For those who didn’t watch the video, here’s the text in question: One time I was talking to a Catholic woman, when we had a Russian church. That woman, she came from Moscow. … She was Catholic. And she was uplifting Mary very highly. I thought to myself, I have to talk to her about this. And you know what? I said, Let me take you further than the Book of Acts. Let me take you further than anywhere that Jesus said blessed art thou among women. She says, Where? I said, Let me take you to John 1. I said, Can you find Mary here? Let’s read together: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. I said, Where is Mary here? ‘The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him and without him was not a thing made was that was made.’ I said, Do you see any Mary here? She said no. So why do you uplift Mary more than Jesus? He is God. He is the Word that brought liberty to every mankind. Hallelujah. His basic contention is that you can’t find Mary in John 1, and we shouldn’t life up Mary more highly than Jesus, and we can’t use Luke 1 to justify uplifting Mary because we should go to John 1 instead.
The first problem with this is that we don’t uplift Mary more highly than Jesus. In Catholic theology, Mary is an exalted creature, but still a creature. So we don’t worship Mary or uplift her more highly than Jesus.
Regarding whether Mary is in John 1, Mary is part of that in several ways. First, look at verse 14: “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” How do you think He became flesh except by Mary? But the video says, Well, Jesus is there from verse 1. Yes, that’s because Jesus is God and verses 1-4 are about God. The video wants to prove that Mary isn’t important because she isn’t in those four verses. So does that mean if I could find four verses that don’t mention Jesus, I could say that Jesus isn’t important because He isn’t mentioned in every verse of the Bible? Of course not. The Bible doesn’t have to say Mary is important in every single passage, it just has to say it, and then we know it’s true.
The final problem is this: he doesn’t want you to use Luke 1. I can see why. Luke 1 praises Mary many, many times:
Luke 1:28 – “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!”
Luke 1:28 – “Blessed are you among women!”
Luke 1:42 – “Blessed are you among women!”
Luke 1:45 – “Blessed is she who believed!”
Luke 1:48 – “All generations will call me blessed.”
Luke 1:49 – “For the Almighty has done great things for me.”
Luke 1:43 – “And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”
Luke 1:46 – “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”
Luke 1:48 – “He has regarded the lowly estate of His handmaid.”
Luke 1:38 – “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done unto me according to thy Word.”
You shouldn’t stop using Luke 1 merely because he says you shouldn’t. If he is a Christian, he will acknowledge that Luke 1 is as much a part of the Bible as John 1 is. And if you can read Luke 1 and not get the impression that Mary is important, then you’ve got a problem.
Apart from Luke 1, there’s a bunch of evidence that we should honor Mary. St. John wrote about his vision of Mary in heaven in Revelation 12:1-6, and if you notice, he saw her as wearing a crown, and robed in the splendor of the sun, standing aloft on the moon, and with the stars about her head – a very uplifted image, if you think about it. And that’s very biblical too, because Psalms 45 foresaw that a queen would stand in heaven beside Jesus (verse 9), and that she would leave Judaism for Christianity (verse 10), and worship Christ the King as her lord (verse 11), and be prayed to for help (verse 12), and that she would be glorious, in robes of gold and many other colors (verses 13-14), and that communities of virgins would honor her (verses 14-15).
The early Christians had a special reverence for Mary’s role in the history of our redemption, and they talked about it in their writings. St. Paul is their precursor in this, because he wrote of Mary’s role in Galatians 4:4-5. Luke 2:34-35 indicates that Jesus’ death is what opens the way for us to be saved, and Mary’s shared sufferings are what opens our hearts to the influence of God. That’s a very important role to play and it is given to Mary. John 19:25-27 indicates that Jesus wants His disciples to look upon Mary as their mother, and treat her as our own. That also indicates that we should honor her.
These are just a few of the reasons the Bible gives for honoring Mary very highly. And if God didn’t want us honoring Mary, he wouldn’t have put all these things in the Bible. Catholics uplift Mary because the Bible says to, and we don’t have to be afraid to use it to defend that.
