Go to Lester in Cypress, California, listening on Immaculate Heart Radio, you
are on with Karlo Broussard, what's your question, Lester? Hey, thanks for taking
my call, and Cy, a big fan of you, I really miss your movie reviews.
Oh, you're very nice, thank you. Let's talk about this for a
while. We've got a whole segment. Karlo, you can go home, let's just chat about
this. Thank you Lester, you're very kind. Thank you.
Okay, so quick question: why didn't Jesus call our Blessed Lady "mother," and
always referred to her as "woman?" Yes, this is a fantastic question. Before I
answer it, Lester, I'm gonna have to give a plug for my mentor and colleague Tim
Staples and his book "Behold Your Mother." It's sort of an exhaustive
defense, Biblical and historical defense, of the various doctrines and dogmas that
we believe as Catholics regarding Mary. And in that book he addresses this
question in great detail. But I'm just going to give you a sneak peak of that,
Lester, and basically, fundamentally, it seems I think we have a high degree of
reasonable certitude to conclude that what Jesus is doing, Lester, is He's trying
to make a connection. He's trying to draw us to the reality of who Mary is; namely,
she is the prophetical woman spoken of in the Old Testament in what is called
the Protoevangelium, the first Gospel, in Genesis 3:15. Lester, do you
recall how, after Adam and Eve sinned, God speaks to Satan
and says, "I will set enmity--" total opposition, separation "--between you and
the woman, between your seed and her seed." Do you recall that Lester, you recall
that prophecy? Yeah. Okay fantastic, yeah. So what we see there is, number one, this
woman that God is referring to is going to be the mother of the Messiah, because
the seed that will come forth from this
woman, which some scholars see to be a hint of the virgin birth of Jesus, right--
because normally the Bible talks about the seed of the man but here is talking
about the seed of the woman--so here we have this virgin woman giving birth to
this male child that's going to crush the head of the serpent. But if you
notice, Lester, that woman is not of the seed of Satan. Consequently, we can
conclude that this woman is sinless. She's not tainted by sin and the
dominion of Satan. And because she's not of his seed, we see a hint that this
woman will be immaculately conceived like the first woman. Because, Lester, in
the Genesis narrative, Eve was called "woman" in the first couple of chapters
before Eve sinned. She doesn't receive her name until after she sins. So the
first woman was created without the stain of Original Sin. She was pure, she
was holy, but she failed. The new woman that God prophesies about is gonna be
like the first woman in that she will be created free from Original Sin; but
unlike the first woman, she will remain sinless, because there will be total
opposition between the serpent--Satan-- and this woman. And I think this is the
historical--this is the backdrop, Lester, against which Jesus refers to Mary as
"woman," and if you do the Biblical study, if you do some Bible study, Lester, you'll
discover that all--the preceding verses before John chapter 2:4, where
Jesus calls Mary "woman" at the wedding feast of Cana, what John is doing is he
has various details in his narrative that parallel the first creation story.
So the whole context in which Jesus says "woman," it's embedded in this context of
this image of a new creation. And so what Jesus is revealing to us is that this
woman, Mary, is the woman of the new creation that Genesis 3:15 was speaking of.
And consequently, Jesus would call Mary "woman," in John 19:25, when He's on the
cross, as He's crushing the head of the serpent. He looks to that woman, He looks
to Mary, and says, "Woman, behold your son." Did you think he's just calling her
"woman" for...is this just a coincidence? I don't think so. And then finally, Lester,
in Revelation 12, when John has his heavenly vision,
what does he describe? But yet, he describes the mother of the Messiah as
"the woman clothed with the sun," and she will have offspring; her offspring would
be those who keep the commandments of God. So the bottom line, Lester, I think we
can conclude that Jesus is calling Mary "woman" at the wedding feast of Cana
and on the cross precisely to connect her to the woman God prophesied about in
Genesis 3:15; that woman who would be a new woman created free from Original Sin
and remaining sinless throughout her life, not touched by the stain of Satan.
Fantastic! Okay, Lester. Hey brother, thank you so much for giving
us a call this afternoon. Thank you, thank you, great answer. Thank you. Thank
you so much.