As I
have begun again to go through the Bible from start to finish, I find new insights
along the way, even as I’ve read it all several times before. What is striking is the nature of faith in
the people of Israel, going back to the Patriarch Abraham. What set Israel apart is their acceptance and
belief in only One God. Early on, this
was what is called “henotheism”, or, they only had one God, as opposed to the
surrounding cultures which had multiple gods.
It took awhile for the Hebrews to develop the understanding that the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was the only true God. The God who made everything had chosen Abram,
and his descendants, as His special people.
Oddly,
this choice of them as peculiarly His own came at a time in their history when
the other part of God’s promise seemed to be broken, that they would inherit
the land of Canaan in perpetuity. After
the exile of the northern kingdom of Israel, and then the consequent exile of
Judah, the Hebrews needed to come to a deeper understanding of their
relationship to God, and what it meant to be His people. Surprisingly, along with the realization that
their God was the only true God also opened up the prophets to speak of Israel
as a sign for all the nations, and indeed the vehicle by which He would reveal
Himself more broadly. In the later
prophets we have universal themes develop which bear this out, even if at the
time it was not understood; indeed, it would not fully dawn upon them in
fullness until Christ came, and sent the apostles out to all the nations.
But
what is consistent throughout the history of the Hebrews, from Abraham on to
the last of the prophets, is the nature of the faith. God remains unseen by human eyes, but still
makes Himself present in various ways, as the letter to the Hebrews points out.
How Abraham heard or knew God was speaking to him is really irrelevant. He had an awareness of God that led him to
wander based upon a promise he heard, and to remain faithful even in the face
of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, such as the length of time it took
for him to finally have the child of the promise.
This is
what makes Abraham so great, that he remained faithful in the face of his
trials. Somehow God would fulfill the promise, and that was enough for
Abraham. The great heroes of the Old
Testament are those who imitated Abraham in this consistency, not turning to
other gods to solve their problems, be they hand-made idols, or nature gods, or
whatever. The pure faith that gave
strength was in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Consider
David. Though he sinned mightily by committing
adultery and murder, and then sinned by numbering the people, he never sought
help from other gods. He was simply a
real man who sinned, and repented. His
son Solomon, however, was not so faithful, and by worshipping other gods, to
whom his many wives introduced him, he was a cause of the splitting of the
kingdom in twain, and the subsequent evils that afflicted the Israelites for
centuries.
This
brings us to the one who exhibited the greatest faith the world has ever known,
or will ever know: that of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Steeped in the faith tradition of her people,
she knew the prophecies, and was certainly attuned to God’s directions her
whole life. Though possibly (from tradition with a small “t”) she was a member
of the priestly tribe, or certainly related to it (hence, Elizabeth, her
kinswoman, being married to Zechariah, a priest), her faith was not centered on
the Temple once she was older, for she lived, after all, in Nazareth by the
time the Annunciation took place. Yet she had that awareness of God’s care for
her, and knew her obligation to be faithful to Him.
It was this
faith that enabled her to be open to the message of the angel, and to believe
what she heard. It’s important to note
that her question to the angel Gabriel was not “how can this be”, implying a
bit of doubt, but “how will this be. . . since I do not know man.” This indicates that she knew God could enable
her to conceive, but since she was dedicated to virginity, she needed more
information. I propose that she was, in
a way, testing the spirit of the angel to make sure that her divinely inspired
vow of virginity was not going to be at stake.
Somewhere Saint Ambrose makes this point in other verbiage.
Once
apprised of the protection of her virginity, she opens herself, and her womb,
to the working of the Holy Spirit, and the rest, as they say is history, so to
speak.
And on
that note, since the proof is in the pudding, isn’t it interesting that a
shepherd from the Podunk area of Mesopotamia who claimed to have been called by
God, and that God had promised him descendants as numerous as the sand on the
seashore, indeed became the Patriarch of billions who trace their religious
life back to him? One surely cannot
claim that this faith took off through force of arms, since conversions were
not sought by the Israelites (not really anyway), and so much of the history of
the Hebrews was very much under persecution and exile. Even the Church sought conversions through
witness, and not force (even if at certain times there have been forced
conversions, but always contrary to Church teaching). Nevertheless, what Abraham believed, in a
loving God Who would fulfill His promises and provide protection to that end, is
still the center of the Judeo-Christian religious system.
It’s
funny when talking with atheists who like to note that there are “thousands of
gods” and “which one do you choose”, since the obvious answer is: the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Who became a man in Jesus Christ to save us.
Which brings
us back to the Blessed Mother. . .
Abraham had his faith tested when God asked him to offer up Isaac, and
act that was designed not for God’s knowledge, but for Abraham’s sake, to bring
his faith to perfection. (As an aside,
this story was also kept alive in the mind of the Hebrews to tell them that
human sacrifice was not on God’s wish list.).
Mary received word that she would conceive and bear a son, without
knowledge of man. It happened, and Jesus
was born. She was also told that her Son
would have an eternal kingdom, yet on the cross, that seemed to be a lie. She, like Abraham her father in faith, was
tested, and even moreso. The beauty of
the faith of the Virgin Mary is that she continued to believe as she held the
corpse of her Son in her arms at the foot of the cross. The Annunciation is bound to the mystery of
the cross as much as any other event in her life. As Abraham continued to believe that “God
Himself will provide a lamb”, so the Virgin Mary believed that the cross was
not the end, but the new beginning of her Son’s eternal kingdom.
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