A Layman's Chronology of Mary

A LAYMAN’S CHRONOLOGY OF MARY

Armiger Jagoe

iUniverse LLC

Bloomington

A LAYMAN’S CHRONOLOGY OF MARY

Copyright © 2013 Armiger Jagoe.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-0099-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0100-3 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 8/5/2013

Contents

Introduction

Dates

Index by Year

Listing of Saints

Listing of Popes

Acknowledgements

Book design by John Trupp

Theological support by Rev. Patrick Granfield, O.S.B.

Moral support by Eva Jagoe

In memory of

Royston

and

Nicholas

Introduction

When I converted to the Church six decades ago at age twenty-seven, with joy I embraced the whole concept of Catholicism. This included the Trinity, the Sacraments, the Pope, the saints and Mary. I accepted Mary’s prominence because Jesus was God, Mary was the mother of Jesus; therefore, Mary was the Mother of God. Now at the final stage of life when daring to explore the essence of Being, I realize that, as a focused light, structured religion is a recent arrival in the existence of Man. And throughout this period, Mary is the most renowned of all women.

Mary’s fame is puzzlement. In the New Testament she is mentioned only 19 times and has just four quotations. At the Annunciation, she said, Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it done to me according to thy word. During her pregnancy when she visits her cousin Elizabeth, Mary recited the Song of Praise. When she and Joseph find the teenage Jesus in the temple, she asked, Why have you done this? Didn’t you know your father and I were searching for you? Then at the Feast at Cana, she let Jesus know they are out of wine and tells the wine steward Do whatever he tells you to do. Therefore, the high position of honor and reverence we give to Mary has come primarily through revelation and her interventions through the centuries.

This book is a pebble on the mountain of writings about Mary. The Marian Library at the University of Dayton, Ohio, houses the world’s largest collection of printed material about Mary. The current count there is over sixty thousand books in fifty languages, more than fifty-five thousand clippings from newspaper and magazines and almost twenty thousand holy cards bearing her image.

When I converted to the Catholic Church, my favorite Cousin Loraine, who was a staunch Baptist, would not have been more shocked had I decided to become a bank robber. She told a friend, I couldn’t believe what I heard. Why, I thought Armiger was more intelligent than that.

The following year, after a visit with relatives in Alabama, she couldn’t wait to return home and tell me a funny thing she had seen. One afternoon, she said, we were driving through town and passed a Catholic Church. And can you guess the name of the church? I shook my head and braced for what was to come.

It was called ‘Mother of God.’! Can you believe it?

After she wiped her tears from laughing, Cousin Loraine added, How can you imagine God needing a mother?

Realizing I was bucking the Rock of Gibraltar, I forced a smile and a change of subject.

In memory of this delightful relative and for others who share her ignorance of Mary, I hope this book which records important dates about Mary will be a spark of enlightenment. Many who do not believe in Mary would like to believe if they had evidence.

As Pope John Paul II said, In the life of a human being there are many more truths which are simply believed than truths which are acquired by way of personal verification.

Dates

The Chronology of Mary

@600 BC    In the Book of Isaiah (7:14) in the Hebrew Bible the prophet stated: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.

100 BC    In the pagan temple on the site of the Chartres Cathedral, the Druids devoted a space to the Virgin who gave birth.

17 BC    Mary is born. Her mother was Anna and her father was Joachim (also called Heli or Eliachim) of the House of David.

1 BC    Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit (Angel Gabriel?), and during her pregnancy, she married Joseph, also of the House of David.

-0-   Mary gives birth to Jesus in Bethlehem.

2    Joseph takes Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt to escape the risk of the child being killed by King Herod.

4    After the death of Herod, Joseph returned to Galilee with Mary and little Jesus, and they settled in the town of Nazareth.

12    Mary and Joseph took the child Jesus with them to Jerusalem and on their trip home, they realized he was not with them. Returning to Jerusalem, the found him in the temple.

30    When Mary was with Jesus at a wedding feast in the nearby town of Cana, she noticed that the party is out of wine and calls the wine steward, telling him to do whatever Jesus tells him to do. This was the first public miracle Jesus performed when he changed the water into wine.

33    After the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, Mary lived with Saint John in a stone house in Ephesus for the rest of her life.

40    The disciples began their travels to spread the message of Christ throughout the Roman Empire. Saint James the Greater traveled as far as the village of Zaragoza (Saragossa) in Spain where he had little success in preaching the Gospel.

One day when he was preaching on the banks of the Ebro River, he was visited by the Virgin Mary in the flesh, who was still alive at that time. He described her as standing on a six-foot tall pillar of jasper carried by angels. Giving him the pillar and a statue of her with the infant Jesus, she told him, This place is to be my house and this image and column shall be the title and altar of the temple that you shall build, and the people of this land will honor greatly my son Jesus. There James built a chapel which was the first built in honor of Mary.

