Scott Hahn - Fatima, Coredemption & the Bible - Greenwood 2007 - CONF 5

[Music] our next speaker is exceptionally popular and another EWTN favorites I'm sure we have many EWTN viewers here doing [Applause] he is currently a professor of theology and scripture at Franciscan University of Steubenville where he's taught since 1990 and he is the founder and director of the st. Paul Center for biblical theology in 2005 he was appointed as the Pope Benedict the sixteenth chair of biblical theology and liturgical proclamation at st. Vincent's Seminary in Latrobe Pennsylvania congratulations and please welcome dr. Scott Hahn [Applause] [Music] [Applause] for so many years I've been listening to Donna's music but now I don't have to turn on my CD player I just get to look up and see her what a joy it is to share the day with you and with you my brothers and sisters and with my dear brother and good friend and colleague at Franciscan University of Steubenville dr. Marc Mero Valley it's rather daunting for me to get up after him and share as I will about the Blessed Virgin because in so many ways he's been my teacher over the years over the decades going all the way back to when I first entered the church 21 years ago so I'm going to spare him the embarrassment by not asking him to leave but I hope you will all join with me as I ask you to pray in the name of the Father of the son then of the Holy Spirit Almighty God our Heavenly Father we want to thank you from the depths of our heart for the gift of your son but our hearts are too weak and so we turn now to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin and ask for her intercession to gain the grace for us to pray in a way that you deserve as Abba Father for the gift of Jesus your son and hers but the power of the Holy Spirit might come over us and overshadow us to enlighten our minds with the light of divine truth and when Kindle our hearts with the fire of divine love that we might grow in our understanding but that with your help we might live out faithfully all that we learn of these supernatural mysteries these beautiful truths and realities that make up our faiths that make us your family so help us and hear us as we pray the family prayer that Jesus taught us our Father who art in heaven Hallowed if I came to become thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from heal hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen Our Lady of the Holy Rosary pray for us in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen well I've got the sense this past hour that the majority of you seemed to be cradle Catholics and so I suspect that for most of you you can hardly remember a time where you are not already familiar with Fatima and Our Lady of Fatima well that is not the case for me I can remember vividly exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard for the very first time about those three kids and that wonderful apparition from May until October 1917 for us to be able to join together to celebrate the 90th anniversary of that one occasion when six months after the first appearance you have the miracle of son and so many more Grace's - it's just a great indescribable privilege for me but I'll tell you it was almost exactly 23 years ago that I first heard about it because I was there at a hospital dead where my wife was laying there in labor and I had been taking this husband coach childbirth I was supposed to help her with her breathing but the television was on and I was distracted by the voice of Ricardo Kevon and as a Protestant pastor I should have turned the channel but I didn't I looked up and I listened and I watched as Ricardo montalbán described Our Lady of Fatima and the miracle that had happened back in 1917 and she kept looking me and she said would you help she said turn that off I said I'll turn the volume down I was mesmerised I I was stunned after almost an hour I was trying to figure out how to help her breathe through labor while I was also trying to figure out how in the world did I miss out on this I never heard of the miracle of son I never heard of Lucy I just seemed to and Francesco and here I was sitting there in a chair next to my wife who ended up getting a cesarean section that night and I don't accept the blame it wasn't her breathing but I remember because at that time in my own study so many things kept coming up Catholic that I had basically prayed and studied myself into a crisis of faith I had already resigned my pastored as a Presbyterian minister and so I was taking a job in a college administration that would leave me evenings free to study but I didn't think that this evening was going to be such an instruction instructional time but it was and I'd like to tell you that when the show is over all I did was the focus upon my bride and her agony but my mind was just split I had to go and find more and so about three days later I went out and found some materials about Fatima and I fed my mind and my heart and ever since I have become more and more convinced that this is one of the greatest gifts that God has given not only to the Catholic Church in the modern era but to the whole human family and I want to echo so much of what you've already heard from dr. Murrow Valley because he expressed the concerns that many non Catholics have when it comes to Marian doctrine and devotion as the Catholic Church teaches and practices it because for many years I was not only not a Catholic not only was I a Protestant and a Presbyterian minister but I was also a staunch anti Catholic and the one thing that probably upset me more than all of the other things I mean the Pope the Eucharist purgatory those were all problematic but Mary married seemed quite contrary to the Bible that I read and at roots it was more than just the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception it was more than just the doctrine or the dogma of her bodily assumption it was also more than this sense that she is still functioning in terms of heavenly queenship those three doctrines just expressed to me a fundamental dread that I had all of this detract from Jesus all of this robs Christ of glory and so as you explained I opposed that teaching because I wanted to protect the glory of my Savior and Lord and I wanted to bring honor to his name and do whatever I could to take away from those who detracted from it now of course that I am a Catholic there is one fundamental reason because I don't see Mary detracting from the perfect work of Christ our Redeemer I see her refracting the light of His redemptive work she no more detracts from Jesus that a prism detracts from light when a light strikes a prism the refraction of that pure light into the various colors across the spectrum display what was in that pure light when it hit the prison not only does the moon not detract from the Sun but the prism doesn't detract from the light it reveals the perfect beauty of the redemptive work that