A New Creation
Woman
This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
Jesus’ testimony about his mother is amazing. He calls her “Woman.” This is among the greatest proclamations about who Mary is, along with the Angel’s salutation at the annunciation and Elizabeth’s proclamation when filled with the Holy Spirit at her visitation. Since ancient days, Woman is a glorious title.
Let us remember, in the context of ancient Israel, “Woman” was the highest praise that could be bestowed on a female. Woman is the title of female perfection. Woman is the name uttered by the first man upon seeing his beautiful bride in paradise. Woman is the crown of God’s creation. Woman is the glory of humanity, the only helper that completes man. Yes, before sin entered the world, when all was proclaimed “very good,” Woman was the name of the sinless female in paradise.
In a world not under the influence of sin, Woman is her name.
According to the sacred stories, only after the fall into sin and death and the consequence of painful childbirth is Woman given a new name. After the fall, when sin enters the world, the first woman is named Eve, ‘mother of all living.’ But before sin came into the world, Woman was her name.
And that context is critical to understanding Jesus’s proclamation about his mother.
Here, Christ our Savior, is highlighting for his disciples regarding his mother – “this is perfect female, this is Woman, the crown of creation, our New Eve.” But rather than ramble on with many words, Jesus uses a poet’s brevity to communicate these truths about his mother when he simply says “Woman.”
And with incredible storytelling efficiency, Saint John leverages common phrases to their culture to impart many truths to the readers of the story. Let us revisit the beginning of the story and hear these words by the grace of the Holy Spirit,
On the third day, there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him, “they have no wine. And Jesus said to her, “O Woman, what is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
In almost unfathomable storytelling efficiency, Saint John the Evangelist has told this story in a way that easily communicates the four Marian dogmas believed and taught by the Catholic church! Rather than explicitly writing out the story in a way that says Mary was Immaculately Conceived (1854), Ever-Virgin (533), the Mother of God (431), and Assumed into Heaven (1950), with all the scriptural reasons to communicate these things, Saint John has chosen storytelling efficiency and beauty to hide those insights in plain sight. He said, “mother of Jesus.” In another place, simply “woman.” Poet of poets, storyteller of storytellers, John writes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to record for all posterity truths about the kingdom of heaven and the mother of our Lord. Truths that continue to be understood and preserved by the Church two thousand years later!
Let’s consider how all this is communicated in the short story of the wedding at Cana and begin by considering the first two stories in Genesis. For the efficiency of the story is dependent on leveraging cultural tropes embedded in the ancient stories.
The first story of Genesis tells the story of the first week of creation and culminates with God creating man in his own image. Moses wrote, “In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.” After giving brief instructions to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion,” the sixth day ends shortly after, which is the end of the workweek.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
Thus, the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. So, God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation.
Now, immediately after this story we have the second story of creation, which tells the same story but from a different point of view. The second story brings into focus the story of humanity. The story tells us that “the Lord God formed man of dust form the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” A little later, the story continues,
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Paradise to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “you may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Then the Lord God said, “it is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Only, at first, God formed the beasts of the field and birds of the air and brought them before the man. The man, Adam, gave names to all the living creatures, and yet there was not a suitable helper fit for him. There was not yet a helper who would truly help him fulfill the original command, “be fruitful and multiply.”
So, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
This is the peak of the original creation. The next story chronicles the fall of Man (‘Adam’), which happens when Adam fails in his duty to serve and protect his wife and Satan deceives the Woman. The holy couple eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree and introduce sin to mankind. Saint Paul would elegantly summarize in his letter to the Romans,
Therefore, as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
Now, once sin came into the world, as told in chapter three of Genesis, we have the first promise of the coming of the Woman and her Seed. For the Lord God said to the serpent (revealed to be Satan),
Because you have done this (meaning tempted and deceived Eve),
cursed are you above all cattle, and above all wild animals;
upon your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the Woman,
and between your seed and her Seed.
He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
After this encounter, Adam renamed the Woman to Eve (‘mother of all living’), and the Ancient Israelites begin chronicling the various covenants, promises, and prophecies of God’s promise of salvation through the Woman and her Seed. Ultimately, those promises were awaiting the fulfillment of the words spoke to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the Woman, and between your seed and her Seed.”
Obvious to Christians today, Eve’s sons Able and Seth are only minor fulfillments of a greater fulfillment to come, similar to how we discussed the sons of David, specifically Absalom and Solomon, where minor fulfillments of a greater fulfillment to come. Or, as Saint Paul better states it, they were simply a “type of the one to come.”
One such prophecy that continued to expand on the original promise of the Woman and her Seed comes from the Book of Jeremiah. The Prophet Jeremiah writes eloquently of the New and Eternal Covenant to come. So critical to the story of the Virgin with Child that the evangelist Saint Matthew quotes not only from Isaiah but also Jeremiah, acknowledging the slaughter of the innocents as fulfillment of a prophecy from Jeremiah,
A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more.
