DOS enigmatic fact. 1. The first fact: John avoids calling her "Mary." A first fact that strikes us in reading the Gospel of St. John in search of what Mary says is that the evangelist has avoided calling for the name of Mary. John never names the mother of Jesus by this name, and is the only one of the four evangelist systematically avoiding it. Mark brings the name of Mary once. Matthew five times. Lucas thirteen times, twelve in his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. John never.
And we decided that John intentionally avoided naming the name of Mary, because there are indications that omission is not accidental but deliberate, willed and planned.
John is aware, for example, the name of Joseph dark when playing quoted phrase of disbelief that we were talking about Marcos and collect in one way or another also Matthew and Luke: "They said," is not perhaps this Jesus, son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he say, "I came down from heaven '." (Jn 6, 42).
Second, John knows and frequently named in his gospel to other women named "Mary": Mary of Cleophas, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus and Martha. gospel are secondary characters, and yet John does not stop calling them by name. This also makes other characters, whose name could apparently be omitted without taking anything away from his gospel, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. If we had kept the names of figures less important: Why has not appointed by him to the Mother of Jesus? If it's something, as someone might assume, to not repeat what we say and the other evangelists, not have worried for giving us the names of Joseph and Mary's many of those also have kept the news we onomastics.
Thirdly if you had a disciple who could and should inform the mother of Jesus, that was John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and last will of a dying Jesus took it as their own mother and took her to his Home:
"Near the cross of Jesus were his mother, sister His Mother, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. Jesus saw his mother and with her the disciple whom he loved, said his mother, 'Woman, behold your son. " Then he said to the disciple, 'Behold your Mother. " And from that hour the disciple took her into his home, '" (Jn 19, 25-27)
Well, is this disciple, that all who in any way it can ignore the real name of the Mother of Jesus who, avoiding recorded in writing in his gospel, always refers to her as the Mother of Jesus or, more briefly his mother. It is precisely this disciple - the one between all could have been more entitled to refer to the Mother of Jesus as "My Mother" - who insists on reserve, with an exclusivity that turns on its own behalf and that is an epithet, the title "Mother of Jesus." Juan
not know the name of Mary and, if in fact you know is with a deliberate intention. An intention is not easy to detect at first glance, but worth striving for understanding.
2. One hypothesis
And a first explanatory hypothesis could be next. John may avoid using the name of Mary as the proper name Mother of Jesus because it seems too common a name to apply it as their own. If the name is to us that distinguishes one person, one individual from all others, yes, well-Israeli mentality for the name reveals the essence of a person and sets out its mission in the history of salvation, then John was right: Mary is a name own mind enough to adequately describe or distinctive to the Mother of Jesus. It is too common a name for his own. Marys in the Gospels there are many and no doubt were many in town and at the time of Jesus, as they still are with us today. If John wanted a name one, a title that will bring the unrepeatable uniqueness of the destination of the woman, chose well: Mother of Jesus was she and she alone, in all ages.
In this scenario, therefore, John, to avoid calling her Mary, and always tell the Mother of Jesus, his mother, far from silencing the proper name of this woman, we would be revealing his real name, the one that best expresses its rationale and its existence. But try to go further and deeper into the possible hidden intentions of San Juan.
3. Another fact: Dialogues distant
Consider a second event which calls attention to the study the image of Mary as seen from the only two passages in this Gospel where it is displayed: the wedding at Cana and the crucifixion.
As we know, John, like Mark, does not give us stories of Jesus' childhood. We also reject the reference-that make his opponents, his father and mother, and that John, like the Synoptics has preserved for us (Jn 6, 42). We saw, trying to figure María Marcos reveals why this approach to more pre-gospel tradition. And we insist that's not here in that aspect, which is not typical of John.
strictly Johannine The material about the Mother of Jesus, unfortunately for our pious curiosity, but fortunately for those who, like us, has to consider in a short period, is reduced to these two scenes, which together do not exceed fourteen verses: the wedding at Cana (Jn 2, 1-11) and crucifixion (Jn 19, 25-27). If not for the gospel of John, Jesus would not know that he had attended with his mother and his disciples to those wedding at Cana in Galilee. Nor would we know either that the Mother of Jesus closely followed his passion and was among the few that were found at the foot of the cross.
And here-now-the second act which would draw attention. Of all the Gospel passages about Mary there are very few that we retain something resembling a dialogue between Jesus and his Mother. To be exact there are three: two of John's Gospel and the scene that the child tells Lucas Finding in the Temple, when, on the occasion of Mother's anguished reproach, "Son, why have you done this? Your father and I been looking for you anxiously "(Lk 2, 48), Jesus responds to those enigmatic words in Luke opened the repertoire of the sayings of Jesus:" And you sought me? Did you not know that I had to be (here) at my Father "(Lk 2, 49).
who read the dialogues Johannine Lucas had gathered earlier in this first impression can not help but freak out more. At the scene of the wedding at Cana Jesus responds to his mother that he exposes the lack of wine: "Woman, what's between you and me? (or, as translated another phrase to soften the impact: what are we going to do with me?), Has not yet my time. " And in the crucifixion scene: "Woman, behold your son."
