ABVM PARISH COMMUNITY

  THE MOST HOLY TRINITY Some things can be known about God by the use of human reason.  For example, that he is all-powerful, eternal, and the source of life.  But human beings can only come to know the true nature of God, who he is in himself – that is, his substance – by revelation.  “To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament.  But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit” (Catechism of the Catholic Church #237) .  St. John writes in his Gospel, “No one has ever seen God.  The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him” (Jn 1:18) . Christianity is unique among monotheistic religions in that we confess that God is One and Three.  An early creed of the Church professed that “God is one but not solitary.”  In order to explain her belief about the

  THE HIDDENESS OF MARY Saints Luke and Matthew give our Blessed Mother Mary a leading role in the first two chapters of their Gospels, but after that write very little about her.  Luke mentions her once in the Acts of the Apostles, noting that she was among those who gathered in prayer with the eleven apostles shortly before Pentecost (Acts 1:14) .  Saint Mark mentions Mary’s name only once, when he records the townspeople of Nazareth calling Jesus “the son of Mary” (Mk 6:3; also, Mt 13:55) .  Mary is referenced once more in Mark, Luke, and Matthew not by name but simply as Jesus’ mother when she and his relatives seek to get to him through the crowds (Mt 12:46-50; Mk 3:31-35; Lk 8,19-21) .  In the Gospel of John Mary is seen at two key moments.  Her name is not given, but she is addressed by Jesus as “woman”; at the wedding feast of Cana, and in his dying moments on the Cross (Jn 2:4 & 19:26) . Saint John presents Mary very prominently in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revel

  THE HIDDENESS OF MARY (continued) This is the follow-up to my article last week on the Blessed Virgin Mary.  I promised to provide more commentary on some Marian texts with the hope of showing that the New Testament does, in fact, give Mary a prominent role in God’s plan for the salvation of the world.  Let us consider Mary’s visit to Elizabeth.  The angel Gabriel had told her that her cousin Elizabeth, who was without child, had conceived a son in her old age and was due in three months.  After the angel left, Mary “made haste” to visit her cousin “in the hill country, to a city of Judah.”  When she greeted Elizabeth the babe, later known as John the Baptist, leaped in her womb.  The precursor of the Messiah leaped for joy on hearing Mary’s voice and was consecrated in the womb.  Elizabeth said,  “And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk 1:43) .  Mary responded by singing a canticle, which we call the Magnificat according to its first wor

  MARRIAGE AND PARENTHOOD When God created Adam, he saw that it was not good for him to be alone.  He said, “I will make a helper suited to him.”  God then created the animals “but none proved to be a helper suited to the man.”  So God caused Adam to fall asleep, and out of his rib he formed a woman.  When Adam saw her, he recognized her as his partner: “‘This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man this one has been taken.’  That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body” (Genesis 2:23-24) .  The first commandment God gave them was for Adam and Eve to be “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:27-28).   Thus, the vocation of marriage preceded all things, even the cultivation of the earth.  All of creation is built upon the union of man and woman.   Marriage was given by God so that man and woman would not be alone; they were meant