Did Jesus Downgrade
the Role of
His Mother?
“And it came to pass,
as He spoke these things,
a certain woman from the crowd,
lifting up her voice, said to Him:
‘Blessed is the Womb that bore Thee,
and the paps that gave Thee suck.’
But He said:
‘Yea, rather, blessed are they who
hear the Word of God, and keep it.’ ”
Luke 11:27-28
Most people are mistaken when they believe that this is a new “dogma” the Church made up in 1950. The 1st Millennium Church has long celebrated this feast since 451 A.D., almost 1,500 years previous to the declaration by Pius XII.
The difference is, of course, prior to 1950, if one were a Catholic and did not accept the Assumption of Mary Body and Soul into Heaven, it was not a mortal sin. Today, one cannot claim to be a Catholic and reject this great Universal Truth of the Church.
As we all know, for protest-ants, it is totally different. They claim there is no scriptural basis for this dogma — a fact we have often pointed out is wrong based on the Lord’s words that, “I tell you of a Truth: there are some standing here that shall not taste death …” (Luke 9:27), which we are certain is a direct reference to His Mother standing among those listening to our Lord preach!
In this darkened and perverted shadow world of how protest-ants — in their disdain for the Truth of Mary as their Queen and Mother — twist scriptural references to NEVER include Jesus’ Mother in a positive way outside of the fact that they believe She bore their Savior, we want, in honor of Mary’s Assumption, to discuss the incorrect interpretation of the verse we began this article with.
For Catholics, this verse from the Gospel of Luke is particularly perplexing when a protest-ant confronts one with what they claim is “scriptural evidence” that Mary has no special role as Jesus supposedly “proves” with these words.
Nothing could be farther from the Truth.
We have often spoke of how our Lord — as THE WORD — is the Master of language. He knows every nuance of every jot and tittle and no one can best Him when it comes to interpretation. Lest of all, a protest-ant!
In fact, many times the Lord — as He proved in His use of parables — tests even further the hearts and minds of people as to whether or not they truly love and want Him. Not as they decree, but as He decrees!
“ ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him ear.’
And His disciples came and said to Him:
‘Why speakest Thou to them in parables?’
Who answered and said to them:
‘Because to you it is given to know
the Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven:
but to them it is not given. …
Therefore do I speak to them in parables:
because seeing they see not,
and hearing they hear not,
neither do they understand.
And the prophecy of Isaias is fulfilled in them, who saith,
“By hearing you shall hear, and shall not understand:
and seeing you shall see, and shall not perceive.
For the heart of this people is grown gross
and with their ears they have been dull of hearing,
and their eyes they have shut:
lest at any time they should see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their heart
and be converted,
and I should heal them.” ’ ”
Matthew 13:9-11, 13-15
There is no greater test of a person’s love for Jesus than through their love for His Mother! Only a fool would believe that Jesus — who spent nine months in the Womb of Mary, a Woman who formed the Sacred Heart of our Savior that would pour forth Blood and Water as a Fountain of Mercy for us — does not put His Mother on a pedestal (anyone remember the Lord’s own Fourth Commandment?)!
Only a fool would believe that God — for Whom nothing is impossible — would let the Body of His Mother rot in the ground after She passed from this life.
Only a fool would take the verse from Luke that we quoted in the beginning and turn it into an anti-Mary diatribe by Her own Flesh and Blood, for to do so would in effect have our Lord breaking His own Commandment to honor His Mother!
So if the Lord was not deflecting praise of Mary in this verse, what was He doing?
One must have a heart that has not “grown gross” (“lacking sensitivity or discernment” in this context). One must not have a heart that has become “offensive” and “disgusting” to our Savior, in another context of this word.
One must, instead, not be “dull of hearing,” have their eyes “shut,” but have both senses open that they might “understand with their heart and be converted,” so that the Lord “should heal them.”
For there is a simple straightforward answer as to why Jesus uttered this parable to the woman who cried out from the crowd blessing Mary and bringing about the Words of our Lord. In the blessing of a woman with sin to the Woman conceived without sin, Jesus deflected her words for a specific reason.
The Lord does not wish for us to focus on the PHYSICAL nature of Mary!
Jesus, knowing full well the evil and perverted heart of mankind, did not want believers in Him to become enamored with honoring Mary’s womanhood. This was something the Lord wanted mankind to move away from — for in paganism, the sexual nature of women was celebrated much to the offense of God. (And is this not rearing its head again?)
