Steve Ray - The Footprints of God: Mary

[Music] hello and welcome to another special episode of footprints of god series we've been going each month through the footprints of god series um today is on mary our lady and um yeah we this has been an amazing journey with steve ray who's been to the holy land so many times 180 times we've learned uh to the spot where mary has been and just been phenomenal who who who has done it more than him i don't think there's been anyone on the planet that's been back to the holy land that many times um but we're going to learn if there's anyone that can talk about her it is him and we're gonna i'm super excited about it on the back of the rosary pilgrimage we're now we've um we're in november we're getting ready for advent the coming of the messiah and let's before we welcome jesus let's welcome mary so this is quite quite exciting and the timing is so providential so let's uh cross over live to steve right now hello steve how you doing hello charbelle doing very good and um just waiting for trump to make the announcement that uh we have the same president for another four years so that's right we are all praying uh um praying praying for that uh yeah so we're only hours away from the moment of this uh this stream so uh yeah we will keep praying and my goodness it's been so uh um amazing to watch from on the other side of the world the the american elections but uh yeah it's been quite uh an adventure it's been quite quite exciting yeah it is you um uh you yeah 180 times you've been to mary's pl where mary has been or is it the holy land in general i've been to israel at least 180 or more times that doesn't count to iraq and syria and jordan and all the other places and i've been to the places where mary was in egypt too when they fled there's uh there's a great strong tradition there of the places in fact there was a jewish community in in the cairo area and if you watch that movie on mary i take you down into the place where the holy family lived while they were in egypt um i also went to turkey because she lived there in ephesus with john and the movie that i made that you showed i end up on the island of greece on the island of putmos because from potmos the end of the bible john is in a cave looking up and he says behold i saw the woman clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet and i'm sitting right where john was when he got that revelation of mary the queen of heaven so yeah we've we've done it a few times but to nazareth uh where mary spent most of her time let's face it she was there the for the 30 years the 30 silent years we call them and she was there as a young girl too so yeah i've been to nazareth many many times my best friend over there lives in nazareth so we spend a lot of time there when we're in israel wow well so very excited i mean we've we've journeyed through the whole old testament here we are right at the at the end now we're now coming up to the new testament um uh we've gone all the way you've went right from adam all the way up to this point it's been quite exciting to see uh the connection and and the i guess the foreshadowing of christ and now uh mary is quite a i mean obviously a key person and we we overlook it but but her birth her life how she lived all that we're gonna dive into a bit um but where do we start steve uh to dive into her and and i imagine john the baptist as well uh uh two key figures before christ came on the scene well let's make the point first that they are neither old testament nor new testament really although we hear we read about them in the new testament is they're really inter-testamental that means they're in between the two testaments both mary and john are two pillars that are there the last of the prophets spoke 400 years before the coming of jesus we have the maccabees and so on but the the last of the prophets spoke there was 400 years of silence everybody's waiting for something to happen they knew it was going to happen all the way back in genesis from the garden of eden there was the promise of genesis 3 15 i will bring enmity between you and the woman and between you hurt your seed and her seed and uh so that what does that mean but there's going to be something coming and it has to do with a woman and it has to do with her seed this of course is a prophecy of the virgin mary coming and her seed would be jesus who would crush the head of satan and satan would bruise his heel which is the crucifixion of course but his head's going to get crushed he gets the worst of the deal i've stepped on more than one snake's head and i know if you do that that's they're done and that's what jesus did to the devil he stomped on his head and um so where we know that there's going to also be some guy coming who is like elijah we talked about that last month and the last prophet malachi said that before the great and coming day of the lord there's going to be elijah's going to return and jesus said that john the baptist was that elijah he came in the spirit and the power of elijah dressed the same way of course with camel hair and a leather belt the only two guys ever mentioned that way and so you have these two people in the middle of the two testaments were already prepared for both of them the old testament already warned us that they're coming also when isaiah 7 14 the lord himself will give you a sign behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son you shall call his name emmanuel and micah chapter 5 verse 2 and 3 tells us you it's going to be in bethlehem which is why of course mary and joseph had to go to bethlehem the emperor of rome didn't realize that when he called that census that he was really fulfilling the word of god because mary and joseph had to get from nazareth down to bethlehem which was by the way a hundred miles of walking or riding a stupid donkey whichever they're both bad so you have the prefiguration they're coming they've been prophesied and john the baptist appears he is in the wilderness he is born by the way to 100 aaronic priesthood aaron the high priest of the brother of moses he was the high priest of israel in order to be a priest you had to be in the family of levi to be servants and priests but to be high priests those that could serve in the temple you had to be with the blood of aaron zechariah and elizabeth both were 100 percent pure blood aaronites they had the blood of aaron so john the baptist is 100 aaronic priesthood so that's why it says that he anointed jesus when he went down for his baptism jesus was anointed because john the baptist is of the priestly tribe now so you have him down in the wilderness he's preparing the way he is prophesying saying there's one going to come and he's going to i'm not going to be worthy to tie his shoes or sandals and then up in the north in nazareth a young girl 15 years old that's roughly we guess 14 15 16 years old she has been specially prepared for this we don't have time i mean the whole thing about non the non-biblical story of of her birth is fascinating but we could do you know half an hour just on that alone and we got to go all the way from nazareth to jerusalem all the way through mary's life and canaan and ein karim and nephi's assault we got to get to