Christ accomplished because Christ didn't come and didn't come to earth and become a man in order to redeem himself he didn't come and die and rise again in order to get something that he lacked it began to occur to me over the course of years as a Protestant struggling with the Church's teaching that I really had a fundamental misunderstanding of how we glorify God because it seemed to me a kind of tug-of-war that the more glory you give to Mary or the Saints or the Pope or the priests the less Christ gets but in fact Jesus didn't become a man suffer die and rise again in order to get more glory than he had in the first place he can't get anymore he's God his glory is infinite and His infinite glory is eternal so if he didn't become a man suffer die and rise in order to get more glory for himself then why did he go to the trouble and go through all of that agony well the scriptures are clear at least they became increasingly clear to me he to give us his glory the glory as of the only son of the father he came to share with us his own divine sonship and so now the one overarching reason why I embrace the Catholic Church's doctrinal teaching and devotional practices concerning the man the Blessed Virgin Mary and the one overarching reason why I fully affirm the timeliness and the profound rightness of defining the fifth Dogma is because I think this will show the world the revelation of Christ's glory and the perfection of His redemptive work where is found in its most resplendent form his mother our mother Jesus proclaimed the gospel and then he proceeded to fulfill it but as I said the gospel didn't change the second person of the Trinity the eternal son did not gain a single drop of glory for himself after living dying and rising as a human which he lacked before him God didn't create and redeem the world in order to get more glory but rather to given we need to get over this notion that the God creature relationship is a kind of master/slave relationship that's the way I think a lot of people think but know what we have to grasp is the beautiful truth of the mystery of Abba Father and we wouldn't know that truth until he sent His only Son and he taught us to pray in a way that they had never prayed before in ancient Israel to pray our Father to call God Abba to come to know him as Papa daddy in the most intimate terms do with us detract from Christ's finished work by affirming it's perfect realization in the Blessed Virgin Mary on the contrary we celebrate the work of God the Father through his son in this creature who is destined to be not only his daughter but the mother the Sun here we find the perfection of Christ's saving work which he accomplished not for himself but for us as humans I am convinced that nothing brings a family together so much as when they celebrate a mother we have done that for years with my bride for birthdays and anniversaries we just did it recently for my mother-in-law and my father-in-law with their 50th anniversary nearly five hundred people gathered together to celebrate their lives their marriage their family their love and it's really a wonderful thing to be married into a family with such a godly prince of a man as my father-in-law he is clearly the head of a wonderful home but she is the heart and this is a natural human family and she makes it warm with love think of how God would create a supernatural family a divine family that reaches around the world and stretches from Earth to heaven how could we be a family if we have a father and his firstborn son as her oldest brother but without a mother but we are not without a mother as we know from John 19 verse 26 what does Jesus say to the Beloved Disciple behold your mother and he's not talking to John alone he's talking to all of those disciples whom he would call beloved and so if he gives us his own mother to be ours what would he withhold from us I like the way that mark drew in John 3:6 3:16 for God so loved the world that He gave His only Son but we here in John 19 verse 26 that we could almost paraphrase for Christ loved the world that he gave us his only beloved mother to be our own as exhibit a proof positive that were not just ransom captives we are adopted brothers and sisters we are divine sons and daughters and this is something that does not rob God of the glory it reveals the glory the father that he accomplishes through the work of his son by the power of the Holy Spirit making us one with a oneness that originates inside of the Blessed Trinity Mary is not God we're very clear on that we do not give her the adoration of worship but she is the mother of God she is only a creature but she is God's greatest creation st. Thomas Aquinas was very emphatic about this in the Summa Theologica he says that there are three things that God has accomplished that cannot be improved upon one is the hypostatic union when you look at jesus the union of humanity and divinity is perfect it could not possibly be improved upon number two the beatific vision our life in God for all eternity will lack nothing it cannot be improved upon after billions and billions and trillions of years it will pass by as one intensely intensely pleasurable second you know they say time flies when you're having fun trillions of years will seem like a moment with the joy of life inside the Holy Trinity the beatific vision cannot be improved upon so what's the third the third thing that God has accomplished that cannot be improved upon is the Blessed Virgin God could not fashion a creature greater than her and this again gives all the glory to God because she is his handiwork she is Christ's masterpiece you see the perfection of Christ's redemptive work manifested in her not in Jesus but in Mary far better than you see it in Scott or Mark or any of us God is accomplishing a father work in all of our lives but his fatherly work is a work in process it's a work in progress it's a work that has to accommodate our weaknesses and our failures and so when you see the Blessed Virgin Mary someone who was conceived immaculately by the power of this of the son who comes from the father when you see the Blessed Virgin giving her Fiat and the power of the Most High overshadowing her not only does the Spirit of God enable her to be conceived immaculately but the Holy Spirit of God enables Jesus to be conceived virginal II and that virginity is perpetual it is everlasting she is the resplendent work of Christ her son and Savior her creator and her Redeemer and so Jesus like any true artist has done many great works but the artist often has to you know fulfill deadlines and you know fulfill contractual demands and produce many works but every artist wants to save his very best to create the masterpiece well here we have a divine artist with unlimited genius and love and in the Blessed Virgin Mary we behold the masterpiece of Christ if you went to an art gallery to look at an exhibit and the artist himself showed up do you