Podcasts about though mary

Are you willing to trust God in anything he sends into your life, whether you understand it or not? Jaci shared an inspiring message on how we can best respond to the gift of Christmas, looking at Mary's Faith. Though Mary might seem like a hero of faith, her story shows us that we, too, can respond in faith to God's extraordinary plans.  Unwrapping Christmas - Mary's Faith | Jaci Mun-Gavin

Luke 1:26-38; “Mary's Story”  The Christmas story is familiar to most of us, but Pastor Dodge gives us a fresh view of this well know story over the next few weeks beginning today with the story of Mary, Jesus' mother. Mary's name means bitter.  She was born in an obscure village, raised in a difficult time when the children of Israel were in bondage to Roman master. BUT her Son would not only redeem Israel - He would redeem the world. Very little is know about Mary. What we know is that she was a virgin born in the town of Nazareth, a town not even mentioned in the Old Testament. However, God chose an obscure little town and an unknown young woman to be the carriers of His promised Savior. Though Mary's name means bitter, God changes things! He turns bitterness into joy! A unique birth, a unique mother and a unique child!   Today, Christmas is under attack. Yet perhaps it's more than that. The battle is larger than the attack on Christmas, it's a battle that goes back to the garden of Eden. It's not a war on Christmas, it's a war on God. The human race, since our fall, has been hostile to the things of God. But! The magnitude of God's love is that He breaks into our world even when we are His enemies. Let us pray that God would move in the lives of people to reveal His incredible goodness. This well-known story shows us many things:     ⁃    God breaks into the life of Mary and He still breaks into our lives today.     ⁃    Mary willingly listened to God's message to her through the angel Gabriel and His Word is still active and alive today!     ⁃    Gabriel tells her what to name her son. She is to name Him Jesus, meaning “God saves” and God continues to save His people today through faith in Christ Jesus.     ⁃    Mary asked “I am a virgin, how will this be?” Gabriel responded through the Holy Spirit and the angel goes on to say in Luke 1:37 “For no word from God will ever fail.” God's promises are assured. He does the impossible!  He does what no human being can accomplish - our redemption! Jesus alone redeems and saves.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit using the Virgin Mary to conceive and bear a Son - God's one and only Son - Jesus breaks into our world with His saving grace! Today's reading ends with Mary saying, “I am the Lord's servant, may your word to me be fulfilled” and then the angel left her. Such a powerful example of trust - she hears the word of God, receives it, believes it and rejoices in it. So much to learn from Mary. She's not just our Savior's mother, she is an amazing role model for any who desire to be servants of the Lord.  Things that stand out about Mary that we can apply in our own lives as well:     1.    Devout Faith - trusted God even when what Gabriel told her seemed impossible.  We too are called to devout faith in God today.     2.    Humility - humble individual who knew it wasn't about her, but about God. A truth for us to internalize too.     3.    Obedience - she listened, obeyed and followed God. Faith saves and when we have faith we will obey!  Faith shows itself in obedience.     4.    Worship - sing praises- thank God for what He has done. As we celebrate Christmas we're not simply looking back to what happened long ago at Jesus' first coming. We're also looking forward to His final coming when He returns - when He reigns and rules forevermore! Check out our website –   https://www.awakeusnow.com Watch the video from our website! https://www.awakeusnow.com/2-year-study-of-the-gospels-upper Watch the video from our YouTube Channel!! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTaaqrC3dMOzMkhPyiNWwlJRpV6Bwpu01 St. Luke's Account is part three of our Two Year Study of the Gospels. The Gospel of Luke takes a look at the life of Jesus, beginning with the well-known Christmas stories. Luke, a non-Jew, offers a unique perspective into the story of Jesus' life. This study is great for large group. small group or home group Bible study.

Full Text of ReadingsMemorial of Our Lady of the Rosary Lectionary: 461The Saint of the day is Our Lady of the RosaryThe Story of Our Lady of the Rosary Saint Pius V established the feast of Our Lady of Victory to thank God for the Christian defeat of the Turks at Lepanto—a victory attributed to praying the rosary. Pope Gregory XIII changed the name to Feast of the Holy Rosary–originally celebrated on the first Sunday in October–in 1573. Pope Clement XI extended the feast to the universal Church in 1716. And in 1913, Saint Pius X set the date for the feast that we know today of October 7. The development of the rosary has a long history. First a practice developed of praying 150 Our Fathers in imitation of the 150 Psalms. Then there was a parallel practice of praying 150 Hail Marys. Soon a mystery of Jesus' life was attached to each Hail Mary. Though Mary's giving of the rosary to Saint Dominic is recognized as a legend, the development of this prayer form owes much to the followers of Saint Dominic. One of them, Alan de la Roche, was known as “the apostle of the rosary.” He founded the first Confraternity of the Rosary in the 15th century. In the 16th century, the rosary was developed to consist of 15 mysteries: joyful, sorrowful and glorious. In 2002, Pope John Paul II added the five Mysteries of Light to this devotion. Reflection The purpose of the rosary is to help us meditate on the great mysteries of our salvation. Pius XII called it a compendium of the gospel. The main focus is on Jesus—his birth, life, death, and resurrection. The “Our Fathers” remind us that Jesus' Father is the initiator of salvation. The “Hail Marys” remind us to join with Mary in contemplating these mysteries. They also make us aware that Mary was and is intimately joined with her Son in all the mysteries of his earthly and heavenly existence. The “Glory Bes” remind us that the purpose of all life is the glory of the Trinity. The rosary appeals to many. It is simple. The constant repetition of words helps create an atmosphere in which to contemplate the mysteries of God. We sense that Jesus and Mary are with us in the joys and sorrows of life. We grow in hope that God will bring us to share in the glory of Jesus and Mary forever. Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

In this teaching, Pastor Jim looks into the interaction that the resurrected Jesus has with Mary Magdalene outside the garden tomb.  Though Mary is looking for the living among the dead, and mistakes Jesus for the gardener, she is doing so out of devotion to Jesus!  Jim shows that disciples are devoted to Jesus because of what he has done for them, and that they can join Jesus as the perfect rabbi and gardener as he does works of new creation.

The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” Luke 1:26–28What an amazing experience this would have been. This humble servant of God, a young girl, was visited by the Archangel Gabriel and greeted with the salutation, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” Try to imagine her experience. She was humble beyond comprehension, filled with every heavenly virtue, loved God with all her heart and suddenly came face-to-face with this glorious and most magnificent Archangel. And this heavenly visitor showered the deepest of praises upon this lowly servant of the Lord.At first, in her humility, Mary simply pondered this greeting. She pondered it in her heart through prayer and faith. Then the Archangel spoke further: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Though Mary inquired further about how this could be, she quickly gave her consent: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” And it was these words of this young woman that continuously echoed in her heart throughout her life.Mother Mary was great for many reasons. She was the Immaculate Conception—the one singularly conceived without sin in the womb of her own mother. She was the one chosen by the Father to bring forth the Savior of the World as her only begotten Son. But her greatness is especially found in her ongoing submission to the will of God. “May it be done to me according to your word.” This is what she said over and over throughout her life. This is her perfect “fiat” to her God. All she knew was surrender and submission to all that God asked of her. And it is this, more than anything else, that made her the worthy Mother of God.Though none of us were immaculately conceived within our mother's wombs and none of us have remained without sin throughout our lives, we must all strive to be inspired by this holy woman. We must all ponder her deep humility and her willing acceptance of God's will in her life. And we must all strive to imitate her fiat and her perfect virtue.Imitation of our Blessed Mother is accomplished by first coming to know her, understand her and love who she is. Gazing upon her interior beauty and holiness presents us with the vision of the perfection to which we are all called. As we prayerfully gaze upon her heart and come to understand her virtues more clearly, we will be inspired to open our own hearts so as to imitate her by the grace of God. This prayerful exercise is one of the best and quickest ways to obtain the heights of holiness to which God has called us. Reflect, today, upon this holy daughter of the Most High. She is not one we can “figure out.” Instead, she is one whom we can come to know through prayer and through God's inspiration. Ponder her prayerfully. Be open to her inspiration. And allow the Holy Spirit to also overshadow you so that you will more closely be able to imitate her in her holy virtues.My dearest Mother, you lived a life of perfect virtue and holiness. You continuously pondered the mysteries of God in your heart and always surrendered to the will of God with perfection. Please inspire me so that I may not only learn from you but also be able to share in the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit given to you. Mother Mary, pray for us. Jesus, I trust in You.Source of content: catholic-daily-reflections.comCopyright © 2023 My Catholic Life! Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission via RSS feed.

Though Mary and Martha were sisters with similar names, their approach to Jesus was drastically different. In this life lesson, Eric and Nathan talk about their struggles living as “Marthas” and their desire to have the lifestyle of Mary. While Martha was right in her focus, we need recalibrate and becoming “more right” like Mary.

Listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts Let's face it the New Testament probably calls Jesus God (or god) a couple of times and so do early Christian authors in the second century. However, no one offers much of an explanation for what they mean by the title. Did early Christians think Jesus was God because he represented Yahweh? Did they think he was God because he shared the same eternal being as the Father? Did they think he was a god because that's just what they would call any immortalized human who lived in heaven? In this presentation I focus on the question from the perspective of Greco-Roman theology. Drawing on the work of David Litwa, Andrew Perriman, Barry Blackburn, and tons of ancient sources I seek to show how Mediterranean converts to Christianity would have perceived Jesus based on their cultural and religious assumptions. This presentation is from the 3rd Unitarian Christian Alliance Conference on October 20, 2023 in Springfield, OH. Here is the original pdf of this paper. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Z3QbQ7dHc —— Links —— See more scholarly articles by Sean Finnegan Get the transcript of this episode Support Restitutio by donating here Join our Restitutio Facebook Group and follow Sean Finnegan on Twitter @RestitutioSF Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play them out on the air Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library. Who is Sean Finnegan?  Read his bio here Introduction When early Christian authors called Jesus “god” (or “God”) what did they mean?[1] Modern apologists routinely point to pre-Nicene quotations in order to prove that early Christians always believed in the deity of Christ, by which they mean that he is of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father. However, most historians agree that Christians before the fourth century simply didn't have the cognitive categories available yet to think of Christ in Nicene or Chalcedonian ways. If this consensus is correct, it behooves us to consider other options for defining what early Christian authors meant. The obvious place to go to get an answer to our initial question is the New Testament. However, as is well known, the handful of instances in which authors unambiguously applied god (θεός) to Christ are fraught with textual uncertainty, grammatical ambiguity, and hermeneutical elasticity.[2]  What's more, granting that these contested texts[3] all call Jesus “god” provides little insight into what they might mean by that phrase. Turning to the second century, the earliest handful of texts that say Jesus is god are likewise textually uncertain or terse.[4] We must wait until the second half of the second century and beyond to have more helpful material to examine. We know that in the meanwhile some Christians were saying Jesus was god. What did they mean? One promising approach is to analyze biblical texts that call others gods. We find helpful parallels with the word god (אֱלֹהִים) applied to Moses (Exod 7.1; 4.16), judges (Exod 21.6; 22.8-9), kings (Is 9.6; Ps 45.6), the divine council (Ps 82.1, 6), and angels (Ps 8.6). These are texts in which God imbues his agents with his authority to represent him in some way. This rare though significant way of calling a representative “god,” continues in the NT with Jesus' clever defense to his accusers in John 10.34-36. Lexicons[5] have long recognized this “Hebraistic” usage and recent study tools such as the New English Translation (NET)[6] and the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Background Commentary[7] also note this phenomenon. But, even if this agency perspective is the most natural reading of texts like Heb 1.8, later Christians, apart from one or two exceptions appear to be ignorant of this usage.[8] This interpretation was likely a casualty of the so-called parting of the ways whereby Christianity transitioned from a second-temple-Jewish movement to a Gentile-majority religion. As such, to grasp what early postapostolic Christians believed, we must turn our attention elsewhere. Michael Bird is right when he says, “Christian discourses about deity belong incontrovertibly in the Greco-Roman context because it provided the cultural encyclopedia that, in diverse ways, shaped the early church's Christological conceptuality and vocabulary.”[9] Learning Greco-Roman theology is not only important because that was the context in which early Christians wrote, but also because from the late first century onward, most of our Christian authors converted from that worldview. Rather than talking about the Hellenization of Christianity, we should begin by asking how Hellenists experienced Christianization. In other words, Greco-Roman beliefs about the gods were the default lens through which converts first saw Christ. In order to explore how Greco-Roman theology shaped what people believed about Jesus as god, we do well to begin by asking how they defined a god. Andrew Perriman offers a helpful starting point. “The gods,” he writes, “are mostly understood as corporeal beings, blessed with immortality, larger, more beautiful, and more powerful than their mortal analogues.”[10] Furthermore, there were lots of them! The sublunar realm was, in the words of Paula Fredriksen, “a god-congested place.”[11] What's more, “[S]harp lines and clearly demarcated boundaries between divinity and humanity were lacking."[12] Gods could appear as people and people could ascend to become gods. Comprehending what Greco-Roman people believed about gods coming down and humans going up will occupy the first part of this paper. Only once we've adjusted our thinking to their culture, will we walk through key moments in the life of Jesus of Nazareth to hear the story with ancient Mediterranean ears. Lastly, we'll consider the evidence from sources that think of Jesus in Greco-Roman categories. Bringing this all together we'll enumerate the primary ways to interpret the phrase “Jesus is god” available to Christians in the pre-Nicene period. Gods Coming Down and Humans Going Up The idea that a god would visit someone is not as unusual as it first sounds. We find plenty of examples of Yahweh himself or non-human representatives visiting people in the Hebrew Bible.[13] One psalmist even referred to angels or “heavenly beings” (ESV) as אֱלֹהִים (gods).[14] The Greco-Roman world too told stories about divine entities coming down to interact with people. Euripides tells about the time Zeus forced the god Apollo to become a human servant in the house of Admetus, performing menial labor as punishment for killing the Cyclopes (Alcestis 1). Baucis and Philemon offered hospitality to Jupiter and Mercury when they appeared in human form (Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.26-34). In Homer's Odyssey onlookers warn Antinous for flinging a stool against a stranger since “the gods do take on the look of strangers dropping in from abroad”[15] (17.534-9). Because they believed the boundary between the divine realm and the Earth was so permeable, Mediterranean people were always on guard for an encounter with a god in disguise. In addition to gods coming down, in special circumstances, humans could ascend and become gods too. Diodorus of Sicily demarcated two types of gods: those who are “eternal and imperishable, such as the sun and the moon” and “the other gods…terrestrial beings who attained to immortal honour”[16] (The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian 6.1). By some accounts, even the Olympian gods, including Kronos and Uranus were once mortal men.[17] Among humans who could become divine, we find several distinguishable categories, including heroes, miracle workers, and rulers. We'll look at each briefly before considering how the story of Jesus would resonate with those holding a Greco-Roman worldview. Deified Heroes Cornutus the Stoic said, “[T]he ancients called heroes those who were so strong in body and soul that they seemed to be part of a divine race.” (Greek Theology 31)[18] At first this statement appears to be a mere simile, but he goes on to say of Heracles (Hercules), the Greek hero par excellence, “his services had earned him apotheosis” (ibid.). Apotheosis (or deification) is the process by which a human ascends into the divine realm. Beyond Heracles and his feats of strength, other exceptional individuals became deified for various reasons. Amphiarus was a seer who died in the battle at Thebes. After opening a chasm in the earth to swallow him in battle, “Zeus made him immortal”[19] (Apollodorus, Library of Greek Mythology 3.6). Pausanias says the custom of the inhabitants of Oropos was to drop coins into Amphiarus' spring “because this is where they say Amphiarus rose up as a god”[20] (Guide to Greece 1.34). Likewise, Strabo speaks about a shrine for Calchas, a deceased diviner from the Trojan war (Homer, Illiad 1.79-84), “where those consulting the oracle sacrifice a black ram to the dead and sleep in its hide”[21] (Strabo, Geography 6.3.9). Though the great majority of the dead were locked away in the lower world of Hades, leading a shadowy pitiful existence, the exceptional few could visit or speak from beyond the grave. Lastly, there was Zoroaster the Persian prophet who, according to Dio Chrysostom, was enveloped by fire while he meditated upon a mountain. He was unharmed and gave advice on how to properly make offerings to the gods (Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 36.40). The Psuedo-Clementine Homilies include a story about a lightning bolt striking and killing Zoroaster. After his devotees buried his body, they built a temple on the site, thinking that “his soul had been sent for by lightning” and they “worshipped him as a god”[22] (Homily 9.5.2). Thus, a hero could have extraordinary strength, foresight, or closeness to the gods resulting in apotheosis and ongoing worship and communication. Deified Miracle Workers Beyond heroes, Greco-Roman people loved to tell stories about deified miracle workers. Twice Orpheus rescued a ship from a storm by praying to the gods (Diodorus of Sicily 4.43.1f; 48.5f). After his death, surviving inscriptions indicate that he both received worship and was regarded as a god in several cities.[23] Epimenides “fell asleep in a cave for fifty-seven years”[24] (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 1.109). He also predicted a ten-year period of reprieve from Persian attack in Athens (Plato Laws 1.642D-E). Plato called him a divine man (θεῖος ἀνήρ) (ibid.) and Diogenes talked of Cretans sacrificing to him as a god (Diogenes, Lives 1.114). Iamblichus said Pythagoras was the son of Apollo and a mortal woman (Life of Pythagoras 2). Nonetheless, the soul of Pythagoras enjoyed multiple lives, having originally been “sent to mankind from the empire of Apollo”[25] (Life 2). Diogenes and Lucian enumerate the lives the pre-existent Pythagoras led, including Aethalides, Euphorbus, Hermotimus, and Pyrrhus (Diogenes, Life of Pythagoras 4; Lucian, The Cock 16-20). Hermes had granted Pythagoras the gift of “perpetual transmigration of his soul”[26] so he could remember his lives while living or dead (Diogenes, Life 4). Ancient sources are replete with Pythagorean miracle stories.[27] Porphyry mentions several, including taming a bear, persuading an ox to stop eating beans, and accurately predicting a catch of fish (Life of Pythagoras 23-25). Porphyry said Pythagoras accurately predicted earthquakes and “chased away a pestilence, suppressed violent winds and hail, [and] calmed storms on rivers and on seas” (Life 29).[28] Such miracles, argued the Pythagoreans made Pythagoras “a being superior to man, and not to a mere man” (Iamblichus, Life 28).[29] Iamblichus lays out the views of Pythagoras' followers, including that he was a god, a philanthropic daemon, the Pythian, the Hyperborean Apollo, a Paeon, a daemon inhabiting the moon, or an Olympian god (Life 6). Another pre-Socratic philosopher was Empedocles who studied under Pythagoras. To him sources attribute several miracles, including stopping a damaging wind, restoring the wind, bringing dry weather, causing it to rain, and even bringing someone back from Hades (Diogenes, Lives 8.59).[30] Diogenes records an incident in which Empedocles put a woman into a trance for thirty days before sending her away alive (8.61). He also includes a poem in which Empedocles says, “I am a deathless god, no longer mortal, I go among you honored by all, as is right”[31] (8.62). Asclepius was a son of the god Apollo and a human woman (Cornutus, Greek Theology 33). He was known for healing people from diseases and injuries (Pindar, Pythian 3.47-50). “[H]e invented any medicine he wished for the sick, and raised up the dead”[32] (Pausanias, Guide to Greece 2.26.4). However, as Diodorus relates, Hades complained to Zeus on account of Asclepius' diminishing his realm, which resulted in Zeus zapping Asclepius with a thunderbolt, killing him (4.71.2-3). Nevertheless, Asclepius later ascended into heaven to become a god (Hyginus, Fables 224; Cicero, Nature of the Gods 2.62).[33] Apollonius of Tyana was a famous first century miracle worker. According to Philostratus' account, the locals of Tyana regard Apollonius to be the son of Zeus (Life 1.6). Apollonius predicted many events, interpreted dreams, and knew private facts about people. He rebuked and ridiculed a demon, causing it to flee, shrieking as it went (Life 2.4).[34] He even once stopped a funeral procession and raised the deceased to life (Life 4.45). What's more he knew every human language (Life 1.19) and could understand what sparrows chirped to each other (Life 4.3). Once he instantaneously transported himself from Smyrna to Ephesus (Life 4.10). He claimed knowledge of his previous incarnation as the captain of an Egyptian ship (Life 3.23) and, in the end, Apollonius entered the temple of Athena and vanished, ascending from earth into heaven to the sound of a choir singing (Life 8.30). We have plenty of literary evidence that contemporaries and those who lived later regarded him as a divine man (Letters 48.3)[35] or godlike (ἰσόθεος) (Letters 44.1) or even just a god (θεός) (Life 5.24). Deified Rulers Our last category of deified humans to consider before seeing how this all relates to Jesus is rulers. Egyptians, as indicated from the hieroglyphs left in the pyramids, believed their deceased kings to enjoy afterlives as gods. They could become star gods or even hunt and consume other gods to absorb their powers.[36] The famous Macedonian conqueror, Alexander the Great, carried himself as a god towards the Persians though Plutarch opines, “[he] was not at all vain or deluded but rather used belief in his divinity to enslave others”[37] (Life of Alexander 28). This worship continued after his death, especially in Alexandria where Ptolemy built a tomb and established a priesthood to conduct religious honors to the deified ruler. Even the emperor Trajan offered a sacrifice to the spirit of Alexander (Cassius Dio, Roman History 68.30). Another interesting example is Antiochus I of Comagene who called himself “Antiochus the just [and] manifest god, friend of the Romans [and] friend of the Greeks.”[38] His tomb boasted four colossal figures seated on thrones: Zeus, Heracles, Apollo, and himself. The message was clear: Antiochus I wanted his subjects to recognize his place among the gods after death. Of course, the most relevant rulers for the Christian era were the Roman emperors. The first official Roman emperor Augustus deified his predecessor, Julius Caesar, celebrating his apotheosis with games (Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar 88). Only five years after Augustus died, eastern inhabitants of the Roman Empire at Priene happily declared “the birthday of the god Augustus” (ἡ γενέθλιος ἡμέρα τοῦ θεοῦ)[39] to be the start of their provincial year. By the time of Tacitus, a century after Augustus died, the wealthy in Rome had statues of the first emperor in their gardens for worship (Annals 1.73). The Roman historian Appian explained that the Romans regularly deify emperors at death “provided he has not been a despot or a disgrace”[40] (The Civil Wars 2.148).  In other words, deification was the default setting for deceased emperors. Pliny the Younger lays it on pretty thick when he describes the process. He says Nero deified Claudius to expose him; Titus deified Vespasian and Domitian so he could be the son and brother of gods. However, Trajan deified Nerva because he genuinely believed him to be more than a human (Panegyric 11). In our little survey, we've seen three main categories of deified humans: heroes, miracle workers, and good rulers. These “conceptions of deity,” writes David Litwa, “were part of the “preunderstanding” of Hellenistic culture.”[41] He continues: If actual cases of deification were rare, traditions of deification were not. They were the stuff of heroic epic, lyric song, ancient mythology, cultic hymns, Hellenistic novels, and popular plays all over the first-century Mediterranean world. Such discourses were part of mainstream, urban culture to which most early Christians belonged. If Christians were socialized in predominantly Greco-Roman environments, it is no surprise that they employed and adapted common traits of deities and deified men to exalt their lord to divine status.[42] Now that we've attuned our thinking to Mediterranean sensibilities about gods coming down in the shape of humans and humans experiencing apotheosis to permanently dwell as gods in the divine realm, our ears are attuned to hear the story of Jesus with Greco-Roman ears. Hearing the Story of Jesus with Greco-Roman Ears How would second or third century inhabitants of the Roman empire have categorized Jesus? Taking my cue from Litwa's treatment in Iesus Deus, I'll briefly work through Jesus' conception, transfiguration, miracles, resurrection, and ascension. Miraculous Conception Although set within the context of Jewish messianism, Christ's miraculous birth would have resonated differently with Greco-Roman people. Stories of gods coming down and having intercourse with women are common in classical literature. That these stories made sense of why certain individuals were so exceptional is obvious. For example, Origen related a story about Apollo impregnating Amphictione who then gave birth to Plato (Against Celsus 1.37). Though Mary's conception did not come about through intercourse with a divine visitor, the fact that Jesus had no human father would call to mind divine sonship like Pythagoras or Asclepius. Celsus pointed out that the ancients “attributed a divine origin to Perseus, and Amphion, and Aeacus, and Minos” (Origen, Against Celsus 1.67). Philostratus records a story of the Egyptian god Proteus saying to Apollonius' mother that she would give birth to himself (Life of Apollonius of Tyana 1.4). Since people were primed to connect miraculous origins with divinity, typical hearers of the birth narratives of Matthew or Luke would likely think that this baby might be either be a descended god or a man destined to ascend to become a god. Miracles and Healing As we've seen, Jesus' miracles would not have sounded unbelievable or even unprecedent to Mediterranean people. Like Jesus, Orpheus and Empedocles calmed storms, rescuing ships. Though Jesus provided miraculous guidance on how to catch fish, Pythagoras foretold the number of fish in a great catch. After the fishermen painstakingly counted them all, they were astounded that when they threw them back in, they were still alive (Porphyry, Life 23-25). Jesus' ability to foretell the future, know people's thoughts, and cast out demons all find parallels in Apollonius of Tyana. As for resurrecting the dead, we have the stories of Empedocles, Asclepius, and Apollonius. The last of which even stopped a funeral procession to raise the dead, calling to mind Jesus' deeds in Luke 7.11-17. When Lycaonians witnessed Paul's healing of a man crippled from birth, they cried out, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men” (Acts 14.11). Another time when no harm befell Paul after a poisonous snake bit him on Malta, Gentile onlookers concluded “he was a god” (Acts 28.6). Barry Blackburn makes the following observation: [I]n view of the tendency, most clearly seen in the Epimenidean, Pythagorean, and Apollonian traditions, to correlate impressive miracle-working with divine status, one may justifiably conclude that the evangelical miracle traditions would have helped numerous gentile Christians to arrive at and maintain belief in Jesus' divine status.[43] Transfiguration Ancient Mediterranean inhabitants believed that the gods occasionally came down disguised as people. Only when gods revealed their inner brilliant natures could people know that they weren't mere humans. After his ship grounded on the sands of Krisa, Apollo leaped from the ship emitting flashes of fire “like a star in the middle of day…his radiance shot to heaven”[44] (Homeric Hymns, Hymn to Apollo 440). Likewise, Aphrodite appeared in shining garments, brighter than a fire and shimmering like the moon (Hymn to Aphrodite 85-89). When Demeter appeared to Metaneira, she initially looked like an old woman, but she transformed herself before her. “Casting old age away…a delightful perfume spread…a radiance shone out far from the goddess' immortal flesh…and the solid-made house was filled with a light like the lightning-flash”[45] (Hymn to Demeter 275-280). Homer wrote about Odysseus' transformation at the golden wand of Athena in which his clothes became clean, he became taller, and his skin looked younger. His son, Telemachus cried out, “Surely you are some god who rules the vaulting skies”[46] (Odyssey 16.206). Each time the observers conclude the transfigured person is a god. Resurrection & Ascension In defending the resurrection of Jesus, Theophilus of Antioch said, “[Y]ou believe that Hercules, who burned himself, lives; and that Aesculapius [Asclepius], who was struck with lightning, was raised”[47] (Autolycus 1.13). Although Hercules' physical body burnt, his transformed pneumatic body continued on as the poet Callimachus said, “under a Phrygian oak his limbs had been deified”[48] (Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis 159). Others thought Hercules ascended to heaven in his burnt body, which Asclepius subsequently healed (Lucian, Dialogue of the Gods 13). After his ascent, Diodorus relates how the people first sacrificed to him “as to a hero” then in Athens they began to honor him “with sacrifices like as to a god”[49] (The Historical Library 4.39). As for Asclepius, his ascension resulted in his deification as Cyprian said, “Aesculapius is struck by lightning, that he may rise into a god”[50] (On the Vanity of Idols 2). Romulus too “was torn to pieces by the hands of a hundred senators”[51] and after death ascended into heaven and received worship (Arnobius, Against the Heathen 1.41). Livy tells of how Romulus was “carried up on high by a whirlwind” and that immediately afterward “every man present hailed him as a god and son of a god”[52] (The Early History of Rome 1.16). As we can see from these three cases—Hercules, Asclepius, and Romulus—ascent into heaven was a common way of talking about deification. For Cicero, this was an obvious fact. People “who conferred outstanding benefits were translated to heaven through their fame and our gratitude”[53] (Nature 2.62). Consequently, Jesus' own resurrection and ascension would have triggered Gentiles to intuit his divinity. Commenting on the appearance of the immortalized Christ to the eleven in Galilee, Wendy Cotter said, “It is fair to say that the scene found in [Mat] 28:16-20 would be understood by a Greco-Roman audience, Jew or Gentile, as an apotheosis of Jesus.”[54] Although I beg to differ with Cotter's whole cloth inclusion of Jews here, it's hard to see how else non-Jews would have regarded the risen Christ. Litwa adds Rev 1.13-16 “[W]here he [Jesus] appears with all the accoutrements of the divine: a shining face, an overwhelming voice, luminescent clothing, and so on.”[55] In this brief survey we've seen that several key events in the story of Jesus told in the Gospels would have caused Greco-Roman hearers to intuit deity, including his divine conception, miracles, healing ministry, transfiguration, resurrection, and ascension. In their original context of second temple Judaism, these very same incidents would have resonated quite differently. His divine conception authenticated Jesus as the second Adam (Luke 3.38; Rom 5.14; 1 Cor 15.45) and God's Davidic son (2 Sam 7.14; Ps 2.7; Lk 1.32, 35). If Matthew or Luke wanted readers to understand that Jesus was divine based on his conception and birth, they failed to make such intentions explicit in the text. Rather, the birth narratives appear to have a much more modest aim—to persuade readers that Jesus had a credible claim to be Israel's messiah. His miracles show that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power…for God was with him” (Acts 10.38; cf. Jn 3.2; 10.32, 38). Rather than concluding Jesus to be a god, Jewish witnesses to his healing of a paralyzed man “glorified God, who had given such authority to men” (Mat 9.8). Over and over, especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus directs people's attention to his Father who was doing the works in and through him (Jn 5.19, 30; 8.28; 12.49; 14.10). Seeing Jesus raise someone from the dead suggested to his original Jewish audience that “a great prophet has arisen among us” (Lk 7.16). The transfiguration, in its original setting, is an eschatological vision not a divine epiphany. Placement in the synoptic Gospels just after Jesus' promise that some there would not die before seeing the kingdom come sets the hermeneutical frame. “The transfiguration,” says William Lane, “was a momentary, but real (and witnessed) manifestation of Jesus' sovereign power which pointed beyond itself to the Parousia, when he will come ‘with power and glory.'”[56] If eschatology is the foreground, the background for the transfiguration was Moses' ascent of Sinai when he also encountered God and became radiant.