To Jesus Through Mary

Nothing divides non-Catholics and Catholics like Mary. Actually, Mary divides no one. More correctly put, it is Catholic dogma, doctrine and marian beliefs which put many non-Catholics as well as some very pious Catholics ill at ease.

Devotion to Mary we are told, is just another artificial insertion by Catholics of someone or something between man and his personal relationship with Christ. Even many otherwise devout and self-labeled "Traditional" Catholics have this view. My goal in this post is not to convince otherwise pious Catholics who do not have devotion to our Blessed Mother that they should have such devotion, nor to convert non-Catholics to the practice of Catholic Marian devotions. My goal in this post is to explain the Biblical basis for Mary's queenship and hopefull by that explaination, quiet the anxiety many Catholics have, justified or otherwise, when they encounter strong Marian devotions.

Throughout the Old Testament we have the image of the "Queen Mother." In Hebrew, the term for the highest official position within the monarchy held by a woman is "Gebirah." Although Gebirah literally means "Grand Lady", the Gebirah was quite often and for very practical reasons, the mother of the king. For reference, the word Gebirah appears 15 times in the Hebrew Old Testament.

A common practice among military allies in the Old Testament was for the kings to exchange daughters. Each king would take the daughter of his ally as a wife and this arrangement really made perfect sense. Each king would have a close family member in the royal court of his ally, able to report back news of what was happening to ensure that the allience was on the up-and-up. But each king would be loath to promote the daughter of the another king to the position of queen as this would have given tremendous power to an ally who might some day become a rival. This is why kings would often promote their own mother to the position of queen. The famous Gebirah of the Old Testament is Bathsheba.

Then Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him for Adonijah, and the king stood up to meet her and paid her homage. Then he sat down upon his throne, and a throne was provided for the king’s mother, who sat at his right. (1 Kings 2:19 NAB)

Bathsheba clearly sits on a throne, a sign that she held the official title of Gebirah for Solomon's kingdom. 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles gives the name of every Queen Mother of both the northern nation of Israel and the Southern nation of Judah during the divided kingdom.

In the eighteenth year of King Jeroboam, Abijah became king of Judah; he reigned three years in Jerusalem. His mother was named Micaiah, daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. (2 Chronicles 13:1-2 NAB)

Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah, daughter of Omri. (2 Chronicles 22:2 NAB)

...and so forth.

In the story of Solomon and his appointed Gebirah Bathsheba, we see the absolute repsect and reverence given to the king. Due to his magesty and power, ordinary citizens, and even close family members were not deemed worthy to go to the king directly. In some circumstances, the king's power was so esteemed that even a wife of the king would be put to death if she approached the king without permission. This led to the practice of the Queen Mother fielding requests on behalf of the king and then bringing those requests which she deemed worthy to the king for consideration herself.

Adonijah, son of Haggith, came to Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon. "Do you come in peace?" she asked. "In peace," he answered, and he added, "I have something to say to you." She replied, "Speak." So he said: "You know that the kingship was mine, and all Israel expected me to be king. But the kingship passed me by and went to my brother; by the LORD’s will it went to him. But now there is one favor I would ask of you. Do not refuse me." And she said, "Speak on." He said, "Please ask King Solomon, who will not refuse you, to give me Abishag the Shunamite to be my wife." Bathsheba replied, "Very well, I will speak to the king for you." (1 Kings 2:13-18)

Unlike David, Solomon, and the other monarchs of the Old Testament, Jesus was not viewed by the ordinary Jew of his time as a king. At several points they tried to make him king but he distained the title of King and went to great lengths to avoid being seen as a temporal ruler.

When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, "This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world." Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain alone. (John 6:14-15)

Since Jesus was not seen as a king but as a prophet and he himself distained the title of King, people would have freely approached him. We know in hindsight that Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords, the greatest king who every walked the face of the earth. And we know as a fact, clearly stated in scripture, that Jesus' mother Mary is the Gebirah in Heaven.

Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a violent hailstorm. A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth. (Revelation 11:19, 12:1-2)

The woman goes on to give birth to a male child who is "Caught up to God and his throne." The child is clearly Jesus and the woman must be Mary. Pope Pius XII made Mary's Queenship dogma of the Church. Reference the papal bull Ad Caeli Reginam.

So my point is, if Solomon had a Gebirah whom even the most powerful citizens and Solomon's own family members went to because they were unworthy to go to the king directly, and if all the other kings in the Bible appoint a Gebirah, should we not go to our own king, Jesus Christ, through his Gebirah, Mary? Is not Mary the fulfillment of all the Gebirahs of the Old Testament?

To Jesus, through Mary - the claim that doing so is not Biblical cannot be made.

-Tim-