think he would be threatened if instead of staring at him you began staring at his greatest masterpiece of course not he would take pride in the fact that you recognized the genius and the greatness of his work when we behold our mother we behold Christ's redemptive work we behold the mother of God to affirm the truth about Mary does not detract from Jesus though not to affirm it does of all creatures that God has fashioned the Blessed Virgin is the only person directly related to God by a natural bond of Covenant kinship she only receives the gift of her humanity by her sons through the Spirit she turns around and gives to her son the flesh and blood they share a bond of Covenant kinship as mother to son and so this bond is what enables us to share the new grace of Jesus Christ through adoption she has this covenant bond of divine kinship as the mother of God through the work of the Spirit in a way that is direct and unique but it is something that is not so much exceptional as it is the plenitude she has it not just a hornet for herself she has it to lavish it upon those who are her children she gave consent not only to bear in Jesus but to bearing the Redeemer of the world as co-redemptrix as our media tricks as our advocate she gave consent not only to bearing Jesus from the cradle to the grave and then beyond she also gave consent to his suffering for us she gave consent to becoming the mother of her son's torturers of her son's executioner's we all know how much it hurts to be misunderstood it hurts even more to have loved ones our own children misunderstood mistreated and abused but you know I have six kids and they're all better than I deserve but none of them are perfect though at times they thought they were there's only one mother who ever had a child who was perfect and divine the Blessed Virgin and what does she give consent to slander misrepresentation torture and then the most ignominious and shameful execution I mean I don't know about you but I've sometimes put myself in her sandals and wondered why she didn't cry out do something show them who you are you and I both know what you could do or she could turn around and you say you have no idea what's coming you have no idea who you're messing with you think you've got the power to take his life I'll tell you who has the power to take yours you just you wait but you didn't just bite you no she didn't bite your tongue shouldn't just kind of keep a stiff upper lip like a kind of maternal stoic she gave consent not only to his suffering but to his suffering for all of us who maligned him and misrepresented him and tortured and executed him to become her children that is a heart that is deeper than any ocean that is a heart that is greater more inexhaustible than the universe itself her Immaculate Heart is the new creation and it's immeasurably vaster than the old one if only we could see what God sees but it we can't that's part of the beauty of holiness I'm reminded of Saint to res who in one of her last entries in her journal described herself as a tiny seed a tiny seed that nobody noticed even people in her own convent even our sisters didn't notice what a heroic Saint was in their midst until the story of the soul until her diary was published and then of course pope pius xi referred to this tiny little seed that up in heaven be Kame what he called a hurricane of glory what an image well if Tourette's is a hurricane of glory I think she would want us to know that the Blessed Virgin Mary is immeasurably more glorious she is the one who leads us to Christ Christ is the one who leads us to her Jesus as you know subjected himself to his father's will he subjected himself to the Old Covenant to the ten commandments he fulfilled the first three to God his father more perfectly than any creature ever did he also fulfilled the last seven which deal with our duties to our fellow humans the first of which is what honor your father and mother indeed He fulfilled this commandment more perfectly than any son has ever done by bestowing his own honor upon his heavenly father but also by bestowing His divine honor upon his earthly mother and we are simply called to imitate him we are not supposed to love Mary any more than Jesus did but what we long to do is to love her as just as he did and that's what I asked him constantly to empower me to love her as she deserved to be loved but as he alone has loved her and then I asked her give to me the grace to love Jesus as much as he deserves because nobody has done it like you he gave her the power to love her son more than any mother ever did and then the power to enable us to do the same and that's why her privilege is not exceptional in the sense of excluding us it is a plenitude that is given for precisely the purpose of including us when you give something to a mother you can be sure everybody in the family will get it especially if they need it and so this is the heart and soul of what it means to be Catholic Christians to live our lives as sons and daughters of God in the Catholic Church as the family of God and to behold the eternal son of the Father and to hear him and to thank him for the gift of his own mother to be ours this is the love affair we call salvation now there's a lot more to it than what I can in one hour but I want to identify something that I consider to be of greatest importance and you can already get a sense of it because of what I've said thus far and that is we have got to we've got to transpose the gospel key out of the key of individualism into the key of the family in Western civilization we tend to think of individuals and their rights and then the family and the state of all the other as institutions but the family is different than all the other institutions the family is not only something that God has designed beginning with the marital covenant the family is what reflects who God is in his perfection Pope John Paul the second once stated and I quote God and his deepest mystery is not a solitude but a family because God hasn't himself fatherhood sonship and the essence of the family which is love notice he didn't say that God is like a family he said that God is a family because God alone possesses fatherhood in its perfection from all eternity he isn't like a father I am like a father because my father hood is flawed God's is not he also possesses not only eternal fatherhood but also eternal sonship you see father is not just a noun at the verb he's internally fathering and that's why the Sun isn't younger than the father or smaller or weaker he's Co eternal with the father God from God light for Oh God from True God because he is begotten not made were made not forgotten were creatures who have human nature he is begotten from all eternity he is divine nature - father doesn't mean to lord it over a subject that means to take your life and lavish it upon another as a gift of love and any a son means to image the father if fathering is