[57] Viewed from the lenses of Moses' ascent and the eschaton, the transfiguration of Jesus is about his identity as God's definitive chosen ruler, not about any kind of innate divinity. Lastly, the resurrection and ascension validated Jesus' messianic claims to be the ruler of the age to come (Acts 17.31; Rom 1.4). Rather than concluding Jesus was deity, early Jewish Christians concluded these events showed that “God has made him both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2.36). The interpretative backgrounds for Jesus' ascension were not stories about Heracles, Asclepius, or Romulus. No, the key oracle that framed the Israelite understanding was the messianic psalm in which Yahweh told David's Lord to “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool” (Psalm 110.1). The idea is of a temporary sojourn in heaven until exercising the authority of his scepter to rule over earth from Zion. Once again, the biblical texts remain completely silent about deification. But even if the original meanings of Jesus' birth, ministry, transfiguration, resurrection, and ascension have messianic overtones when interpreted within the Jewish milieu, these same stories began to communicate various ideas of deity to Gentile converts in the generations that followed. We find little snippets from historical sources beginning in the second century and growing with time. Evidence of Belief in Jesus' as a Greco-Roman Deity To begin with, we have two non-Christian instances where Romans regarded Jesus as a deity within typical Greco-Roman categories. The first comes to us from Tertullian and Eusebius who mention an intriguing story about Tiberius' request to the Roman senate to deify Christ. Convinced by “intelligence from Palestine of events which had clearly shown the truth of Christ's divinity”[58] Tiberius proposed the matter to the senate (Apology 5). Eusebius adds that Tiberius learned that “many believed him to be a god in rising from the dead”[59] (Church History 2.2). As expected, the senate rejected the proposal. I mention this story, not because I can establish its historicity, but because it portrays how Tiberius would have thought about Jesus if he had heard about his miracles and resurrection. Another important incident is from one of the governor Pliny the Younger's letters to the emperor Trajan. Having investigated some people accused of Christianity, he found “they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honour of Christ as if to a god”[60] (Letter 96). To an outside imperial observer like Pliny, the Christians believed in a man who had performed miracles, defeated death, and now lived in heaven. Calling him a god was just the natural way of talking about such a person. Pliny would not have thought Jesus was superior to the deified Roman emperors much less Zeus or the Olympic gods. If he believed in Jesus at all, he would have regarded him as another Mediterranean prophet who escaped Hades to enjoy apotheosis. Another interesting text to consider is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. This apocryphal text tells the story of Jesus' childhood between the ages of five and twelve. Jesus is impetuous, powerful, and brilliant. Unsure to conclude that Jesus was “either god or angel,”[61] his teacher remands him to Joseph's custody (7). Later, a crowd of onlookers ponders whether the child is a god or a heavenly messenger after he raises an infant from the dead (17). A year later Jesus raised a construction man who had fallen to his death back to life (18). Once again, the crowd asked if the child was from heaven. Although some historians are quick to assume the lofty conceptions of Justin and his successors about the logos were commonplace in the early Christianity, Litwa points out, “The spell of the Logos could only bewitch a very small circle of Christian elites… In IGT, we find a Jesus who is divine according to different canons, the canons of popular Mediterranean theology.”[62] Another important though often overlooked scholarly group of Christians in the second century was led by a certain Theodotus of Byzantium.[63] Typically referred to by their heresiological label “Theodotians,” these dynamic monarchians lived in Rome and claimed that they held to the original Christology before it had been corrupted under Bishop Zephyrinus (Eusebius, Church History 5.28). Theodotus believed in the virgin birth, but not in his pre-existence or that he was god/God (Pseudo-Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 7.35.1-2; 10.23.1-2). He thought that Jesus was not able to perform any miracles until his baptism when he received the Christ/Spirit. Pseudo-Hippolytus goes on to say, “But they do not want him to have become a god when the Spirit descended. Others say that he became a god after he rose from the dead.”[64] This last tantalizing remark implies that the Theodotians could affirm Jesus as a god after his resurrection though they denied his pre-existence. Although strict unitarians, they could regard Jesus as a god in that he was an ascended immortalized being who lived in heaven—not equal to the Father, but far superior to all humans on earth. Justin Martyr presents another interesting case to consider. Thoroughly acquainted with Greco-Roman literature and especially the philosophy of Plato, Justin sees Christ as a god whom the Father begot before all other creatures. He calls him “son, or wisdom, or angel, or god, or lord, or word”[65] (Dialogue with Trypho 61).  For Justin Christ is “at the same time angel and god and lord and man”[66] (59). Jesus was “of old the Word, appearing at one time in the form of fire, at another under the guise of incorporeal beings, but now, at the will of God, after becoming man for mankind”[67] (First Apology 63). In fact, Justin is quite comfortable to compare Christ to deified heroes and emperors. He says, “[W]e propose nothing new or different from that which you say about the so-called sons of Jupiter [Zeus] by your respected writers… And what about the emperors who die among you, whom you think worthy to be deified?”[68] (21). He readily accepts the parallels with Mercury, Perseus, Asclepius, Bacchus, and Hercules, but argues that Jesus is superior to them (22).[69] Nevertheless, he considered Jesus to be in “a place second to the unchanging and eternal God”[70] (13). The Father is “the Most True God” whereas the Son is he “who came forth from Him”[71] (6). Even as lates as Origen, Greco-Roman concepts of deity persist. In responding to Celsus' claim that no god or son of God has ever come down, Origen responds by stating such a statement would overthrow the stories of Pythian Apollo, Asclepius, and the other gods who descended (Against Celsus 5.2). My point here is not to say Origen believed in all the old myths, but to show how Origen reached for these stories as analogies to explain the incarnation of the logos. When Celsus argued that he would rather believe in the deity of Asclepius, Dionysus, and Hercules than Christ, Origen responded with a moral rather than ontological argument (3.42). He asks how these gods have improved the characters of anyone. Origen admits Celsus' argument “which places the forenamed individuals upon an equality with Jesus” might have force, however in light of the disreputable behavior of these gods, “how could you any longer say, with any show of reason, that these men, on putting aside their mortal body, became gods rather than Jesus?”[72] (3.42). Origen's Christology is far too broad and complicated to cover here. Undoubtedly, his work on eternal generation laid the foundation on which fourth century Christians could build homoousion Christology. Nevertheless, he retained some of the earlier subordinationist impulses of his forebearers. In his book On Prayer, he rebukes praying to Jesus as a crude error, instead advocating prayer to God alone (10). In his Commentary on John he repeatedly asserts that the Father is greater than his logos (1.40; 2.6; 6.23). Thus, Origen is a theologian on the seam of the times. He's both a subordinationist and a believer in the Son's eternal and divine ontology. Now, I want to be careful here. I'm not saying that all early Christians believed Jesus was a deified man like Asclepius or a descended god like Apollo or a reincarnated soul like Pythagoras. More often than not, thinking Christians whose works survive until today tended to eschew the parallels, simultaneously elevating Christ as high as possible while demoting the gods to mere demons. Still, Litwa is inciteful when he writes: It seems likely that early Christians shared the widespread cultural assumption that a resurrected, immortalized being was worthy of worship and thus divine. …Nonetheless there is a difference…Jesus, it appears, was never honored as an independent deity. Rather, he was always worshiped as Yahweh's subordinate. Naturally Heracles and Asclepius were Zeus' subordinates, but they were also members of a larger divine family. Jesus does not enter a pantheon but assumes a distinctive status as God's chief agent and plenipotentiary. It is this status that, to Christian insiders, placed Jesus in a category far above the likes of Heracles, Romulus, and Asclepius who were in turn demoted to the rank of δαίμονες [daimons].[73] Conclusion I began by asking the question, "What did early Christians mean by saying Jesus is god?" We noted that the ancient idea of agency (Jesus is God/god because he represents Yahweh), though present in Hebrew and Christian scripture, didn't play much of a role in how Gentile Christians thought about Jesus. Or if it did, those texts did not survive. By the time we enter the postapostolic era, a majority of Christianity was Gentile and little communication occurred with the Jewish Christians that survived in the East. As such, we turned our attention to Greco-Roman theology to tune our ears to hear the story of Jesus the way they would have. We learned about their multifaceted array of divinities. We saw that gods can come down and take the form of humans and humans can go up and take the form of gods. We found evidence for this kind of thinking in both non-Christian and Christian sources in the second and third centuries. Now it is time to return to the question I began with: “When early Christian authors called Jesus “god” what did they mean?” We saw that the idea of a deified man was present in the non-Christian witnesses of Tiberius and Pliny but made scant appearance in our Christian literature except for the Theodotians. As for the idea that a god came down to become a man, we found evidence in The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Justin, and Origen.[74] Of course, we find a spectrum within this view, from Justin's designation of Jesus as a second god to Origen's more philosophically nuanced understanding. Still, it's worth noting as R. P. C. Hanson observed that, “With the exception of Athanasius virtually every theologian, East and West, accepted some form of subordinationism at least up to the year 355.”[75] Whether any Christians before Alexander and Athanasius of Alexandria held to the sophisticated idea of consubstantiality depends on showing evidence of the belief that the Son was coequal, coeternal, and coessential with the Father prior to Nicea. (Readers interested in the case for this view should consult Michael Bird's Jesus among the Gods in which he attempted the extraordinary feat of finding proto-Nicene Christology in the first two centuries, a task typically associated with maverick apologists not peer-reviewed historians.) In conclusion, the answer to our driving question about the meaning of “Jesus as god” is that the answer depends on whom we ask. If we ask the Theodotians, Jesus is a god because that's just what one calls an immortalized man who lives in heaven.[76] If we ask those holding a docetic Christology, the answer is that a god came down in appearance as a man. If we ask a logos subordinationist, they'll tell us that Jesus existed as the god through whom the supreme God created the universe before he became a human being. If we ask Tertullian, Jesus is god because he derives his substance from the Father, though he has a lesser portion of divinity.[77] If we ask Athanasius, he'll wax eloquent about how Jesus is of the same substance as the Father equal in status and eternality. The bottom line is that there was not one answer to this question prior to the fourth century. Answers depend on whom we ask and when they lived. Still, we can't help but wonder about the more tantalizing question of development. Which Christology was first and which ones evolved under social, intellectual, and political pressures? In the quest to specify the various stages of development in the Christologies of the ante-Nicene period, this Greco-Roman perspective may just provide the missing link between the reserved and limited way that the NT applies theos to Jesus in the first century and the homoousian view that eventually garnered imperial support in the fourth century. How easy would it have been for fresh converts from the Greco-Roman world to unintentionally mishear the story of Jesus? How easy would it have been for them to fit Jesus into their own categories of descended gods and ascended humans? With the unmooring of Gentile Christianity from its Jewish heritage, is it any wonder that Christologies began to drift out to sea? Now I'm not suggesting that all Christians went through a steady development from a human Jesus to a pre-existent Christ, to an eternal God the Son, to the Chalcedonian hypostatic union. As I mentioned above, plenty of other options were around and every church had its conservatives in addition to its innovators. The story is messy and uneven with competing views spread across huge geographic distances. Furthermore, many Christians probably were content to leave such theological nuances fuzzy, rather than seeking doctrinal precision on Christ's relation to his God and Father. Whatever the case may be, we dare not ignore the influence of Greco-Roman theology in our accounts of Christological development in the Mediterranean world of the first three centuries.    Bibliography The Homeric Hymns. Translated by Michael Crudden. New York, NY: Oxford, 2008. Antioch, Theophilus of. To Autolycus. Translated by Marcus Dods. Vol. 2. Ante-Nicene Fathers. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001. Aphrahat. The Demonstrations. Translated by Ellen Muehlberger. Vol. 3. The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings. 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End Notes [1] For the remainder of this paper, I will use the lower case “god” for all references to deity outside of Yahweh, the Father of Christ. I do this because all our ancient texts lack capitalization and our modern capitalization rules imply a theology that is anachronistic and unhelpful for the present inquiry. [2] Christopher Kaiser wrote, “Explicit references to Jesus as ‘God' in the New Testament are very few, and even those few are generally plagued with uncertainties of either text or interpretation.” Christopher B. Kaiser, The Doctrine of God: A Historical Survey (London: Marshall Morgan & Scott, 1982), 29. Other scholars such as Raymond Brown (Jesus: God and Man), Jason David BeDuhn (Truth in Translation), and Brian Wright (“Jesus as θεός: A Textual Examination” in Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament) have expressed similar sentiments. [3] John 20.28; Hebrews 1.8; Titus 2.13; 2 Peter 1.1; Romans 9.5; and 1 John 5.20. [4] See Polycarp's Epistle to the Philippians 12.2 where a manuscript difference determines whether or not Polycarp called Jesus god or lord. Textual corruption is most acute in Igantius' corpus. Although it's been common to dismiss the long recension as an “Arian” corruption, claiming the middle recension to be as pure and uncontaminated as freshly fallen snow upon which a foot has never trodden, such an uncritical view is beginning to give way to more honest analysis. See Paul Gilliam III's Ignatius of Antioch and the Arian Controversy (Leiden: Brill, 2017) for a recent treatment of Christological corruption in the middle recension. [5] See the entries for  אֱלֹהִיםand θεός in the Hebrew Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), the Brown Driver Briggs Lexicon (BDB), Eerdmans Dictionary, Kohlenberger/Mounce Concise Hebrew-Aramaic Dictionary of the Old Testament, the Bauer Danker Arndt Gingrich Lexicon (BDAG), Friberg Greek Lexicon, and Thayer's Greek Lexicon. [6] See notes on Is 9.6 and Ps 45.6. [7] ZIBBC: “In what sense can the king be called “god”? By virtue of his divine appointment, the king in the ancient Near East stood before his subjects as a representative of the divine realm. …In fact, the term “gods“ (ʾelōhı̂m) is used of priests who functioned as judges in the Israelite temple judicial system (Ex. 21:6; 22:8-9; see comments on 58:1; 82:6-7).” John W. Hilber, “Psalms,” in The Minor Prophets, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, vol. 5 of Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: Old Testament. ed. John H. Walton (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 358. [8] Around a.d. 340, Aphrahat of Persia advised his fellow Christians to reply to Jewish critics who questioned why “You call a human being ‘God'” (Demonstrations 17.1). He said, “For the honored name of the divinity is granted event ot rightoues human beings, when they are worthy of being called by it…[W]hen he chose Moses, his friend and his beloved…he called him “god.” …We call him God, just as he named Moses with his own name…The name of the divinity was granted for great honor in the world. To whom he wishes, God appoints it” (17.3, 4, 5). Aphrahat, The Demonstrations, trans., Ellen Muehlberger, vol. 3, The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge, 2022), 213-15. In the Clementine Recognitions we find a brief mention of the concept:  “Therefore the name God is applied in three ways: either because he to whom it is given is truly God, or because he is the servant of him who is truly; and for the honour of the sender, that his authority may be full, he that is sent is called by the name of him who sends, as is often done in respect of angels: for when they appear to a man, if he is a wise and intelligent man, he asks the name of him who appears to him, that he may acknowledge at once the honour of the sent, and the authority of the sender” (2.42). Pseudo-Clement, Recognitions, trans., Thomas Smith, vol. 8, Ante Nicene Fathers (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003). [9] Michael F. Bird, Jesus among the Gods (Waco, TX: Baylor, 2022), 13. [10] Andrew Perriman, In the Form of a God, Studies in Early Christology, ed. David Capes Michael Bird, and Scott Harrower (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022), 130. [11] Paula Fredriksen, "How High Can Early High Christology Be?," in Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity, ed. Matthew V. Novenson, vol. 180 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 296, 99. [12] ibid. [13] See Gen 18.1; Ex 3.2; 24.11; Is 6.1; Ezk 1.28. [14] Compare the Masoretic Text of Psalm 8.6 to the Septuagint and Hebrews 2.7. [15] Homer, The Odyssey, trans., Robert Fagles (New York, NY: Penguin, 1997), 370. [16] Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library, trans., Charles Henry Oldfather, vol. 1 (Sophron Editor, 2017), 340. [17] Uranus met death at the brutal hands of his own son, Kronos who emasculated him and let bleed out, resulting in his deification (Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 1.10). Later on, after suffering a fatal disease, Kronos himself experienced deification, becoming the planet Saturn (ibid.). Zeus married Hera and they produced Osiris (Dionysus), Isis (Demeter), Typhon, Apollo, and Aphrodite (ibid. 2.1). [18] Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, Greek Theology, trans., George Boys-Stones, Greek Theology, Fragments, and Testimonia (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2018), 123. [19] Apollodorus, The Library of Greek Mythology, trans., Robin Hard (Oxford, UK: Oxford, 1998), 111. [20] Pausanias, Guide to Greece, trans., Peter Levi (London, UK: Penguin, 1979), 98. [21] Strabo, The Geography, trans., Duane W. Roller (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge, 2020), 281. [22] Psuedo-Clement, Homilies, trans., Peter Peterson, vol. 8, Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1897). Greek: “αὐτὸν δὲ ὡς θεὸν ἐθρήσκευσαν” from Jacques Paul Migne, Patrologia Graeca, taken from Accordance (PSCLEMH-T), OakTree Software, Inc., 2018, Version 1.1. [23] See Barry Blackburn, Theios Aner and the Markan Miracle Traditions (Tübingen, Germany: J. C. B. Mohr, 1991), 32. [24] Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, trans., Pamela Mensch (New York, NY: Oxford, 2020), 39. [25] Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, trans., Thomas Taylor, Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras (Delhi, IN: Zinc Read, 2023), 2. [26] Diogenes Laertius, Life of Pythagoras, trans., Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1988), 142. [27] See the list in Blackburn, 39. He corroborates miracle stories from Diogenus Laertius, Iamblichus, Apollonius, Nicomachus, and Philostratus. [28] Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras, trans., Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1988), 128-9. [29] Iamblichus,  68. [30] What I call “resurrection” refers to the phrase, “Thou shalt bring back from Hades a dead man's strength.” Diogenes Laertius 8.2.59, trans. R. D. Hicks. [31] Laertius, "Lives of the Eminent Philosophers," 306. Two stories of his deification survive: in one Empedocles disappears in the middle of the night after hearing an extremely loud voice calling his name. After this the people concluded that they should sacrifice to him since he had become a god (8.68). In the other account, Empedocles climbs Etna and leaps into the fiery volcanic crater “to strengthen the rumor that he had become a god” (8.69). [32] Pausanias,  192. Sextus Empiricus says Asclepius raised up people who had died at Thebes as well as raising up the dead body of Tyndaros (Against the Professors 1.261). [33] Cicero adds that the Arcadians worship Asclepius (Nature 3.57). [34] In another instance, he confronted and cast out a demon from a licentious young man (Life 4.20). [35] The phrase is “περὶ ἐμοῦ καὶ θεοῖς εἴρηται ὡς περὶ θείου ἀνδρὸς.” Philostratus, Letters of Apollonius, vol. 458, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2006). [36] See George Hart, The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, 2nd ed. (Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2005), 3. [37] Plutarch, Life of Alexander, trans., Ian Scott-Kilvert and Timothy E. Duff, The Age of Alexander (London, UK: Penguin, 2011), 311. Arrian includes a story about Anaxarchus advocating paying divine honors to Alexander through prostration. The Macedonians refused but the Persian members of his entourage “rose from their seats and one by one grovelled on the floor before the King.” Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander, trans., Aubrey De Sélincourt (London, UK: Penguin, 1971), 222. [38] Translation my own from “Ἀντίοχος ὁ Θεὸς Δίκαιος Ἐπιφανὴς Φιλορωμαῖος Φιλέλλην.” Inscription at Nemrut Dağ, accessible at https://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/mithras/display.php?page=cimrm32. See also https://zeugma.packhum.org/pdfs/v1ch09.pdf. [39] Greek taken from W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graecae Inscriptiones Selectae, vol. 2 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1960), 48-60. Of particular note is the definite article before θεός. They didn't celebrate the birthday of a god, but the birthday of the god. [40] Appian, The Civil Wars, trans., John Carter (London, UK: Penguin, 1996), 149. [41] M. David Litwa, Iesus Deus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 20. [42] ibid. [43] Blackburn, 92-3. [44] The Homeric Hymns, trans., Michael Crudden (New York, NY: Oxford, 2008), 38. [45] "The Homeric Hymns," 14. [46] Homer,  344. [47] Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus, trans., Marcus Dods, vol. 2, Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001). [48] Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis, trans., Susan A. Stephens, Callimachus: The Hymns (New York, NY: Oxford, 2015), 119. [49] Siculus,  234. [50] Cyprian, Treatise 6: On the Vanity of Idols, trans., Ernest Wallis, vol. 5, Ante-Nicene Fathers (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995). [51] Arnobius, Against the Heathen, trans., Hamilton Bryce and Hugh Campbell, vol. 6, Ante-Nicene Fathers (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995). [52] Livy, The Early History of Rome, trans., Aubrey De Sélincourt (London, UK: Penguin, 2002), 49. [53] Cicero, The Nature of the Gods, trans., Patrick Gerard Walsh (Oxford, UK: Oxford, 2008), 69. [54] Wendy Cotter, "Greco-Roman Apotheosis Traditions and the Resurrection Appearances in Matthew," in The Gospel of Matthew in Current Study, ed. David E. Aune (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 149. [55] Litwa, 170. [56] William L. Lane, The Gospel of Mark, Nicnt, ed. F. F. Bruce Ned B. Stonehouse, and Gordon D. Fee (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974). [57] “Recent commentators have stressed that the best background for understanding the Markan transfiguration is the story of Moses' ascent up Mount Sinai (Exod. 24 and 34).” Litwa, 123. [58] Tertullian, Apology, trans. S. Thelwall, vol. 3, Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003). [59] Eusebius, The Church History, trans. Paul L. Maier (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007), 54. [60] Pliny the Younger, The Letters of the Younger Pliny, trans., Betty Radice (London: Penguin, 1969), 294. [61] Pseudo-Thomas, Infancy Gospel of Thomas, trans., James Orr (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1903), 25. [62] Litwa, 83. [63] For sources on Theodotus, see Pseduo-Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 7.35.1-2; 10.23.1-2; Pseudo-Tertullian, Against All Heresies 8.2; Eusebius, Church History 5.28. [64] Pseudo-Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, trans., David Litwa (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2016), 571. [65] I took the liberty to decapitalize these appellatives. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, trans. Thomas B. Falls (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 244. [66] Justin Martyr, 241. (Altered, see previous footnote.) [67] Justin Martyr, 102. [68] Justin Martyr, 56-7. [69] Arnobius makes a similar argument in Against the Heathen 1.38-39 “Is he not worthy to be called a god by us and felt to be a god on account of the favor or such great benefits? For if you have enrolled Liber among the gods because he discovered the use of wine, and Ceres the use of bread, Aesculapius the use of medicines, Minerva the use of oil, Triptolemus plowing, and Hercules because he conquered and restrained beasts, thieves, and the many-headed hydra…So then, ought we not to consider Christ a god, and to bestow upon him all the worship due to his divinity?” Translation from Litwa, 105. [70] Justin Martyr, 46. [71] Justin Martyr, 39. [72] Origen, Against Celsus, trans. Frederick Crombie, vol. 4, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003). [73] Litwa, 173. [74] I could easily multiply examples of this by looking at Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and many others. [75] The obvious exception to Hanson's statement were thinkers like Sabellius and Praxeas who believed that the Father himself came down as a human being. R. P. C. Hanson, Search for a Christian Doctrine of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), xix. [76] Interestingly, even some of the biblical unitarians of the period were comfortable with calling Jesus god, though they limited his divinity to his post-resurrection life. [77] Tertullian writes, “[T]he Father is not the same as the Son, since they differ one from the other in the mode of their being. For the Father is the entire substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole, as He Himself acknowledges: “My Father is greater than I.” In the Psalm His inferiority is described as being “a little lower than the angels.” Thus the Father is distinct from the Son, being greater than the Son” (Against Praxeas 9). Tertullian, Against Praxeas, trans., Holmes, vol. 3, Ante Nice Fathers (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003).

