Virgin Mary

The Magnificat is a canticle proclaimed by Mary to Elizabeth (not God) after Elizabeth had rejoiced at Mary coming to visit her. It comes from Lk 1:46-55, which reads as follows (from the Douay-Rheims translation of the bible):

46 And Mary said: My soul doth magnify the Lord. 47 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. 48 Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid: for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. 49 Because he that is mighty hath done great things to me: and holy is his name. 50 And his mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear him. 51 He hath shewed might in his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. 52 He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble. 53 He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away. 54 He hath received Israel his servant, being mindful of his mercy. 55 As he spoke to our fathers: to Abraham and to his seed for ever.

It is called the "Magnificat" because that is the first word of the Latin translation of the canticle: "Magnificat anima mea Dominum . . ."

The story of The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Temple comes from a writing called the Protoevangelium of James (c. 150 A.D.). It tells of Mary being presented at the temple when she was three years old:

And her months were added to the child. And the child was two years old, and Joachim said: Let us take her up to the temple of the Lord, that we may pay the vow that we have vowed, lest perchance the Lord send to us, and our offering be not received. And Anna said: Let us wait for the third year, in order that the child may not seek for father or mother. And Joachim said: So let us wait. And the child was three years old, and Joachim said: Invite the daughters of the Hebrews that are undefiled, and let them take each a lamp, and let them stand with the lamps burning, that the child may not turn back, and her heart be captivated from the temple of the Lord. And they did so until they went up into the temple of the Lord. And the priest received her, and kissed her, and blessed her, saying: The Lord has magnified your name in all generations. In you, on the last of the days, the Lord will manifest His redemption to the sons of Israel. And he set her down upon the third step of the altar, and the Lord God sent grace upon her; and she danced with her feet, and all the house of Israel loved her. (Protoevangelium of James, no. 7)

As an apocryphal work, it is not considered part of the canon of the Bible, but as an historical document, it may provide insight into the life of the early Church.

Clarification:

When the Church gives its approval to an apparition it simply states that all evidence supports that something unusual apparently occurred and their is nothing contradictory to Church teachings and doctrine. It does not become an article of faith. In other words, Catholics are free to believe or free to not believe in the event. Belief in what happened at Fatima is not a requirement for salvation. The same holds true for all other purported apparitions of Mary - Guadalupe, Lourdes, and others.

The Church feels that all doctrine and teachings were revealed in scripture. Private revelation, such as at Fatima, while they can be significant events, as they are not scriptural in origin, belief is not required.

It has always been the Tradition of the Church to refer to Mary as the Mother of God. This was defined formally at the third ecumenical Church council of Ephesus in 431 AD when Mary was confirmed as the "Theotokos" or "Mother of God". The teaching is that Mary is the mother of Christ, giving to Him His human nature which thus allowed Him to become a true member of the human race even though He possessed, as well, a divine nature. Mary is thus Mother of the whole Person of Jesus Christ, having given birth to a complete Person, not just a human nature. The title of "Theotokos" was chosen over "Christotokos" which meant "birth-giver of Christ" by the council fathers as "Christotokos" was favoured by Nestorius (who soon became a heresiarch). They saw "Christotokos" as belittling the perfect union of the divine and human natures in Christ, the fullness of the Incarnation and, by extension, the salvation of humanity as affected through Mary's motherhood.

from A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, by Dave Armstrong, Sophia Institute Press, © 2003

1) Mary the "Mother of God" (Theotokos) The official, dogmatic proclamation of this dogma was made at the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431, in response to the heresy of Nestorianism.

Scripture implicitly affirms Mary’s Divine motherhood by attesting, on the one hand, the true Divinity of Christ, and on the other hand, Mary’s true motherhood. Thus Mary is called: "Mother of Jesus" (John 2:1) ... "Mother of the Lord" (Luke 1:43). Mary’s true motherhood is clearly foretold by the Prophet Isaiah: "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel" (Isaiah 7:14) . . . . the woman who bore the Son of God is Progenitress of God, or the Mother of God [ see also Matt. 1:18, 12:46, 13:55; Luke 1:31, 35; Gal 4:4]. (Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 196-197)

The doctrine of Mary as Theotokos flows consistently and straightforwardly from the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son, Jesus. Cardinal Gibbons explains:

We affirm that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word of God, who in His divine nature is from all eternity begotten of the Father, consubstantial with Him, was in the fullness of time, begotten, by being born of the Virgin, thus taking to Himself, from her maternal womb, a human nature of the same substance with hers.

But it may be said the Blessed Virgin is not the Mother of the Divinity. She had not, and she could no have, any part in the generation of the Word of God, for that generation is eternal; her maternity is temporal. He is her Creator; she is His creature. Style her, if you will, the Mother of the man Jesus or even of the human nature of the Son of God but not the Mother of God.

