Jim in Atlanta, Georgia, listening on Sirius radio, you are on with Steve Ray,
your question about Mary the mother of Jesus. Yes, thank you both for all you do,
it's great to hear you and catch you both together. My question has to do with
what our Blessed Mother's life would have been like after our Lord's
suffering, death, and resurrection; where she lived, what the historical sources
and maybe the tradition (with the small "t") says. Also about where she died.
Some people say Ephesus, some Jerusalem I was just curious to see what we know? Very good,
let me start by saying it's not anywhere clearly stated in the Bible or anywhere
else. It's a matter of looking at what we do know, at early traditions, early
writings, archaeology, all these other kind of things. Mary--and in my movie--I made a
movie called Mary Mother of God and I filmed it in three countries, we followed
every city and place where Mary was and we discussed her time there, and the way I
describe it in the movie is that when Jesus died on the cross, He looked down
and he saw his mother, and he said, "Woman, John (my Apostle John) is now going to be
your son. And John, Mary (my mother) is now going to be your mother." In other words,
why did he do that? Let's start right from there. Because Mary had no other
sons. Jesus may have had brothers which were a word for relative or kin (relative,
relations), but Mary did not have any other sons. And because of that she could
have been destitute, because if a woman didn't have a husband or a son, then she
would not, they didn't own property. They didn't have social security and
unemployment and welfare back in those days. You needed a son. And because she
didn't have a son, Jesus cared for his mother up to the last moment and gave
her into the hands of John so that she would have a home and he knew she would
be well taken care of. We know, then, that John became the bishop of Ephesus. I know
right where his tomb is, I take people there all the time.
And John was in Ephesus and he took Mary with him. There is a church in Ephesus
that was built there prior to the 4th century, because in 431 there was a
council; the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus took place in Ephesus in a
church called the Church of the Virgin Mary. In those days they never named a
church after a person who had not been there,
and so they named it after her. And the council specifically chose Ephesus to
have that council because it was going to be about Mary, so they had it in
Ephesus where she had lived in the big Basilica called the Church of the
Blessed Virgin. And there they determined that Mary was called the "Theotokos," the
mother of God. Now there's a house up on the side of the hill, which a nun from
Germany named Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich had a vision of it, and she had
never been there, told some monks where it was; they went and discovered the
foundation of the house, and we go there now, we have mass. It's up on the hillside
from Ephesus. Now here's what I think happened: Jim, I
think that when Mary was about 70 years old, John went back to Ephesus--I'm sorry,
back to Jerusalem for a council. It took place in Acts chapter 15. And in Acts
chapter 15, it was in 49 AD, the Apostles came back to Jerusalem for this council.
And I think at that point John brought Mary back with him, and Mary chose to die
on Mount Zion because she didn't want to die in a pagan city like Ephesus. She's
the daughter of Zion, she came back to Mount Zion to die where her--it was very
important to die with your fathers. Even in Scripture, said he was buried with his
fathers. That was important to the Jews, so I think Mary came back. On top of
Mount Zion, there's a church called the Abbey of the Dormition of Mary. The place
where Mary fell asleep. Whether she fell asleep or died, the
Church doesn't define that. What the Church says is, at the end of the course
of her Earthly life, she was taken into Heaven, body and soul. And there's a
statue of her laying there in that church to commemorate the place where
she fell asleep. Then there was a tomb, and it's still there today, it's called
the Church of the Tomb of Mary. It's in the Kidron valley,
not too far from the Garden of Gethsemane. And that tomb is also called
the Church of the of the Assumption of Mary. Mary was placed
in that tomb, and when the Apostles came back later she was gone because she was
assumed into Heaven from Jerusalem. And I put it all in my movie "Mary, Mother of
God."