Full Text of ReadingsMemorial of Our Lady of the Rosary Lectionary: 460The Saint of the day is Our Lady of the RosaryThe Story of Our Lady of the Rosary Saint Pius V established the feast of Our Lady of Victory to thank God for the Christian defeat of the Turks at Lepanto—a victory attributed to praying the rosary. Pope Gregory XIII changed the name to Feast of the Holy Rosary–originally celebrated on the first Sunday in October–in 1573. Pope Clement XI extended the feast to the universal Church in 1716. And in 1913, Saint Pius X set the date for the feast that we know today of October 7. The development of the rosary has a long history. First a practice developed of praying 150 Our Fathers in imitation of the 150 Psalms. Then there was a parallel practice of praying 150 Hail Marys. Soon a mystery of Jesus' life was attached to each Hail Mary. Though Mary's giving of the rosary to Saint Dominic is recognized as a legend, the development of this prayer form owes much to the followers of Saint Dominic. One of them, Alan de la Roche, was known as “the apostle of the rosary.” He founded the first Confraternity of the Rosary in the 15th century. In the 16th century, the rosary was developed to consist of 15 mysteries: joyful, sorrowful and glorious. In 2002, Pope John Paul II added the five Mysteries of Light to this devotion. Reflection The purpose of the rosary is to help us meditate on the great mysteries of our salvation. Pius XII called it a compendium of the gospel. The main focus is on Jesus—his birth, life, death, and resurrection. The “Our Fathers” remind us that Jesus' Father is the initiator of salvation. The “Hail Marys” remind us to join with Mary in contemplating these mysteries. They also make us aware that Mary was and is intimately joined with her Son in all the mysteries of his earthly and heavenly existence. The “Glory Bes” remind us that the purpose of all life is the glory of the Trinity. The rosary appeals to many. It is simple. The constant repetition of words helps create an atmosphere in which to contemplate the mysteries of God. We sense that Jesus and Mary are with us in the joys and sorrows of life. We grow in hope that God will bring us to share in the glory of Jesus and Mary forever. Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

