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The Virgin Mary — Everything the Bible Says About Her Fits on a Few Pages · Everyday Saints: A Catholic Podcast

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  She's on church walls, paintings, medals, and the dashboards of more than a few cars. She's
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  named in the Bible and in the Quran. And yet, if you tried to write her biography using only
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  the earliest sources, you would probably be done by lunch. A handful of scenes, a few spoken
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  lines, that's about it. So how did one young woman from a small village in Galilee become
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  one of the most recognized women in the world? This is the story of Mary.
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  Hi, my name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday Saints. This is episode number 25. If this
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  is your first time stopping by, consider yourself invited. Grab a seat, something to drink, and
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  get comfortable. A new Saints story lands here every Thursday. Before we get to Mary, a quick
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  thank you. On Tuesday, I put out my second special episode. This one's all about where Halloween,
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  All Saints Day, and All Souls Day came from. If you missed it, it's waiting in your feed
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  and it's a lighter listen than most. And one small favor, wherever you listen, please tap
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  the follow or subscribe, depending on your app. It's free, it takes one tap, and it helps new
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  people find the show. Okay, that's the whole shameless ask. I already feel slightly cleaner.
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  Now, this week we are back to a known saint, and I'm guessing you know her face better than
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  you know most of your neighbors. Catholics call her the Blessed Virgin Mary or Our Lady.
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  For this episode, we'll just call her Mary. Here's how this is going to work. Almost everything
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  we can say with real confidence about Mary comes from a few pages of the gospels, which are
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  the four early accounts of Jesus's life, plus one verse in the book of Acts. Those writers
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  weren't writing her biography though. They were telling a bigger story and Mary shows up where
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  she matters to it. Mary says surprisingly little in the gospels and when she does speak, it's
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  usually short. So we will walk through those scenes one at a time. Along the way, you're
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  gonna run into a couple familiar faces. St. Joseph, whose story we told in episode 17,
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  and St. Peter all the way back from episode one. Then we will look at what people added
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  later and sort out what's tradition and what's legend. Our first scene is in Nazareth, a small
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  village in Galilee in what's now northern Israel. Luke's gospel tells us Mary is engaged to a
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  man named Joseph. Now, back then being engaged was a legal formal commitment that came before
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  a wedding, not just simply a promise. Then an angel named Gabriel shows up and greets her.
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  And here's what I love about this scene. Luke says Mary was greatly troubled by the greeting
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  and she stopped to think about what it could mean. The first thing she does when an angel
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  appears is not faint or be shocked. She thinks. Gabriel tells her that she's going to have
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  a son and that he will be called the son of the Most High. Mary asks a question. How can
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  this be since I have no husband? It's a fair question. Gabriel answers that the Holy Spirit
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  will come upon her. He also mentions her relative Elizabeth. who is expecting a child in her
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  old age, and he says nothing is impossible for God. Now notice something, Gabriel never actually
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  asks, will you do this? He announces what God is going to do, but Mary answers anyway. She
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  says she's the Lord's servant and let it be to me according to your word. Christians have
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  long read that as her yes. a free answer to a message that didn't strictly need one. And
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  that scene is called the Annunciation, which just means the announcement. And here's what
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  Luke doesn't tell us. He doesn't say how old she was or what she looked like or what her
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  family thought. Now, we'll come back to that. Right after that, Luke says Mary went with
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  haste to the hill country of Judea to visit Elizabeth. Luke calls Elizabeth her relative,
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  but he doesn't say exactly how they are related. When she arrives, Elizabeth greets her with
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  a joy that honestly sounds like relief. Two women, both with surprising news, finally getting
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  to say it out loud to someone who believes them. And Mary answers with a song. It's called the
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  Magnificat, because that's the first word in the Latin version, and it means magnifies.
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  You'd expect a gentle lullaby, it isn't one. The song says God has scattered the proud,
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  brought rulers down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. It says the hungry get filled
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  and the rich get sent away empty. Coming from a young woman in a nowhere village, that's
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  a pretty bold song. Luke says she stayed about three months. Now we get to the birth of Jesus,
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  the story we now call Christmas. Matthew and Luke seem to tell it differently, so I have
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  to be upfront about this. Luke tells the story mostly through Mary. Matthew tells it mostly
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  through Joseph. So don't forget to go back to episode 17 to get the Joseph story in deeper
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  detail. Luke has the Emperor's census, the trip to Bethlehem, the manger, and the shepherds.
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  Matthew has Joseph's dilemma, an angel in a dream, wise men from the East, a jealous king.
