Category: Media

Catechetical Poetry

Post author By stefan
Post date June 1, 2021

The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine
#3 Catechetical Poetry: Presenting Christianity in China

The beauty and structure of poetry presents a particular form of literature that is at once attractive and easily memorised. Roy Peachey will examine how Wu Li, one of the masters of early Qing Dynasty painting, used traditional Chinese verse to evangelise the people of China. Even after he became a Jesuit priest in 1688, Wu Li continued to paint and write poetry, using his elegant art to present the essentials of Christianity to the Chinese people at a time of great political and religious uncertainty. Despite the very different conditions in which it was produced, his work therefore offers an intriguing example for our own times too.

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:

About the speaker:

Roy Peachey was educated at Oxford, London and Lancaster universities, studying Modern History, English and Chinese Studies. He is has held several senior educational roles whilst teaching, and pubilshed a number of books, including 50 Books for Life: A Concise Guide to Catholic Literature.

Devotion to Mary

Post author By stefan
Post date May 31, 2021

29th May 2021

The CHC blog

Devotion to Mary

Adam Coates

As May comes to a close, we come to the final post in this series dedicated to Mary. We’ve taken the opportunity of using this month, which the Church has set aside as a time of devotion to Mary, to get to know her better. In this final post, we want to conclude with a few thoughts on Marian devotion.

We have already established the essential nature of Mary’s role in salvation history over the course of the previous posts. It is her ‘yes’ which opens the door of Salvation; it is the singular grace of the Immaculate Conception that enables this ‘yes’ and the perfect discipleship that followed. We have seen how this enabled her to take on a new mission as Mother of the Church, and how Our Lady was assumed into Heaven and crowned as its Queen. This alone should be enough to understand that she is a model worth emulating. However, what of the topic of devotion to Our Lady?

The answer is found within Sacred Scripture. Mary announces that ‘all generations will call me blessed’ (Luke 1:48). And indeed we should. St. Paul VI explains that the devotion of the Church to the Virgin Mary “is intrinsic to Christian worship” and that it has consistently been a feature of Christian worship, “from the blessing with which Elizabeth greeted Mary (cf. Lk. 1:42-45) right up to the expressions of praise and petition used today”. St. Paul VI continues to note that the Church’s devotion is a special one, greater than that offered to any other Saint, because of the “the singular dignity of Mary”. However, and as the Catechism explains, it is essential to mention that this devotion “differs essentially” from the worship given to the Almighty Trinity. As St. Paul VI further notes, this devotion is “subordinated to worship of the divine Saviour and in connection with it”. This is exactly the point of devotion to the Virgin Mary: Mary is the perfect disciple of the Lord and true devotion to her necessarily points to her Son. St. Louis de Montfort, one of the most important Saints in advancing devotion to Our Lady, explains that “Jesus Christ is the ultimate end of devotion to Our Lady … If, then, we are establishing solid devotion to Our Blessed Lady, it is only to establish more perfectly devotion to Jesus Christ, to provide an easy and sure means of finding Jesus Christ”. Mary is an intercessor between us and Jesus, designed to help draw us closer to her Son. This is meaning of our devotions to Mary and all the Saints: they intercede for us before Christ, and provide an example for us to follow.

The Church has many practical means of devotion to Our Lady. Her Son’s disciples have been ever creative in honouring her through poetry, songs, music, paintings, sculpture, and other forms of art; but most importantly of all, through prayer. Many Popes have continually recommended the Rosary to the faithful. The Rosary takes the form of a series of short meditations on the great events of salvation history by the means of repetitions of the Hail Mary. As Pope Pius XII explains, by “the frequent meditation on the Mysteries, the soul little by little and imperceptibly draws and absorbs the virtues they contain, and is wondrously enkindled with a longing for things immortal, and becomes strongly and easily impelled to follow the path which Christ Himself and His Mother have followed. … [and] has … the admirable quality of infusing confidence in him who prays and brings to bear a gentle compulsion on the motherly Heart of Mary”.

The Angelus, too, is strongly recommended and, in a tradition started by St. John XXIII, the Pope leads the faithful of Rome in the Angelus every Sunday at noon. It consists of a short recollection of and meditation on the events of the Annunciation, and thereby provides a practical means to think upon that essential moment in salvation history throughout the day. It is traditionally recited in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. The seven sorrows of Mary, examined in our post on Mary as the Mother of Sorrows, has also provided a traditional focus for meditation, thinking upon the hardships which Mary suffered and united with her Son, sorrows suffered for His sake. Many more devotions to Mary have arisen throughout the history of the Church besides these, but the one thing that should remain clear are that all these devotions to the Virgin Mary are also, at their end, devotions to her Blessed Son.

