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FATHER PABLO T. GADENZ
Commandments, written on the stone tablets. Mary thus became the new Ark of the Covenant, a title which Christian tradition also has given her — for example, in the Litany of Loreto — and which is used in Magisterial documents, such as in Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, where Mary is called the “ark of the new and eternal covenant.”3 In this essay,4 to the Eucharist. Since Mary always leads us to Jesus, by considering Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant, we have the opportunity to consider our own relationship with
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was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled upon it, and the glory the Hebrew verb related to the noun form shekinah, the Mishnaic Hebrew word later used by the rabbis to refer to God’s glorious presence dwelling in the Temple and among the people of Israel.9 God, whom “the heavens and even the highest heavens cannot contain” (2 Chr 2:5 NAB), nevertheless came close to his people through his dwelling presence, the shekinah. Thus, the Jewish Targums (the paraphrases of Scripture written in Aramaic and read in the synagogues) comment on Ex 40:34-35, 10
which she as the Ark of the New Covenant carried Jesus in her womb. Mary, the Living Ark of the New Covenant In Nazareth, in the Basilica of the Annunciation built over the traditional site of the Latin inscription on it, Verbum caro hic factum est, (cf. Jn 1:14). As the British theologian John Saward explains, the extra hic (“here”) added to the words of John’s Gospel indicates that“[i]t was there”5 in the town of there in the womb of the Virgin Mary. At the moment of her acceptance of the mission given to her, that is, at the moment of her Fiat, “Be it done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38), the Incarnation took place. “God the Son, without ceasing to be true God, assumed a complete human nature into the unity of his divine person and became true man.” That and blood, a rational soul created and infused into the body and, in the same instant, the complete human nature united to the divine Word.”6 Mary thus became the Ark of the New Covenant, as her womb became the dwelling-place understand this wondrous event in light of its Old Testament type, the Ark of the Covenant.7 Let’s review this background. Recall that long before the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem by King Solomon, the people of Israel had the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting (cf. Ex 40:2), which was, in effect, a portable temple. In the days of Moses, during the forty years of the people’s wandering in the wilderness toward the Promised Land, the Tent of Meeting with the Ark of Covenant in it was pitched in the center of ple of Israel during their exodus from Egypt, leading them “in a pillar of cloud by 8 Similarly, at the end of the book of Exodus, after Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai and built the Tent of Meeting, placing the Ark of the Covenant in it, the cloud of God’s presence INSTITUTE FOR CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY
The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, made several hundred years before Christ, translated the rather common verb in a unique way in Exodus 40:35, using the uncommon Greek verb meaning “overshadow.”11 In the New Testament, this verb episkia is used to describe another cloud, namely, the cloud that overshadows Mk 9:7; Lk 9:34), the cloud from which is heard the voice of God the Father, saying, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him” (Mk 9:7). Indeed, Jesus the Son of God is overshadowed the Word of God written on the stone tablets. Jesus himself is now the shekinah presence of God’s dwelling among human beings. What does that then say about his mother Mary? It suggests that, during the nine months of her pregnancy, she was the dwelling place of God, having within her the Word of God, not written that she will be the mother of the Son of God, he explains, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Lk 1:35). For the word “overshadow” here, Luke uses the same verb suggesting that Mary, on account of the virginal conception of Jesus that is about to take place, will become the new Ark of the Covenant, a living Temple, the dwelling place of God’s presence.12 the antitypical shrine and sanctuary of the divine presence.”13 Such a conclusion also is also supported by recalling the many parallels in Luke chapter 1 between the Temple in Jerusalem while the second occurs, as it were, in a new temple, in the deceptive simplicity of Nazareth, where the Virgin Mother of God is “more exalted than any man-made temple.”14 Several hundred years after Moses’ construction of the Tent of Meeting in the wilderness, long after the Israelites had entered into the Promised Land, the monarchy arose in things he did was to bring the Ark of the Covenant up to the city of Jerusalem as its more IM M AC ULATE C O N C EP TIO N S EM IN ARY S C H O O L O F TH EO LO G Y