UNDERSTANDING MARY AS THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY BY FR MICHAEL OGBOR
UNDERSTANDING MARY AS THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY
BY REV. FR MICHAEL O. OGBOR
INTRODUCTION
I want to begin this talk with a few personal stories.
While growing up in Bomadi, my late mum would tell me stories of the white missionaries. How they left their homeland and comfort and how they came to our riverine territory and adapted and familiarized themselves with the people and culture in bringing the gospel to the people of the Niger Delta. I would be amazed to learn of their many sacrifices; their pastoral zeal in covering many communities under Cathedral parish; their joy in even learning the Izon language and learning to paddle the canoe; and their generosity in building the then Cathedral and even the current one. These men literally were being poured out like libation for the sake of the spread of God’s kingdom on earth, precisely in this our diocese that was once a mission territory. However, while being amazed and humbled at the heroic stories of these white priests, in my little mind I had erroneously concluded that the work of mission – the task of evangelizing the world – is meant only for priests. And I believe this is also the position held by some Catholics who have stereotyped and dubbed the Church as ‘fada Church’ and have failed to see the Church as a family in which each and every one of us, by virtue of our baptism, have been called together as an assembly (Ekklesia) and are part of God’s people and since we belong to the Lord (Kuriakon), are chosen to continue his salvific mission on earth.
This talk aims at examining Mary’s role in the mission of the Church by examining her visitation to Elizabeth which makes her the first Christian missionary as she carried Jesus in her womb, being the new Ark of the Covenant to Elizabeth who had hidden her pregnancy for six month.
CLARIFICATION OF TERMS
MARY – In the New Testament, there are six different Marys, namely, the Virgin Mary who is the mother of Jesus Christ; Mary Magdalene who is the apostle to the apostles, the one from whom the Lord casted seven demons from; Mary the wife of Clopas and the mother of James and Joses; Mary the mother of John Mark, Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus and Martha and lastly, we have Mary of Rome. The Mary referred to in this write-up is the Blessed Virgin Mary whose fiat changed history and made the Incarnation possible for humanity’s salvation.
CHRISTIAN – A Christian is simply anyone who follows Christ. A Christian is a follower, a believer and a disciple of Christ. He or she is one who accepts Jesus as the Messiah, the Savior, and walk in his footstep. Christianity is not merely a religion. It is a way of life. It is not just a name or badge we wear like a chieftaincy title; it is a life that demands commitment, faith and trust in Christ and his will.
MISSIONARY – A missionary is a member of a religious organization or group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development. In the context of this write-up, the Church is religious organization. By virtue of our baptism, we are all missionaries since the mandate of Christ to go into the world and preach the gospel to everyone is for each and every one of us. The call to be missionaries is not meant for the priests and religious alone but for each and every one of us.
AN OVERVIEW OF MISSION OF THE CHURCH
The word “mission” originates from the Latin word “missio,” meaning “a sending” or “the act of sending”. It’s derived from the verb “mittere,” which translates to “to send”. For every mission, there must be the sender, the messenger and the message.
In the theology of mission, God is the author of the mission. Mission is born out of God’s initiative as He is proactive in human history, seeking to reveal Himself and establish a relationship with humanity and reconcile creation. In other words, the whole of salvation history, that is basically divided into three – creation, redemption and sanctification, is a history of God’s mission in gradually revealing Himself as Triune (a community of being – Father, Son and Holy Spirit) and calling humanity into a relationship.
In the Old Testament, after the fall of man, God chose Israel as his own nation, in order to present Israel as the ‘model nation’ for the other nations of the earth. However, Israel, rather than being the exemplary nation, chose to be unfaithful and follow other nations and their gods. Even when God sent his prophets time and time again, they refused to listen.
But in the New Testament, God the Father sent His Son to the world to bring salvation and reconciliation. In his earthly ministry, our Lord Jesus Christ chosen twelve apostles as the new patriarchs of the new Israel – Church – he has come to established. The Church is the bride of Christ, formed from his side on the cross (through the water and blood that signifies the most necessary and important sacrament respectively – baptism and the Eucharist) as Eve was formed from the side of Adam. The Church is also known as Ekkelsia – a privileged assembly of all people called together by Christ. Also, the Church is Kuriakon as she belongs entirely to the Lord. The Church exists for the mission. She is called and commissioned by Christ before his ascension to “go and make disciples of all nations” in witness God’s love. The mission of the Church is a continuation and perpetuation of Christ‘s mission in every generation. However, this mission of the Church cannot be successful without the help, inspiration, strength and guidance of the Holy Spirit who is the Principal agent of evangelization and the soul and memory of the Church that is the body of Christ and the new Israel. Lastly, the task of evangelization or the mission of the Church is not meant for the clergy or religious alone but for everyone, including the laity.