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  and a flight to Egypt. You won't find the shepherds and the wise men in the same gospel. People
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  have argued for centuries about how the two fit together, and we are not going to settle
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  it today. So we will tell each one in its own voice. So here's Luke's version. An emperor
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  orders a census. So Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem. There she gives birth, wraps
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  the baby, and lays him in a manger. a feeding trough for animals, because there was no place
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  for them in the guest's lodging where travelers usually stayed. Shepherds arrive with a story
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  about angels, and then Luke gives us one of the most important sentences about Mary in
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  the whole Bible. He says she, treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart.
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  Hold on to that sentence, we are going to hear it again. Here's Matthew's version. and it
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  starts with Joseph. If you've listened to episode 17, you have already heard his side of this.
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  He finds out Mary is expecting and he knows he isn't the father. So he decides to quietly
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  end the engagement because he doesn't want to shame her. Then an angel appears to him in
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  a dream and tells him to take Mary as his wife. He does. Luke gives us another scene. When
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  the baby is brought to the temple in Jerusalem, An elderly man named Simeon takes him in his
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  arms and thanks God. Then he turns to Mary with a warning. He says a sword will pierce her
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  own soul too. Think about that. It's supposed to be a joyful ceremony and a stranger tells
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  a new mother that she's going to be hurt. Luke doesn't say how she reacted. He just moves
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  on. But remember that sword. It was as well comes back. Matthew's version has its own danger.
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  Wise men from the East come looking for a newborn king, and King Herod is not happy about it.
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  An angel warns Joseph in a dream, and the family flees to Egypt. They return after Herod dies,
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  and they settle in Nazareth. The next time we see Mary, Jesus is 12. His family travels to
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  Jerusalem every year for the festival of Passover. And this time, on the way home, they discover
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  he isn't with the group. They go back and search for three days, three long days. There's no
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  phones, no group chat, no tracking app, just a caravan of people and a lot of panic. They
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  finally find him in the temple, sitting with the teachers, asking questions. And Mary does
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  what any parent would do. She says, son, why have you treated us like this? Your father
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  and I have been searching for you anxiously. Anyone who has ever lost a kid in a store knows
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  that tone and that feeling. Jesus answers that he had to be in his father's house. And Luke
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  adds a line that I find strangely comforting. He says they did not understand what he said
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  to them. Then Jesus goes home with them and Luke says it again. His mother treasured all
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  these things in her heart. That's twice now. Luke wants us to notice it. After that, the
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  gospels go quiet for years. Nothing about Mary until Jesus is a grown man. And notice who's
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  missing. Joseph doesn't appear in the story again after that trip to Jerusalem. And the
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  Bible never says what happened to him. If you want more on Joseph, that's episode 17. When
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  she shows up again, it's at a wedding in a village called Cana. John's gospel says Mary was there.
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  And then Jesus and his disciples were also invited. During the party, the wine runs out, which
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  in that culture would have embarrassed the host family. Mary takes notice. She tells her son
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  they have no wine. His answer is a little puzzling. He says, it's not his time yet. And Mary doesn't
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  argue. She turns to the servants and says, do whatever he tells you. Jesus has them fill
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  six huge stone jars with water. It becomes wine. and the man in charge of the feast says, the
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  best was saved for last. John calls it the first of Jesus' signs, and those words to the servants
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  are the last words Mary speaks in any of the gospels. Then we come to the scene nobody wants
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  to read. John's gospel says that standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother and several
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  other women, including Mary Magdalene. John doesn't tell us what Mary said. He doesn't
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  describe her face. He just says she was there. And the word he uses is standing. Remember
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  Simeon's warning from the temple all those years earlier, the sword has come. Then Jesus in
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  agony looks at his mother and at a disciple standing next to her. He says to her, woman,
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  behold your son. He says to the disciple, behold your mother. And John writes that from that
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  hour, The disciple took her into his own home. At the very least, it's a son making sure his
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  mother is looked after, even as he is dying. Just think about that. In the worst hour of
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  his life, he's thinking about where she's going to live. And notice she wasn't alone. John
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  names other women standing with her. Most of us have been in a room where there's nothing
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  to say and nothing to fix. and the only thing left to do is stay. That's what these few verses
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  describe. After Jesus is raised from the dead, the Book of Acts says, his followers go back
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  to Jerusalem and gather in an upstairs room and they spend their time in prayer. And in
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  the list of people who are there, Acts names the women and then it says, and marry the mother
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  of Jesus. And this is just weeks after the cross. Peter, whose story we told in episode one,
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  is in that same room. He had denied even knowing Jesus, and now he's praying alongside Jesus'
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  mother. That is the last time the New Testament mentions her by name. She isn't at a podium.
