Problem with the woman in Revelations

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FuzzyBunny116

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How can the woman in Revelations 12:2 be Mary? It reads

1A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.

Mary was born without orginal sin, so why would childbirth give her pain?
 
Hi FB116,

Sorry to do a hit and run link in response to your question but. . . .see catholic.com/thisrock/1997/9705chap.asp for a great article addressing this.

The woman in Revelations has several meanings, and one is Mary. Another is Israel (under the old covenant) that was in travail as it brought forth Christ.

What do you think? Does that help at all?
 
Perhaps this commentary from the Navarre Bible may be helpful:
The mysterious figure of the woman has been interpreted ever since the time of the Fathers of the Church as referring to the ancient people of Israel, or the Church of Jesus Christ, or the Blessed Virgin.
The text supports all of these interpretations but in none do all the
details fit. The woman can stand for the people of Israel, for it is
from that people that the Messiah comes, and Isaiah compares Israel to “a woman with child, who writhes and cries out in her pangs when she is near her time” (Is 26:17).
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She can also stand for the Church, whose children strive to overcome evil and to bear witness to Jesus Christ (cf. v. 17). Following this interpretation St Gregory wrote: “The sun stands for the light of truth, and the moon for the transitoriness of temporal things; the holy Church is clothed like the sun because she is protected by the splendor of supernatural truth, and she has the moon under her feet because she is above all earthly things” (“Moralia”, 34, 12).
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The passage can also refer to the Virgin Mary because it was she who truly and historically gave birth to the Messiah, Jesus Christ our Lord (cf. v. 5). St Bernard comments: “The sun contains permanent color and splendor; whereas the moon’s brightness is unpredictable and changeable, for it never stays the same. It is quite right, then, for Mary to be depicted as clothed with the sun, for she entered the profundity of divine wisdom much further than one can possibly conceive” (“De B. Virgine”, 2).
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In his account of the Annunciation, St Luke sees Mary as representing the faithful remnant of Israel; the angel greets her with the greeting given in Zephaniah 3:15 to the daughter of Zion (cf. notes on Lk 1:26- 31). St Paul in Galatians 4:4 sees a woman as the symbol of the Church, our mother; and non-canonical Jewish literature contemporary with the Book of Revelation quite often personifies the community as a woman. So, the inspired text of the Apocalypse is open to interpreting this woman as a direct reference to the Blessed Virgin who, as mother, shares in the pain of Calvary (cf. Lk 2:35) and who was earlier prophesied in Isaiah 7:14 as a “sign” (cf. Mt 1:22-23). At the same time the woman can be interpreted as standing for the people of God, the Church, whom the figure of Mary represents.
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Awesome Fidelis! Thanks.

You have the Navaree bible online somewhere, or did you type that in?!
 
Sin has consequences that effect more than the individual sinner.
 
Verbum Caro:
Awesome Fidelis! Thanks.

You have the Navaree bible online somewhere, or did you type that in?!
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I belong to a daily e-mail subsciption service that gives you the Navarre Bible commentary for the daily and Sunday readings. I’ve been collecting them all on one document for a couple of years so I can copy and paste (I also have all the hard volumes).

To subscribe, go here:
SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE by clicking on either one or both of the following links:
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Regular “Daily Word For Reflection”:
groups-beta.google.com/group/CIN-Daily-Word
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Week-Ahead “Daily Word For Reflection”:
groups-beta.google.com/group/CINDailyWordWeekAhead
The “Daily Word For Reflection” is a free service and a non-discussion list intended primarily towards personal reflection on the Word of God.
It was begun in 1992 as an electronic evangelization ministry in
Silicon Valley, San Francisco Bay Area, California, U.S.A.
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The “Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries” is available from:
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Scepter Publishers
scepterpublishers.org/product/index.php
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Genesis 3:16 does not say that if Eve had not sinned she would not have had any pain in childbearing. Rather, it says that the pain she would have had was now greatly multiplied because of her sin. So, there is no reason to believe that the childbearing of the sinless Blessed Virgin Mary would have been completely without pain but rather that her pain in childbearing was much less than a woman laboring under the effects of Original Sin.

“To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children…’” (Gen 3:16)
 
The Revelation 12 “woman” is, indeed, Mary, at the plaintext level.

In my opinion, Mary suffered an incredibly painful birthing process. Read the Bible. It says so. In other words, *in spite of *Mary’s immaculate conception, Mary really suffered terribly, when Jesus was born. Also, read Wisdom 7:5, which says that “no king” – including presumably King Jesus – “has any different…birth.”
 
Based on my reading of the article on the Immaculate Conception in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Mary may well have experienced some pain in childbearing because, although her soul was free from all stain of original sin, her body was not exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam:
". . .was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin. . ." The formal active essence of original sin was not removed from her soul, as it is removed from others by baptism; it was excluded, it never was in her soul. Simultaneously with the exclusion of sin. The state of original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded. But she was not made exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam – from sorrow, bodily infirmities, and death.
Although she may have experienced pain in childbearing, the Church teaches that Mary delivered miraculously…Mary was a Virgin before, during, and after the birth of Jesus. The Protoevangelium of James, written about A.D. 120, describes both Mary’s labor pains and her miraculous delivery.
 
I’m reading Scott Hahn’s The Lamb’s Supper right now, and just got to this section last night (p78-79):

“The pangs of the woman, however, need not have been physical pain. St. Paul, for example, used birth pangs to describe his own agony until Christ be formed in his disciples (see Gal 4:19). Thus, the suffering of the woman could describe the suffering of a soul–the suffering that Mary knew, at the foot of the cross, as she became the mother of all “beloved disciples” (see Jn 19:25-27)”

Pete
 
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FuzzyBunny116:
How can the woman in Revelations 12:2 be Mary? It reads

1A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.

Mary was born without orginal sin, so why would childbirth give her pain?
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In his book Rapture, David B.Currie discusses the woman and many other prophesies in Revelation.
 
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