permits all the Jews of the kingdom to be killed and their property stolen on a certain date. And so what can be done? Mordecai says to Esther, you by being in the king's harem have an opportunity to speak to the king to reverse this decree or to do something to stop the extermination of the Jewish people. And so Esther goes before the king and there was a custom that the king had two possibilities. He could receive the petitioner or if he didn't want to receive her, he or she would lose their life. So to petition the king was like playing Russian roulette. And so Esther takes the chance going before the king, laying down a petition and she ends up convincing the king that Haman is the culprit, shaming Haman and Haman gets hung on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. And so Esther ends up saving the Jewish people from this great persecution. And in this, she again is a type of Mary we find the last place, orphan, a member of this pagan harem. And again, her beauty is a key element. The king listens to her and because of her beauty. And so again, this is pointing to Mary's not physical but spiritual beauty before the Lord bringing down as it were the supreme gift of the incarnation by her yes at the Annunciation. And so typology uses elements of the natural order like physical beauty to prefigure something that can't be seen, right? The spiritual beauty that's hidden in the heart, the spiritual beauty of faith, hope and charity. And so Esther thus prefigures Mary. And then another beautiful thing we see is that Esther, unlike Judith, wins this grace the freedom of the Jewish people from that edict of death, precisely by intercession. She intercedes with the king of kings. And that's a type of how Mary is Mediatrix. And so we speak of Mary as Mediatrix of all graces. And that's essentially Mary interceding for all of our needs. And so Mary, by being made our mother, and so at the foot of the cross, Jesus says to Mary, behold your son and to John, the beloved disciple, behold your mother. And we think that that was said not just to John, but because he's spoken of as the beloved disciple that we too have a place there as beloved disciples in being given the gift of Mary as our mother. And think about, this was Jesus' final bequest, right? So his last thing that he does in his earthly life before he says it is consummated is to give to the beloved disciple Mary as his mother and vice versa. And then if you think that Jesus is saying this in agony, right? So Jesus, in crucifixion, one dies of asphyxiation. You can't breathe. And in order to breathe, one would have to lift oneself up by precisely the wounds in the hands and the feet. And thus to speak would be especially excruciating. Requires more breath. And so those last words of Jesus, we have to think cost him really unutterable, unthinkable pain. And so what he's giving is of supreme importance, right? And so what he's giving is his final gift, the night before he'd given us the Eucharist. At that last moment, he was giving us Mary as his mother before he then gave his own life. So that's kind of the order, the Eucharist, Mary and his own life. And so that gift of Mary as our mother is crucial. And Mary as our mother, if she's truly our mother, is there any need that we have that she wouldn't be interceding for before God? Right, it's impossible if she's our mother. Our earthly mother might not intercede for certain needs because she doesn't know them because I keep them from her. But Mary is a mother who perfectly loves all her children and now in the vision of God knows absolutely every one of our needs. And so Mary intercedes as our mother for every single need, right? Think of the wedding at Cana. She's the one who notices, they have no wine, right? The mother notices those things, nobody else notices. Mary now with the vision of God knows that we too are lacking wine, et cetera. And so Mary mediates, mediates precisely by interceding for every need that we have in the course of our life, right? Even if we don't realize that she's involved, right? And so every grace comes to her. And so Esther provides a beautiful kind of image of that role of Mary as mediatrics of every grace. And then there's the theme of humility, right? So Esther the orphan, Mary unrecognized to occupy in the last place, unknown, doesn't even hardly speaks in the Bible and yet is the very center of all God's plans after her son. So Joseph Ratzger in that book, Daughter of Zion has a beautiful explanation of this. So he puts together Esther and Judith. And he says the great salvific figures in the bottom of page 10, if you're following, the great salvific figures of Esther and Judith appear taking up again the most ancient tradition as it was embodied in the figure of the Judge Deborah. Both women have an essential characteristic in common with the great mothers. One is a widow, the other is a harem wife at the Persian court, and thus both find themselves in different ways in an oppressed state. Both embody the defeated Israel. Israel has become a widow and wastes away in sorrow. Israel who has been abducted and dishonored among the nations enslaved with