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  She isn't giving instructions. She's in a room full of people praying as one of them. So,
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  That's what the first century sources give us, and it's not much. Even Paul, who writes more
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  of the New Testament than anyone, says only that Jesus was born of a woman. He never names
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  her. But people wanted to know more, so stories kind of grew. In the second century, a writing
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  now called the Gospel of James gave her a backstory with a birth story, a childhood, and names
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  for her parents. The church never included it in the Bible, but some of its details stuck.
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  Later writers described the end of her life in detail, though none of those accounts appear
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  until centuries after she lived. We'll look at one of them in a minute. But in the year
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  431, a gathering of bishops at the city of Ephesus affirmed that Mary could be called Theotokos,
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  a Greek word that means God-bearer. The point of that title was mostly to say something about
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  who Jesus is. If her child is truly God, then she's the Mother of God. The Catholic Church
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  also teaches that Mary was conceived without sin, which is called the Immaculate Conception
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  and was officially defined in 1854. And it teaches that at the end of her life, she was taken
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  into heaven, called the Assumption. defined in 1950. The Orthodox honor her deeply too,
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  though they don't define those teachings the same way, and Protestants vary widely. We don't
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  have to settle all that here. And now it's time for truth or legend. Claim number one, Mary's
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  parents were named Joachim and Anne. All right, got it, pick. Neither name appears anywhere
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  in the gospels. They come from that second century writing. the Gospel of James. Plenty of Christians
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  have honored them for centuries and that's fine. But my verdict is tradition, not scripture.
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  It's not provable, but it might not be nonsense either. Claim number two. Mary was 14 when
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  Jesus was born. Locked in? The Bible never gives her age. People estimate it would, from the
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  marriage customs of the time, which would suggest she would be a young teenager. That's a reasonable
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  guess, but exactly 14 has no source. My verdict is legend. A good guess wearing a fax close.
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  Claim number three. Mary died in Ephesus, a little stone house that you can visit today.
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  The house was identified in 1891 after a German mystic described it in visions. The oldest
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  traditions about the end of Mary's life place it in Jerusalem, and even those stories weren't
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  written down until several centuries later. Many pilgrims visit the house today, and I'm
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  not here to take that away from anyone, but the history behind the identification is thin.
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  My verdict is legend. Claim number four. Mary is mentioned more often in the Quran than in
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  the entire New Testament. That one is true, surprisingly. She's named about 34 times in
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  the Quran and one whole chapter is named after her. The New Testament names her around 29
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  times, depending on how you count. So my verdict is true. All right, back to the porch. So grab
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  that refill if necessary. Here's what I can't stop thinking about. Remember that sentence
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  from Luke that Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart? Look at the scenes
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  where he says it. Mary does not understand them yet. She's troubled by the angel. She's warned
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  about a sword. She's baffled by her 12 year old. And later at the cross, there aren't even
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  words. That's what I find most human about her. The gospels don't describe someone with all
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  the answers. They describe someone paying attention. And what does she do? She doesn't pretend to
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  understand. She doesn't walk away either. She keeps it. She carries it. And she keeps showing
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  up. Most of us don't get explanation for the hardest things in our lives. A diagnosis, a
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  job. that disappears, a season of grief, a question we can't answer no matter how hard we pray.
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  And we usually think the only options are to figure it out or just quit. Mary shows a third
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  way. You can hold on to something you don't understand yet. You don't have to solve it
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  to stay in the room. And notice that she isn't alone in it. At the cross, there were other
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  women beside her. In the upper room, there was a whole crowd. Staying is easier with company.
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  And it's okay to let someone stay with you. And look at where she ends up. Not at a podium
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  in an upstairs room with a bunch of other people praying. Sometimes staying is the whole job.
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  So here's my challenge for the week. Pick one thing in your life you don't understand yet.
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  Now don't try to fix it. And don't try to explain it away. Just carry it. Say a prayer about
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  it. And then keep showing up. It is now time for the closing prayer. Lord, thank you for
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  Mary, who said yes without knowing where it would lead and who stayed when it hurt. For
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  anyone carrying something they don't understand yet, give them patience and give them company.
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  Help us to keep showing up and to trust that you are still at work in the things we can't
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  explain yet. Amen. Mary is honored under many titles and in many places around the world.
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  The church celebrates her as the mother of God every year on January 1st. Well, that is episode
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  number 25. If her story stuck with you, send it to somebody who could use the reminder that
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  you don't have to understand something to stay with it. And if you haven't tapped follow yet,
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  that was a pretty good time. So the next story. and the next special episode show up in your
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  library on their own. Next week, we are back to an unknown saint, one who was shut out of
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  the church by her own bishop, welcomed back, and is now her country's first saint. I'm John
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  O'Connor. Thanks for sitting on the porch with me, and I will see you next week.