Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/522

 VIRGIN

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VIRGIN

St. Matthew (ii, 6) the chief priests and scribes, when asked where the Messias was to be born, answered Herod in the words of the prophecy, "And thou Bethlehem the land of Juda . . ." According to St. John (vii, 42), the Jewish populace gathered at Jerusalem for the celebration of the feast asked the rhetorical question: "Doth not the Scripture say that Christ cometh of the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the town where David was?" The Chaldee paraphrase of Mich., v, 2, confirms the same view: "Out of thee shall come forth unto me the Messias, that he may exercise dominion in Israel". The verj' words of the prophecy admit of hardly any other exjjlanation; for "his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity".

But how does the prophecy refer to the Virgin Mary? Our Blessed Lady is denoted by the plirase, "till the time wherein she that travaileth shall bring forth". It is true that "she that travaileth" has been referred to the Church (St. Jerome, Theodoret), or to the collection of the Gentiles united with Christ (Ribera, Mariana), or again to Babylon (Calmet); but, on the one hand, there is hardly a sufficient con- nexion between any of these events and the promised redeemer, on the other hand, the passage ought to read "till the time wherein she that is barren shall bring forth" if any of these events were referred to by the prophet. Nor can "she that travaileth" be referred to Sion: Sion is spoken of without figure before and after the present passage so that we cannot expect the prophet to lapse suddenly into figurative language. Moreover, the prophecy thus explained would not give a satisfactory sense. The contextual phrases "the ruler in Israel", "hisgoingforth", which in Hebrew imphes birth, and "his brethren" denote an individual, not a nation; hence we infer that the bringing forth must refer to the same person. It has been shown that the person of the ruler is the Messias; hence "she that travaileth" must denote the mother of Christ, or Our Blessed Lady. Thus ex- plained the whole passage becomes clear: the Messias nmst be born in Bethlehem, an insignificant village in Juda: his family must be reduced to poverty and obscurity before the time of his birth; as this cannot happen, if the theocracy remains intact, if David's house continues to flourish, "therefore will he give them up till the time wherein she that travaileth shall bring forth " the Messias. (Cf. the principal Catholic commentaries on Micheas; also Maas, "Christ in Type and Prophecy", New York, 1893, I, pp. 271 sqq.)

A fourth prophecy referring to Mary is found in Jer., xxxi, 22: "The Lord hath created a new thing upon the earth: A woman shall compass a man". The text of the prophet Jeremias offers no small difficulties for the scientific interpreter; we shall follow the Vulgate version of the Hebrew original. But even this rendering has been explained in several different ways: Rosenmiiller and several conservative Protestant interpreters defend the meaning, "a woman shall protect a man"; but such a motive would hardly induce the men of Israel to return to God. The explanation "a woman shall seek a man" hardly agrees with the text; besides, such an inversion of the natural order is presented in Is., iv, 1, as a sign of the greatest calamity. Ewald's rendering, "a woman shall change into a man", is hardly faithful to the original text. Other commentators see in the woman a tjT^e of the Synagogue or of the Church, in man the tyjje of God, so that they explain the proph- ecy as meaning, "(^lod will dwell again in the midst of the Synagogue (of t he people of Lsrael) " or "the Church will i)rotect the earth with its vahant men". But the Hebrew text hardly suggests such a meaning; besides, such an exi)lanation renders the passage tautological: "Israel shall return to its God, for Israel will love its God". Some recent writers render

the Hebrew original: "God creates a new thing upon the earth: the woman (wife) returns to the man (her husband)". According to the old law (Deut., xxiv, 1-4; Jer., iii, i), the husband could not take back the wife once repudiated by him; but the Lord will do something new by allowing the faithless wife, i. e. the guilty nation, to retm-n to the friendsliip of God. This explanation rests upon a conjectural correction of the text; besides, it does not necessarily bear that Messianic meaning which we expect in this passage.

The Greek Fathers generally follow the Septuagint version, "The Lord has created salvation in a new plantation, men sliall go about in safety"; but St. Athanasius twice (P. G., XXV, col. 205; XXVI, 1276) combines Aquila's version "God has created a new thing in woman" with that of the Septuagint, saying that the new plantation is Jesus Christ, and that the new thing created in woman is the body of the Lord, conceived within the virgin without the co-operation of man. St. Jerome too (In Jer., P. L., XXIV, 880) understands the prophetic text of the virgin conceiv- ing the Messias. This meaning of the passage satis- fies the text and the context. As the Word Incarnate possessed from the first moment of His conception all His perfections excepting those connected with His bodily development. His mother is rightly said to "compass a man". No need to point out that such a condition of a newly conceived child is rightly called "a new thing upon earth". The context of the proph- ecy describes after a short general introduction (xxx, 1-3) Israel's futm-e freedom and restoration in four stanzas: xxx, 4-11, 12-22; xxx, 23; xxxi, 14, 1.5-26; the first three stanzas end with the hope of the Messianic time. The fourth stanza, too, must be ex-pected to have a similar ending. More- over, the prophecy of Jeremias, uttered about 589 B. c. and understood in the sense just explained, agrees with the contemporary Messianic ex-pectations based on Is., vii, 14; ix, 6; Mich., v, 3. According to Jeremias, the mother of Christ is to differ from other mothers in this, that her child, even while within her womb, shall possess all those properties which consti- tute real manhood (cf. Scholz, Kommentar zuni Pro- pheten Jeremias, Wiirzburg, 1880; Knabenbauer, Das Buch Jeremias, des Propheten Klageheder, und das Buch Baruch, Vienna, 1903; Condamin, Le texte de J^remie, xxxi, 22, est-il messianique? in Revue bibhque, 1897, 396-404; Maas, Christ in Tvpe and Prophecy, New York, 1893, I, 378 sqq.). The Old Testament refers indirectly to Mary in those prophe- cies which predict the incarnation of the Word of God.

B. Types and Figures of the Blessed Virgin Mary. • — In order to be .sure of the typical sense, it must be revealed, i. e. it must come down to ua through Scripture or tradition. Individual pious writers have developed copious analogies between certain data of the Old Testament and corresponding data of the New; however ingenious these develop- ments may be, they do not prove that God really intended to convey the corresponding truths in the inspired text of the Old Testament. On the other hand, it must be kept in mind that not all truths contained in either Scripture or tradition have been explicitly proposed to the faithful as matters of belief by the exphcit definition of the Church. According to the principle "Lex orandi est lex credendi" we must treat at least with reverence the numberles.s suggestions contained in the official prayers and litur- gies of the Church. In this sen.se we n\ust regard many of the titles bestowed on Our Blessed Lady in her litany and in the "Ave maris stella". The Anti- phons and Respon.ses found in the Offices recited on the various feasts of Our Blessed Lady suggest a number of tyjies of Mary that hardly could have been brought so vividly to the notice of the Church's ministers in any other way. The third antiphon of