the dynamism of love than for the son the image of the father he must take that life as a gift of love and give it back as lavishly as he got it and what do you call the life the gift and the love from the father to the son and from the son back of the father it's not a what it's a who it's the Holy Spirit this constitutes the highest and the holiest mystery but far from being a mathematical abstraction this is an intensely interpersonal reality eventually we will all call home if we get to heaven because the Holy Trinity is a divine family and this recasts our understanding of everything that God the Father accomplishes through his son who was described by Paul as the firstborn among many brothers and sisters he is the one who gives us the spirit of sonship in Romans 8:15 the father sends the son to give us the spirit so that our hearts will be stirred up to cry out what abba father to come to know that God is more truly and perfectly our Father than our natural dads could ever be this is what the New Covenant accomplishes this is what is so unique and definitive about the Christian religion God sharing his own family life and love with all of humanity and it began with the gift of Mary in her Immaculate Conception in her virginal conception of Jesus in her Co redemptive work at the foot of the cross as well she obeyed the father by bearing his son through the power of the Holy Spirit for us the Apostle Paul speaks of this family mystery mark already quoted him in first Corinthians 3 verse 9 we read that we are God's co-workers in the Greek it's sooner it's a strange term because you don't typically think of God as having assistants coworkers can't God get the job done himself why does God need co-workers because God is a father and what is he doing he's not spoiling his kids he's raising them is a father threatened when his sons grow up and begin cutting the grass and raking the leaves and cleaning the garage this father I'll tell you is not I am very pleased and fulfilled and slightly overweight from lack of exercise the work that God is doing is a fatherly work raising sons and daughters to share in his work which is redemptive the work of redemption is more than getting people out of hell it's bringing them home to heaven but it's empowering them to reach out and to bring others as many as possible home with them this is what Jesus has shared in an unparalleled way with the Blessed Virgin Mary to whom God entrusted such coworking tasks as feeding his son nursing them singing him to sleep teaching him him to speak accompany him all the way to the cross and then waiting for the gift of his spirit and teaching the Apostles to pray like nobody's ever prayed before this yes was not just given to Gabriel this Fiat me secundum verbum to him this yes from the heart of the Immaculata is a yes that continues for all eternity it is the yes of God's greatest creation could there be a more intimate co-worker with God then the only creature fashioned to be the mother of God this is something that we could spend much more time on but we're limited this afternoon so I want to just kind of focus on a formula that Pope John Paul the second seem to have introduced it's already been referred to but I want to underscore it just briefly and that is maternal mediation maternal mediation and the reason I want to emphasize this is because Mark put his finger right on the pulse of this former Protestant when he cited that passage in first Timothy 2:5 where we read what that there is one mediator between God and man the man Jesus Christ I can't tell you how many hundreds of times I threw that in the face of my Catholic friends to show them how absurd and how unthinkable Marian doctrine and devotion were from a biblical standpoint how dare we refer to Mary's maternal role as mediatrix and yet that is precisely what motherhood means most especially in the family of God Mediatrix is just a theological term that captures the concrete truth beauty and reality of what it means to have a divine mother she is not the mother of God in the sense of the originator of God obviously she's a creature not the creator but she's a mother in the truest sense of one who bears God the bishops who define the dogma of Theotokos the mother of God way back in 431 at the Council of Ephesus thousands of faithful came down to Ephesus they waited all evening into the early morning hours until the bishops came out hundreds 200 bishops came out and declared the definition of the dogma of Theotokos the mother of God the people responded with an explanation with shouts with songs they suddenly rushed the bishops they hoisted them their shoulders and they carried them for blocks as a family celebrating the gift of a mother that came from the heart of God this is who we are as the of God this is what Christ has accomplished as the one true mediator this is what we need to understand much better because Christ has mediated the the covenant love of God the Father for us so perfectly that he has merited everything we need everything we need but I used to assume that if Christ merited everything we need for salvation then there's no room left for Mary until I discovered the Catholic Church teaches that Christ merited everything for our salvation including Mary's capacity to merit Christ's intercession at the right hand of the Father is perfect but far from exploding my own feeble prayers and intercessions for others Christ Seder session doesn't exclude mine it empowers mine and enables me to pray with greater fervor and fruitfulness than I ever could on my own without the one and only mediator between God and man the one mediator is the son of the Father the firstborn among many brothers and sisters Jesus is the one mediator because he is the firstborn son the eternal son of the father Mary is the media tricked because she is the mother empowered by God's Spirit and so everything she is Christ made her everything she has Christ gave her and she didn't just get it in a passive way she got it in a dynamic and active way or else she wouldn't be a mother and so what we see is Christ has merited Mary's capacity to merit he's married and our capacities to merit as small as those capacities might be but what do we mean by merit if we're thinking of merit these strictly economic terms and it's quite absurd to apply it to Mary or anybody else but that is not what merit means merit comes from the Bible and the Bible is covenant 'el not actual it is familis t'k it is not economic we're not looking at the US Open where one man is the winner and everybody else is the loser we're not looking at a bowling match where only one person wins and all the others congratulated we're looking at a family where everything the father has it gives the son and he returns the father and the power of the Spirit and they lavish it upon all of us beginning with Mary the exemplar of our salvation so a san agustin writes when God rewards us for our labors he's