their arbitrary desires. Yet both personify at the same time Israel's unconquered spiritual strength which cannot boast as do the worldly powers. And for that very reason, knows how to scorn and overcome the mighty. The woman as savior, embodiment of Israel's hope takes her place beside the unblessed, blessed women. So in addition to Sarah and Hannah and Elizabeth, we find these figures of Esther and Judith all pointing in different ways to Mary. Another beautiful figure is Proverbs 31, often used at weddings, especially Jewish weddings. A woman of valor who can find, beautiful verse. She is more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her. He will have no lack of gain. She does him good, not harm all the days of her life. She seeks wool and flax and works with willing hands. She is like the ships of the merchant. She brings her bread from afar. Now the text is about the perfect wife. And the fathers of the church reading this, see this also as a type of Mary. She's the woman of valor who brings her bread from afar. And the fathers see that as a reference to the incarnation. The bread of life comes down, is brought from very far heaven in Mary's womb through her yes. She makes possible the bread of life. And then finally, scripture speaks frequently in the Old Testament about Israel in a personification, the daughter of Israel. At the beginning I mentioned the feminist complaint that Judaism is a patriarchal religion without women having a subordinate role. But we've been going through all of these figures in which the woman plays a key role, not a role in human temporal terms. The woman is not generally the king, but that's the whole point. The woman has this spiritual strength precisely by being temporarily unblessed. And so Israel as a whole is likewise spoken of never as a man, but always as a woman. Israel is daughter, daughter Zion. Israel is a she, Israel is the virgin that the Lord has chosen. Israel is bride, and the Lord is the bridegroom. So the song of songs is all about Israel as bride. The bride of the song of songs is Israel. The bride of the songs of songs is that special Israelite who becomes the mother of God, Mary, right? Mary is the bride of the song of songs. And we too are the bride of the song of songs, right? The church. Israel and the church are in revelation spoken of in bridal terms because God's covenant is a bridal covenant. And in that covenant, in that bridal imagery, the people of God can't be the bridegroom. The people of God has to be the bride who receives because it's simply what God put in, I call it the typology of creation. In gender difference, God has put into creation a magnificent typology of in the active generation, an active role and a receptive role. The woman has a receptive role, receiving the seed and bearing life, that life in her body and then bringing out from her body, right? And that's the type of Israel and the church. Israel and the church receive God's word, which is the active part, and that's why God presents himself as male, as the bridegroom, right? He's the word, he impregnates Israel. Israel receives that word in the heart and then bears fruit of holiness, right? And spiritual maternity. And so Israel has, she can only be bride, right? So again, the feminine is not marginal, but is gigantic because it's the whole people of God is feminine. And so Israel is a whole. And then in particular, scripture speaks of the daughter of Zion, so that has, we could say, two meanings, just as we saw the bride in the Song of Songs. Israel is a whole and one particular Israelite, Mary. And likewise here, the daughter of Zion is Israel, but the daughter of Zion is one Israelite who perfectly lives it out and that's Mary. And so when we read these prophetic texts about the daughter of Zion, we should think Israel and Mary. So let's look at some of them. Zechariah 2, verse 10, 11, sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for lo, I come and I will dwell in the midst of you, says the Lord, it's the incarnation. And we read this in Advent, and many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day and shall be my people and I will dwell in the midst of you and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. So that's Israel is a whole receiving the Messiah and a special daughter of Zion, Mary, receiving the Messiah in her womb. Zechariah 9, 9 to 10, we read this on Palm Sunday, rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem, lo, your King comes to you, triumphant and victorious as he, humble and riding on an ass, on a cult the full of an ass and his dominion shall be from sea to sea, the river to the ends of the earth. And so who's the daughter of Zion, right? It's all of Israel who receives the King, but it's especially Mary who makes that possible. Zephaniah 3, 14 to 18, sing aloud, O daughter of Zion, shout, O Israel, rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away the judgments against you. He has cast out your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord is in your midst. And again, that would be the indwelling in the temple, but much more so, God made man in Mary's womb. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, do not fear of Zion. The Lord your God is in your midst. And we can go on on Isaiah 62. Say to the daughter of Zion, behold, your salvation comes. Some texts, lamentations, speak of the daughter of Zion in a different sense, a sorrowful sense. So, Lamentations 2, 13, we read about in Holy Week in the Tenebrae service, what can I say for you on Good Friday? What can I say for you? To what can I compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What can I liken to you that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For vast as the sea is your ruin, who can you restore you? So that's on the literal level, that's set of Jerusalem in the Babylonian captivity and the burning of the temple, the destruction of Jerusalem. The Lamentations of Jeremiah. But the church applies it to Mary standing at the foot of the cross. Mary standing at the foot of the cross realizes this text in a higher way. So it shows again, Israel as a whole is the daughter of Jerusalem, daughter of Zion, but Mary is uniquely the daughter of Zion who can taste suffering in a way deeper than any other. Just as our Lord suffered more in his passion than any other human being, so Mary suffered more in her compassion than any other human ever will or can. And then finally, we have the figure of the bride. I already spoke about the bride of the Song of Songs. Hosea speaks of all of Israel as a bride. And so all of us are called to be members of the bride but Mary is the supreme model of the bride, the bride who never refused the bridegroom's will in anything. And so she's the bride, but we're called to participate in her bridal yes. And St. Paul in Ephesians, chapter five, where he speaks about marriage, he speaks about baptism there, that through baptism we may be without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. And so he's speaking about the church becoming the bride of Christ through baptism. And baptism enables us to be without spot or wrinkle and thus enables us to be the bride to the bridegroom Christ. And that's what every couple is prefiguring in the sacrament of matrimony, right? Every couple in the sacrament of matrimony is a figure, a living figure of the union of Christ and his bride in the church, right? But who's the perfect bride? Only she who truly is without blemish and that's Mary. Finally, I'd like to close with Mary as the created wisdom. Now the Old Testament in various places speaks of wisdom as personified. We find it in Proverbs eight in the wisdom of Solomon chapter seven through nine and Ben Sirach chapter 24. All of these wisdom with a capital W is spoken of as a person who was with God, who was begotten by God. And we know that that applies to Christ, that he is the uncreated wisdom as the word of God, the logos. And so a text like Proverbs eight that speaks about wisdom with a capital W is first of all about Christ as the uncreated wisdom. But the church applies these texts also to Mary. And so we might ask why she's not uncreated. In what sense is she wisdom? Well, she is the, we could say the created wisdom in this sense that by always her yes to God's word enables God's wisdom to find in here a perfect reflection. A reflection marred in each of us by sin. And so Mary's yes, Mary's life without sin, Mary's life of perfect correspondence with God's grace enables Mary to be, we could say, creation's masterpiece. Her son is not properly creation's masterpiece because he's the Lord. And so Mary's role, so that was our question from the beginning, is Mary's role marginal in scripture or central? And the yes of all creation, in other words, the perfect response to God's word, that can't be marginal. That's at the center of all God's ways. And so Mary's yes brings forth the incarnation, but Mary's yes is the model of what all creation is called to be. Let's look at Sirach 24. So here it's about wisdom, personified wisdom, and the personification of wisdom says this, quote, then the creator of all things commanded and said to me, he that made me rested in my tabernacle, and he said, let thy dwelling be in Jacob and thy inheritance in Israel, take root in my elect. So we could think all of Israel, but Mary in Israel. And I took root in an honorable people and in the portion of my God, his inheritance, and my abode is in the full assembly of saints. I was exalted like a cedar in Lebanon as a cypress tree on Mount Zion. I am the mother of fair love, of fear of knowledge and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth. In me is all hope of life and of virtue. They that eat me shall yet hunger and they that drink me shall yet thirst. They that work by me shall not sin. That's a mysterious text, and the church applies this to Mary as precisely the mother of fair love. She's the mother of fair love in a double sense. She's her love was perfect, but she's the mother of the love with a capital L, her son. They that eat me shall yet hunger, that's strange. It's different from what Jesus says, right? Those that eat the living bread that he gives us shall not hunger. Those that eat of her shall yet hunger because that's her role to lead us