heaven by the end of tonight because that's where she ends up as the queen and how we're going to do that in an hour i really don't know unless i start talking much faster than i'm talking now but um let me just recap how we know how john the baptist was born and his father was uh deaf and dumb some people it says dumb but there's implication that he's also was deaf because he they did sign language to him because i it appears he couldn't hear so they did sign language to him about what they're going to call the the new baby but we don't know from the bible about mary's birth but in early second century there's a document called the proto-evangelium of james i know that's a big scary name proto means first evangelium means good news the gospel the first good now good news of james it was written probably or at least it was written down probably the story was there but it may be written down in the first half of the second century so very close to the events and it tells the story of the birth of mary the betrothal to joseph and the birth of jesus very interesting reading by the way we can read it in 15 minutes and mary's parents were named joachim and anna but those names aren't in the bible we learned those names from the proto-evangelium of james that's where we get those names and the fact that mary was consecrated to the temple we also get that that when we celebrate the um the uh when mary goes to the temple there the dedication of the temple that's that is uh from that document as well nobody's saying that it's a hundred percent accurate or that and it's not scripture but it's a historical document from which the catholic church has taken great um respect and learned a lot from well in that story it says that zechariah joachiman and joachim and anna could not have children they were kicked out of the temple because there must be something wrong with you you must be a sinner if god hasn't blessed you with children so there must be something wrong and so they wouldn't let them come to the temple with their sacrifice so they prayed zechariah went out i keep thinking of john the baptist went out into the desert and he prayed said i'm not going home till i get an answer to my prayer anna went into the garden and she watched the birds laying making a nest and laying their eggs and the baby birds hatching and she says why is it that the birds can have babies but you don't give me i'm your daughter i've lived for you why is it that i can't have a child so god says this time next year you'll have a child and to both of them the angel came and said that and a year later mary was born but the deal was that she had to give she pledged she made a vow to give the girl to the service of the lord in the temple very much like samuel and when she was born mary didn't want to give her up right away i can understand that but also women back then breast fed their babies for up to three years it was just the way it was you couldn't go to the drug store and get formula a bottle to stick in their mouth you know so they had they had to nurse and the story is that joachim and anna kept the baby for three years anna breast fed her and then she took her to the temple says that the holy women carried her everywhere because they didn't want her to touch the ground why because there were all these animals around and no plumbing and can you imagine what the city of jerusalem was like with camels and donkeys and sheep everywhere it must have been filthy said the women carried her around and then when they finally took her to the temple to dedicate her to the lord it says they set her on the third step and she danced and everyone loved her and they took her into the temple and she was fed by the angels in preparation before the ark of the covenant before the presence of god she was prepared to become the mother of god and close that section of her life with this when she was around 11 12 years old when the menstruation cycle would kick in then she would be rendered ceremonially unclean to be in the temple that was part of the ceremonial law and i think at that point her family moved up to nazareth and that's where she ended up meeting the angel the only thing we didn't talk about is her actual birth and we can talk about that if you want to and that because in tide and there is the immaculate conception yeah yes what about that so um it's very interesting we do say that when people think of immaculate conception many people make the false or they they mix it with the birth of christ thinking that he's born without sin they think it's the incarnation well no no it's not that it's not the enunciation or incarnation it's mary mary born without sin and and was conceived even without sin so can you explain a bit about that yeah we could talk a whole hour about that but we won't um there's a church in jerusalem we try to get there with our group sometimes time doesn't allow but i think when we go back with your group in 2022 i think it's in february or april i gotta look that up again i think it's probably april i think it is april uh 2022 we should have more time because there won't be any lines people will still be afraid to go yes and we're going to go and we're going to own the city the whole country will be ours nobody will be in our way we won't have to so we'll have more time to do more things which is going to be very nice and we'll visit a church called the church of saint ann her mother and when you walk in there's a beautiful statue there of ann sitting and mary standing there talking to her mother and with her arm around her with her daughter mary it's very beautiful picture uh it's white marble statue but then there's a sign over to the right and there's a stairway going down you read the sign it says the nativity you think it's going to say of our lord but it says the nativity of our lady and you go down and from early tradition that's the place where mary was born in that grotto and if that's the case then that was the place where the immaculate conception happened the immaculate conception of course was a grace given to mary not required for her to do what she did but it was a grace that was commensurate or appropriate thomas aquinas says for the monumental task that god had asked her to do and when he asked her would you do this she gave her fiat meaning yes i will i'll do that now there was a great moment of sorrow i think for mary we don't realize that mary had a lot of sorrows that we don't even know of there is the devotion of the seven dolorosas the seven sorrows the losing of jesus in the temple the crucifixions on but but i think when when the angel told her that she was going to give birth to the king he was going to sit on the throne of her father david and mary says but i don't know a man and i'm not married yet now i always get a flack from this she wasn't she was betrothed which means she was legally on paper the marriage had taken place but they had not moved in together yet so there was the marriage was two parts it was first the patrol though the family it was a religious actually even in you know in your country today lebanon if you go up with those folks the engagement is not just a boy asking a girl to marry him the engagement is a very serious matter and