Note, then, that in the three dialogues that we retain, Jesus seems to put an austere distance between himself and his mother. It is precisely these passages, which by presenting Jesus and Mary in a one on one, could have been provided to reflect the tenderness and affection that undoubtedly united these two beings on earth, which we propose, instead, an image, apparently , austere, of that relationship, able to shock the sensitivity of our contemporaries: 1) Women: What's between you and me?, 2) Women: Behold your son.
John seems to have picked up and highlighted what Luke ahead in your scene. The Mother of Jesus only appears in his Gospel in these two passages dialogic, and Jesus appears to them away from his mother: 1) with a question that challenges their relationship; 2) appealing to the generic word cold Woman, 3) for transmission to another as his son.
printing they said is disturbing. And add a second event, which begs to be explained, the enigmatic and silencing the name of the Mother of Jesus.
EXPLANATIONS
attempts to account for these two intriguing facts.
1. "Do whatever he tells you"
The Gospel of John emphasizes the revelation of God in Jesus Christ as the revelation of the Father of Jesus. God is the Father of Jesus. John is the evangelist best shows Jesus' intimacy with the Father, the current of mutual love and pleasure that unites them, how Jesus lives and is completely devoted to what pleases His Father , how it feeds on parental satisfaction, which was her true life " Father loves me, because I give my life to it again. No one takes it from me, I give it voluntarily. I have power to lay it down and recover it, and that is the order (the will) that I received from my Father. " (Jn 10, 17-18). " I and the Father are one" (Jn 10, 30). "Philip, that I have seen me has seen the Father" (Jn 14, 9).
is in parallel, and analogy with those-in-ubiquitous John My Father, the Father of Jesus, as I believe we must understand the insistence of John to refer to one and only Mary as Mother, the Mother of Jesus.
Just as God the Father for Jesus is omnipresent in his life and on her lips (my Father, the Father who sent me go to my Father, my Father and your Father, the Father who loves me, my house Father ...) and also, to indicate a mísitica analogy to underline a parallel spiritual reality, John calls to that which is like an echo of the divine father figure, not only through physical motherhood, but mainly through a communion with the Holy Spirit the Mother of Jesus.
And one of the main purposes of the Cana scene-we think it is the intention of John-the extent to show the mother of Jesus is identified in spirit with the Spirit of the Father of Jesus.
In the scene at Cana, in fact, it seems that John is pleased to emphasize the coincidence of the veiled witness that Jesus gives Mary to men, with the assurance that Jesus gives his Father: "Do whatever he tells you" says Mother. "Listen," says the Father, which is the same: obey. We know, indeed, by the testimony of the Synoptics, that the two moments of Baptism and the Transfiguration of Jesus the heavens opened and down a voice-the voice of God proclaiming (with small variations according to each evangelist): "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. "
In Baptism, the purpose of this voice is revealed as the Father is the messianic identity credential and the divine sonship of Jesus, and it sounds like a solemn decree of public enthronement of the Son and his mission Messiah at your destination. In the Transfiguration, the purpose of this voice is to confirm and guarantee of authenticity Messianic to the Via Dolorosa, Jesus announces to ternary solemnity to his disciples. And the heavenly voice completes its message with a second member of the sentence, listen to them.
San Juan, unlike the Synoptics, it tells the baptism scene. Neither refers to the heavenly voice, according to synoptic was heard in Baptism. Has put in place not only more profuse and explicit testimony of the Baptist, but also, it seems, the voice of Mary: "Do whatever he tells you," equivalent to "listen to him" the divine voice at the Transfiguration, but forward here at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus.
Before the scene at Cana, Jesus has not named even once to his Father, he will for the first time at the scene of the cleansing of the temple, which immediately follows the feast of Cana. is through his mother as she comes to Jesus and at Cana, and through most faithful echo the voice of his Father. No, as in the Synoptics, by a voice from heaven or as later in the same Gospel of John with the surrounding din, whom it is intended, are divided in attributing to thunder or the voice of angel, but as a simple statement of a woman whose prophetic character only Jesus could understand, as it was hidden under the modest garb of the home language.
And proof that Jesus recognized on Mother's words echo the voice of his father is that, having argued that it was not yet your time, change suddenly after the words "Do as I say", and performs the miracle of changing water into wine.
was not mere deference or courtesy, let alone weak to reject an untimely request. It was recognition in the voice of the Mother, crystal clear echo of the will of the Father. Obeying the voice, Jesus performed the first sign and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him. " And St. John is concerned, in other passages the Gospel, Jesus emphasized the scruple not to do but what the Father commanded, to show just what the Father shows and jealously guard what the Father gives him.