Thus, we hope that this series of posts will help people to draw closer to Mary, and through her, to Jesus. We will finish with the words of the great St. Maximillian Kolbe: “Never be afraid of loving Mary too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did”.

Mary, Queen of Heaven

Post author By stefan
Post date May 26, 2021

26th May 2021

The CHC blog

Mary, Queen of Heaven

Adam Coates

In our previous post in this series, we considered Our Lady’s Assumption as that moment when Mary was taken up into Heaven, body and soul, to be united with her Son. In this post we will examine what it means for Mary to reign as Queen of Heaven, at her Son’s side.

To examine what this title of Queen means, it is necessary to turn to the Old Testament. When one typically thinks of a Queen, they often imagine the wife of a King. It is not so in the Old Testament. In the first Book of Kings, Bathsheba, the mother of King Solomon, is seated at her son’s right hand and Solomon states that requests to him should be directed through his mother, so that she might intercede for them before him (1 Kings 2:19-20). Moving to the Psalms, we are told that the Queen shall stand at the right side of the King (Psalm 45:9). In the final verse of this Psalm, this Queen is addressed directly and told that she will be “celebrated in all generations” and that “therefore the peoples will praise you for ever and ever”.

Anyone familiar with the New Testament should be instantly reminded of Our Lady’s Magnificat in St. Luke’s Gospel. Here Mary says that, due to God’s blessings, “henceforth all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48). This Queenship of Mary has been put into effect from the moment of her ‘yes’ to the Angel Gabriel: by opening the door to salvation, the subject of our first post, she puts herself on this path. In the Magnificat we are further told that God has seen Mary’s humble state, and that He will exalt the lowly in place of the mighty who have been cast down from their thrones (Luke 1:48, 52). It is obvious what is being said here: Mary is the humblest of God’s creatures, for she is the perfect disciple, and, thus, she is destined for Queenship; Mary is destined for glory. Christ, in ascending into his glory with his Resurrection and Ascension into heaven, gives a similar tribute to Mary. He assumes her into heaven and crowns her as Queen.

The Second Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium expresses this by saying that Mary was “exalted by the Lord as Queen of the universe, that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords”. Truly, Our Lady’s coronation as Queen is the culmination and the continuation of her mission as the Lord Jesus’ perfect disciple. In St. John Paul II’s words, “She who at the Annunciation called herself the “handmaid of the Lord” remained throughout her earthly life faithful to what this name expresses. In this she confirmed that she was a true “disciple” of Christ, who strongly emphasised that his mission was one of service … she fully obtained that “state of royal freedom” proper to Christ’s disciples: to serve means to reign”! Her service of faithful discipleship makes possible her reign as Queen.

Generations, indeed, have called Mary blessed and glorified her name. As St. John Henry Newman explains, these glories of Mary are fitting to her state. But they are given not for her glory or her exaltation, but, rather, for the sake of her Son, and also for our sake so as to provide us with an example to follow. In St. John Henry’s own words: “Let us copy her faith, who received God’s message by the angel without a doubt; her patience, who endured St. Joseph’s surprise without a word; her obedience, who went up to Bethlehem in the winter and bore our Lord in a stable; her meditative spirit, who pondered in her heart what she saw and heard about Him; her fortitude, whose heart the sword went through; her self-surrender, who gave Him up during His ministry and consented to His death”. Mary has consistently been an example and model for Christians to follow and, in glorifying her as the Church does, her perfect discipleship is made clearer for the Church to imitate.

We should also be clear that devotion to Mary as Queen in no way diminishes the devotion proper to her Son. The great Archbishop Sheen reminds us that “devotion to the Mother of our Lord in no way detracts from the adoration of her divine son. The brightness of the moon does not detract from the brilliance of the sun but rather bespeaks its brilliance”. All glories given to Mary are not, in the end, to glorify her, but to glorify Him who gave her all these good things.

Thus, whilst all things are given to Christ the King, they can be given through Mary the Queen. Numerous works of art, hymns, and poetry have been written to the Virgin Mary for the glory of Jesus Christ. One such poem is St. John Henry Newman’s The Queen of Seasons. This is a wonderful meditation on Mary’s Queenship and a beautiful act of devotion. It is devotion to Our Lady which we will discuss in the next, and final, post of this series.