it takes place before the priest that's the uh the betrothal and it's a pledge it's a it's a pledge but they're not married yet in the sense of living today a year later or so the husband the boy comes and gets his bride and then takes him her to his house then and in in i've been to these weddings in nazareth and they the the boy comes a young man comes and gets the girl they go to the actual to a mass and they're married very simple and then they go off on their honeymoon now both parts betrothal and mass are together and they're married so mary says i don't know a man even though she's betrothed she's not married yet and even joseph is concerned when he finds out that she is with child well how did that happen what happened but mary said i don't know a man and that's a very strange answer for a young girl who plan if you would assume that the girl is going to get married and have a husband and have children you would assume that she'd say oh good well i expected to have lots of children you mean one of them is going to be the son of god the king of israel but mary didn't say that she says but i don't know a man which implies quite strongly that she had planned to be a a virgin as she was not going to have sexual relations and that must have been something that her and joseph had agreed on and in um in numbers i think it's numbers chapter 30 there's a provisions made for a young lady to make vows like that by the way case people said well they wouldn't have done that well yes go back and read your old testament so anyway they mary now is born but we are told that she has of the immaculate conception she was from the moment of conception without the stain of original sin a grace that god gave her and i think that back to that thing about why i think it was a sorrow i don't want to leave you hanging there is because for a young girl to get pregnant out of wedlock in israel without having married and moved in with her husband she would be stoned to death that was the penalty for becoming with child without doing it properly and can you imagine that when mary said yes to the angel she knew she was going to become the figure of ridicule wow and gossip and when she said yes she knew that in this small village of 250 people now where she lived in nazareth to say yes to a question like that was to set herself up for a very uncomfortable situation and i think that she knew that anyway there's so much about mary that you don't know unless you go to the land and you sit and you think and meditate and you understand the people that's why the context the historical the cultural context is so important because you under you have to understand that more well anyway now she's the immaculate conception but i put charbelle don't you remember in the bible where it says in romans that all have sinned how can harry be how can she be immaculate conception and and having never sinned if the bible says that uh all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god many of our protestant brothers sisters raised that yeah that's right so all of them respond not only that do they raise it they love to dance on it yeah yeah well that's very simple of course mary needed a savior in my movie i make a puddle of mud and i'm walking towards the puddle of mud and there's a big log in front of the mud puddle and i say we have a problem because mary said i rejoice in god my savior so mary needs a savior i thought only sinners need saviors and right then i say but there are two ways to be saved from a puddle of mud and i trip and i fall headfirst into that mud puddle and at that moment i say mary did need a savior but her say she was saved in a another way i'm i'm looking for a picture here because i have a picture of me falling in the mud there i see if i can it's classic um on on the dvd um i love how you get your hands dirty you got your body dirty in this case yeah this this is uh maybe you could see it it's me falling head first into the mud puddle and that's what i look like uh when the camera comes down and goes down on me see that all right i love iphones anyway so i say when that mud's all in my face they pull me up and i say to the camera there are two ways to be saved from a puddle of mud the first way is to be pulled up and cleaned off cleaned up given a bath and then it goes rewinds like a video and i'm coming at the mud puddle again i trip and i fall and i don't hit the mud puddle this time a hand stops me and pushes me back and i say the second way to be saved from a puddle of mud is to be prevented from falling in in the first place mary was a daughter of eve she was subject to sin like the rest of us but by a unique act of god based on the merits of her son she was prevented from falling into the mud yes mary needed a savior so that is the immaculate conception now with that illustration any eight-year-old can explain it yeah absolutely love it the catholic church is really very simple in its theology it's so simple that if you teach a eight-year-old the eight-year-old can explain it and teach it but then again it's it's um enough for even to go over the head of a guy like thomas aquinas but anyway so now we have her born and she's the immaculate conception and there's so much more we could say she's also the ark of the covenant and all those things but we'll get into that maybe if we have time later and now she is um with child and she gets the message from the angel now the a let's just talk about the angel real quick the angel comes and tells you that what was life like for mary when i'm in israel in nazareth i do a half hour talk for everybody it's called a day in the life of the holy family i also have a cd talk on my website for sale called that and we go through what what it was like they lived in a cave very rustic i always ask people what do you think mary did first thing every morning when she woke up what do you think people say she prayed right she got up and prayed and that was it right now you always ask people is that the first thing you do in the morning yeah well no i go to the bathroom yeah and everybody's kind of like shocked and you can't say that about the blessed mother well yes i can she was a girl she was a woman walked on two feet dressed like the rest of us did and she had to get up in the morning and go to the bathroom so where do you go to the bathroom in the morning when you don't have any plumbing and you live in a cave and you live in a small village of 25 other caves well i'll leave that to your imagination the book of deuteronomy tells us what they did but so that's what the holy family did very rustic life very simple life and going to the well every morning for water she had to go get water at the well 15 minute walk the only water in nazareth is 15 minutes away so she had to go walk every and just imagine when she had baby jesus every day little guys falling around mommy mommy wait for me wait for me you know he's just running tagging along chasing her down to the well and back and i always ask young girls in the on the pilgrimage do you think mary liked it when she was a young girl because men didn't you know you and i had never gone and got water that was the woman's job the girls went and got the water i asked the girls do you think