And with that in mind, we got a call here. Maybe we should go...Magalie. Yeah oh
good, yeah. Calling from Long Beach, California, what is your question for Dr.
Michael Barber? Hi, I recently went to, I had the opportunity to go to Our Lady
of Guadalupe, the Basilica in Mexico City, and the image, the tilma, was explained
to me, and I had learned in my previous classes that there are a lot or possibly
a lot of connections between...I believe it's chapter 12 in the book of
Revelation-- Sure --(singular, not plural) and Our Lady of Guadalupe, the apparition.
We're getting the name of the
book right, that's a really good start. Okay, so--you're from Long Beach,
do you ever attend Holy Innocents Catholic Church? No, I go to St. Cornelius
or Our Lady of Refuge. Okay, my uncle is actually the pastor of Holy Innocents Catholic
Church. Father Peter Irving up there in Long Beach, so it's a
beautiful church and yeah, you might want to check it out sometime. Anyway, so Our
Lady of Guadalupe and the book of Revelation. Let's talk about that. Okay, so
in the book of Revelation chapter 12, there is a vision of the mother of the
Messiah, and she is clothed with the Sun. Okay. And so we were just talking about
the fact that the book of Revelation has multiple layers of meaning and their
symbols can mean different things. And so when you look at this vision of the
mother of the Messiah, you can see actually that the woman seems to be
symbolic of a number of things. John Paul II, for example, said in a
very rich Wednesday catechetical presentation he gave on Revelation 12,
John Paul II explained that the woman can be understood to be a symbol
of Israel and a symbol of God's people, the Church, because we see things in
Revelation 12 said about the woman that are said about Israel in the Old
Testament. But at the same time, the mother of the Messiah is also a person.
Right? And we know who that person is, it's the
Blessed Virgin Mary. And there'll be some people--and maybe we'll get some pushback,
that'd be fun to get some callers, you know, say, "Ah, no, that's not what this is really about,"
I'd love that--but-- bring it on, guys--but in the book of
Revelation, things can mean multiple...they, you can have one reference meaning a lot
of different things. And in Revelation 12, what's really interesting is you have
the mother of the Messiah, yeah, but right before that, very interesting, the end of
Revelation 11 concludes with a vision of God's Temple in Heaven being opened and the
Ark of the Covenant being seen. Now why is that interesting? Well elsewhere in
early Christianity, for example, just to give you one: in the Gospel of Luke,
Mary's trip to go and visit Elizabeth is described with terms taken from the
account of the journey of the Ark of the Covenant. So what is the Ark of the
Covenant? Everybody knows the Ark of the Covenant from--if you haven't read the book "Raiders of the--"
Seen the movie! Right, yeah! Melts your face off, man, I mean that's the Ark of the Covenant, right?
It's powerful--okay, well it doesn't say it melts your face off in
the Bible, but armies fail to stand before the presence of God in the Ark of
the Covenant, and remember the walls of Jericho, for example, come down after they
march around the city with the Ark. The Ark is very powerful, and the reason the
Ark is powerful is because of what's inside of the Ark, right? The Ark is not,
like, it's not from Heaven, in the sense it didn't, like, descend out of Heaven;
it's not made out of some celestial material, it's made out of wood, it's
overlaid with gold; but what makes it special is what's inside of it. Hebrews 9
tells us, for example, that there were three things in the Ark: the manna--the
bread from Heaven--the Ten Commandments, right--God's Word written in
stone--and the staff of the high priest Aaron. Okay, these three things were in
the Ark of the Covenant. Okay. And then God descends over the Ark, and
he overshadows, if you will, the tabernacle, we read about this at the end
of the book of Exodus--"episkiazo" is the Greek word, He overshadows the tabernacle
and the Ark, and the Ark is described as the mercy seat because God dwells over
it. Well, in the Gospel of Luke, the angel tells Mary that the Holy Spirit will
OVERSHADOW her, and it's the same term that's used in Exodus, in the Greek
version of the Exodus, that book of Exodus, to describe this presence of God
over the Ark and the tabernacle. And moreover, when it says that Mary
journeyed to Elizabeth, she stayed with Elizabeth for three
months, and we talk about how--we read about how when her greeting
comes to Elizabeth, Elizabeth says, "How can the mother of my Lord come to me?"
Well, all of this mirrors what's said in 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Chronicles 16
when David brings the Ark into Jerusalem. Same language is used, over and over
again, multiple points of contact; David said, "How can the Ark of the Lord come to
me;" the Ark of the Lord stays with somebody for three months; there's lots
of parallels I don't have time to get into them all now. But what we see is, in
other places in early Christianity, Mary is linked with the Ark of the Covenant.
Why? Because what's inside Mary is more important than what's inside the Ark of
the Covenant! Right? What was inside the Ark? The bread from Heaven. What's inside
Mary? You know, the bread from Heaven: Jesus. What's inside the Ark? Well, God's
Word written in stone, the Ten Commandments. What's inside Mary? The God's Word, right?
And so Mary's understood as the Ark in early Christianity; so the fact that
Revelation 11 ends with a vision of the Ark and then goes right into a
vision of the mother of the Messiah is really interesting. And it seems to
suggest that, in fact, there might be really something to this
Marian connection in Revelation 12. So all of that is a long way to get back to
the question: is there a connection between Our Lady of Guadalupe and the
book of Revelation? Well, in a roundabout way, maybe. Because in the book
of Revelation we read about this woman who's clothed with the Sun, and that
seems to be the image that is on the tilma, right, that is celebrated in
Catholic tradition. So there's a lot of connections there between the vision in
Revelation 12 with the mother of the Messiah--who I think is, in Scripture,
clearly Mary--and this tilma of Juan Diego where we have the mother of the Messiah,
Mary, on this garment. So anyway, does that help answer the
question there, Magalie? Yeah, yeah, thank you very much, and it was really
beautiful to have the tilma explained and everything and to see the connection
to Scripture, the possible connection. So thank you. That's great, thank you so much
for calling in.