Questions about Mary

Here we will go over the main questions about Mary, “Mother of Jesus” and the Titles or Different names she has. What we as Catholics believe about her?

Who is Mary? Mary is the mother of Jesus as we see in Luke 1:43, Luke 1:35-37, Matthew 1:23 and Matthew 1:18-21.

Why do we believe Mary was a virgin even after she gave birth to Jesus? We can see that Mary was a virgin in Luke 1:27, Luke 1:34. Some might say, But in Matthew 1:25 it says, “He (Joseph) had no relations with her (Mary) until she bore a son, and he named him Jesus. Well let’s look at this word “until” and see how it’s used in other verses in scripture. As we see in Matthew 28:20, “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” Does this mean at the end of our life, or after judgment he will leave us? Of course not. Let’s also look at 1 Corinthians 15:25, “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” Does this mean once Jesus put all his enemies under his feet he will no longer reign? Of course not. Also look at 1 Timothy 4:13, 2 Peter 1:19, and see how they use this word until in those verses. The word until is not accurately translated from Greek to English as its best. It’s used as everlasting until.

Why do we call Mary blessed? Luke 1:42, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” She is clearly called blessed. Another verse we can also look at is Luke 1:48, for he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness; behold, from now on all generations shall call me blessed. All generations includes the people of today as well.

Why do we call Mary our mother? Let’s look in the book of Revelation. Revelation 12:17, then the dragon became angry with the woman, and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring, those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus. We are the offspring, also known as children. Some might say this is talking about the “Church.” This would make a lot of sense as well and would be acceptable sense the church is spoken as a female. Neither one of these would be speaking against the Catholic Church. Let’s look into John19:26-27, “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold your son,” (27) than he said to his disciple, “Behold your mother.” Just as John accepted Mary as his mother, we do as well.

Did Mary only have one biological child? Or should we say, was Jesus her only child? Yes he was her only child; he had no biological brothers or sisters. Some people might take you to Acts 1:12-15, they will say it says right there in scripture that Jesus had brothers. Here we can see they all gathered to pray and Peter stands up to speak and it says, He stood up in the midst of the bothers and then it points out there was about 120 of his brothers there. Do you really think they were speaking about biological brothers, or maybe they were speaking of spiritual brothers? If we look back at John 19:26-27, we see Jesus give his mother to John his disciple. If Jesus had brothers or sisters, why would he give his mother to a friend? Wouldn’t that be wrong? If he did have any siblings, where were they during his crucifixion? Where were they in all the stories of Jesus as a child or his lifetime?

Why do we believe that Mary was sinless? Not even sinning once. If we go to Genesis 3:15, I will put enmity between you (Satan) and the woman (Mary), and between your offspring and hers (Jesus); He (Jesus) will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel. This would be why she was born without original sin. She carried Jesus in her womb. Jesus is God in the flesh. He couldn’t be brought into this world from a sinful person. If Mary was born with sin than her Original sin would have been handed down to Jesus, which can’t be. So God protected her from all sin so he could come into the world as God in the flesh, always and forever pure. The reason we sin is because we were born into it, sense she was not born into sin, she never knew sin. In this question as well you can also look at the section of “Theology” under the heading of “Mary is sinless.” You will see it goes a little deeper in this belief.

Is it okay to believe Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven? Well let’s see if it goes against scripture. We see in 2 Kings 2:11 and Hebrews 11:15, Enoch and Elijah were both assumed body and soul into heaven. Enoch walked with God and Elijah was taken by a chariot of fire. So it wouldn’t be going against scripture to believe God would do the same for the perfect, sinless mother of Jesus. Another thing that goes along with this is no one has ever found the tomb of Mary where her body was place, or found her body on earth. Just like Jesus, Enoch and Elijah, Mary was also taken to heaven.

-AVM