In Michaelangelo's ‘Pietà,' we see the sixth Sorrow personified. Though Mary knew he would rise again, she still had to endure the immense grief of her Son's earthly death. In this episode of the #BecomeFire Podcast, we pray and reflect on 'Mary Receives the Dead body of Jesus In Her Arms.'

After her own meeting with the angel Gabriel, Mary came to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Though Mary was young and Elizabeth old, they shared the common experience of bearing special sons.When Mary arrived at Elizabeth's house, Elizabeth greeted her with the same words the angel used, “Blessed are you among women.” Elizabeth's baby leaped in her womb at the sound of Mary's voice, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.All God's Women is a daily devotional women's Bible study podcast and internationally syndicated radio show where we journey through the Bible one woman's story at a time. If you enjoy learning about women in the Bible, tune in each weekday for 2-minute Bible stories about Bible women.If you enjoy listening to All God's Women podcast and radio show, you're going to love my brand new Women of Prayer Bible study. Get to know the character of God by studying the prayers of women in the Bible. Grab your copy today. Available in paperback and Kindle. Take your study further with the Women of Prayer BIBLE STUDY Be a part of the Women of Prayer SIMULSTUDYLearn more at the All God's Women WEBSITEJoin the All God's Women FACEBOOK GROUPPin All God's Women on PINTERESTFollow Sharon Wilharm on FACEBOOK