MARY AS THE FIRST CHRISTIAN
As seen from our clarification of terms, a Christian is a follower and disciple of Jesus Christ who accepts his teachings and walk in his footstep. In this light, Mary can rightly be called the first Christian even though the name ‘Christian’ was first used to described the believers or disciples of the Lord in Antioch. Mary is the first Christian because she was the first to believe in Jesus and follow him. She was the first to receive the good news of Christ’s coming, and from that point, she consistently demonstrated her faith through bearing and raising Jesus from infancy to adulthood, witnessing his miracles, including his first miracle that she interceded for at the wedding in Cana, and she consistently followed the Lord from the beginning of her fiat to standing by him at the cross.
MARY AS THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY
Mary is the first Christian missionary of the New Testament because she was the first to believe in God’s word and carry Jesus (the Word of God) in her heart and then in her womb; she was the first to encounter Him, and the first to share the good news of his coming with others. She embodies the missionary spirit by being open to God’s will, traveling to visit Elizabeth, and sharing the joy of Jesus with her.
The following are some of the detailed look at why the Blessed Virgin Mary is considered as the first Christian missionary:
First to believe and carry Jesus:
In the New Testament, Mary was the first to believe without doubting the words of the angel Gabriel about the Incarnation. The “Fiat” (Yes) of this humble virgin maiden of Nazareth changed history as through her God became man. Despite the fact that saying yes to God will put her in a dilemma or difficult situation of explaining her pregnancy to Joseph her betrothed or of being stoned by the Jewish populace if peradventure Joseph refuse to accept her and the pregnancy, her faith in God’s providence was unmatched when she utter the words “behold I am the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to your words.” Mary first believed the word of God (Jesus) her heart before carrying the word of God in her immaculate womb. She was a woman of great faith.
First to share the Good News:
In visitation to Elizabeth and John the Baptist, Mary as the first Christian missionary did not keep Jesus Christ for herself alone but was joyous and willing to share him with others, beginning from her cousin sister Elizabeth. Charity must begin at home. And Mary exemplified this by taking the word of God in her womb to bless the home of Elizabeth.
MODEL FOR ALL MISSIONARIES:
The unwavering faith, willingness to serve as the vessel of God’s love is a powerful model and example to all who seek to share Gospel with others.
MOTHER OF MISSIONARIES:
Mary is the mother of all missionaries. She was the one who initiated the mission of Jesus and interceded for him to perform his first miracle of turning water to wine in the marriage feast of Cana in other to increase the faith of the disciples and make them to believe in her son as the Christ. As the Mother of the Saviour, she is also the mother of the mission who gathered the Apostles together in the upper room as a hen does her chicks for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that launched the Church into the world on the day of Pentecost for the work of mission.
THEOLOGICAL EVALUATION OF MARY’S VISITATION TO ELIZABETH
Mary’s Visitation as the Visitation of the Ark of the Covenant
The Visitation of Mary in Luke’s Gospel mirrors the Old Testament story of David bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. This highlights the salient fact that Mary is a new Ark of the Covenant.
The Ark of the Covenant was the most sacred object in the Old Testament. It was a sacred chest that housed the Ten Commandments, the rod of Aaron that grew flower and a sample of the manna that the Israelites ate in the wilderness during their Exodus. The lid of the Ark was made with pure gold, with two cherubim facing each other, with a small seat known as the mercy seat in between them.
Mary, in her conception of Jesus in her womb, became the Ark of the new Covenant. In her immaculate womb, Mary housed Jesus who is not just the Lawgiver per excellence but the word of God in person, the bread of life that is greater than the manna which sustain the Israelites and the eternal high priest who will sacrifice himself as both priest and victim for humanity’s salvation and redemption. During the annunciation, an angel visited her and her lap became the throne of grace – where God as man sits.
