Dr. Michael Barber takes a deep dive into the connections of the woman clothed with the sun in Revelation 12, the Gospel language used about Mary, and the Old Testament accounts of the Ark of the Covenant in order to explain the significance of the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Host: Magalie, calling from Long Beach, California, what is your question for Dr. Michael Barber?
Caller: Hi, I recently had the opportunity to go to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Basilica in Mexico City, and the image, the tilma, was explained to me, and I had learned in my previous classes that there are a lot or possibly a lot of connections between…I believe it’s chapter 12 in the book of Revelation, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, the apparition.
Dr. Barber: Okay, so–you’re from Long Beach, do you ever attend Holy Innocents Catholic Church?
Caller: No, I go to St. Cornelius or Our Lady of Refuge.
Dr. Barber: Okay, my uncle is actually the pastor of Holy Innocents Catholic Church. Father Peter Irving up there in Long Beach, so it’s a beautiful church and yeah, you might want to check it out sometime.
Anyway, so Our Lady of Guadalupe and the book of Revelation. Let’s talk about that. Okay, so in the book of Revelation chapter 12, there is a vision of the mother of the Messiah, and she is clothed with the sun. And so we were just talking about the fact that the book of Revelation has multiple layers of meaning and the symbols can mean different things. And so when you look at this vision of the mother of the Messiah, you can see actually that the woman seems to be symbolic of a number of things.
John Paul II, for example, in a very rich Wednesday catechetical presentation he gave on Revelation 12, John Paul II explained that the woman can be understood to be a symbol of Israel and a symbol of God’s people, the Church, because we see things in Revelation 12 said about the woman that are said about Israel in the Old Testament.
But at the same time, the mother of the Messiah is also a person. Right? And we know who that person is, it’s the Blessed Virgin Mary. And there’ll be some people–and maybe we’ll get some pushback, that’d be fun to get some callers, you know, say, “Ah, no, that’s not what this is really about,” I’d love that–bring it on, guys–but in the book of Revelation, things can mean multiple…you can have one reference meaning a lot of different things. And in Revelation 12, what’s really interesting is you have the mother of the Messiah, yeah, but right before that, very interesting, the end of Revelation 11 concludes with a vision of God’s temple in heaven being opened and the Ark of the Covenant being seen.
Now why is that interesting? Well, elsewhere in early Christianity, for example, just to give you one: in the Gospel of Luke, Mary’s trip to go and visit Elizabeth is described with terms taken from the account of the journey of the Ark of the Covenant. So what is the Ark of the Covenant? Everybody knows the Ark of the Covenant from–if you haven’t read the book–
Host: Raiders of the Lost Ark!
Dr. Barber: Seen the movie! Right, yeah! Melts your face off, man, I mean that’s the Ark of the Covenant, right? It’s powerful–okay, well it doesn’t say it melts your face off in the Bible–but armies fail to stand before the presence of God in the Ark of the Covenant. Remember the walls of Jericho, for example, come down after they march around the city with the Ark.
The Ark is very powerful, and the reason the Ark is powerful is because of what’s inside of the Ark, right? The Ark is not from heaven, in the sense it didn’t, like, descend out of heaven, it’s not made out of some celestial material, it’s made out of wood, it’s overlaid with gold; but what makes it special is what’s inside of it. Hebrews 9 tells us, for example, that there were three things in the Ark: the manna–the bread from heaven–the Ten Commandments, right–God’s Word written in stone–and the staff of the high priest Aaron. Okay, these three things were in the Ark of the Covenant.
And then God descends over the Ark, and he overshadows, if you will, the tabernacle, we read about this at the end of the book of Exodus–episkiazo is the Greek word, He overshadows the tabernacle and the Ark, and the Ark is described as the mercy seat because God dwells over it. Well, in the Gospel of Luke, the angel tells Mary that the Holy Spirit will overshadow her, and it’s the same term that’s used in Exodus, in the Greek version of that book of Exodus, to describe this presence of God over the Ark and the tabernacle.
And moreover, when it says that Mary journeyed to Elizabeth, she stayed with Elizabeth for three months, and we read about how when her greeting comes to Elizabeth, Elizabeth says, “How can the mother of my Lord come to me?” Well, all of this mirrors what’s said in 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Chronicles 16 when David brings the Ark into Jerusalem. Same language is used, over and over again, multiple points of contact. David said, “How can the Ark of the Lord come to me;” the Ark of the Lord stays with somebody for three months; there’s lots of parallels, I don’t have time to get into them all now.
But what we see is, in other places in early Christianity, Mary is linked with the Ark of the Covenant. Why? Because what’s inside Mary is more important than what’s inside the Ark of the Covenant! Right? What was inside the Ark? The bread from heaven. What’s inside Mary? You know, the bread from heaven: Jesus. What’s inside the Ark? Well, God’s word written in stone, the Ten Commandments. What’s inside Mary? God’s Word, right?
And so Mary’s understood as the Ark in early Christianity, so the fact that Revelation 11 ends with a vision of the Ark and then goes right into a vision of the mother of the Messiah is really interesting. And it seems to suggest that, in fact, there might be really something to this Marian connection in Revelation 12.
So all of that is a long way to get back to the question: is there a connection between Our Lady of Guadalupe and the book of Revelation? Well, in a roundabout way, maybe. Because in the book of Revelation we read about this woman who’s clothed with the sun, and that seems to be the image that is on the tilma, right, that is celebrated in Catholic tradition. So there’s a lot of connections there between the vision in Revelation 12 with the mother of the Messiah–who I think is, in Scripture, clearly Mary–and this tilma of Juan Diego where we have the mother of the Messiah, Mary, on this garment. So anyway, does that help answer the question there, Magalie?
Caller: Yeah, yeah, thank you very much, and it was really beautiful to have the tilma explained and everything and to see the connection to Scripture, the possible connection. So thank you.
Dr. Barber: That’s great, thank you so much for calling in.