that mary and the girls in nazareth liked going down to get the water every day in the well carrying that jug on her and they all go no she would never like that and i said i think she did because guess who's at the well all the other girls they didn't have twitter and facebook and all these uh chat lines they went to the well to talk all the girls got they couldn't wait to get there and talk to their girlfriends about who likes who and mom was really mean to me today and all these things are girls and mary was right in the middle of them okay so mary now let's get back she she comes back to her cave and the angel meets her at the cave i think that she had camel dung between her toes she's walking in a dirt path where camels and donkeys and sheep go to get water i lived on a farm i know what it's like to live on a farm this was very much farm country farmland animals and she probably had a camel dung between her little bare feet and i had pictures of girls in nazareth 100 years ago going to get water at the well they're all barefoot they all have jugs on their head when cameras were first invented very much like during mary's time and flies buzzing around her head and you can't talk about the blessed mother like that well yes we can because that's the way she really lived that's the real girl mary not what you see in the statues that's the real girl mary and so the angel comes and says this to her and then i think the most important line and i'll quit on this section is it says and then the angel left her yeah and here's a here's a 15 year old girl how does she process that that's like a hard drive on a computer you just can't process that big data file mary didn't know everything people said well she would no mary didn't even when she said they lost jesus in jerusalem and they had to go back she says why did you do this to your father and i mary pondered these things in her heart she and so the angel left her and now she has to process this and mary has to live by faith the same way we do because the angel did not come back every day and meet her at the kitchen table for a cup of coffee and say mary let me give you an update today mary now had to step out in faith and trust god even though she was in very unusual circumstances so then that it's interesting because when luke's gospel here in chapter one this happens and then the next scene she the the idea of her going and um visiting her cousin elizabeth and you talk about that um because it sort of changes uh the scene and now she's got this long trek ahead of her so going from the enunciation now she's hearing about hang on um her cousin now is pregnant and and she's now pregnant and she goes to help another pregnant woman um can you should we jump into that yep that's she goes to ein karim and i'm going to take you there when we go on the pilgrimage is a subdivision of jerusalem it's about four or five miles outside to the west of jerusalem out in the hillside the priests live there because the priests were very rich the high priests were very rich at that time and they would have country homes out in the country away from the smelly fly-ridden city of jerusalem and this is where elizabeth and zechariah lived about five miles west of jerusalem for mary people think she jumped in a taxi and drove across town to visit elizabeth but actually that was a hundred miles she had to walk into the hill country of judea and so mary packs up and goes to the hill country of judea i don't think she went to help her because her relative doesn't say cousin it's really the word kim kinswoman a relative of some sort we don't know which leads me to believe that mary was probably of the priestly line too most people want to say that she was of the line of judah like joseph was the kingly line but i i like to think that because she was a relative a close relative of 100 percent ironic priesthood obviously she was also from at least part the line of aaron the high priest and they were very exclusive in their relations so they kept the blood pure to a degree so i like to think that mary provided jesus the priestly blood and joseph was the kingly now she it says that she packs up her she makes haste okay so she packs up her little young girl's suitcase thing you know she she's on her way to visit elizabeth it's gonna be a hundred miles of walking and when we're on the bus driving there it's a two-hour drive and a mercedes air-conditioned bus i always say to people and don't forget mary is still walking mary is still walking how long was that journey well the understanding is is that in in the middle east during biblical times that on average you travel 20 miles a day if you were on horses or maybe in a hurry military something you could travel 25 or 30. maybe jesus and his disciples walking alone could travel 25 miles a day they're young they're strong but mary would not have gone by herself it's dangerous you can't remember the story of the man who went down from jerusalem to jericho and he got bushwhacked by those guys and the good samaritan helped him you yes there's wild animals i've been i've run all over israel i was a runner and i ran all over and i've run around the corner there's a hyena standing right in front of me poisonous snakes all kinds of things and so mary would have gone with a caravan or with a group of people which then would have to find a place to stay every night they would travel maybe with children and animals roughly 20 miles in a day so that would be five days from sun up to sun down just to get to elizabeth's house and when she gets down there it's the hill country of judea you'll see that when we go on the pilgrimage it's really hilly wow and um so now one point i know that i'm digressing and not talking about the life of mary here but just we're having an election here and abortion is one of the big issues mary she said it made haste to go so let's say it took her five days didn't take her that long but say it did take her five days to get ready and then five days to get there now she's there with elizabeth ten days after the angel told her how big is the baby in her womb we always see pictures of mary she's pregnant pregnant mary who it's just coming up the hill you know with then the baby in her womb was so small the cells were still so small you couldn't see you'd have to use a microscope to see them and yet elizabeth said the mother of my lord is here she recognized that those few small cells in mary's womb were 100 man and 100 percent god and those cells were god had become flesh he had become flesh the moment and so god had become flesh and nazareth and by the way in nazareth where that happened the altar i'll show this to you when we go the altar said the word became flesh here it says it right on the altar when you go into greta the word became flesh here that's the incarnation happened in nazareth not in bethlehem so she gets there elizabeth said the mother of my lords come to me and john the baptist leaps in his mother's womb because he recognizes that what's in there that's in mary's room is already jesus christ the son of god 100 percent human and then imagine perish the thought it's even sacrilegious it seems to say this perish the thought that mary had said i'll get an abortion oh