The Assumption of Mary into Heaven

Post author By stefan
Post date May 21, 2021

22nd May 2021

The CHC blog

The Assumption of Mary into Heaven

Adam Coates

Our previous few posts in this series have, essentially, built on Our Lady as the model for Christians. Made possible by her Immaculate Conception, she has proven a model of faith, a model in suffering, and a model as the Mother of the Church.

The culmination of all of this is found in the dogma of the Assumption. Pius XII teaches us that Mary “obtained, as the supreme culmination of her privileges, that she should be preserved free from the corruption of the tomb and that, like her own Son, having overcome death, she might be taken up body and soul to the glory of heaven”.

The Assumption is the natural fruit of Mary’s perfect discipleship, which we have already discussed. As we have also seen, this discipleship is expressed in a Eucharistic fashion. To have a truly Eucharistic faith is be in communion with Jesus. This, St. John Paul II explains, is expressed in the Assumption: “In the mystery of the Assumption is expressed the faith of the Church, according to which Mary is ‘united by a close and indissoluble bond’ to Christ, for, if as Virgin and Mother she was singularly united with him in his first coming, so through her continued collaboration with him she will also be united with him in expectation of the second”. Our Lady is perfectly united to Jesus in her life on Earth and this is expressed also with her entry into heaven, body and soul.

Ultimately, as Pope Benedict XVI explains, this is a sign that heaven is real. In Pope Benedict’s own words: “in the Assumption we see that in God there is room for man, God himself is the house with many rooms of which Jesus speaks (cf. Jn 14:2); God is man’s home, in God there is God’s space. And Mary, by uniting herself, united to God, does not distance herself from us. She does not go to an unknown galaxy, but whoever approaches God comes closer, for God is close to us all; and Mary, united to God, shares in the presence of God, is so close to us, to each one of us”.

Our Lady’s entry into heaven, and this profound union with God she experiences there, allows her to be an intercessor for all people. She has thus been granted the title “Queen of Heaven”. We will discuss this reality in our next post.

Mary, Mother of the Church

Post author By stefan
Post date May 19, 2021

19th May 2021

The CHC blog

Mary, Mother of the Church

Adam Coates

Our last post in this series addressed Our Lady’s suffering as an essential part of her model discipleship. We saw how it united her discipleship to her Son’s mission of sorrow. It is not hard to imagine the height of Our Lady’s sorrow as being the witnessing of her beloved Son suffering and dying in agony upon the Cross, whilst being mocked and derided.

This is the moment to which the ministry of Jesus has been leading and this is a key moment within the life of Our Lady’s discipleship; it is the moment where she takes on a new role, the moment she is proclaimed Mother of the Church. As Christ hangs dying upon the Cross, He see His mother and St. John. Addressing His mother, He says, “Woman, behold your son”. Addressing St John, He says, “Behold your mother”. The passage then continues stating that “from that hour the disciple took her to his home” (John 19:26-27). St. John, the only Apostle present, represents the Church. This is more than simple a call for St. John to take Mary as his mother, it is a call for the whole Church to take Mary as its mother. St. John responds generously, and, to provide a more literal translation, Pope Benedict XVI explains that it can even be translated that St John takes Mary “into his inner-life setting”.

The Mother of Jesus is called to be taken into the hearts of all Christians. This motherhood, St. Paul VI writes, is a “new motherhood in the Spirit”. He continues, that in this “new motherhood … Mary embraces each and every one in the Church, and embraces each and every one through the Church”. As St. Paul VI makes clear, this is not a motherhood that ends with the end of the earthly life of either Mary or St. John but, rather, one that continues as a lived reality in the Church.

St. John Paul II further reinforces this fact. Pointing to the Mass, that awesome moment where Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross is re-presented, he writes that to revisit the Cross in this fashion is also to revisit this moment with Our Lady: in every celebration of the Mass, Our Lady is given anew to the Church. In St. John Paul’s own words, “Experiencing the memorial of Christ’s death in the Eucharist also means continually receiving this gift. It means accepting – like John – the one who is given to us anew as our Mother”. It means, St. John Paul continues, “putting ourselves at the school of his Mother and allowing her to accompany us”. Every celebration of the Mass renews the Church’s oneness with Christ and its motherhood with Mary. It is no accident that it is in the Mass, the “source and summit of the Christian life”, where Mary’s motherhood is renewed in the Church, for Mary’s role in Christ’s saving mission is essential; this relates right back to our very first post where Our Lady’s ‘yes’ makes possible Christ’s mission. Mary’s motherhood of the Church, where she serves as an example and teacher to all Christians, is central to the lived reality of the Christ’s Body the Church.