After her own meeting with the angel Gabriel, Mary came to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Though Mary was young and Elizabeth old, they shared the common experience of bearing special sons. When Mary arrived at Elizabeth's house, Elizabeth greeted her with the same words the angel used, “Blessed are you among women.” Elizabeth's baby leaped in her womb at the sound of Mary's voice, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.All God's Women is a daily devotional women's Bible study podcast and internationally syndicated radio show where we journey through the Bible one woman's story at a time. If you enjoy learning about women in the Bible, tune in each weekday for 2-minute Bible stories about Bible women. If you enjoy listening to All God's Women podcast and radio show, you're going to love my brand new Women of Prayer Bible study. Get to know the character of God by studying the prayers of women in the Bible. Grab your copy today. Available in paperback and Kindle. Take your study further with the Women of Prayer BIBLE STUDY Be a part of the Women of Prayer SIMULSTUDYLearn more at the All God's Women WEBSITEJoin the All God's Women FACEBOOK GROUPPin All God's Women on PINTERESTFollow Sharon Wilharm on FACEBOOK

First ReadingSIRACH 50:22-2422And now bless the God of all, who in every way does great things; who exalts our days from birth, and deals with us according to his mercy. 23May he give us gladness of heart, and grant that peace may be in our days in Israel, as in the days of old. 24May he entrust to us his mercy! And let him deliver us in our days!Responsorial PsalmPSALMS 138:1-51I give thee thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing thy praise; 2I bow down toward thy holy temple and give thanks to thy name for thy steadfast love and thy faithfulness; for thou hast exalted above everything thy name and thy word. 3On the day I called, thou didst answer me, my strength of soul thou didst increase. 4All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O LORD, for they have heard the words of thy mouth; 5and they shall sing of the ways of the LORD, for great is the glory of the LORD.Second Reading1 CORINTHIANS 1:3-93Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, 5that in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge -- 6even as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you -- 7so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ; 8who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.GospelLUKE 17:11-1911On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Sama'ria and Galilee. 12And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance 13and lifted up their voices and said, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." 14When he saw them he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went they were cleansed. 15Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; 16and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. 17Then said Jesus, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? 18Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" 19And he said to him, "Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well."

Full Text of ReadingsMemorial of Our Lady of the Rosary Lectionary: 465All podcast readings are produced by the USCCB and are from the Catholic Lectionary, based on the New American Bible and approved for use in the United States _______________________________________The Saint of the day is Our Lady of the Rosaryof Our Lady of the Rosary Saint Pius V established this feast in 1573. The purpose was to thank God for the victory of Christians over the Turks at Lepanto—a victory attributed to the praying of the rosary. Clement XI extended the feast to the universal Church in 1716. The development of the rosary has a long history. First a practice developed of praying 150 Our Fathers in imitation of the 150 Psalms. Then there was a parallel practice of praying 150 Hail Marys. Soon a mystery of Jesus' life was attached to each Hail Mary. Though Mary's giving of the rosary to Saint Dominic is recognized as a legend, the development of this prayer form owes much to the followers of Saint Dominic. One of them, Alan de la Roche, was known as “the apostle of the rosary.” He founded the first Confraternity of the Rosary in the 15th century. In the 16th century, the rosary was developed to its present form—with the 15 mysteries: joyful, sorrowful and glorious. In 2002, Pope John Paul II added the five Mysteries of Light to this devotion. Reflection The purpose of the rosary is to help us meditate on the great mysteries of our salvation. Pius XII called it a compendium of the gospel. The main focus is on Jesus—his birth, life, death, and resurrection. The Our Fathers remind us that Jesus' Father is the initiator of salvation. The Hail Marys remind us to join with Mary in contemplating these mysteries. They also make us aware that Mary was and is intimately joined with her Son in all the mysteries of his earthly and heavenly existence. The Glory Bes remind us that the purpose of all life is the glory of the Trinity. The rosary appeals to many. It is simple. The constant repetition of words helps create an atmosphere in which to contemplate the mysteries of God. We sense that Jesus and Mary are with us in the joys and sorrows of life. We grow in hope that God will bring us to share in the glory of Jesus and Mary forever. Click here for a reflection on the rosary! Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

#Sexual Assault Awareness MonthI'm talking to Mary Reigel an experienced  Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT). and Trauma  Recovery Specialist who has been working in the field of death, grief, and trauma about how to recover from trauma. Can you ever fully recover from trauma? What does recovery look like? We talk about the fear that so many trauma survivors carry of going to therapy and having to re-experience the trauma in order to “recover from it.” Mary Reigel talks about trauma-free, trauma recovery. New and emerging trauma therapy treatment methods.We also define trauma. What is trauma? Big trauma, small trauma. And how trauma shapes our brains, and how we are completely affected by what we've lived through. And how trauma has real, emotional, physical, and social consequences. Mary Reigel, LMFT, with over 36 years of experience helping people, has seen an amazing increase in the positive outcomes achieved in informed psychotherapy practices. These improvements are a result of the accumulation of knowledge, experience, and cutting-edge therapies. Mary helped individuals and organizations. In time she was working side-by-side coroner investigators, police, EMS, and firefighters in the big and little disasters that impact our lives. She knows that no amount of money or job title can immune us from life's sorrows. She also knows that people can recover with a solid sense of well-being.Though Mary is a full-time psychotherapist, she is also the founder of the Grief STEPtm Programs and its Say the Right Thing and Do the Right Thing Trainings, and an Approved Consultant for EMDRIA, Certified in EMDR treatment for trauma, Certified in Clinical Hypnosis, and an approved trainer for the ICISF.Mary talks about trauma, recovery, hope. How you can heal and turn your pain into purpose.

Mary was one of a faithful remnant of Israel, who for 400 silent years had been awaiting the arrival of their prophesied Savior. Now that His arrival is finally upon her, she is so filled with exceeding joy, that she cannot contain her worship. From her mouth comes an outburst of praise, filled with marvel and wonder. Though Mary may have never guessed her response would be made known to others, the church would echo her canticle for thousands of years.