Yes, because Mary is on one hand 'Daughter of Zion, "as embodied in the holiest of the People of God is also the daughter of the voice, so it is said in Hebrew we say: Echo Echo Voice of God = Bat Qol, Daughter of the Voice.
2. Between Cana and Calvary
The importance which the figure of the Mother of Jesus in the Gospel according to John we can not infer from the abundance of references to it, because, as we have seen, are few. We have deducted from the suggestive placement within the overall plan of the gospel, and only two brief scenes in which she appears: Cana and Calvary. And not only, of course, instead of material, but also its content developer.
Cana and Calvary are a great inclusion Mary in the Gospel of John. Enclosed public life of Jesus as brackets. They are like a Marian quoting Jesus' mission. encompass a big hug as maternal and discreet but also revealing of a full understanding and rapport between mother and child public life of Jesus from opening in Cana to the consummation on Calvary.
The Mary of St. John is not only, as in Mark, Mother to Son solidarity with contempt. Nor is it, as in Matthew and Luke, a shooting star that illuminates the obscure night of the Messiah or a childhood lost in the oblivion of men.
Mother of Jesus is to witness and actor John Main in the life of Jesus. His presence at the beginning and end, in the exordium and the outcome is as sudden, brief, but enlightening burst of lightning comparable to also double unexpected thunder of the voice of Father at the Baptism and Transfiguration.
3. The dialogue in Cana
Mother of Jesus as presented to us John, knows and understands. Jesus is for a valid and intelligent interlocutor initiated into the mystery of Jesus' time, it is understood in a language of arcane veiled allusions to a common.
who hears from outside this language, can be impressed by appearances. Banality of the intervention of Mother: They have no wine. Rude apparent distance and coldness of the Son: Woman, what's between you and me? Not yet my time.
occasion of a marriage alliance party, Mother and Son playing in his conversation The theme of the Alliance. The Old and New. Old wine and new wine. Cheap wine and excellent wine to serve God has kept the final. Old Covenant is water purification ritual, leaving the stone of unbelief and only washes the outside. New Covenant, which inexplicably sprouts force of the word of Christ, like good wine, like blood flowing from within by its side open and happy from within.
Mother's observation (no wine) contains a discrete midrashic allusion to the joy of the Messianic Alliance, yet to come, and from which the wine is a symbol of Scripture.
We know from Luke that not only Jesus but Mary speaks and understands that midrashic style, which weaves Scripture and everyday life. In the Gospel of John, Jesus appears as a master in this style, which lies in material things and makes them full of divine meaning proverb: he spoke of the temple ... your body, like the wind ... is all that is born of the Spirit; who drinks this water will be thirsty ... but whoever drinks the water I give him ... and my flesh is real food ...
And if the observation of Mary must be understood as the core of a broader dialogue that St Juan abbreviated and plays only in essence, also the arcane response we interpret Jesus not as the someone who teaches the ignorant, but like who responds to an intelligent question.
The words of Jesus (Women, what's between me and you have not yet my time), rather than deny a relationship with Mary is a forward-reference to an arrival time when Jesus will be created between him and his mother the perfect link, last and final before which pale the strong and united it with his mother in the flesh and the Spirit. A bond so strong that, as we shall see. One might say that when Jesus is both the time of Mary, the eschatological time of a birth, which shows you the Crucified Juan the Son of his sufferings, the firstborn of the Church.
And if Mother asked indirectly about the joy symbolized by the wine (no party if there is no wine, Jewish saying goes), Jesus refers to a joy that comes in the pain of his time, his passion, joy Jesus announced in due to his Mother, from the cross, as the painful joy of childbirth.
4. The scene on Calvary
And with that we have started our response to the second striking fact: the coldness and distance that seems to bring Jesus in his dialogues with his mother. But at the same time, just to suggest the meaning Marian the second scene in the Gospel of John: that of Calvary. Let's take into consideration more carefully:
"Near the cross of Jesus were his mother, the sister of his mother, Mary, wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. Jesus saw his mother and with her the disciple whom he loved, said to his mother, 'Woman, behold your son. " Then he said to the disciple, 'Behold your Mother. " And from that hour the disciple took her into his home, '" (Jn 19, 25-27).
We feel that we can start interpreting the meaning of this passage, words since that time. John loves the seemingly common phrases, but full of meaning. And these, is one of them. Because that time is nothing less than the time of Jesus, which he said the time has come ... so what can I say? 'Father, save me from this hour? But, if for this I came to this hour! Father, glorify your name! (Jn 12, 23-27). For St. John
when someone is as long as it meets the work for which is particularly intended. The time of the unbelieving Jews is the time when God commit the crime in the person of Christ or his disciples:
"Even when they come around who kills you will think that offering worship to God. And they will. Because they have not known the Father or me. I told you so when the time comes you will remember ... " (16, 3-4).