only crowning his work in us he has successfully fathered us through the son by the Holy Spirit we merit grace like a child earn his dessert by eating everything else the father put it as plates we married grace the same way children end up gaining an inheritance by staining the family by loving your brothers and sisters and doing your best to honor your parents on inheritance is not something you strictly merit by some principle abstract justice by the grace of birth you enter a family you know by your way into my family you got you can't work your way into my family how much work he would not by her work her way into God's but Mary didn't she was fashioned as the mother of God through the power of Christ's spirit as the daughter of the Father and as the mother of the son and the spouse of the Holy Spirit she is the greatest handiwork of God but she is proof positive she is exhibit a that God's redemptive work is a family affair that we do not understand it properly unless we look at it in the light of God's fatherly action that raises us up as children and her not only as a daughter but as a mother and a spouse as well so let's remember that it's true the crisis merited all Grace's for us including Mary's capacity to merit Christ's role as mediator secures all Grace's including her role as Mediatrix Crais intercession is all-sufficient but far from meaning that we don't need to pray we can now pray you know more powerful than we ever could apart from Christ the one true mediator just as Christ is not a substitute but a representative so Christ's suffering doesn't exempt us from suffering does it rather Eden dows are suffering with a redemptive value it would never have on its own Christ's obedience doesn't get us off the hook so we don't have to obey Christ obedience is what secures the power of the Holy Spirit to enable us to obey in a way we never put on our own and if that's true for us how much more true is it for the only creature that he created to be his own mother the one whom he is divinized more gloriously than any other so we see not only in the Blessed Virgin Mary the resplendent beauty of God's redemptive work now I want to say something here just as a footnote you know we as Catholics are faithful we are a traditional we are Orthodox we are conservative we get a lot of labels I want to do away with them and just say we are simply an uncomplicated ly Catholic and as such our faith doesn't rest or terminate in doctrinal propositions the Catechism quotes st. Thomas by reminding us that our faith doesn't terminate in doctrinal propositions but in the realities those doctrines convey we need doctrinal formulations we need the Magisterium to define dogma because God made us with minds and the minds that he's given us feed on truth Chesterton was right we're not created just to have forever an open mind the mind is like a mouth it's not meant to remain open just as the mouth closes on meat so the mind closes on the mysteries of faith that have defined as doctrine as dogmas by the Apostles and their successors just as Jesus empowered them to do just as he promised to safeguard and maintain them so it's not only something that is a beautiful mystery in a reality it is something that leads us back to the mystery of the Magisterium the Pope and all the bishops in union with the Pope are successors of the Apostles but too often we treat them or we hear the media treating them you know sort of like the ref on the field the overweight umpire behind second base you know it's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it you know you're out and if you argue you're out of the game you know strike three foul ball but the Magisterium that is the Pope and all the bishops who are successors of the Apostles are United in a supernatural organism as the teaching arm of the church the Magisterium they're not the umpires on the field they're the players they're the ones who are proclaiming the gospel administering the sacraments they're the ones who are the successors to the Apostles and we are in union with them by the power of the Holy Spirit who safeguards them so what is a dogma well on the one hand before he was Pope Benedict Cardinal Ratzinger stated and I quote Dogma is by definition nothing other than the church's authoritative interpretation of Scripture it's how we read the Bible according to tradition Dogma is by definition nothing other than the church's authoritative interpretation of Scripture so as Mark went down the list of the Marian dogmas beginning in 431 with the council of ephesus Theotokos the mother of god and then in 647 with Pope Martin the first and the perpetual virginity of Mary and then likewise in 1854 with Pope Pius the ninth in the Immaculate Conception and then of course in 1950 with it the definition of the dogma of Mary's assumption by Pope Pius the 12th working with all of the bishops in the church around the world there are four dogmas she's the mother of God she's perpetually virgin she is in fact the Immaculate Conception but now she's been assumed into heaven body and soul for what purpose just to kind of wait for the rest of us know to pray and to gain the grades for the rest of us that is what we celebrate in her heavenly queenship she is the Queen Mother and as such she is co-redemptrix Mediatrix and advocate all those three terms do is to unpack the meaning of what she is now that she's glorified in heaven as the mother of god and the mother of God's children and this is why the first four definitions of Mary and dogma all basically help us plot a trajectory that leads straight to the fifth and final dog because the fifth Dogma explains who she is now and what she's doing until we all get home to share in this heavenly reunion she is co-redemptrix not an alternative not an equal but as mother she gave us a redeemer as mother she gave us our mediator as mother she is our advocate I wish they had time but I know that I don't to go into how it was that I came ever so slowly and with great resistance but also with considerable excitement to discover that the Catholic Church is not just teaching truth authoritative Lee but interpreting Scripture compelling like the way back in high school and college I used to challenge my Catholic friends show me a text the Immaculate Conception the bodily assumption or heavenly queenship you know when they run and hide when I came into the cafeteria I wasn't aware of the fact until I I just met a few months ago with an old college friend of mine who we shared a fraternity and he came up and he told me he said you know I'm so glad you're Catholic I'm like why is that he said because when we were students and you walked in the cafeteria I literally I would get up and leave I was afraid of you and I'm like I didn't remember how I would just gently and lovingly harass you Papists that I remember a turning point in my life sitting in class as a graduate student in seminary when a professor just gave us