Mary was, as Pope Leo XIII writes, “in very truth, the Mother of the Church, the Teacher and Queen of the Apostles, to whom, besides, she confided no small part of the divine mysteries which she kept in her heart”. The Apostles would have looked to Mary as a model which to follow for, as we already know, she was the perfect disciple. That perfect discipleship was to lead to Mary’s Assumption into Heaven, the subject of our next post in the series.

Mary, Mother of Sorrows

Post author By stefan
Post date May 15, 2021

Frari (Venice) - Sacristy - Il Sassoferrato - Madonna in prayer

15th May 2021

The CHC blog

Mary, Mother of Sorrows

Adam Coates

We discussed in our previous post how Mary is the model of the Christian disciple. She constantly said ‘yes’ to God and adhered perfectly to His will. To be a disciple means to follow Jesus and, as Our Lord said Himself, this is achieved through the Cross: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).

Our individual crosses, our sufferings and trials are all joined to Christ’s suffering on the Cross; as St. John Paul II says, our sufferings have a “salvific” power. He continues that it is for “this reason Saint Paul writes: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake” (Colossians 1:24)”.

The Church’s tradition tells of Mary’s seven great ‘sorrows’ during her earthly life. These are:

1. The prophecy of Simeon (Luke 2:34-35)

2. The flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13-15)

3. The loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem (Luke 2:41-52)

4. The meeting on Jesus and Mary on the road to calvary (handed down in Sacred Tradition)

5. The Crucifixion of Jesus (Matthew 27:33-50, Mark 15:22-41, Luke 23:33-49, John 19:16-37)

6. The piercing of the side of Jesus with a lance and his descent from the Cross (John 19:34-38)

7. The burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea (Matthew: 27:57-61, Mark 15: 42-47, Luke 23:50-56, John 19:38-42)

These are all significant events in the life of Jesus and Mary. Beginning with Simeon’s prophecy in the Temple of Jerusalem that Jesus’ life and ministry would be a monumental one, he also adds, addressing Mary directly, that a “sword will pierce through your own soul” (Luke 2:34-35) and it points straight towards the road to the Cross. The sinlessness of Jesus and Mary is no guard against suffering in a word which is fallen.

St. John Paul II refers to Simeon’s prophecy to Mary as a “second Annunciation” which tells “her of the actual historical situation in which the Son is to accomplish his mission, namely, in misunderstanding and sorrow”. He continues, this prophecy “also reveals to her that she will have to live her obedience of faith in suffering, at the side of the suffering Saviour, and that her motherhood will be mysterious and sorrowful”. Jesus’ life and ministry is one filled with sorrow and Mary’s life is intrinsically bound up with the life of Jesus and her suffering has a salvific role to play.

However, we know that the ministry of Jesus does not end in sorrow, but with the Resurrection and Ascension.

Truth in Fact & Fiction Today

Post author By stefan
Post date May 14, 2021

The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine
#2 Searching for Truth: Fact & Fiction Today

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:

Fiction plays a powerful role in the search for and perception of truth. Historical fiction offers a means of accessing the past, and contemporary fiction often helps to shape the way a society is perceived. Fiorella Nash will explore the importance of both genres in seeking and reclaiming truths both religious and about ourselves, and in a particular way, the role of the murder mystery genre in the search for truth and justice.

About the speaker:

Fiorella De Maria is an Anglo-Maltese writer who grew up in Wiltshire, England and studied English literature at Cambridge University. A winner of the National Book Prize of Malta, she has published ten books including: Poor Banished Children, Do No Harm, We’ll Never Tell Them, A Most Dangerous Innocence and the Father Gabriel mysteries which have been described as “Miss Marple for the twenty-first century”. She lives in Surrey with her husband, four children and a dog called Monty. For more information about Fiorella, click here.

The Ascension of Our Lord

Post author By stefan
Post date May 13, 2021

13th May 2021

The CHC blog

The Ascension of Our Lord

Stefan Kaminski

The Feast of the Ascension can appear to have a slightly puzzling aspect. With the celebration of Our Lord’s bodily resurrection at Easter, we know Him to possess a glorified body that is no longer subject to the limitations of our earthly bodies. Although we hear of Christ’s many appearances to the Apostles and other disciples in the time following Easter, it is clear that His human and bodily nature can already be said to exist independently of this world. If this is true, why does a particular moment of “Ascension” need to take place?