It was not Mary’s Womb nor Her suckling of the Savior as a Child that Jesus wished us to focus on, praise, or perhaps, even to fall prey to worship. Rather it was Mary as our role model who heard “the Word of God, and keep it” — “pondering them in Her Heart.”
Luke 2:19
It was Mary as our Mother — not a physical “goddess” — that Jesus wanted us to focus on.
It is Mary as our Queen — the first believer in the King — that Jesus wants us to continue to focus on.
It is the praise, worship and honor of the Fruit of Her Womb that we are to bless.
But instead, the Lord’s Words — by those with “gross” hearts — have been twisted to make the King appear to be against His own Queen, even though He specifically states that “Every kingdom divided against itself shall be made desolate” Matthew 12:25. In this same chapter, Jesus warns us to “either make the tree good and its fruit good: or make the tree evil, and its fruit evil. For by the fruit the tree is known” Matthew 12:33.
Is Mary’s Fruit good or evil? Is Mary, the Tree, good or evil? Those who disdain the Queenship of Mary, the Images of mankind’s Mother, and the dogmas of Mary have the audacity in their gross hearts to make the “fruit evil”!
No wonder Jesus said in the next warning, “O generation of vipers, how can you speak good things, whereas you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh!” Matthew 12:34.
If we, as believers, have any example how hard it is to truly comprehend the parables of Jesus, we only need to look to Mary as our role model, who with St. Joseph, when the Holy Child disappeared from them for three days in a great prophecy — telling His earthly parents that He “must be about My Father’s business” — the two closest people in the history of the world to Jesus “understood not the Word that He spoke unto them.”
Luke 2:49-50
How can those with “gross” hearts who prove this Truth by disdaining Mary claim to know what any Words of our Lord mean?
How can anyone who claims to be a follower of Mary allow themselves to be used, whether by linking their web sites to those who “protest” against Her, or engage in “ecumenical dialogue” at the expense of our Queen, claim to truly worship the Lord, the Fruit, and honor His Mother, the Tree?
As so often happens in the world of protest-ant-ism, a few lines of our Lord’s Words are taken out of context and most people do not realize the end of our God’s dissertation when He provides His creation with a lesson.
This is true in the case of Luke 11:27-28. For the Lord ends a lengthy discourse on the meaning of these parables with these Words:
“ ‘Have ye understood all these things?’
They say to Him: ‘Yes!’ …
And it came to pass: when Jesus
had finished these parables,
He passed from thence.
And coming into His own country,
He taught them in their synagogues,
so that they wondered and said:
‘How came this Man by this Wisdom and miracles?’
Is not this the carpenter’s Son?
Is not His Mother called Mary,
and His brethren James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Jude?’ …
And they were scandalized in His regard.
But Jesus said to them:
‘A prophet is not without honor,
save in his own country, and in his own house.’
And He wrought not many miracles there,
because of their unbelief.”
Matthew 13:51, 54-55, 57-58
Here, in the Scriptures, we see clearly who the “brothers” of the Lord are. For they are His “brethren” — “a person sharing a common ancestry, allegiance or purpose with another; a kinsman.”
A “kinsman,” a “male relative, sharing the same racial, cultural or national background with another.”
A “relative,” one “related to another by kinship.”
Etc., etc.
But nowhere does the meaning of the word “brethren” insist that two men have the same “biological” mother!
“And one said unto Him:
‘Behold, Thy Mother and Thy brethren stand without, seeking Thee.’
But He answering Him that told Him, said:
‘Who is My Mother, and who are My brethren?’
And stretching forth His Hand towards His disciples,
He said: ‘Behold, My mother and My brethren.
For whosever shall do the Will of My Father,
that is in Heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.’ ”
Matthew 12:47-50
Does Jesus not know who His “biological” Mother is?
Did Mary not “do the Will” of Jesus’ Father?
Is this, then, not a parable He spoke?
And in this parable, what do we not find once again from our God: a lesson?
And what is the lesson, which, once again, proves how little comprehension we have?
Is the lesson not “blessed are they who hear the Word of God, and keep it”?
Are we blessed and keeping the Word of God when we have no love for Mary? Not love for Her as our “sister,” but as our Mother!
Are we blessed and keeping the Word of God when we do not accept the Words of Scripture from Jesus Himself that “there are some standing here that shall not taste death …”? For to believe is to accept the Scriptures, correct?
Then we must ask ourselves, if we cannot pinpoint and clearly identify who did “not taste death” regarding those who were “standing” before the Lord Himself, then the Scriptures are FALSE! For this is either a great prophecy of Jesus or a lie.
