Episode Four of Catholicism:Our Tainted Nature’s Solitary Boast - Mary, the Mother of God

This Thursday, November 8, 2012, Cinema Catechism returns with a showing of Episode Four of Fr. Barron's Catholicism series, Our Tainted Nature’s Solitary Boast - Mary, the Mother of God, together with further discussion and reflections on Immaculate Mary, the Virgin Mother, assumed body and soul into heaven: the New Eve, Full of Grace, who carries the Lord within her and points us toward her Son while also pointing us toward our true selves, the people that God intended and intends for us to be in the fullness of Love and Truth.



The Inexhaustibly Rich Figure of Mary
Fr. Robert Barron
Word on Fire Catholic Ministries

Mary is a rich and multivalent figure in all of the Gospels. In Luke’s infancy narrative, she emerges as the spokesperson for ancient Israel, speaking, in her Magnificat, in the words and cadences of Hannah; and as the recipient of an angelic announcement of a miraculous birth, she calls to mind not only Hannah but also Sarah and the mother of Samson as well. In Matthew’s Christmas account, she is compelled to go into exile in Egypt and is then called back to her home, recapitulating thereby the journey of Israel from slavery to freedom. She is thus the symbolic embodiment of faithful and patient Israel, longing for deliverance. In John’s Gospel, she is, above all, mother—the physical mother of Jesus and, through him, the mother of all who would come to new life in him. As mother of the Lord, she is, once again, Israel, that entire series of events and system of ideas from which Jesus emerged and in terms of which he alone becomes intelligible. Hans Urs von Balthasar comments in the same vein that Mary effectively awakened the messianic consciousness of Jesus through her recounting of the story of Israel to her son. So in the Cana narrative, Mary will speak the pain and hope of the chosen people, scattered and longing for union.

(excerpted from: Robert Barron, The Priority of Christ)