We've all heard the story of "Frankenstein's Monster." A bat shit crazy scientist wants to reanimate dead tissue and basically create a fucking zombie baby… BECAUSE THAT'S HOW YOU GET FUCKING ZOMBIES! Anyway, Dr. Frankenstein and his trusty assistant, Igor, set off to bring a bunch of random, dead body parts together, throw some lightning on the bugger and bring this new, puzzle piece of a quasi-human back to "life." At first, the reanimated corpse seems somewhat ordinary, but then flips his shit and starts terrorizing and doing what I can only imagine REANIMATED ZOMBIES FUCKING DO!    Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin.  So, she was brought into this world by some smart fucking people. Mary's mother died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Puerperal fever is an infectious, sometimes fatal, disease of childbirth; until the mid-19th century, this dreaded, then-mysterious illness could sweep through a hospital maternity ward and kill most new mothers. Today strict aseptic hospital techniques have made the condition uncommon in most parts of the world, except in unusual circumstances such as illegally induced abortion. Her father, William, was left to bring up Mary and her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Mary's mother's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after her mother's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, the Memoirs revealed Mary's mother's affairs and her illegitimate child. In that period, they were seen as shocking. Mary read these memoirs and her mother's books and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise Mary and Fanny himself, he looked for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children—Charles and Claire SO MANY MARY'S! Sorry folks. Most of her father's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as a straight fucking bitch. Ok, not really, but they didn't like her. However, William was devoted to her, and the marriage worked. Mary, however, came to hate that bitch. William's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs. Godwin had favored her own children over Williams. So, how awesome is it that he had a biographer? That's so badass.  Together, Mary's father and his new bride started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books and stationery, maps, and games. However, the business wasn't making any loot, and her father was forced to borrow butt loads of money to keep it going. He kept borrowing money to pay off earlier loans, just adding to his problems. By 1809, William's business was close to closing up shop, and he was "near to despair." Mary's father was saved from debtor's prison by devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him additional money. So, debtor's prison is pretty much EXACTLY what it sounds like. If you couldn't pay your debts, they threw your ass in jail. Unlike today where they just FUCK UP YOUR CREDIT! THANKS, COLUMBIA HOUSE!!!  Though Mary received little education, her father tutored her in many subjects. He often took the children on educational trips. They had access to his library and the many intelligent mofos who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. You know, that dude that shot and killed his POLITICAL opponent, Alexander Hamilton, in a fucking duel! Ah… I was born in the wrong century.   Mary's father admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary's mother's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. However, Mary still received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's Roman and Greek history books. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate, England. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." My father didn't know how to spell my name until I was twelve.  In June of 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. In a letter to Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, remove her from the seamy side of the business, or introduce her to radical politics. However, Mary loved the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and with his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 to hang out for 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered."   Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in between her two stays in Scotland. When she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley became estranged from his wife and regularly visited Mary's father, William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family. They wanted him to be a high, upstanding snoot and follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy. He tried to donate large amounts of the family's money to projects meant to help the poor and disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had a problem gaining access to capital until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice." After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed and whooped his fuckin ass! Yeah! Ok, not really. He was just super pissed. Mary and Percy began hookin' up on the down-low at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. Creepy and super fucking gross.   On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion,." This led her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. So, the grown-ass 21-year-old man statutorily raped the 16-year-old daughter of the man he idolized and dicked over. In a graveyard. My god, how things have changed...GROSS! Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks." Smart but ugly. Got it. To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage his daughter's "spotless fame." No! You don't say! Dad wasn't into his TEENAGE DAUGHTER BANGING A MAN IN THE GRAVEYARD!?! Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts at about the same time. Oof. He found out after he diddled her. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father," was confused. Um… what? She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them.  After convincing Mary's mother, who took off after them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio traveled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through France, recently ravaged by war, all the way to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they traveled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. Finally, at Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. Instead, they traveled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was packed with bullshit, some of which she had not expected. Either before or during their journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's stupid ass surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They kept doing their thing, reading, and writing and entertained Percy Shelley's friends. Percy Shelley would often leave home for short periods to dodge bill collectors, and the couple's heartbroken letters would reveal their pain while he was away. Pregnant and often sick, Mary Godwin had to hear of Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 due to his constant escapades with Claire Clairmont. Supposedly, Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused Mary to be rightfully jealous. And yes, Claire was Mary's cousin. Percy was a friggin' creep. Percy pissed off Mary when he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked during a walk in the French countryside. This offended her due to her principles, and she was like, "Oh, hell nah, sahn!" and started taking off her earrings in a rage. Or something like that. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea since she believed in free love in principle. She was a hippie before being a hippie was cool. Percy probably just wanted to not feel guilty for hooking up with her cousin. Creep. In reality, however, she loved only Percy and seemed to have gone no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-months premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: "My dearest Hogg, my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley (Percy) is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now." The loss of her child brought about acute depression in Mary. She was haunted by visions of the baby, but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-story cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Unfortunately, little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 was lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father and soon nicknamed "Willmouse." In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. In May 1816, Mary, Percy, and their son traveled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. Claire sounds like a bit of a trollop. No judging, just making an observation. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley." Byron joined them on 25 May with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer," Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house." Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories called Fantasmagoriana, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story." Unable to think up an account, young Mary became flustered: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." Finally, one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated," Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things." Galvanism is a term invented by the late 18th-century physicist and chemist Alessandro Volta to refer to the generation of electric current by chemical action. The word also came to refer to the discoveries of its namesake, Luigi Galvani, specifically the generation of electric current within biological organisms and the contraction/convulsion of natural muscle tissue upon contact with electric current. While Volta theorized and later demonstrated the phenomenon of his "Galvanism" to be replicable with otherwise inert materials, Galvani thought his discovery to confirm the existence of "animal electricity," a vital force that gave life to organic matter. We'll talk a little more about Galvani and a murderer named George Foster toward the end of the episode. It was after midnight before they retired, and she was unable to sleep, mainly because she became overwhelmed by her imagination as she kept thinking about the grim terrors of her "waking dream," her ghost story: "I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world." She began writing what she assumed would be a short, profound story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she turned her little idea into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that time in Switzerland as "when I first stepped out from childhood into life." The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalized repeatedly, and it helped form the basis for several films. Here's a cool little side note: In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2 am and 3 am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write their ghost stories. Shelley and her husband collaborated on the story, but the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics forever. There are differences in the 1818, 1823, and 1831 versions. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was her husband's work "as far as I can recollect." James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator." At the same time, Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, the editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." So, eat one, Percy! Just kidding. In 1840 and 1842, Mary and her son traveled together all over the continent. Mary recorded these trips in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843. In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower," Mary put it. For the first time in her life, she and her son were financially independent, though the remaining estate wasn't worth as much as they had thought. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself in the crosshairs of three separate blackmailing sons of bitches. First, in 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. Scandalous! However, a friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Vaffanculo, Gatteschi! Shortly afterward, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also, in 1845, Percy Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her, claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary told him to eat a big ole bag of dicks and jog on! In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary liked Jane. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and vacationed with them, as well. Mary's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing, obviously two of her favorite things. Then, on 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, Mary Shelly died at fifty-three from what her doctor suspected was a brain tumor. According to Jane Shelley, Mary had asked to be buried with her mother and father. Still, looking at the graveyard at St Pancras and calling it "dreadful," Percy and Jane chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church in Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Romantic or disturbing? Maybe a bit of both. Mary Shelley remained a stout political radical throughout her life. Mary's works often suggested that cooperation and sympathy, mainly as practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view directly challenged the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and Enlightenment political theories. She wrote seven novels / Two travel narrations / Twenty three short stories / Three books of children's literature, and many articles. Mary Shelley left her mark on the literary world, and her name will be forever etched in the catacombs of horror for generations to come. When it comes to reanimation, there's someone else we need to talk about. George Forster (or Foster) was found guilty of murdering his wife and child by drowning them in Paddington Canal, London. He was hanged at Newgate on 18 January 1803, after which his body was taken to a nearby house where it was used in an experiment by Italian scientist Giovanni Aldini. At his trial, the events were reconstructed. Forster's mother-in-law recounted that her daughter and grandchild had left her house to see Forster at 4 pm on Saturday, 4 December 1802. In whose house Forster lodged, Joseph Bradfield reported that they had stayed together that night and gone out at 10 am on Sunday morning. He also stated that Forster and his wife had not been on good terms because she wished to live with him. On Sunday, various witnesses saw Forster with his wife and child in public houses near Paddington Canal. The body of his child was found on Monday morning; after the canal was dragged for three days, his wife's body was also found. Forster claimed that upon leaving The Mitre, he set out alone for Barnet to see his other two children in the workhouse there, though he was forced to turn back at Whetstone due to the failing light. This was contradicted by a waiter at The Mitre who said the three left the inn together. Skepticism was also expressed that he could have walked to Whetstone when he claimed. Nevertheless, the jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to death and also to be dissected after that. This sentence was designed to provide medicine with corpses on which to experiment and ensure that the condemned could not rise on Judgement Day, their bodies having been cut into pieces and selectively discarded. Forster was hanged on 18 January, shortly before he made a full confession. He said he had come to hate his wife and had twice before taken his wife to the canal, but his nerve had both times failed him. A recent BBC Knowledge documentary (Real Horror: Frankenstein) questions the fairness of the trial. It notes that friends of George Forster's wife later claimed that she was highly suicidal and had often talked about killing herself and her daughter. According to this documentary, Forster attempted suicide by stabbing himself with a crudely fashioned knife. This was to avoid awakening during the dissection of his body, should he not have died when hanged. This was a real possibility owing to the crude methods of execution at the time. The same reference suggests that his 'confession' was obtained under duress. In fact, it alleges that Pass, a Beadle or an official of a church or synagogue on Aldini's payroll, fast-tracked the whole trial and legal procedure to obtain the freshest corpse possible for his benefactor. After the execution, Forster's body was given to Giovanni Aldini for experimentation. Aldini was the nephew of fellow scientist Luigi Galvani and an enthusiastic proponent of his uncle's method of stimulating muscles with electric current, known as Galvanism. The experiment he performed on Forster's body demonstrated this technique. The Newgate Calendar (a record of executions at Newgate) reports that "On the first application of the process to the face, the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion."  Several people present believed that Forster was being brought back to life (The Newgate Calendar reports that even if this had been so, he would have been re-executed since his sentence was to "hang until he be dead"). One man, Mr. Pass, the beadle of the Surgeons' Company, was so shocked that he died shortly after leaving. The hanged man was undoubtedly dead since his blood had been drained and his spinal cord severed after the execution.   Top Ten Frankenstein Movies https://screenrant.com/best-frankenstein-movies-ranked-imdb/

For those of us who are personally acquainted with the Savior who was born that first Christmas day, Christmas holds particular significance. However, we've romanticized the story of Christmas to the place that the manger scene and the people involved seem like actors in a play. We rarely stop to think that they were real people, in anything but a romantic setting. That's why I'd like to bring a little reality to the Christmas story. I want to talk about the most blessed woman who ever lived. And I want to focus on the heart of Mary. What was it about this lady that qualified her for this incredible privilege of bearing the Savior of the world? What was in her heart? Let me begin by pointing out that nowhere in Scripture are we given any indication that Mary is to be worshipped. If she were here, I think Mary would be the first to tell us that she was just a woman, a very simple young lady, chosen by God for a special purpose. But like all of the rest of mankind, she was born of Adam's race—born according to man—and she inherited the same sin nature that all of us have. So, when I speak of Mary's heart, I'm not elevating her to some divine place of sinless perfection. We'd have a hard time relating to her if that were true. But in fact it is because Mary was just like us—a  regular lady—that we can look at her heart and can identify with her and learn from her. So, try to erase all those images of Mary with a halo over her head, and see instead a lady with a wash bucket and children, a small, poor home, with few luxuries or conveniences, and a very special heart. Though Mary came from the line of David, she was a humble lady from a very small, insignificant town, Nazareth. We don't know anything about her parents, except that they must have been godly people because Mary had a very good knowledge of Old Testament Scripture. We begin to get an idea of the heart of Mary when we think about Gabriel's announcement to her that she had been chosen to bear the Messiah. Let's look at that passage in Luke 1:28-38: Gabriel said to Mary: "Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end." And Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God. And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month. For nothing will be impossible with God." And Mary said, "Behold the bondslave of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. Certainly Scripture makes it clear time and again that Mary was then a virgin and remained a virgin until after the birth of Jesus. You know, not many people who will be celebrating Christmas this year really believe that Jesus was born of a virgin. Why is it so terribly important that we believe and accept that Mary was indeed a virgin until after Jesus' birth? Because we know from Scripture that sin entered the world through the seed of man. Had Jesus been conceived through an earthly man's seed, he could not have escaped the sin nature that is born into all of us. And if Jesus were not sinless, he could never become the sacrifice demanded by God's righteousness. The virgin birth is not an optional theology. Your whole destiny—and mine—depends upon whether or not it is true. We are acceptable to God when we accept the redemption and forgiveness of our sins made possible because the perfect sacrificial Lamb, Jesus Christ, paid the debt for our sins.

Full Text of ReadingsMemorial of Our Lady of the Rosary Lectionary: 464All podcast readings are produced by the USCCB and are from the Catholic Lectionary, based on the New American Bible and approved for use in the United States _______________________________________The Saint of the day is Our Lady of the Rosaryof Our Lady of the Rosary Saint Pius V established this feast in 1573. The purpose was to thank God for the victory of Christians over the Turks at Lepanto—a victory attributed to the praying of the rosary. Clement XI extended the feast to the universal Church in 1716. The development of the rosary has a long history. First a practice developed of praying 150 Our Fathers in imitation of the 150 Psalms. Then there was a parallel practice of praying 150 Hail Marys. Soon a mystery of Jesus' life was attached to each Hail Mary. Though Mary's giving of the rosary to Saint Dominic is recognized as a legend, the development of this prayer form owes much to the followers of Saint Dominic. One of them, Alan de la Roche, was known as “the apostle of the rosary.” He founded the first Confraternity of the Rosary in the 15th century. In the 16th century, the rosary was developed to its present form—with the 15 mysteries: joyful, sorrowful and glorious. In 2002, Pope John Paul II added the five Mysteries of Light to this devotion. Reflection The purpose of the rosary is to help us meditate on the great mysteries of our salvation. Pius XII called it a compendium of the gospel. The main focus is on Jesus—his birth, life, death, and resurrection. The Our Fathers remind us that Jesus' Father is the initiator of salvation. The Hail Marys remind us to join with Mary in contemplating these mysteries. They also make us aware that Mary was and is intimately joined with her Son in all the mysteries of his earthly and heavenly existence. The Glory Bes remind us that the purpose of all life is the glory of the Trinity. The rosary appeals to many. It is simple. The constant repetition of words helps create an atmosphere in which to contemplate the mysteries of God. We sense that Jesus and Mary are with us in the joys and sorrows of life. We grow in hope that God will bring us to share in the glory of Jesus and Mary forever. Click here for a reflection on the rosary! Saint of the Day Copyright Franciscan Media

Mary models for us the life that Jesus calls us to live. She also models the reward that Jesus has in mind for us—eternal life with him. Mary's assumption gives us hope that Jesus' promise will be fulfilled for us. Though Mary's assumption is not recorded in scripture, it has been held as fact since early Church days. For an article on this, click this link: Assumption: History of Doctrine. The reading from Revelation, as does the gospel, speaks of Mary as the mother of the Savior. Interestingly, the image in Revelation 12 is also seen many years later in the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. For more information on this click here: Explanation of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Rejoice! If we live the life to which we have been called, we shall live with Him forever. The Mass readings can be found here: Scripture Readings The blog post can be found here: Blog Post