The purpose of the Ascension is best expressed by considering the fact that it divides the Easter season into two uneven periods of forty and ten days respectively.

The significance of the period of forty days, from Easter to the Ascension, should be fairly clear to anyone with a cursory knowledge of Biblical history. Periods of forty days or years appear numerous times in Old and New Testaments: the forty days of the Flood, Israel’s Exodus in the desert, Moses’ time with God on Mount Sinai, and various forty years of peace or slavery for Israel and of the reigns of particular kings. Forty is a time of preparation, a time of transition, which therefore points towards a new era.

In this sense, Jesus’ forty days on earth after His Resurrection have a dual significance.

Insofar as the Resurrection proclaims the possibility of our individual redemption and our restoration to righteousness before God, so the Ascension announces the future restoration of human nature to a state even greater than that in which it was created. As St Thomas Aquinas explains, our mortal bodies belong to this earth, a place of generation and corruption; Christ’s immortal and incorruptible body belongs to the perfection of heaven. In other words, Christ’s Ascension points to the complete rehabilitation of human nature – body and soul – in a future, heavenly state, in “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1).

This is the destiny of that organic home of our soul which we call our body; that which the rupture of Original Sin has caused such a problematic relation with. Similarly to the “sneak preview” that Peter, James and John experienced at the Transfiguration, the Apostles are all blessed with a vision of the bodily glory that God intended for us, as a reflection of the spiritual beauty that He blessed us with.

Whilst drawing the future into the present in this way, the Ascension also and simultaneously closes the era of the Son, with the completion of His work of Redemption for the human race. The Apostles benefit from His presence among them during this time, listening to Him “speaking of the Kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). As much as this offers a completion and closure to His time among them, it is also a time of preparation for the next era. The arrival of the “Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name” (Jn 14:26), will grant the Apostles the fullness of Christ’s authority in order for them to commence their ministry on His behalf. This era or “phase”, which can be spoken of as the era of the Holy Spirit or of the Church, is the last before Christ’s Second Coming and the renewal of all things in Him.

After the Lord’s Ascension and the time of transition to the new era, we are left with another ten days in which to prepare specifically for the great Feast of Pentecost. It is a particular time of prayer for the Church, which, though already “born” from the side of Christ on the Cross, awaits her anointing with the Spirit. Thus, these ten days form a sort of “mini-Advent”, preparing not to receive the Lord this time, but to put into effect His command to “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19).

Tags crucifixion, death, Good Friday, jesus christ, passion

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Mary, Model of Christians

Post author By stefan
Post date May 12, 2021

12th May 2021

The CHC blog

Mary, Model of Christians

Adam Coates

In attempting to deny Mary’s traditionally exalted place, some people have pointed to Christ’s rebuke to the woman who addresses him in St. Matthew’s Gospel with the words “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked”. Christ replies to her that “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:27-28).

On the surface, this might seem to be a refutation of the idea that Mary is special. However, it is quite the contrary. As Saint Augustine explains, “Didn’t the Virgin Mary do the will of the Father? I mean, she believed by faith, she conceived by faith. … Yes, of course, holy Mary did the will of the Father. … It means more for Mary to have been a disciple of Christ than to have been the mother of Christ. … Mary, too, is blessed, because she heard the word of God and kept it. She kept truth safe in her mind even better than she kept flesh safe in her womb”.

It is clear what St. Augustine is saying: Mary perfectly followed God’s will and this is why she is blessed, not because of any biological connection to Jesus, but because she is the model of a faithful disciple in her fidelity to the God’s will. As the Catechism explains, ‘By her complete adherence to the Father’s will, to his Son’s redemptive work, and to every prompting of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary is the Church’s model of faith and charity. Thus she is a “preeminent and … wholly unique member of the Church’”.

The Eucharist, as we know, is the “source and summit of the Christian life”. That is to say, Jesus is the Eucharist is where our faith begins and in which it finds its greatest fulfilment, its true end. As St. John Paul II explains, the Eucharist is the continuation of the Incarnation, of God taking on flesh. He writes, “In a certain sense Mary lived her Eucharistic faith even before the institution of the Eucharist, by the very fact that she offered her virginal womb for the Incarnation of God’s Word. … At the Annunciation Mary conceived the Son of God in the physical reality of his body and blood, thus anticipating within herself what to some degree happens sacramentally in every believer who receives, under the signs of bread and wine, the Lord’s body and blood.”

