The Preeminence of the Blessed Mother in the Garden of the Resurrection

PART I
(PART II and PART III)

The Myth of Mary Magdalen’s Intimate Association with Jesus

The BRETHREN and the DISCIPLES are 2 different sets of 
people (John 2:12).  Jesus sent His Mother to the BRETHREN

(John 20:17) while the Blessed Mother sent Mary Magdalen 
to the DISCIPLES (John 20:18).

Every year at Easter, the secular media, newspapers and television rush to inform their audiences that Christianity is nothing less than a gigantic fraud perpetrated for over 2,000 years, a conspiracy of power that long held a monopoly on the things of the soul and is now being exposed. 

What attacks against Christianity share in common is totally unscientific, undocumented and unsupported speculation intended to destroy the heart of the Christian Faith, namely, that Jesus Christ rose physically from the dead, and was God, not just a mortal man. The outright bigotry inherent in their wild assertions is evident for all logical educated persons to see.

Central to their preposterous distortions are the many MYTHS surrounding Mary Magdalen:

·        MYTH - Mary Magdalen was reputed to have had an intimate relationship with Jesus, became His lover and wife, and in some stories lived together in the south of France with their 3 children.

·        MYTH - Mary Magdalen was reputed to have been the first Pope designated by Christ, but was overthrown by Peter’s diabolical machinations to get that job.

·        MYTH - Mary Magdalen was the most important person present at Christ’s crucifixion on Calvary.

·        MYTH - Mary Magdalen was the first person to whom Christ appeared after His Resurrection from His tomb.

·        MYTH - Mary Magdalen was much more prominent at Christ’s crucifixion on Calvary and at Christ’s Resurrection than His Blessed Mother Mary.

          The Truth about Mary Magdalen and our Blessed Mother Mary

The truth about Mary Magdalen and our Blessed Mother has been evidenced by the unbroken Tradition of our Roman Catholic Church over the 20 centuries since the time of Christ. There is however solidly researched supporting biblical evidence for this Traditional Teaching of our Church in a 2006 book, The Miraculous Parallelisms of John,  by John J. Gerhard, S.J.,

Over the last 200 years, our Church’s claim to the truth of the Gospels was undermined by many biblical scholars, both Protestant and Catholic, who claimed that our Church’s reliance on the New Testament Gospel of John to support its doctrines was in error, because the original order of the Gospel narrative had in many places been rearranged, and because first century ecclesiastical editors had made unwarranted personal insertions into its text, which were extraneous to John’s original text. Their procedures, codified and summarized by the German biblical scholar, Rudolf Bultmann, came to be called “historical criticism,” giving their personal theories the aura of objective scientific research. Yet the fact remains that their supposed history is not an actual real history, but merely an imagined history, resting solely on their subjective methods and opinions. Thus their “historical criticism” proves to be neither scientific, nor historical, nor properly critical.

The Gerhard book directly challenges the work of these “historical critics” and demonstrates that their subjective opinions fail of persuasion. It proves, with detailed and comprehensive objective evidence that the extant text of the Gospel of John is well ordered, as originally intended by its author, and devoid of extraneous insertions modifying its original text. Gerhard’s book identifies extraordinary displays of parallelisms, patterns and symmetries in the text of the Gospel of John that prove the brilliance of John’s literary and poetic genius. This book demonstrates, to a degree of virtual certainty that the claims of the “historical critics” are in serious error. Gerhard’s discovery supports Roman Catholic orthodoxy and the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church, the highlights of which will be described below with respect to the truth about Mary Magdalen and our Blessed Mother Mary at Christ’s Resurrection tomb in the Garden of the Resurrection, and at His Crucifixion on Calvary.

It is interesting to note the central distinction between the methodology of the Gerhard book and that of the “historical critics.” “Historical critics” practice MICRO-THEOLOGY and MICRO-SCHOLARSHIP, in that they narrowly focus on the minutiae of biblical analysis, using only subjective tunnel vision. The Gerhard book, on the other hand, practices MACRO-THEOLOGY and MACRO-SCHOLARSHIP, because it masterfully presents a comprehensive objective analysis of the entire Gospel of John as a whole, and thereby proves its thesis brilliantly with the scope of its comprehensive overview.

The Gerhard book is the book which Pope Benedict XVI himself, as Cardinal Ratzinger, long advocated be written to challenge and objectively rebut biblical scholarship of the “historical criticism” type practiced by Rudolf Bultmann and his followers. Ratzinger believed that Bultmann wanted to undermine the inerrancy of the bible and thus give support to the Protestant standard of individual personal interpretation of the Gospel. Bultmann’s view clashed directly with the Roman Catholic Church’s concept of biblical inerrancy, as interpreted by the teaching Magisterium of the Church. It also gave
encouragement to liberal Catholics bent on undermining the orthodoxy of the Church.

Eleven years ago Avery Cardinal Dulles confirmed such concerns about the deleterious effect of historical criticism on the orthodoxy of the Church, when he stated: “In combination with the virtual monopoly of historical-critical exegesis, the neglect of tradition leads many Catholics to think that nothing can be taught in the Church that does not pass the scrutiny of historical-critical method.”

The 1993 Pontifical Biblical Commission, consistent with the above expressed concerns by Cardinal Ratzinger and Cardinal Dulles, encouraged a study of the mode of composition and literary structure of biblical texts to directly counter the historical critics. Happily, their encouragement led to the comprehensive research and authoritative conclusions published in the Gerhard book.

To be continued.... Part II HERE