exactly yeah nah i only say that to make a point yeah that's right and she of course wouldn't do that it should shutter you right now i can't even matter who what babies have been killed babies who could have this maybe some of the smartest people in the whole world have been aborted ones that could have cured cancer could have done so many wonderful things for mankind and yet they've all been aborted many anyway we can't talk on that we'll do abortion another time so mary is now there the interesting thing is when i'm in ein karem i do another talk there about the visitation you know we're halfway done already sure bill and we're not even out of the visitation yet this is really scary anyway so but this has to be said when the angel said to mary she said how will this be and the angel said the spirit of god will overshadow you now what do you think mary thought mary knew exactly how many how many catholics right now think oh that's isaiah i mean exodus chapter 40. why would i say exodus chapter 40 because in exodus 40 it says that when moses had finished making the ark of the covenant he stood back and the spirit of the lord overshadowed the ark with the bot with the word of god inside of the ark when mary said how will this be the angel said the holy spirit of god will overshadow you and that which is in you will be the holy thing of god the same thing see the same word being used for mary overshadowing so mary already may i think knew she was going to be the queen of heaven we'll talk about that why but she also knew oh my goodness i'm going to be the ark of the new covenant the ark of the old covenant was a gold box about this size this size while i'm talking here i'm just going to grab something yes this is all in the dvd um mary by by steve ray the mother of god footprints have gone amazing stuff and there it is i say to people this is my statue of mary and they say what do you mean that's sierra county yes that's what i said that's my statue of mary why because when mary was on her way to um ein cameron when she was there what was in mary's womb well let me go back first it says that she arrived in the hill country of judea mary elizabeth said who my mother who are who am i that the mother of my lord should come to me john the baptist sleeps and dances in front of the ark mary stays for three months and everybody is blessed the word blessed is used twice in that passage so how many catholics right now just thought of 2nd samuel chapter 6 in the old testament unless i knew about it yeah and once in a while i get in my group somebody raises their hand because i give this whole talk for half an hour and i encounter well the fact is in second samuel chapter six david was bringing the ark of the covenant back to jerusalem and it said he brought the ark of the covenant into the hill country of judea and it says david danced and leaped in front of the ark john the baptist danced and leaked in front of the newark yes they came into the hill country of judea elizabeth said whom no david said who am i that the ark of the lord should come to me elizabeth said who am i that the mother of my lord should come exactly the same words you just transpose ark of the covenant with mother of my lord yes first of all she's saying that mary that's god in her womb and she's also saying that in your womb is you are the ark of the new covenant she left david left the ark of the covenant in the hill country of judea for three months mary stayed for three months and everybody in the hill country was blessed well do you think that luke put that together by chance in the visitation in the story of the visitation there's a whole nother story percolating and bubbling underneath the story of the old testament of mary being the ark of the new covenant all of that's there so anyway so mary and what was in the ark of the covenant let's do that what was in the ark of the cut hebrews chapter 9 verse 4 if i remember right hebrews chapter 9 verse 4 2 3 or 4 says that in the ark of the covenant in that gold box in the wilderness there was the stone tablets of the law the word of god inscribed in stone there was manna from the wilderness and there was a stick that proved the priesthood of aaron three things now what's in mary's womb the word of god inscribed not in stone but in flesh she doesn't have the manna in her womb she has the bread which came down from heaven in her womb and she doesn't have a stick that proves the priesthood she has the priest in her womb mary is the ark of the new covenant all of that congeals together in the visitation and anybody who has eyes to see and ears to hear and know their old testament would see that mary there luke is telling you she's the ark of the new covenant and then we see her at the end of her story when i'm gonna add this now in case we don't get there where john looks up into heaven and he says i behold i looked into the heavens and i saw the woman clothed with the son of the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars she's the one that gives birth to the the child who would rule the world with a rod of iron that's mary the queen but right before that verse in chapter 11 whoever divided the chapters up divided it very poorly because it separated those two verses if you read it the way it was written it says behold i looked up into heaven and i saw the tabernacle of god opened and there was the ark of the covenant mary and behold i saw the woman mary clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars under her head there you see the blessed virgin mary in heaven as the ark of the covenant and as the queen of heaven now we're done with the visitation so much happens in the visitation but three months later she walks all the way back now to and i made the point i don't think she went there to help elizabeth because elizabeth was rich as a high priest wife they would have had servants galore we think that mary maybe went there to get away from nazareth so that she didn't people didn't start the rumors and she wanted like a spiritual retreat to go and have a spiritual retreat with her aaronic priesthood uncle and our cousins whoever their relative relations were now she's going back to nazareth and now there's the 30 silent no now she goes back sorry getting ahead of myself she goes back for six months and then they go to bethlehem to give birth to the baby wow so she um this is interesting because you were talking about uh she was pregnant uh she would have been showing did the wedding happen did the final part of the ceremony happen yet we don't know the bible doesn't tell us yeah interesting fascinating yeah but um what so let's let's the journey to bethlehem um this is quite interesting too it wasn't an easy one and saint joseph had his his doubts as well as as matthew talks about it and the angel the angel had to come to him if you read the gospels with this in mind it's interesting matthew is the story of jesus's birth from joseph's perspective luke is the story of the nativity from mary's perspective in matthew you don't see the angel come to mary but the angel comes three times to joseph in the gospel of luke you never hear about an angel going to joseph but you do hear the angel coming to mary so joseph is that matthew is his