Over to John who is in Boston listening on the Station of the Cross. Hi John,
welcome, you're on with Jimmy Akin. Good evening, thank you for taking my call, I
love this program. I've asked the question of learned people before, and
the answer given to me only confused me more, so I'm excited to ask it to
Jimmy. First of all, I do want to say I'll be praying for Mary. Awesome. Thank
you. But I--this is regarding the infancy narratives in...which Gospels I'm
not sure it even comes from-- Matthew and Luke. But with regard to the Annunciation, in
one of the Gospels Mary says to the angel, "How can this be? For I haven't known
man." Right. It's actually present tense, "I know not man." "I know not man." Okay.
And it's Luke. Is it? Okay. And then, now go over to the angel greeting
Zechariah to tell him that he and Elizabeth will conceive in their
old age, and Zechariah says something to the effect of, "How can this
be, because we're well beyond childbearing years," as the previous caller
just said. And yet he's sort of chastised in a way, and told because of his lack of
faith that he won't speak until John is born. Right. I don't understand
why--seemingly they both asked the questions basically anybody would have asked:
"How could this happen?" Yeah. So this is, this is a very common
question, because the way Luke writes this account, he points out multiple
parallels between what happens with Zechariah and what happens with Mary. And
you can read about this, this is Luke chapter 1. And so given those multiple
parallels between their situations, why, when Zechariah asks a question, does
he get struck dumb; but when Mary asks the question, she doesn't, and she's even...
the angel, you know... sends her, indicates that, you know...John
the Baptist has already been conceived by her kinswoman Elizabeth, who she then
goes to visit, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, praises Mary. So rather
than being chastised for asking the question, Mary ends up being praised as a
result. And if you look closely at the text, the answer becomes apparent. When
Zechariah is told he's going to have a son, his question is, "How will I know
this?" So he's just been told, but he's challenging that answer. He's saying--he's
asking for proof, because he's not believing. He's not simply taking
the angel at his word. Then, when the same angel, Gabriel, goes to Mary, and tells
her she's gonna have a child in seemingly impossible circumstances--
because she doesn't know man, she doesn't have marital relations with any man, so
how's she gonna have a child?--she asks a different question. She doesn't say "How
will I know this?" She says, "How will it be?" So she accepts the fact it's going to be,
but she asked how it's going to come about. And so then the angel tells her,
"Well, this is within God's power, He can give children even to people in
impossible circumstances; like, look at your cousin Elizabeth, who's too old to
have a child but God's given her one anyway." And then when she visits
Elizabeth, if you look look in Luke 1:45, Elizabeth, filled with the Holy
Spirit, confirms our understanding of what the difference in the question was.
Because what she says regarding Mary is, "Blessed is she who believed that this
would happen for her." And so that's the key difference between Mary and her
reaction, and Zechariah and his reaction. Zechariah didn't believe, he demanded a
miraculous sign; and so the angel gave him one, he struck him dumb. But when Mary
asked her question, she believed--she just wanted a clarification on how
it would happen, and so she's pronounced blessed for having believed, and that's
the point of difference between her and Zechariah. Okay John, hope that clears
that up for you there.