I shall answer this objection by putting a question. Did the mother who bore us have any part in the production of our soul? Was not this nobler part of our being the work of God alone? And yet who would for a moment dream of saying "the mother of my body," and not "my mother"? . . . (Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, 137-138)

In like manner . . . the Blessed virgin, under the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, by communicating to the Second Person of the Adorable Trinity, as mothers do, a true human nature of the same substance with her own, is there really and truly His Mother.

2) The Immaculate Conception of Mary Pope Pius IX (in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus) infallibly defined this doctrine as binding upon all Catholics on December 8, 1854.

Genesis 3:15

(known as the "Protoevangelion"): "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." Ludwig Ott expounds this verse:

The literal sense of the passage is possibly the following: Between Satan and his followers on the one hand, and Eve and her posterity on the other hand, there is to be constant moral warfare. The posterity of Eve will achieve a complete and final victory over Satan and his followers, even if it is wounded in the struggle. The posterity of Eve includes the Messiah, in whose power humanity will win a victory over Satan. Thus the passage is indirectly messianic.

The seed of the woman was understood as referring to the Redeemer, and thus the Mother of the Redeemer came to be seen in the woman. Since the second century, this direct messianic-Marian interpretation has been expounded by individual Fathers, for example, St. Irenaeus, St. Epiphanius .... St. Cyprian ... St. Leo the Great. However, it is not found in the writings of the majority of the Fathers . . . According to this interpretation, Mary stands with Christ in a perfect and victorious enmity toward Satan and his following. Many of the later scholastics and a great many modern theologians argue, in the light of this interpretation . . that Mary’s victory over Satan would not have been perfect, is she had ever been under his dominion. Consequently she must have entered the world without the stain of Original Sin. (Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 200)

Most Protestant Bible translations follow the King James, or Authorized, Version’s lead in rendering kecharitomene, the Greek word, as "favored," as indeed also some recent Catholic versions. The favored (no pun intended!) Traditional Catholic rendering (actually the more literal rendering) is "Hail, full of grace" (for example, Douay, Confraternity, Knox). The word Mary (after hail) is not in the text, but strongly implied, as the angel is addressing her by title; thus we arrive at the phrase "Hail, Mary, full of grace,"

The Bible speaks only implicitly of many things that Protestants strongly believe, such as the proper mode of Baptism (immersion, sprinkling, or pouring?). The Immaculate Conception is entirely possible within scriptural presuppositions.

Luke 1:35

(The Annunciation; Mary as a type of the ark of the covenant): "And the angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the pow3er of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.

Overshadow is derived from the Greek, episkiasei, which denotes a bright cloud or cloud of glory. It is used in reference to the cloud at the transfiguration of Jesus (Matt. 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:34) and hearkens back to instances of the Shekinah glory of the God in the Old Testament (Exod. 24:15-16, 40:34-38; 1 Kings 8:10).

The Septuagint uses episkiasei in Exodus 40:34-35. Mary, as Theotokos, becomes, in effect, the new temple and holy of holies, where God dwelt in a special, spatially located fashion. In particular Scripture seems to be making a direct symbolic parallelism between Mary and the ark of the covenant. She is the bearer and ark of the New Covenant, which Jesus brings about (Heb. 8:6-13; 12:24).

Catholic tradition says that on May 10, 1291, a house was raised from its foundations in Nazareth and transported by angels across the Mediterranean from Palestine to Dalmatia and the small town of Tersatto. The pastor of the Church of St. George, at Tersatto, was puzzled by the sudden presence of what looked like a tiny church and prayed for enlightenment. His prayers were answered when the Blessed Virgin appeared to him in his sleep and told him that this was the Holy House of Nazareth where the Annunciation took place and it was brought here through the power of God. To confirm what she was telling him, he would be restored to health. At that moment, Father Alexander was cured of an illness which he had suffered for many years.

The house seems to have moved miraculously several times until it finally landed on the site it now occupies. The house was examined and an opinion sought, attesting that the house was really from Nazareth. It is this house that gave the title Our Lady of Loreto sometimes applied to the Virgin Mary.

The basilica built around the house is evidence, if not to its origin, at least to the fact that it has long been considered worthy of veneration by Catholics. Papal bulls have been issued by a number of popes in favour of the shrine, although sometimes in guarded language. Before deciding whether the legend is worthy of belief, ask why God would have wanted the house moved from Nazareth in the first place. The Middle Ages are replete with accounts of relics being transferred to remote locations, where they served principally to enrich the local church.

From the accounts left by pilgrims and others it appears that before 1291 there was no little cottage venerated at Nazareth which could correspond in any satisfactory way with the present Santa Casa at Loreto. Chronicles and similar accounts of pilgrims from Nazareth are absolutely silent as to any change which took place in 1291, and there is no word of the disappearance of a shrine formerly held in veneration there. There are charters and other documents which prove that a church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin already existed at Loreto before the supposed translation of the Holy House. Apart from certain documents considered spurious, no writer can be shown to have heard of the miraculous translation of the Holy House before 1472 - 180 years after the event is supposed to have taken place.