St. John Paul II continues to state that there is a “profound analogy” between the believer saying ‘Amen’ when receiving Holy Communion, and the Virgin Mary making her fiat at the Annunciation; both are a ‘yes’ to the will of God. When Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, when the unborn St. John the Baptist leaps in the womb of Elizabeth, Mary is demonstrated to be history’s first “tabernacle”, says St. John Paul. Mary’s faith was a profoundly Eucharistic one, and one that was practiced in model fashion.

Continuing on this theme, St. John Paul II points to how this necessarily leads to the Cross for, indeed, the Eucharist is the fruit of the Sacrifice of Calvary. So in our next post, we shall examine Mary under her title “Our Lady of Sorrows”.

The Immaculate Conception

Post author By stefan
Post date May 8, 2021

8th May 2021

The CHC blog

The Immaculate Conception

Adam Coates

We began the first post in this series by talking about the Annunciation; and this is precisely where we will begin when talking about the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

Let us remind ourselves of what happens at the Annunciation: The Angel Gabriel comes to Mary and tells her she will bear in her womb the Saviour. Mary makes her “yes” and the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity takes flesh and assumes a human nature. This flesh is taken from Mary just as the flesh of you who are reading this is taken from your mother and father.

Now, of His nature, Christ is sinless but he is truly possessing of a human nature. The Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes declares, “born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin”. If Christ, then, truly takes His humanity from the Blessed Virgin Mary, it necessarily leads one to ask how is this possible if she is a sinful human being. The answer lies within the Immaculate Conception. What, however, does this mean precisely?

To put it simply, it means that the Blessed Virgin was conceived, by “a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God”, free from the stain of original sin. Consequently, she never sinned during her time on Earth. How do we know this, however? The answers, implicitly, are found in Sacred Scripture. Returning to the Annunciation narrative, Mary is addressed by the Angel Gabriel by the title “full of grace” (Luke 1:28) – she is filled up with the gifts of God. Secondly, Pope Benedict XVI explicitly links the words of the Angel Gabriel to Mary with the prophecy of Zephaniah which states that “the King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst”. (Zephaniah 3:15). Pope Benedict explains that this prophecy literally means that the Lord “is in your womb”. He further explains that this is a direct reference to God dwelling among His people in the Ark of the Covenant as first seen in the book of Exodus (Exodus 25:10-22). The Ark of the Covenant is truly special and holy, not to be approached by simply anyone. The Ark of the Old Covenant held the word of God inscribed on stone tablets, the rod of Aaron that bloomed into life (Numbers 17:1-12), and manna, the bread from heaven. The Ark of the New Covenant held Jesus, the Word of God, Jesus who rose on the third day, and Jesus who declared Himself the Bread of Life which had come down from heaven. Mary is revealed as the pure, undefiled bearer of the God Who is with His people. She is made spotless so she might hold Him who is the spotless one.

Some people, in questioning this dogma of the Church, have asked how Mary can be free from sin when, in the Magnificat, she refers to God as her saviour. This is easily answered. In defining the dogma, Pope Pius IX made clear that the “singular grace” given by God is made possible “in view of the merits of Jesus Christ”; that is to say, the merits of the Cross, of the Sacrifice of Calvary, are seen by God dwelling beyond time who then applies them to Mary at her conception. This grace, too, is not simply for her own benefit, but because it has an essential place in God’s divine plan of Salvation.

The Second Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium says that she was “enriched by God with the gifts which befit such a role”. This gift, this preservation from the stain of original sin enables Mary to make her “yes” at the Annunciation”, to endure the journey to Bethlehem, to stand at the foot of the Cross. In this, Mary is the model of all Christians, an idea we will explore in the next post.

The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine #3 Catechetical Poetry: Presenting Christianity in China

About the speaker:

Other videos in the series:

Devotion to Mary

Adam Coates

Further reading

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Mary, Queen of Heaven

Adam Coates

Further reading

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The Assumption of Mary into Heaven

Adam Coates

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Mary, Mother of the Church

Adam Coates

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Mary, Mother of Sorrows

Adam Coates

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The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine #2 Searching for Truth: Fact & Fiction Today

About the speaker:

Other videos in the series:

The Ascension of Our Lord

Stefan Kaminski

Mary, Model of Christians

Adam Coates

Further reading

Related posts

The Immaculate Conception

Adam Coates

Further reading

Related posts

The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine
#3 Catechetical Poetry: Presenting Christianity in China

The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine
#2 Searching for Truth: Fact & Fiction Today