Having seen why Mary is the Ark of the new Covenant, we shall now cast our gaze on the parallelism of Mary’s visitation to Elizabeth with the journey of the Ark in 2 Samuel 6:
Firstly, David went to hill town of Baalaha in Judah and Mary also went to a hill town in Judea. Judea was the Roman name for geographical territory of the land of Judah before it was changed to Palestine (meaning the land of the Palestine) as a mockery of the Israelites after their exile in the first century AD.
Secondly, David danced before the Ark recognizing God’s presence and John the Baptist, while in the womb of his womb, recognized the presence and identity of Jesus and leapt or danced for joy.
Thirdly, David, out of fear, when God struck down Uzzah who was not a priest from touching the Ark as the oxen carrying it stumbled, exclaimed: “How can the Ark of the Lord ever come to me?” in a similar way, Elizabeth filled with awe and with the Holy Spirit exclaimed: “Why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”
Fourthly, the Ark of the Covenant stayed in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months and the Lord blessed him and his entire household. In the same manner, Mary, the Ark of the new Covenant, stayed in the house of Zachariah for three month till the birth of John the Baptist and sanctified their home with the presence of the Lord she carried as a baby in her womb.
MARY’S VISITATION AS THE FIRST EARTHLY MISSION OF CHRIST
The above parallelism between the journey of the Ark in the Old Testament and that of Mary’s visitation in the New Testament, not only buttresses the salient fact that she is the Ark of the New Covenant, but also reveal in her missionary zeal, the fulfillment of the two great Prefiguration of the Incarnation in the Old Testament, namely, God’s self abasement and the prophetic representation.
God is the author of the Church’s mission and of which Mary is the model for all missionaries. As the author of the mission, God desire that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1Tim 2:4) in time past, prior to the Incarnation, God dwelt and related in an imminent way with His people. But how can one really reconcile the dwelling of God who is transcendental with mortal men and how can we rightly use human language in our conception of God who is transcendental and infinite? The answer to this question in the Old Testament is God’s self-abasement and the prophetic representation.
God’s self-abasement is simply God humbling Himself to dwell with us. This humility of our transcendental God is known as Divine Condescension in Theology. In the Old Testament, God who is infinity Himself condescended Himself through His Shekinah. Shekinah is the restricted indwelling of God in a place, mostly in the form of a cloud or fire. God in His desire to save mankind, beginning with the Israel (that was supposed to be a model for others), promised Moses and all the high priests enter the Holy of Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement, that He will come and sit on the mercy seat on top of the Ark and give instruction or forgiveness (Ex 20:22).
The prophetic representative simply is seen the prophets are God’s representative and speaking in a theomorphic sense as if the prophet and his action is the same with that of God. in other words, God inspired and possessed the prophets that they were able to know His will and pathos like God’s feeling of joy, sadness, sorrow and anger, their lives were the expression of it. A popular example of this representation in which the action and words of the prophet mirrors God perfectly is the marriage of Hosea and his harlot wife which is seen as the covenant of God to Israel.
However, this question is easily answered in the New Testament by the mystery of the Incarnation that was made possible through the fiat (yes) of Mary and her missionary zeal of bringing Christ into the world for the salvation of humanity. In Mary has been fulfilled in the fullest sense of the mission given to all the prophets of the Old Testament in proclaiming or speaking of God’s word in great anticipation of the coming of the Messiah and the redemption of Jerusalem and humanity at large. And in the fullest of time, God became man and spoke to us directly.
In Mary, both God’s self-abasement and the prophetic representation find their fulfillment. The Shekinah was restricted to the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies in the Old Testament but in the womb of Mary, one can say that God’s Shekinah became flesh and fully identified himself with us as a complete human being with body, soul and will in Christ. In the same vein, the prophets were representatives of God as His mouthpiece or spokesmen in the Old Testament, Jesus, conceived in the womb of Mary, is not only a representative of God bit God Himself. God’s word and Shekinah took flesh and a hundred percent of Mary’s DNA. Ordinarily, every child is a hybrid of the father and the mother but in the case of Jesus, he is one hundred percent the flesh and blood of Mary as there was no other human factor.