precisely to the living bread. Mary points us to Christ, and so she doesn't satisfy. But those that work by her shall not sin. She leads us, those are her last words in scripture at the wedding of Cana, do whatever he tells you. And so we get a beautiful image here of our lady. Ratzinger in the book Daughter's Eye that I've been mentioning. He brings us out that wisdom itself, the word in Hebrew and Greek is feminine. In other words, it refers not only to the uncreated wisdom that created the universe, but to a wisdom that receives God's plan, right? And Mary is the archetype, the perfect model of that reception, right? And that's properly feminine. And so Mary, as the perfection of the feminine principle, is anything but marginal to God's plan of salvation history. And so Ratzinger says, to leave woman out of the whole of theology, in other words, if the feminists' charge were true, that would be ultimately to deny creation and election. That God, he works actively so that what he creates can say yes to him. And so to leave that feminine yes out of the picture would be to miss the whole point of all of God's plan. Now it's true that in the Old Testament, this remains incomplete, it's all pointing to one who will be the perfect yes. In other words, that feminine line in the Old Testament is pointing to Mary as the completion of everything that this feminine strand in the Old Testament is all about. And so Ratzinger says that what is prefigured in these great women of Israel emerges with the name Mary. She emerges as the personal epitome of the feminine principle. And by doing so becomes then the model of the whole Christian life, as Jesus is the model, but the model in the sense of pointing to him, right? And so let us pray that the mother of fear love intercede for us so that our lives can be a yes like hers. Thank you. Stride didn't leave much time for questions. But we have a couple minutes and those who still have questions can come to me afterwards, right? Right, so Mary's name is Miriam in Hebrew and obviously the great prototype of that name would be Moses' sister Miriam, who sings the great canticle after the crossing of the Red Sea. That's another figure of Mary that I didn't mention. But it seems that the etymology of Mary does have to do with, there's a bitter is part of the root of Miriam. And so we can see that her name containing that root of bitter can refer to her role as the mother of sorrows, right? That's a key part of Mary's, right? No, Rebellion, right? No, Hebrew would be, right? And we see it in the, I mean, there's discussion about the exact etymology of Miriam in Hebrew. And so different hypotheses proposed. But I think that there's some truth in that objection, but it's not rightly understood that it would refer to her role as the mother of sorrows. Other questions? It's not a doubt about Mary's vow, but it's a deep part of the tradition. We find it in numerous doctors of the church, Thomas Aquinas, St. Bernard. I mean, in fact, it's really hard not to find it. And it's true that there's a difficulty that there wasn't this tradition in Israel. Now, it's not entirely absent the idea of a virginal consecration. We find it in the Essene community. But that was mostly for men. Mary, it's not unreasonable to think that Mary would be a first in this, precisely because of her crucial role, that she would see, she would have been given by God an insight into virginal consecration that would come from her unique fullness of grace. John Paul, too, speaks about this in a beautiful way in, I don't remember offhand, I'd have to look it up, but in several discourses when he speaks about whether Mary had a vow. But in any case, I mean, the church doesn't define it. The church, but we should see her as, in other words, the incarnation didn't take place in an unmarried woman. It took place in the bosom of a family because by that betrothal, they're already properly married in Jewish culture. And I think that's really important for the defense of the family and for just simply understanding God's plan. It wasn't that they got married afterwards. But so her question does have, I don't see how it can properly be understood without thinking that she had made a vow with Joseph's consent, exchange of vows as it were, right? Right, and you have to remember Jewish weddings took place very young. That betrothal wouldn't happen typically when the bride is 13 or 14. And so you can see that it makes sense that there'd be a delay to the bringing into the husband's house. And again, John Paul, too, speaks about that in his letter about St. Joseph, Radim Taurus Kustos, the guardian of the Redeemer. And he makes this point that they were properly married at the moment of the enunciation. Oh no, that would be, there are tons more figures than I spoke about. And so Bathsheba as the queen mother in relation to Solomon is another type of Mary and a type precisely of that role of intercession. And so that would, yes, thank you. Well, it's five o'clock, so we should close here. But if anybody has more questions, you can come to me afterwards. Thank you. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.