But Jeremiah had even more prophecies of the New and Eternal Covenant. And while in the original covenant of creation, Woman was fashioned from the side of Man while he slept, in the New and Eternal Covenant would have a new thing, a Virgin with Child, specifically, Woman would encompass Man. This would be a new thing on the earth, fulfilled only when “virgin Israel” returns to the Lord after exile. Let us hear Jeremiah’s prophecies in light of the New Covenant, seeing how Mother Mary and her Son Jesus are hidden in this key Old Testament prophecy from Jeremiah,
Set up waymarks for yourself,
make yourself guideposts;
consider well the highway,
The road by which you went.
Return o’ virgin Israel,
return to these your cities.
How long will you waver,
O faithless daughter?
For the Lord has created a new thing on the earth:
a woman encompasses a man.
Woman encompasses man when man is fashioned in his mother’s womb. In the Old Covenant, Woman comes from the side of Man; in the New Covenant, Woman encompasses Man. Or, in other words, a Virgin is with Child, a Woman and her Seed.
The Old Testament fulfillment of the bride of Christ is still that she would come from his side during his sleep of death, like the Church birthed from his side while the bridegroom is crucified, but the new Eve is not the bride of Christ. Instead, the New Eve is the mother of our Lord, identified by Jesus at the wedding of Cana as well as on the cross, repeatedly referring to his mother not as “mom” but as “Woman.”
Other prophets made powerful prophecies of Mother Mary, whether in the Psalms, the major and minor Prophets, or throughout the Law, and time fails us to consider each one in depth. These are sufficient for us to now return to the Evangelist’s story.
Consider anew, dear Reader, with the memory and echo in your mind of the stories of Genesis and prophecies of the Prophets how powerful it is that the evangelist Saint John the Beloved concludes his new creation account with the wedding of Cana.
On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus was also invited to the marriage, with his disciples. When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him, “they have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “O woman, what is that to you or to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
The King listens to his Queen Mother, so Jesus performs a miracle, telling the servants to fill six stone jars, used for rites of purification, with water and draw it out for the steward of the feast. A miraculous transformation occurs, of water into wine, foreshadowing a greater miracle to come when wine becomes blood. And so, “when the steward tasted the water now become wine” he didn’t know where it had come from, and praised the bridegroom for waiting till the end to serve the good wine. Saint John’s new creation account ends with this summary, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”
Again, this story alone is enough to deduce the Marian dogmas that should be believed by all Christians, especially when combined with the other gospels and the rest of the bible. Let’s consider them one by one – Immaculately Conceived, Ever Virgin, Mother of Jesus, and Assumed into Heaven.
Christ calls her “Woman,” not mother or even Mary. In fact, the evangelist is so careful to highlight this that throughout his gospel he identifies her not as Mary but as mother of Jesus in the story. Christ’s testimony about his own mother’s perfection is enough, but lest we think Saint John is the only one of the gospel writers to note Mary’s sinlessness, let those with ears to hear, hear Saint Luke’s account for a second testimony,
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
An angel sent from God honors Mary has “full of grace.” Full of grace means without sin. Grace covers sin. To be full of grace is to cover all sin, and maintains a state of perpetual purity. For Protestants, if there is little hope that the mother of God could be preserved perpetually pure by the greatness of her Son and Savior, what hope of purity in heaven have we? Surely, the Queen of Heaven is able to be pure forever, as a model and hope of us who hope to be made worthy of the promises of Christ – she preserved pure by her Son and Savior, we made pure by our Bridegroom and Beloved.
And not that we need to add to the testimony of Jesus, but why neglect other testimonies, like that of the angel who stands in the throne room of God? Especially when that testimony is available and preserved in sacred scripture? And so, we have the testimonies of how Saint John and Saint Luke fashion their stories to highlight Mother Mary’s sinlessness, as well as the testimony of the Angel Gabriel, sent from God, and the testimony of Jesus, our Lord and Savior who we can trust to speak truth to us.
And so, the angel says “Hail” – and highlights her status as royalty, the Queen Mother to our savior.
Also, the angel calls her “full of grace” – highlighting her sinlessness as the new Eve. For if God created the original Adam and Eve without sin, could he not likewise ensure the new Eve and the last Adam where without sin as well? By all means, it is right and fitting that he does so. Otherwise, are we saying the Old Covenant is greater than the new? No, of course not, the New Covenant is the better covenant. And so, our Eve of the New Covenant is able to obey voice of the angel, give flesh to the word of the Lord, and obey God completely. Our Eve is perpetually pure, like the saints in heaven.
And to be full of grace, called “Woman” to mark her being free from sin, when preserved for the honor to bear the divine Son of God, it is easy to understand how it is that she would be immaculately conceived. These are simple principles applied from both the Old and New Testament scriptures, as well as testimony from those closest to our Father – his Son, angels who stand in the throne room of God, and the great prophets who chronicled his promises across the ages.
Again, when we line up the testimony of the angel Gabriel and the testimony of Jesus, we see consistency that the New and Old Testament scriptures are clearly consistent with Church teaching, Mary is immaculately conceived, saved from sin from conception until eternity. Whereas the first Eve gave into the temptations of the fallen angel, the new Eve would be found faithfully obedient to the word of the Lord, stating simply, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word.” Or as Jesus would simply confirm, “Woman” – sinless female perfection.