And this expression of time, possibly dating back to Jesus himself, out of many passages of St. John, also Luke, we save a word of the Lord who speaks of his passion as the hour: But this is your hour, and the power of darkness (Lk 22, 53).
The time of Jesus is the one time it was definitely done the work for which it was Father sent into this world. It's time for his victory over Satan, sin and death "Now is the opinion of this world, now the prince of this world will be torn down, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself" (Jn 12, 31-32).
As the hour of his passion painful but victorious one hour at a time, John is intimately linked to the glory, the glorious victory of Jesus. And that glory is manifested first in Cana. It's the same with the Father glorify your Son on the cross. And Mary is the witness of that glory in both scenes.
This coexistence of pain and glory that is in time is expressed particularly in an image used by Jesus at the Last Supper and comparing its time with that of woman who is going to be mother
"When a woman gives birth, is sad because her hour has come (the birth), but when I was born the child no longer remembers the anguish, for joy has been born a man in the world " (Jn 16, 21).
I think that this image did not come by chance at the head of Jesus on that eve of His Passion. I rather think it is advanced as an explanation of the scene we meditate, and that, in light of this explanation Juan will be able to understand the depth of the gesture and the last words of Jesus dying for him and Mary. Have they remembered
Jesus, John, Mary, Jeremiah's prophetic oracle or any other similar?:
"And then I heard a voice like a woman in labor, screaming as novice. It was the voice of the Daughter of Zion, who extended his hands moaning, Oh, poor me, my soul faints at the hands of murderers " (Jer 4, 31).
At the foot of the cross, the Daughter of Zion groans and your soul feels faint because of the murderers of his son. And Jesus, who is afflicted, comparable to a first-time laboring in their sorrows, Jesus warns the cry of his heart, perhaps in a veiled allusion to a prophetic oracle as Jeremiah, comforts her with the greatest comfort that can give you just light up a child: showing it. Behold your son, he says showing the pupil, the firstborn of the new village church of God which Jesus purchased with his blood. John the blessed who has been at the gates of wisdom in that hour of darkness:
"Blessed is the man who hears me, and sail continuously to the doors of my house, and is under observation at the threshold of it " (Prov 8:34).
John, the eldest son of the Church, remains attached to the doorposts of Wisdom, marked with the blood of Lamb, to be saved from over Exterminating Angel.
Jesus reveals that his time is also the time of his mother. Far away from it or deny their motherhood, comforting as a good son to his mother, but also can only comfort the Son of God, showing the part that fits in your work. Showing in this hour of pain, lighting his first son among them. Here
indicated the direction in which we seem to be sought the explanation of this woman that Jesus speaks to his mother in the gospel of John. Both at Cana and on Calvary, Jesus sees in her something more than the woman who has given his mortal body and that is joined by individual emotional reasons, casual.
For Jesus, Mary is the Woman that Revelation describes, in terms of dream, in travail, pursued by the dragon, fleeing into the desert with her first child. gilt is the mother of Jeremiah, giving birth between murderers. Jesus does not see his Mother, as we to ours, in a pious but narrow optical exclusive proprietary, but in the perspective of time, determined in advance by the Father, which would receive and glory. That glory is a trend that comes and goes and, as Jesus says, is for those who believe in him: I am glorified in them (Jn 17, 9-10), the you have given me and they are yours, because all I have is yours. The Father glorifies the Son in the disciples called to be one with him, as he and the Father are one. And Mary, Mother of who is one with the Father is also the Mother of those who by faith are one with the Son.
Therefore, by pointing to John from the cross, Jesus himself says to Mary, referring to himself as he sees not crucified in his time, but as it is to see glory on their own, in which the Father has given him such glory belongs. and sends it to her: not according to appearance of Mother robbed of his only Son, humiliated Mother of executed criminal, but as the truth of his Son true first-born in the corporate-initial height, it is true, but perfectly Son of Man.
Understandably so well grounded in Scripture that the Church is contemplating the figure of Mary as the new Eve, wife of the Messiah and a new humanity Mother of Sons of God. Indeed, in the tradition of the Church has played in the Women's nickname is the revelation of mysteries about the identity of Mary. On the one hand, it was recognized in her the New Eve is born of the New Adam's side, open on the cross for the soldier's lance. As it celebrates a new Eve foot of the cross a mysterious betrothal with the new Adam, which makes Wife of the Messiah in the marriage of the Lamb. They finally do and proclaims Jesus mother, laboring through the same pains of redemption that found its redeemer title. Mother of a new humanity, which John is the eldest and the representative of all believers.
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