thank you. this is the approach that I was looking for. you did a fine job of explaining what she could have been thinking about. i appreciate your effort. thank you.
I hesitated because the subject is so big.
One could start at Genesis 1 and work through the whole Old Testament, finding all the prophecies about the Messiah and the fullfillment of the Davidic Kingdom, and Mary might or might not have been taught most, or even all of it.
And the OT is a Jewish book. It is Hebrew storytelling and Hebrew poetry. We have to understand, as you have so rightly pointed out in your first post, the cultural implications of what the texts mean. Your observation there is very insightful, and spot on. We have to read the scriptures through the eyes of a Jew, thinking like a Jew in the first century.
Even the word “Redemption” has a meaning we have lost, because we no longer understand what it means to be redeemed from a debtor’s prison and thereby become a slave or a servant of the one who redeemed us.
There were also various sects, each of which believed different things, similar to today’s denominations. The Sadduces for example, rejected all but the first five books of the Bible.
My point is that it is extremely difficult to know what she would have understood with any certainty, but one thing is absolutely crystal clear to me - her trust in God was several orders of magnituted more valuable than her understanding.
How can this be?
I can see my Holy Mother, my Queen and my Empress Mary shaking her head, not in disbelief, but perplexed, struggling to understand. She is told by the angel that God himself will make it happen, and that,
"the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God", and not only that, but that her barren and elderly cousin had conceieved. She travels
with haste to her cousin, and when greeted, the lack of understanding she carried on that journey pours forth in the Magnificat.
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.
(Luke 1:46-55)
Mary pours out the Magnificat, in the realization that what had been promised to Israel for so long had become reality, in the realization that, as Blessed Pope John Paul II put it, “The whole salvific economy was concentrated inside of her.”
That Mary knew and understood the scriptures is beyond a shadow of a doubt. Read
1 Samuel 2:1-11. It gives me a lump in my throat to read it.
Mary may not have fully understood at the annunciation, asking, “How can this be?”, but she trusted. That’s the lesson I want to learn, that while the whole world struggles to understand, Mary didn’t worry about that, but trusted instead, and the savior and redeemer of creation was born of her trust.
That’s what I want, to trust God, just like Mary.
-Tim-