story mary lucas her story yeah interesting now and it says that joseph was very concerned here he's betrothed and he comes and finds out she's pregnant he knows it's not him and he doesn't know all of this i wondered why doesn't mary tell him what the angels said for heaven's sakes tell him but you know i think people maybe didn't talk as much back then you know us americans and australians we're pretty we're pretty chatty and um but i think back then people may not have been as chatty as we are so anyway joseph is concerned the angel has to calm him down say joseph joseph don't worry it's what happened to mary is done by the holy spirit and joseph trusted the angel so um we never hear one word of joseph he never speaks in the bible we just he just does what he's supposed to do the tall silent uh holy one you know he doesn't ask questions he doesn't argue he just does what he's supposed to go go do this off he goes um so now they're on their way to bethlehem and we know i like to say this it took again another seven five to seven days we don't know she was on a donkey it doesn't say that the proto-evangelium of james says she was on a donkey but the scriptures itself does not i think they arrived in a donkey traffic jam oh all in the intersection all these people were coming to do the census all the the inns were full all the people that had upper levels to rent out they're all full and joseph now he's got a wife who's pregnant whether they're married at this point i would assume they're probably married by this point and um now he's got this girl who's pregnant and nowhere to go now remember 2 000 years earlier or 1800 1800 years earlier a man named jacob was passing through nazareth and when he got to nazareth his wife rachel gave birth to benjamin and she got off the camel gave birth and died rachel the one he loved the beautiful one he buried her on the side of the road and rachel's tomb is still there to this day 4 000 years later you can go visit rachel's tomb but don't think that when joseph was coming down that hebron road it's called today and we take that road from jerusalem to bethlehem when we go visit there don't think that joseph when he's leading the donkey or walking with mary and she's nine months pregnant and he passed by the tomb of rachel where his great great great great great grandmother died giving birth to a baby nine months pregnant don't think he didn't look over there say oh please dear god take care of mary oh yeah think of the thoughts that would come to your mind if your wife was pregnant and you don't even have a place to take her and you're walking all this way and you see there where your grandmother your great-grandmother matriarch died in childbirth and just thinking how that would send a shockwave people say well he didn't have anything to worry about god is going to take care of him don't think that for a minute because even god says quickly quickly get up and go to egypt herod's going to try and kill the baby that's right that's right all this is happening and he's yeah tested now why go to why go to bethlehem to give birth to the baby because in bethlehem the name bethlehem means house of bread and in mary's womb is the bread of life mary goes to be to the house of bread to deliver the bread first thing she does is puts him in a manger why i think that she puts him in a manger because that's a food dish for sheep and mary was telling us from the very first action that jesus is going to become the food of his sheep we're going to eat him so when you go to the altar for mass next time and you see the altar think of it as a manger with baby jesus on it offering himself up to you to be your food so now there's so much we could say bethlehem what happened there they had to go to egypt that's another 250 miles where did joseph get the money for that they were a poor family i think he used the gold frankincense and more myrrh i think that was like a gift that he could turn into liquid cash to finance his trip because they were a poor family how do i know their poor family because you're supposed to take a lamb to the um presentation of the lord and the cleansing chapter if they have a lamb 40 days after they didn't have enough money for a lamb can you believe it joseph did not have enough money for a lamb so they took two turtle doves instead so they did not have a lot of money i think they used the frankincense gold and myrrh and they use that to go to to finance their travels traveling is expensive never thought of that yeah yep and uh we always think there's three wise men but we don't know how many there were there could have been two there could have been ten the only reason we say there's three is because there was three gifts and we thought we think that each one brought a gift but there's no indication there could have been ten wise men we don't know okay now what's next charbel so yeah i mean we're talking about cana as well so i mean you've talked touched on um egypt we've got 30 silent years of the family life so yeah i mean can we imagine this very quickly what would life have been like that that the scripture doesn't really give us an insight to it no but when you know the land and you know the culture you get a lot of insight into what their life was like joseph and jesus would have probably worked in cepherus which is a city an hour's walk away where the romans were building a big city there was stone the word carpenter techdown we'll talk about this when we get to jesus next time but it doesn't mean what we think of it's me it means a somebody that works a grunt somebody with calluses on their hand a day laborer rocks whatever that's what i think they worked with with rocks because they don't have wood around there they have rocks so that's the word techdon carpenter well anyway now joseph dies somewhere we the only incident we know of in that 12-year period is when jesus stays back at the temple at 12 years old arguing with the best professors in the university there and and knocking their socks off they were totally surprised by this young whippersnapper who knew more than they did i always say it's it really helps to be god but he was smart he was smart anyway mary and joseph taught him well now he they they find him and this is interesting because mary says why have you done this to your father and i joseph was referred to as his father even though he was not biological he was legal which that in those days you became the legal son you you had all of the benefits of a son born of the flesh you even the lineage that's how jesus without an earthly he had an earthly mother without an earthly father and he was the son of god with an earthly father without a mother but anyway that's he would have gotten his tie in his genealogy from the the throne of jew the tribe of judah because that's the king lethal in the lion of judah that's jesus he's from that tribe so they they live 20 uh those years together they bring jesus back home and mary says why did why did you do this to your father and i meaning showing again she didn't know everything but she pondered these things in her heart can you imagine losing jesus i i have you ever lost one of your kids in a in a grocery store or a supermarket or a mall and you panic