In this, Mary’s visitation can rightly be termed as Christ’s first earthly mission on earth – the mission to sanctify and consecrate John in his mother’s womb as in the case of Jeremiah (Jer 1:5). Prior to the visitation of Mary, John was a sinner, conceived with original sin, in his mother’s womb and truly lacked the moral authority to function as the forerunner that will prepare the hearts of the people for the Lord’s coming through his baptism of repentance. In other words, John the Baptist was conceived with original sin like every one of us but Mary’s visitation which is also the visitation of Christ sanctified and cleansed him and he was given birth to without original sin. This is a special grace of God in the womb of Mary, the Ark of the new Covenant, to the household of Zachariah just as the Ark of the old covenant was a blessing to the house of Obed-Edom.
AND MARY WENT WITH HASTE: A MODEL FOR BRINGING THE GOSPEL TO THE ENDS OF OUR DIOCESE
The Gospel tells us that, after the archangel Gabriel’s announcement and the start of her pregnancy, Mary immediately sets off to the home of her elderly cousin in a mountainous region in a city of Judea (Lk 1:39). Her cousin, Elizabeth, was about to give birth to a child. Therefore, Mary is the “first missionary” as she takes Jesus on His “first mission” by carrying Him in her womb through the streets of Judea. In a certain sense, we too imitate Our Blessed Mother when we take Christ to others on our Missions and apostolic works. For now, it is Mary who leads her Son. As an adult He will always be “on the road” and will not even have a place to lay His head (cf. Mt 8:20 and Lk 9:58). It is helpful to remember that the evangelist Luke adds some details of Mary’s journey in his Gospel text. He tells us that she walks ‘with haste’ because, moved by the Holy Spirit, she wanted to reach her destination without getting distracted. It is not anxiety that drove Our Lady’s haste but urgency to serve the Kingdom and the missionary desire to announce the fulfillment of God’s promises. This ardent love of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the proclamation of the Word must also drive us, whether clergy, religious and laity, to be missionaries who will bring the Good News to the ends of the diocese, especially villages and town whether the seed of Catholicism has not be planted.
I know that one of greatest challenges facing the mission in our diocese is funding. However, if each and every Catholic treat the mission with a sense of urgency as exemplified by the Blessed Virgin Mary in her visitation to her cousin Elizabeth, then it will be easier to evangelize and spread the gospel to the far ends of the diocese.
Put differently, since by the virtue of our baptism, we are all called to the mission of spreading the gospel, we must act with zeal and the sense of urgency. There is no need to wait for the clergy or religious to organize a crusade or outreach. As a lay faithful, you can be the forerunners of the priests. If you look deeply into the history of this diocese and into the establishment of churches in the different communities, you will discover that most of them were formed by a lay man or woman before a priest was invited to officially celebrate the Mass and from there the place grew with the constant pastoral care of the priest.
There have been a lot of committed and devoted catechists and lay members who volunteered as missionaries to spread the gospel and establish the different Churches we have in this diocese. And how I wish there is a comprehensive record of these great priest missionaries like Fathers Grace, Kyrian and Paul Hardy and also great lay missionaries like late Fufeyin, Catechist Pius, to mention but a few, in order to inspire and revive the missionary spirit among the laity and priests.
Like Mary, those of us who are fortunate to hear the gospel and have deep understanding of the Church, whether we are in the city, should learn to make haste and visit our villages and start or strengthen the Church. There are many strong Catholics and even wealthy ones in the cities are the backbone of the churches, but their home parish or village is nothing to write home away. That is unfortunate. Charity should begin at home. That is what Mary teaches us – she firstly carried Jesus to her cousin Elizabeth. So, do notes be afraid of the mission, the Holy Spirit is the principal agent of Evangelization. God is the only one who sent one on a mission and still goes before him or her to open doors and prepares hearts and still go with him or her. Never be tired of been eager to witness the gospel to your friends and family on a one on one basis.
CONCLUSION
Mary’s example in her visitation to Elizabeth encourages all believers to embrace their own missionary calling, sharing the love and message of Jesus with the world. Mary is the “first missionary” as she takes Jesus on His “first mission” by carrying Him in her womb through the streets of Judea. In a certain sense, we too imitate Our Blessed Mother when we take Christ to others on our Missions and apostolic works. And the mission of spreading the gospel in our diocese is a task for each and every one of us as baptized Catholics. Let us not leave the work for the priests or religious or catechists alone. Let us not be nominal Catholics but Catholics who are zeal and are ready to go in haste in spreading the gospel. The late Pope Francis capture the urgency of going out for the mission succinctly when he opined: “I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.” Mary left the comfort of her home and went with haste to visit Elizabeth as the first Christian missionary.