In fact, there is not scripture or prophecy that can accuse Mother Mary of sin. In fact, accusing our Mother of sin is the work of the devil. Mary, mother of the light, is pure and holy and preserved from the stain of sin, saved by her Son in order to be a holy vessel and home for him within her womb.
And if the ark of the covenant, an Old Testament type of Mary, was so holy that it could not be touched lest death come to those who would violate the command of God, how much greater is the New Testament fulfillment? No wonder holy Saint Joseph was so reverent of his holy wife, the spouse of the holy Spirit, that he had to pray and consider how to handle the situation with his betrothed.
This is why the gospel writer Saint Matthew is so careful to tell us Saint Joseph’s reaction,
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to send her away quietly. But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:
“Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and his name shall be called EmManuel” which means God with us.
Of course, Saint Joseph had to reflect on the right way to handle the news that his betrothed was with child by the Holy Spirit. He resolved to divorce her quietly because he took this as a sign that she was spouse to the holy Spirit. That possibly her becoming his betrothed was a mistake. Could it be they hadn’t discerned the will of God accurately? He had no category for how to handle this situation, much like Mary had to ask the Angel Gabriel, “how will this be since I know not man?” To guide Joseph, once again, the angel Gabriel was sent to confirm, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” These mysteries of our new creation story, at times, had to be clarified not only by looking into the prophecies of the Old Testament, but clarified by messages directly from an angel of God.
Now, if she is with child by the holy Spirit, one can logically deduce that Joseph understood his role as protector and caretaker, and why Mary would remain Ever Virgin. For while she was his earthly wife, she was queen of a heavenly kingdom and spouse of the holy Spirit. Christ would confirm to his disciples while explaining the indissolubility of marriage, “and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it.” Some are made eunuchs (that is, celibate) for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus had a living example of earthly parents living as heavenly saints, pure and chaste.
Now, mother of Jesus is enough to satisfy the dogma Mother of God. It’s simple logical reasoning, a syllogism. Jesus is God. Mary is the mother of Jesus. Therefore, Mary is the mother of God. Not mother of the trinity, but mother of Jesus. To deny this straightforward logic and teaching is to deny the divinity of Christ. The dogmas about Mary are more about Jesus than they are about Mary. They preserve the teaching of his divine nature. Every dogma of Mary is ultimately about the greatness of her Son.
Finally, the fourth dogma, that Mother Mary is assumed into heaven. It is only right and fitting that when the Queen Mother of the kingdom of heaven had ended her earthly sojourn, she was assumed into the throne room of God and seated with her Son. There is scriptural evidence in how King Solomon received his Queen Mother, how would Christ not do more than the one who prefigured him? Or do you think the stories of the Old Covenant have nothing to do with the New? Of course not!
And the king rose to meet her, and bowed down to her. Then he sat her on his throne, and had a seat brought for the king’s mother; and she sat on his right.
Throughout the Old Testament stories of the good kings of Israel and later Judah, the scripture writers always let us know who the mother of the Judean kings are. Likewise, Saint John continues this tradition of identifying the Queen Mother by saying to the one whom Jesus refers to as “Woman” is the mother of Jesus. Moreover, the way Mother Mary advocates for the wedding party, we see her behaving as a good Queen Mother, bringing the needs of the people before their king. A great advocate for the people before our King, Christ our Savior. More even, as Jesus performs this miracle, we have the first of his signs where Jesus “manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” In a very powerful way, Mother Mary helps inaugurate the kingdom of her heavenly Son.
Catholic dogmas about Mary are simply to preserve and protect the truth about her son, Jesus. The Church, as Saint Paul preached, is the “pillar and bulwark of truth.” And so, if the truth is assailed by various protests and protestations, including protestations against the Ever-Virgin, Immaculately Conceived, Mother of God who is assumed into heaven all because of the Savior’s greatness, it is up to the Church to protect the truth about the mother of Jesus. And sometimes, that protection means a teaching will have to be clarified or possibly even defined years after the truth was revealed. Not that it is a new truth, but that it has to be taught anew for the heretics have assailed the truth with lies, much like the devil created doubt in our first parents, today, heretics create doubt in a world confused about the greatness of our beloved Bridegroom and Savior. Part of the redemption of our world is that the Church preserves the word of God for the world to know. And that requires protecting the truth about Mary, because ultimately, she is here to birth Jesus in the world and in our hearts.
And so, Mother Mary, pray for us, that we may bear the light of Christ in our hearts as you bore him in your womb. Highest of all creatures, may we know you better to know your Son more.
And may you, dear Reader, remember that among many other things, as the first Eve grabbed fruit from the tree to her own delight, the last Eve noted wine from the vine was lacking at the wedding celebration. While the first Eve was tempted by the serpent and ate, the last Eve heard the voice of the angel and obeyed. The first Eve sought after her own needs; the last Eve served those in need. The first Eve lacked faith and disobeyed the word of God, the new Eve had faith and trusted the word made flesh, her son. And while the first Eve was the mother of all living, the new Eve is the mother of the Church, mother of all those birthed into eternity, the brethren of Christ who are the sons of Mary.