more today than when i when when i was having our kids you didn't think of pedophiles and all these crazy people that are in the world today never thought about that you lose a kid today even just in one aisle you panic imagine losing the son of god and three days before you finally oh my god i've lost i've lost god um anyway so that must have been very distressing now they after they've been there now they go to cana the meantime john the baptist is now down in the jordan river and we know right where he was we can pinpoint the exact place where he is baptizing because of the early church and the christians and what they did there and we know that it was not in israel it was on the other side of the jordan and bethany beyond the jordan and on that side that's where jesus was baptized so john the baptist is down there proclaiming these things but it and and you get a little bit um whether jesus went and was baptized first and the spirit came down and then went into the wilderness first or whether he did his first miracle first my guess is he may have gone down and been baptized and then gone back up and done his first miracle but it wouldn't have been it would have been a little anticlimactic then because already his disciples would know about him because of the dove yes whereas it seems in john chapter 2 but it had to be after any in any case he goes there and there's a whole lot to talk about the baptism of our lord but he's baptized and then goes out into the wilderness for the devil to tempt him but in in cana i think it's another moment of sorrow for mary on the bus we talked for 45 minutes on this passage and i only have zero minutes yeah left but i think there mary she was the intercessor for the people the wedding guests and she's also an intercessor today for us we're also wedding guests to the great feast of the lamb she interceded then and she intercedes now and she in in the middle east and you may know this i don't know how much you know about your lebanese culture but women have a very strong part in the lebanese culture and like in the in the movie my big fat greek wedding the woman that they're they're coaching this young girl who's getting married and they said don't worry about it you know the men they think they're so important they say they're the head but we women we're the neck and the neck tells the head which way to turn and so we we see that the women are very strong there and mary came in the men and women are separate during the weddings during the whole sermon the men sit over here and the women's over there mary went into the men's section and she got jesus's attention and she said come here come here like this you know we always sing the song gentle woman yeah she was anything but gentle she's a jewish mother for heaven's sakes she said come over here she said they have no wine jesus says woman what does that have to do with you and me my hour's not yet come she just ignores him says the guys do whatever he tells you and she walks back out to be with all the women jesus now he said it's not time for his ministry to begin yet mom did mom just said yes he did with without even saying it she just said do whatever he tells you it turns out to walk so it didn't even answer him and then he turns the water into wine now i think that that was also a moment of sorrow for mary because when she said do whatever he tells you she knew that no longer was he going to come over the hillside at the end of the day and have dinner with her and say night prayers with her and fall asleep on the mats in their cave and she didn't have him to herself anymore to feed him until she loved her son and when she said do whatever he tells you she knew he was now going to leave to follow his heavenly father and she gave him away and i think she had tears in her eyes when she looked at him and said turned away and said do whatever he tells you i think she was weeping when she said that because she was saying goodbye to her son that is the wedding of canaan now we go through the whole ministry of christ it says there were women who followed jesus everywhere taking care of him luke tells us that they come finally eventually we come to jerusalem and there's so much to say but we'll just kind of move through this the fathers of the church taught that mary was the second eve because we know from first corinthians 15 we'll talk about this next month that jesus is the second adam or the last adam we have adam in a garden who brought damnation and sin screwed everything up we have a new adam coming now going into a new garden so where's the new eve if adam and eve were the first and jesus is the last adam where's the last eve well mary is the last eve and the fathers of the church taught that eve in the garden she tied the knot of sin but mary she untied the knot of sin she cooperated in the redemption and she was there at the foot of the cross in john's gospel she's mentioned at the beginning of jesus's ministry do whatever he tells you and at the very end of his ministry when he says this is now john take care of her she's my mother which also tells you that mary didn't have any other children because if she did son number two would be in charge of taking care of her but because there was no son number two jesus had cousins or other relatives but no sons of mary mary had to have somebody take care of her or she would be destitute jesus didn't care about himself on the cross he was worried about his mother and he said mother you don't have any other children another son so john you're going to become her son and that shows right there that mary was ever virgin if you know the context the culture the people the families how things work the bible comes open and like a tech widescreen technicolor well i'm watching the clock here we've got 6 55. um after the crucifixion mary we don't hear about her again i'm assuming she was there to see him raised from the dead maybe the first one that would be appropriate but the next time we see her mentioned is in the upper room why doesn't mary mentioned in the upper room says that mary the mother of jesus was there how many were in the upper room i'm not going to put you on the spot i asked people it would have been 11 or 12 was was was mata thighs selected yet matthias was um he he was they all gathered in the upper room and while he was there they they did choose him matthias but there were 120 all together okay the 11 were there and then we added number 12 with matthias but it says and also mary that there are others there but mary the mother of jesus was there why did they tell us that she's there first of all 120 in the upper room i should save this for next time but that's because in jewish tradition if you wanted to leave a major city and start your own you needed a minimum of 120 people to leave and go start your own new community what is the church they're being called out to start their own community and it's not just a fellowship of brothers that says hey charbell you love jesus too hey we're the church man we get together pray that's the church no no the church was a government you were 120 you could leave and you could go start your own courts and your own sanhedrin have your own new city it's a civic authority and the