a throwaway line I don't think he remembers saying it but he just happened to mention oh he said you know to use a text as a proof text to take attacks out of context in order to use it as a proof text he said that's a pretest and i sat there squirmy because I thought well that's what we do we look for proof texts to back up our beliefs and so often it meant memorizing 20 or 30 or my keys 50 or 60 New Testament verses typically out of context to kind of set you straight and get you out I'm really sorry about all that it's a lifetime of joyful restitution that I'm doing here but that teacher was right but I had no idea how right he was I'm not even sure he did because what I discover is when you when you read the Bible contextually that means not just looking for a text in the New Testament it means reading the new in light of the old and the old in light of the new it took me almost two and a half close to three years of studying scripture reading the father's and discovering the churches living tradition because they were never settling for proof texts they would always read the New Testament text in light of the Old Testament context and there were three sources that I found especially helpful they looked at Adam and Eve and saw Jesus as the new Adam as st. Paul describes in Romans 5 in 1st Corinthians 15 the first Adam was a type that prefigured the new the last Adam and the last Adam surpassed the first but they also pointed out there was an EVE and then there was a new Eve and the new ones surpassed the first by untying the knot by giving the new Adam a body just as the old Eve gave the old Adam the forbidden fruit to reverse the effects of disobedience the new covenant was brought about by a new Adam but not a new Adam alone but a new Eve I remember looking at John the Gospel of John chapters 1 and 2 and seeing the parallels with Genesis 1 and 2 how does Genesis 1 begin in the beginning how does John 1 begin in the beginning how does God create in Genesis he speaks the word let there be light in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God in the Word was God and all things came into being through that word and that word became flesh and dwelt among us but in John 1 verses 29 35 and 40 3 you find what'd you find in Genesis 1 the next day the next day the next day and then eventually you get to the seventh day in Genesis 1 and 2 and you have Adam and Eve in John 1 and 2 you come to the seventh day and there's a marriage there's a wedding feast of Cana but the bride and the groom are not named in fact none of the characters are identified only two and who are they Jesus and Mary but it is in collar Mary didn't call her mom he uses the same term Adam used when he first beheld Eve and what is that woman woman because this is a new covenant it's a mystical marriage with a new adamant and new Eve and he uses that term once more in chapter 19 when she's at the foot of the cross not only is she bribed but she's now mother behold your mother so I saw the new Adam and I saw the new Eve and I discovered the sources of the Church's teaching about the Immaculate Conception because Protestants agree with Catholics on three forces this proposition Protestants and Catholics agree that Adam and Eve and Jesus were all created with original sin we're just squabbling about the new leaf but if the New Covenant surpasses the old and the new Adam is Karina the original sin how fitting it would be for the new Eve to be also and so it's an argument from fitness it's the logic of God's fatherly love and I found the same kind of tradition in the scripture when you read the new in light of the old with respect to Mary as the arc of the New Covenant you go back to Exodus and you see how God uses Moses to bring these people out of bondage but it wasn't Moses alone by the time they got free and they met God at Sinai Moses gave way to the tabernacle the sacred tent and what made it so sacred was the holy of holies and what made that so holy was the Ark of the Covenant where God's Word was contained in that box the Covenant law of God written with the finger of God that box covered with gold contained the word of God in stone well Luke derives his own description of the Annunciation from the traditions of the Ark of the Covenant to show that Mary contains the Word of God not in stone but in flesh and that the terms and the phrases and the events that describe the Ark of the Covenant and how God used to do to lead is here long after Moses died to lead Israel even after Joshua died to lead Israel even after David finished the conquest and saw and built the temple the Ark of the Covenant was the proof of God's abiding presence because it contained the very word of God and the manna as well well if that was the holiest piece of furniture on the planet Earth in the Old Covenant what about the woman who contains the word of God and flesh the true manner and so in Luke 1 and 2 just like John 1 and 2 the father showed me how Mary is the Ark of the new covenant the third and last tradition that I discovered studying not proof text but New Testament text read in the context of the Old Testament was not only Mary as the new even Mary's the Ark of the New Covenant but also Mary as the Queen Mother of the son of David because there are really three if you study the Old Testament for as long as I have you'll notice that there are many important but three mountain peaks the tower over all the others creation when the world came to be Exodus when Israel came to be and the kingdom of David when Israel came to be the source of instruction and light for all the nations so in creation we have a new Adam in the new Eve in the Exodus we have Moses in the ark and a symbol of Jesus the new Moses and Mary the new art but in the kingdom you've got the son of David and who is Jesus the opening verse of the New Testament the book of the genealogy of the son of David and then you've got the royal genealogy to back it up but you also find that as long as the Davidic son reigned over the kingdom of God on earth he never rained alone beginning with Solomon and following every successor you have at the right hand of the king guess who the Queen Mother in Hebrew the gabbie rod she was a permanent fixture in the kingdom of God established the line of David and I discovered that in Matthew 1 and 2 just like in John 1 and 2 and Luke 1 and 2 you'd have the Old Testament illuminating this text where suddenly the Blessed Virgin is from the line of David and she is the virgin who shall conceive a son and she is identified in terms of the Queen Mother the Queen Mother of the son of David all this of course you can find kind of inter woven braided as it were in the book of Revelation chapters 11 and 12 where John describes the Ark of the Covenant but not on earth but in heaven not a box but a woman clothed with the Sun the moon under her feet and she's crowned with 12 stars and what's that the zodiac no the 12 tribes of Israel