After James suffered martyrdom by being beheaded in Jerusalem by King Herod Agrippa I, several of his disciples took his body to Spain. The Spanish queen observed miracles performed by James’ disciples and converted to Christianity. She agreed to have James’ body buried in a local field in Galicia. Eight centuries later, the Compostella cathedral was built over his grave site, and the pillar with the statue is venerated there.

The oldest written testimony of devotion to the Blessed Virgin in Saragossa (known as Our Lady of the Pillar) is that of Pedro Librana, who died in 1155.

41    In correspondence to Mary from one of John’s followers, You should comfort and console me, a disciple of your beloved John. I have heard wonderful and astonishing things to tell about your son, Jesus. With my whole heart, I want to get more information regarding things I have heard from you, who were always intimate and allied with Him. You knew all his secrets. Fare thee well and let the neophytes with me be comforted by you.

In a reply, Mary wrote: The things you have heard and learned from John are true. Believe them, cling to them and hold fast to the profession of the faith you have embraced. Soon I will come with John to visit with you and the others. Stand fast in the faith and show thyself a man. Don’t let the fierceness of persecution move you. Let your spirit be strong and rejoice in God, thy Saviour.

46    Mary died in Ephesus and was assumed into Heaven.

81    Saint Ignatius of Antioch, the third bishop of Antioch, wrote in his letter to the Ephesians, Now the virginity of Mary was hidden from the prince of this world, as was also her offspring, and the death of the Lord; three mysteries of renown, which were wrought in silence by God, which were wrought in silence, but have been revealed to us.

In a later writing, he stated that Our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived in the womb of Mary, according to the dispensation of the seed of David and by the Holy Spirit.

99    This is from a Syriac Christian writer: The son is the cup and the father is He who was milked; and the Holy Spirit is she who milked him. The womb of the Virgin took it and she became a mother with great mercies. And she laboured and bore the Son, but without pain, because it did not occur without purpose, and she did not require a midwife because he caused her to give life.

149    Justin Martyr of Antioch in his writing, Dialogue with Trypho, took on all comers in asserting Mary’s purity and virginity. He wrote, Eve, while still virgin and incorrupt conceived the word of the serpent and gave birth to disobedience and death. Mary, the Virgin, on the contrary, when the Angel Gabriel brought her the happy news that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, accepted it with faith and joy; and for this reason the Holy One born of her would be the Son of God. And she responded with the following words, ‘Be it done to me according to your word.’ (Lk.1:38)

150    The Protogospel of James was written as an account of Mary’s life, describing her as a pure virgin of the Tribe of David.

170   As a youth in Myrna, Saint Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp, a disciple of John the Evangelist, the last surviving line of the apostles and an eye witness. He converted and later was appointed Bishop of Lyons. He is recognized as the first theologian of the Virgin Mary—the first Christian author to integrate the figure of Mary into his theology in an expansive and major way. His belief was that the unique Son of the one God had become man by means of the person of Mary. He wrote, "Eve heeds the serpent and thus disobeys God, thereby bringing corruption and death. Mary heeds the word of the angel and thus obeys God, thereby engendering a ‘holy thing’ that is the source of life and incorruption.

Not only is the Virgin Mary presented as the aesthetic counterpart to the first woman, she is also assigned an active and essential role in the recapitulation of man that extends beyond her role as bearer of the incarnate Son of God.

In a statement to the Ebionite heresy group who believed that Mary was merely the conduit through which the divine Savior passed, Irenaeus blasted them as those who do not choose to understand that the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and the power of the Most High did overshadow her.

He later proclaimed that Jesus was true God, fully man and fully God. He came in Judea, begotten of God and born on the Virgin Mary of the seed of David and of Abraham.

210    The first known image of Mary was done on the wall in the Roman catacomb of Priscilla. It shows Mary holding the baby Jesus in her lap. A nearby figure in the painting is that of a man (perhaps Isaias or Micheas), pointing up to a star (probably the Bethlehem star).

221    Tertullian, in Carthage, wrote that Jesus’ birth from a virgin with no adultery or incest. In his writings he was one of the first theologians to relate Mary to Eve.

242    The theologian Origen strongly defended Mary’s reputation in his manuscript Contra Celsum. In his commentary on the Song of Songs, he wrote as Jesus’ words: In rising from the dead I have curbed the storm and restored calm. And because according to the dispensation of the flesh I grew from a Virgin, the flowers have appeared on the earth, the time of spring has come.

252    Saint Gregory the Wonder-Worker (also known as Gregory Thaumaturgus and Gregory of Neocaesarea) taught that in a real sense Jesus Christ recapitulated the human race in the virginal womb of his Mother, and that Jesus took it upon himself to renew his creatures by way of Our Lady’s chaste body. He wrote, From on high came the Divine Word, and in Mary’s holy womb reformed Adam.

When he retired in solitude from Neocaesara, he experienced an apparition of the Virgin Mary with Saint John, who gave