church was a new civic governmental authority with legislature and judicial that's what the church is it's not a fellowship of believers it is the church it's what the catholic church is today mary was there because happy birthday to you happy birthday to you the pentecost is the birthday of the church and in order for the baby to be born the mother has to be there mary is the mother of the church the church is the mystical body of christ how can you have the mystical body of christ being born without the mother there to be in laboring in prayer to bring about the body of christ amazing and she's also there because the jews were afraid it says of the romans but i think they're also afraid of god the only thing they knew about fire coming down on a mountain was mount sinai and they were terrified back then and they are terrified of god coming down on a mountain and you say he's going to come down on mount zion he's going to come down and fire oh boy and mary says guys relax be calm he's already overshadowed me nothing but pure joy and love just relax don't worry mary had to be there to keep these guys calm it always takes women some time to keep us men in line well i'm going to go very quickly from there she moves in with john it says that john took her into his own home so she lived with john and james because john and james lived together in the same house can you imagine how your life would be different how you would live your life differently if mary was living there with you all day absolutely it would change the way you live no wonder those guys became saints now so now mary lives with them she goes to ephesus for a while i'm going to wrap this up pretty quick here uh we could do another hour on the second half but we'll do it fast the end of mary's life she goes to ephesus with john it would have been a very grueling trip unbelievably grueling whether you walked all the way up through lebanon of today and syria and turkey all the way over to the western coast of or they went on a ship which would have been they didn't have cruise ships back then they were cargo ships and you had to rent space on the deck and bring your own food in your own tent and you lived on the deck of the ship and if there's a storm you're just out in it because there were no cabins down below and if you had to go to the bathroom you sat on the bow and put your butt over the side of the boat so either way mary went it was rough wow so she's in ephesus for a while there's a house in ephesus i'm going to be there in october with a group we have mass at mary's house but then she i think in 49 a.d acts chapter 15 she came back with john to jerusalem there was a council in jerusalem and the apostles came back i think the daughter of zion returned to mount zion she would have been about 70 years old at that point she was not subject to death but she chose death to conform to the image of her son and to be a first fruits for us to be taken up body and soul she she fell asleep the church doesn't say whether she died or fell asleep but john paul ii and most others said that she did die and that she was died on the top of mount zion there's a church there called the dormition of mary with a statue of her laying dead then they buried her in the kidron valley and in the kidron valley today there's a greek orthodox church called the church of the tomb of mary also the church of the ascension she was buried there the apostles came back to prepare her further and she was gone she had been taken to heaven now when you get to revelation john sees her in heaven there and that is the tradition of the church that she was taken up into heaven the church that the church defined that dogmatically that mary was assumed the difference between ascension like jesus he ascended mary was assumed ascension is when you go up with your own rocket pack you go up assumed is when someone has to bring you up mary is not god she's not an angel she's a human being and jesus reached down and took her last thing first kings chapter 2 verse 19 solomon the son of david jesus is the son of david solomon the son of david first thing he did as a king his mother walked into his throne room he bowed down to his mother then he built a throne at his right hand now there's two thrones of in the kingdom of israel two thrones one for the king and one for the king's mother not his wife his mother from then on every king of israel had a queen of judea especially of the line of solomon every king had a queen and the queen was always the mother so if solomon is going to descend and condescend to bring his mother up and seat her at his right hand what do you think the new son of david who's going to be much better than the first son of david is going to do for his mother raise her up to become his queen that's why mary's the queen of heaven so we got all the way from jerusalem to heaven in an hour right on amazing spot on thank you so much well it is amazing she is the queen mother the our mother mother of the church mother this kingdom and uh phenomenal stuff um all is in this dvd so you've got all the details you're in the holy land you're going through all this it's a it's it's a solid amount in the um 78 minutes worth of of time there of all this actual footage there love it love your energy love how you bring it to life and there's a study guide in there too sharp the study guide covers the things that we just talked about it's tied to the bible and the catechism so you can go through that it follows the script of the movie so you can follow all of this in the scriptures and in the catechism and you can learn it too brilliant so we are doing a special on this during this whole nine months pilgrimage twenty percent off any one of these or the whole set if you get it um it's pp for perusia podcast sr for steve ray and fog for footprints of god so p p s r f o g that's your code and you'll get automatically 20 off the the dvds also 2022 put your names down uh contact us um we're going to the holy land with steve ray and uh very very excited about that so things are opening up early next year and then we hope to build up enough of us to to fill two buses let's try to do that in 2022 and we want to bring americans australians uh new zealanders you know anyone who's willing to to come with us uh parousia joining forces with harvest journeys and um steve ray so very excited it's all austrians yeah let's fill it with aussies and i'm trying i'm trying to learn your accent maybe if i am with you for 10 days i'll learn it as good as you guys that's right well thank you so much steve looking forward next time we see you you will actually be part of the advent pilgrimage which we've just announced looking at abraham there when you do amazing job and of course we'll have you in the next part of the series which would also be within that pilgrimage time frame a live show on jesus so looking forward to talking about that as well perfect timing sounds good thanks sherbell thank you so much thank you everybody uh for all the updates go to catholicconvert.com and of course everything at parousianmedia.com [Music] you

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Length: 60min 8sec (3608 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020