Since Jesus, as God, cannot lie, in who was this prophecy fulfilled?
We can look at the longstanding traditions and knowledge of the early Christians and we know for a historical fact that no claim was ever made that one of the Apostles did “not taste death.” All of them died.
The first Christian martyr, St. Stephen, died despite his great vision of seeing Jesus sitting at the Right Hand of the Father!
Who among the crowd that day, then, did “NOT TASTE DEATH”?!
There is only One candidate.
Only One the Church — long before the first 2nd Millennium schism — taught that did “not taste death.”
Only One that every single Saint has confirmed sits at the Right Hand of Jesus as the Queen of Heaven and Earth.
Only One that tradition has long held was not found in Her empty Tomb after Her dormition.
Only One whom there are no known relics (something left behind) for 2,000 years — except Her empty Veil found in Her empty Tomb by no less than the Apostles themselves.
We can pretend that everything is written for us in the Scriptures.
We can pretend that Jesus’ has, by His own Words, downgraded the role of His Mother in salvation history.
We can pretend that modern “scholars” are better at interpreting the Scriptures than the Saints, the 1st Millennium Church and many holy popes combined.
Or we can shutter at the Words of our Lord when He said: “Take heed therefore how you hear. For whosever hath, to him shall be given: and whosever hath not, that also which he thinketh he hath, shall be taken away from him” Luke 8:18.
For in the very next verse, once again, the parable of who is the Lord’s “mother and brethren” rears its head.
We began this article with a parable from the Gospel of Luke that has been misused by protest-ants to claim that Mary has no place in the lives of believers as our Queen and Mother. We did so because we found it interesting that this very verse is the Gospel reading for the Mass in “preparation for the worthy celebration of the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
A Gospel that is paired the next day with the reading from Luke on the Feast of the Assumption quoting the words of St. Elizabeth, a “kinswoman” of Mary.
In that Gospel reading, Elizabeth, “filled with the Holy Ghost,” cries out to Mary “with a loud voice”: “Blessed art Thou among women, and blessed is the Fruit of Thy Womb!” Luke 1:41-42
As God has instructed us so carefully in the Scriptures, we will not praise the Womb of Mary, nor the “paps” that gave our Savior human life.
We will, instead, as all generations are required to do, call Mary, as the Tree of Life, “blessed” and worship the Fruit of Her Womb.
And we will thank God that “He that is mighty, hath done great things to” His Mother, while, at the same time, “He hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.”
Hearts “grown gross” in their disdain for Mary as not only their Queen, but their loving Mother!
And for those who think that Jesus has downgraded the role of His Mother in the Scriptures, believing in their hardness of heart that She is a nobody who does not deserve honor, especially at this time of Her great feast, there is a warning to them from Her Son Himself:
“But when the Master of the House shall be gone in,
and shall shut the door, you shall begin to stand without,
and knock at the door, saying:
‘Lord, open to us.’
And He answering, shall say to you:
‘I know you not, whence are you?’ …
‘depart from Me, all ye workers of iniquity.’ ”
Luke 13:25-28
For those who have not blessed Mary and, instead, have dishonored Her, the Lord Himself who, in parables, did “utter things hidden from the foundation of the world,” warned that the “ … the children of the wicked one and the enemy that sowed them (as “the dragon … cast unto the Earth … persecuted the Woman, who brought forth the male Child, Apocalypse 12:13) is the devil” Matthew 13:38-39.
And for those who follow the evil one is his persecution of Mary, the One “who brought forth the male Child” and, in love, “the paps that gave” Him “suck,” as so many protest-ants and secular mockers wittingly and unwittingly do so today,
“The Son of Man
[who is the Son of a Woman named Mary!]
shall send His Angels,
and they shall gather out of His Kingdom
[where Mary sits as His Queen assumed into Heaven!]
all scandals, and them that work iniquity.
And shall cast them into the furnace of fire:
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth … .”
Matthew 13:41-42
© 2003 Agnus Dei Presents!
It is very important that we understand that those who propagate the death of Mary
in Ephesus are wrong!
Sacred Tradition teaches us that Mary asked the Beloved Disciple, when She knew Her time was to come, to take Her back to the Holy City and be with the Apostles one last time. This is important to comprehend in its symbolism also, as Mary was to die where Her Son was Crucified and Resurrected! Even Pope John Paul II, on his Great Jubilee pilgrimage to Jerusalem stated that he could see where Mary was assumed into Heaven!