she is crowned as the Queen Mother she is the Ark of the New Covenant and she is woman and the ancient serpent knows it she's the new Eve and the serpent attacks only this time he loses these traditions these texts this context is how the church wants us to drink deeply from the wellspring of Scripture and I did it with a little help from the fathers but I did it over the course of almost 3 years of scholarship study personal ingenuity intellectual cleverness or so I thought you know I like to think that converts experience the graces of a kind of honeymoon because my first year as a Catholic was truly graced in spite of me I will tell you a story very briefly it concerns a relative of mine who happens to be a minister since I have five relatives who are ministers and I keep them safe and anonymous but I'll tell you this much this particular family member fought me extra hard when he heard that I had poked as he put it slam the Tiber and so we were both looking forward to the first opportunity we could have to kind of you know do a little bit of biblical wrangling if you will studio wrestling well our lives were determined to prevent that from happening but after dinner one night we both decided to help him out by taking out the garbage and we snuck into the office of the basement where we just went at it tooth and nail for almost four hours and I mean he wanted to talk about the Pope and the Eucharist and purgatory in the Saints but you could tell there was one thing stuck in his craw it was the same thing that was stuck in mind for years and that was Mary Mary quite contrary to the Bible and so he challenged me and so I reminded him of what he had heard from the same professor I'd heard that to take a text out of contacting you there's a proof text is a previous a is a pretext and so we've got to read it contextually and then I basically unloaded two and a half years of research on him all about Mary as the new Eve Mary is the arc of the new covenant Mary as the queen mother of the son of David Christ the king and he was listening and he was looking at me like where'd you come up with this and I was like this is ingenious this is intriguing it isn't altogether compelling but you know I could tell he was faster than even if he wasn't converted into one night sometimes you mistake yourself for the Holy Spirit as I did but I mean I was just deploying text after text after text in context referring to the fathers and basically summarizing two and a half years of brilliant personal innovation clever ingenuity academic achievement at the highest level and that our spouses found us they came down and they out of Selden's offices had stopped this you know and and we did but it was nearly midnight by then the next morning I was halfway through breakfast when I looked up at the calendar and I noticed a particular date it was August 15th and say you can't memorize chapters and verses in the Bible I see but you can holy day is down I was a newbie I didn't know all of these holy days but I recognized this one and I realized I'm gonna have to get the church something I to go to Mass so I you know I asked in the family is your a Catholic Church around well there's only one what is it Our Lady of Victory that sounded so I so I I asked for directions and they were pretty complex and that's where my relatives spoke up but he said I could drop you off and I'm like you know no you're gonna end up having to wait out in a parking lot for an hour he said I could do some shopping and like that's fine he said or I could come in and I said that's even more fine and so he drove me there and he walked in we didn't really speak because it was still kind of you know it was still echoing from the night before when I deployed all of those texts in context we sat down and we prepared ourselves through prayer he's a very devout believer and then when the priest came out we all stood up except for him he's Protestant so he just wanted to sit there as an observer just the same way I had done a year earlier and as we sat back down and the lecture got up and read I couldn't help but notice him that the luck there was reading from second samuel 6 which is where we ended our argument the night before where david takes the art of the Old Covenant up to the earthly capital city of Jerusalem the royal capital of the Davidic Kingdom and I use that as one of the text to show how the New Testament reveals the fulfillment of Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant and then the second passage at this particular holy day the Feast of the Assumption was Psalm 132 it's the only song out of 150 devoted to the Ark of the Covenant being carried up into the earthly capital of the city of Jerusalem and then the next reading was taken from the book of Revelation chapters 11 and 12 where John sees not the Ark of the Old Covenant earth you know made of wood cover with gold but the Ark of the Covenant in the divine temple when heaven and the very next thing he describes his a woman clothed with the Sun this isn't a wooden box this is the woman clothed with the Sun the moon under her feet crowned with twelve stars she's the Queen Mother the Ark of the New Covenant she's the new Eve and this is the third reading and then for the piece de resistance it was Luke one it was the Annunciation where Luke describes Mary as the arc of the New Covenant and when I sat down I felt like I just won the lectionary lottery my relative and dear friend leaned over and he said did you have anything to do with them yeah I said the Pope called me last week and as I sat there listening to the homily I felt set free I felt liberated from all of my academic ingenuity my intellectual prowess I had spent two and a half almost three years reinventing the wheel I wasn't so clever after all in fact I discovered that day and every day since how much better it is to be highly unoriginal and to recognize that this is the way that scripture is read from the heart of the church and has been since the very beginning as it was in the first century it is now in the 21st century we're always going to be hearing about our lady on her feast days listening to how God prepared the human family to become his own but preparing the gift of the mother of God who is the new Eve who is the arc of the New Covenant who is the Queen Mother she's daughter Zion she's so much more she's Jacob's Ladder the Old Testament is filled with major and minor images the burning bush that the fathers showed these don't just point to Jesus these also point to Our Lady and this is what is served up in every main course we call the bread of life in the Liturgy of the word and the Scriptures ought to be causing our hearts to be burning within us remember those two disciples the road to Emmaus what did they say our hearts were burning within us as he opened up the scriptures but did they recognize Jesus not until what the breaking of the bread what does that refer to the Eucharist so the Scriptures prepare us to celebrate the mystery of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist the Holy Eucharist actualizes and fulfills the saving truth of Scripture but none of this happens apart from the Blessed Virgin she is there at every mass just as she was at the foot of the cross so she is present just as John describes in the visions of the heavenly liturgy in Revelation 11 and 12 she is there alongside of her son he is the king of kings he is the high priest she is the Queen Mother she is the arc of the New Covenant she is the temple of God's Spirit and if we could just see 50 percent of her glory now we'd be blinded God mercifully spares us and accommodates our weaknesses so that we walk by faith and not by sight but faith grasped not only the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist but the real presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the foot of the cross at his priestly sacrifice for us whenever that New Covenant is renewed is this cool or what this is what it means to be Catholic this is how we should be reading the scriptures because this is how the scriptures are read from the heart of the church way back in the first century and still now in the 21st century and I also wanted to say in closing that this is how I came to see the Immaculate Conception she's the new Eve the bodily assumption she's carried to the heavenly Jerusalem like the Ark was carried to the earthly she's the Queen Mother in the heavenly Jerusalem next to her divine son the king of kings but this is also how I discovered what else she's the co-redemptrix as the new Eve she is also the Mediatrix the ark was the Ark of the Covenant Jesus the mediator of the Covenant she is the one who bears the mediator that's what Mediatrix means and she is the advocate because that's what the role of the queen-mother is she advocates the cause of the members of God's royal family this isn't just true as Dogma its Dogma because it's real and the reality is infinitely more beautiful and glorious than any words you will hear today so let's close your eyes and lift up our hearts and ask for help in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Almighty God our Heavenly Father you our you are our Creator our Lord our lawgiver and judge but far more you are of a father and we know it and we can live it because of the gift of your son and so in the name of Jesus once more we pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit to come down upon us that the power of God's Spirit your Spirit might overshadow us to enable us to love Jesus as Mary did and to love her as Jesus did so help us and hear us as we pray the family prayer that Jesus taught us our Father who art and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trust hail Mary full of grace the Lord bless and bless the food Holy Mary Mother pray for us sinners now at the hour Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Our Lady of Fatima pray for us in the name of the Father the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen just briefly I want to mention that all that I was sharing today is just an encapsulation of a book entitled hail holy Queen the mother of God in the Word of God and that's where I go through all of the Old Testament and New Testament traditions as I discovered them and I mentioned this because it's great to hear talks and to go home with memories and warm feelings but those will dissipate I want to encourage you to take advantage of the resources that are available downstairs at various tables I want to especially encourage you to read the scripture study the Catechism and discover st. Maximilian Kolbe however you can the resource is down there go online ask your friends ask your priests find out more about the greatest mary ologist of all times as I think he is and as a primer I would recommend this little book hail holy Queen it answers all of the objections that I used to raise at least I do my best to I also have another book that's out called reasons to believe because we all know a lot of people who raise questions not only about Mary but the Pope purgatory the Saints the sacraments and all of the rest so wrote a book called reasons to believe how to understand explain and defend the Catholic faith mostly drawing from the scripture as it's read in the churches living tradition I also wanted to mention the lamb supper book where I deal with the book of Revelation and how it corresponds to the Liturgy of the Eucharist the mass as we know it and also how Mary is an important part of the visions of John in revelation 11 and 12 and how she's an important part of the Holy Sacrifice of the mass and recently I came out with a sequel called letter and spirit it's the sequel to the lamb supper it's basically how to read the Bible from the heart of the church in the liturgy I kind of unpacked it a bit a little bit more and I school text my kids are teenagers what else can I say you know I want them to get it up so I I want them to get up for the scriptures and so I wrote a book called understand this group it's a complete course on Bible study I am using it now with my kids but I was really taken aback just a couple of weeks ago a woman stopped me she said that she had a 15 year old daughter who was just kind of far from the faith and she picked up this book around 9:00 p.m. and her mom didn't know it but she was up till 4:00 a.m. reading she came and she got up and she was falling her mom around and she was telling me the next day she's like like mom you never told me the Bible was so exciting that the the Church's teachings are all rooted in Scripture that the mass takes us to heaven and so this woman gave me a hug and all I wanted to do was to say thanks be to God because this this is the truth of our faith and we really want to do our best to get it across to the next generation so there are resources downstairs I hope you really take advantage of those take them home for yourselves and for your loved ones after all I am a professor and so I can't give you a test but I can at least recommend that you study and read and discover the glory and the beauty of the truth of our faith god bless you all well we'll be asking questions after that one I think very powerful talk thank you very much dr. Han you

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Keywords: 5th Marian Dogma, 90th anniversary, Advocate, Assumption, Behold Your Mother, Bible, Coredemption, Coredemptrix, devotion, Dr. Scott Hahn, Fatima, foot of the cross, Greenwood, Immaculate Heart, Indiana, marian devotion, Marian Dogma, Mariology, Mary Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, Miracle of the Sun, new eve, Scripture, Conferences, Franciscans of the Immaculate, Religion, Christianity (Religion), Catholic, Spirituality, Faith, God, Church, Gospel, Catholic Church, Jesus Christ, Christ, Jesus

Id: sTZqs0OXI08

Length: 68min 6sec (4086 seconds)

Published: Thu May 17 2018