Fleming Rutledge has said, "Advent begins in the dark..." but the whole point of Christmas is the coming of the Light of the World. Here we'll look at another response to Christmas: a troubled teen. While it is easy for us to romanticize the story of the Incarnation with nostalgia and the bigger picture, it was incredibly difficult for those who lived through it - especially Mary. For her, Christmas is nothing less than disturbing. She was "greatly troubled." Christmas disturbs her, ruins her dreams, and then... leads her to rejoice. How can we have that, too? Let's talk about how Christmas disturbs our weary world in order that we might begin to rejoice with Mary. Discussion Questions Christmas disturbs us Read Luke 1:1-4. What is Luke communicating to his readers? Knowing he traveled with Paul to Jerusalem (Acts 21:1-6), and that Acts opens with Mary worshiping with the disciples there (Acts 1:14), has led many scholars to conclude Luke received these accounts firsthand from Mary. What parts of our passage require firsthand knowledge of the events? Do you have confidence in the historical reality of Christmas, or is it too mysterious and miraculous to embrace? Read vs.28-29. How would you have responded to this? What emotion do you think would accompany Mary being "greatly troubled"? At the same time, Mary seems to remain inquisitive, "trying to discern" (v.29) and asking "how will this be?" (v.34) What are we learning about Mary's personality? She is repeatedly told she is "favored" (v.28,30), but would you have heard this sort of news as favor initially? What news have you received in the past that did not seem favorable at that time, but eventually you saw that God was moving in your life? What do you notice about Gabriel's explanation of what is going to happen to Mary (v.35)? Would it have been satisfactory for you - even in these circumstances? Read Luke 2:19 & 2:50-51. What pattern do you see in how Mary processes unusual events in her life? Since she has a long and protracted way of wrestling with God's work in her life, how might we find that encouraging in ours? (Israel means “wrestles with God” because Jacob did just that.) How have you wrestled with God, and did that push you away from Him or draw you closer? How does Gabriel describe this child Mary is going to have (v.32.33)? Read God's promise to David in 2 Samuel 7:12-13. What echoes do you notice? In light of Elizabeth's additional description of Jesus (v.41), what does Mary know about the child within her womb? With all of this happening to her, how is her inner thought life an encouragement to you? Why is it important to know that God welcomes our questions and doubts, especially in crises? And - if Christmas was this disturbing for Mary, should we be surprised when Christ's coming into our lives is equally disturbing? Christmas ruins our dreams In what ways might Mary's pregnancy ruin her pre-existing dreams for her own life? In John 8:19 & 8:41, the Pharisees strongly imply they are aware of the questionable conditions of Jesus' birth, even mocking him. If Jesus is getting such treatment 30 years after-the-fact, what can we infer about how Mary was perceived & treated socially during those decades? In an honor-shame society, why might that be additionally devastating? How has God called you into a lifestyle or ministry that is rejected or even mocked by the culture around you? In v.31, Gabriel gives Jesus' name. Why might God remove that parental right from Mary & Joseph? How does this highlight the unique inversion of authority in the parent-child relationship here? Though Mary is a great example of faith for us, how is this a reminder that she - just like us - equally needs a savior? In light of all the challenges we've seen so far, why is Mary's response in v.38 so astounding? What is she risking - not only socially but also with Joseph? Why might some see this sort of religious surrendering of control as dangerous? How has it been abused - even among Christians? How will Christ's use of authority differ so greatly from how virtually all others use power? Where have you “let go to let God”, and where have you held on to do it on your own? If there are places you don't like what Jesus has said, what does this sort of surrender require of any follower of Christ? Whose opinion must matter more in my daily life? Why is that so difficult? How might Mary's own wrestlings be an encouragement to us even there? Christmas remakes us Why is Mary favored? Has she earned this privilege? Remember what we saw in Ephesians 2:8-9. If this is God's grace she is receiving, if grace has ruined her dreams, how does it now remake her life? In what areas have you been remade, by the grace of God, that is different from maturing or learning from bad mistakes? …You were undone and made into something different. Notice well: though Mary begins to process the theological truths Gabriel tells her, when does she actually begin to experience joy as a result? Does an angel's visit bring her that joy? Why would even that be insufficient for her (or us)? Why would her visit with Elizabeth make that joy practical in a way even an angel had not? What does this show us about our need to practice our faith in community? Have you ever experienced divine confirmation in community that you hadn't while going through the different phases, parts, or pieces? Read the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). What is it precisely that Mary is celebrating? What causes her to rejoice (v.47) and where does she place her focus throughout the song? As the song goes on, note the pronouns: what pronouns fade and which increasingly have focus? How might Mary's focus in prayer and song challenge us to reconsider our own and help us to share her joy? Is there a way you let God's truths take hold of your emotions, as much as you let movies, social media, or the music you normally choose? After all, we hit “share-heart-like”, or boast about a TV series we love, or even make people look at our screen to see something that's funny (Did you see this one?! Check this out!). Do you have joy that comes from God, and how can you share it more than you share other things? GOSPEL: Christmas disturbs Mary with news that forces her to think intensively. Christmas ruins her dreams and brings her into a heightened state of vulnerability. And yet Christmas - the coming of Christ - remakes her, precisely because she will watch as her son takes all of that on himself, for her sake and ours. This baby came to be crushed. We now have a God-man who sits upon the throne of existence with scars borne on our behalf. How do Christ's wounds help not only to heal Mary's wounds, but enable her to deal with them as they happen? How does the fact that Jesus has the audacity to become vulnerable himself help us when we face our own crises? May we consider: what child is this, growing within Mary's womb?

Matthew 1:1-17 Series: Advent 2020 #3 # Introduction Christians do not believe reasonable things, at least as the world defines reasonable, and often even what *religious* people call reasonable. Jesus Christ, God's Son in flesh and blood, is not reasonable. His existence is a scandal. Many Jews anticipated the promised Messiah, but they stumbled over Jesus' claim to be that divine King and they killed Him for it. The fact of His crucifixion caused other Jews to stumble over Jesus, because their Messiah couldn't be a crucified Messiah. Jesus was a rock of offense (1 Peter 2:8; 1 Corinthians 1:23). Not only Jews, but also many Gentiles had their own religious expectations and considered the word of the cross foolish (1 Corinthians 1:23). What kind of "god" was this? The scandal and offense and foolishness began not with Jerusalem but Bethlehem. The Word lifted up (John 8:28; 12:32-33) started with the Word come down, the Word become flesh. The doctrine of Jesus' divinity taking on humanity is called the hypostatic union. As our historic catechisms confess, Jesus is “true God from true God” and “became truly human” (Nicene Creed, AD 325). > one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ (Definition of Chalcedon, AD 451) In the first few centuries this was simply unbelievable. Some argued that Jesus wasn't really a man but just *seemed* to be one (Docetism), or that Jesus wasn't really God (Arianism), or that there were two separate persons in Jesus (Nestorianism), or that after the incarnation there was only the one nature (Eutyches). The hypostatic union was too much of a scandal for many to handle. Christmas has been causing idealogical and worldview arguments since it started. The incarnation of God (the second Person of three Persons in the Trinity, equally God but not the Father or the Spirit) is staggering enough. As Athanasius pointed out in his book _On the Incarnation_, the Son was still holding the universe together while His limbs were being knit together in His mother's womb. But the divine-human union of Jesus' nature is not the scandal that Matthew started with. As we've seen the past two Sundays of Advent sermons, the first seventeen verses of the New Testament point to God's promises fulfilled over generations of *waiting*. The fulfillment came in the coming of the Christ; my boss is not just a Jewish carpenter. *The King was born!* As we come for a third focus on the genealogy we see that Jesus' family tree is a royal mess. The "book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ" (verse 1), the "account of the origin" (NIV fn), the "record" (NASB) could very well be called the original Christmas naughty list. The birth of Christ is filled with inconveniences for Jesus' immediate family, Joseph traveling with his pregnant fiancé where there were mask mandates in the inn, and no room (Luke 2:1-7). But Jesus' extended family is filled with immoralities. It's not just the bit players either. The headliner names, Abraham and David, were not mere mythical figures in Jewish history, they were mortal and sinful men. Abraham, who is the father of the Jews, was *not* a Jew himself. Abram was from Ur, chosen by God to become the father of many nations, including the nation of Israel. Though Abraham believed God, he also disobeyed God, as Genesis records that twice he lied about Sarah being only his sister to cover his butt. David was also chosen by God and anointed as King of Israel, a "friend of God." Also, while being king, David disobeyed God by taking a census (2 Samuel 24:1-17) that led to death by pestilence for 70,000 of his citizens. *These* are Jesus' relatives. We don't have records about all of these fathers, but there are some other big, well-known names. Isaac lied about Rebekah, Jacob lied and stole his brother's birthright and played favorites with his wives and sons. Later on, Solomon took many wives for himself and did most of what the Lord told kings *not* to do. Rehoboam oppressed the people. As I said last week, Jeconiah was such a wicked man that the Lord promised that no son of his would ever sit on the throne (Jeremiah 22:30). Someone could argue that this is an unfair selection, a needless amount of attention on the sins of these men. After all, Matthew moves through the list without pointing out every dirty deed. That is true, sort of, except for two things that make the third point for our advent consideration. Waiting on God's promises, for a King who would rule like the light of dawn, points us to the *grace* in the promises and *grace* from the King. The genealogy is a message of waiting, a message of the King, a message of *grace*. God called Abram from paganism. God called David as the youngest of eight and, at the time, the ruddy runt. Neither Abram or David *deserved* God's attention or His promises, let alone God's forgiveness after their sins. Matthew is selective, not just selecting through Joseph's line (rather than Mary's as in Luke 3) through David (for sake of the royal lineage) and from Abraham (unlike Luke who works backwards all the way back to Adam). Matthew has also selected three sets of 14, with apparently a few steps edited along the way compared to other genealogies. But what Matthew *does* include that makes the grace the inescapable point of the genealogy are *five women*, and the majority are women of ill repute. Jewish genealogies rarely included mother's at all; Luke's does not mention one, not even Mary. Matthew has five, but not Sarah or Rebekah or Rachel, but prostitutes and pagans. Four times Matthew says "[Name] the father of [name] *by* [woman]," and the fifth woman gets her own construction. This is a list full of grace. ## Tamar (verse 3) "Judah the father of Perez and Zerah *by Tamar*." If you were a scribe charged to write the royal record you just would not do it this way. All we really need to know is that Judah was the father of Perez and Perez the father of Hezron. Zerah is superfluous for the genealogy; no son of his is mentioned. And *by Tamar* brings back all sorts of sordid memories. Tamar had been married to two of Judah's *sons*, Er and Onan, who were so “wicked in the sight of the LORD” that the LORD put them to death (Genesis 38:7, 10). Tamar was Judah's daughter-in-law. But her husbands died, and Judah refused to give her the next brother, Shelah, for sake of the levirate marriage. So Tamar dressed up as a prostitute, deceived her father-in-law, took his signet and cord and staff as a pledge on a goat which was the price of sex. When it was told to Judah that Tamar was pregnant, he prepared to have her killed for the immorality (verse 24), until she presented his staff and proved that Judah was the father (verse 26). Judah said, “She is more righteous than I,” but I'm not sure that “righteous” is the word we would use to summarize the affair. ## Rahab (verse 5) "Salmon the father of Boaz *by Rahab*." There's nothing that stands out about Rahab being in the genealogy other than that she's also a woman, *and* a Canaanite, *and* a prostitute by trade. "The prostitute" is the inspired epitaph given to her in the book of Joshua (see 2:1 and 6:25). Hers is the story of receiving and hiding and lying about the two spies sent out by Joshua. She had heard that the LORD had delivered Israel in the Red Sea and was giving Israel the land. She saw the panic among her neighbors, they were melting away (Joshua 2:9). > Our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on earth beneath. (Joshua 2:11) She believed the LORD more than many of the Israelites did. Yet she and her father's house were outsiders. They received great grace in order not to be destroyed with Jericho, but to be invited in to live in Israel (6:25). She herself, with her sinful past, was taken by Salmon as a wife. She didn't belong, and yet here she is. ## Ruth (verse 5) "Boaz the father of Obed *by Ruth*." She has an entire book of the Bible in her name. It is a great, short, true story, a rom-cov (romantic covenant). We rightly appreciate her loyalty to her mother-in-law, her willingness to work in the fields, her submission to do what she was told, her humility in seeking the help (and redemption) of Boaz. When she said, "Your people shall be my people, and your God my God" (Ruth 1:16), we love her conversion and commitment. But she was still not a Jew. What's more, she was a *Moabite*, and Moabites were one of the most bitter and hated enemies of Israel. > No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, non of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever (Deuteronomy 23:3). Those in the line of Moab were vicious toward the Israelites. Yet Ruth not only came along with Naomi and "came to Bethlehem" (Ruth 1:22), she was the great-grandmother to David the king and part of the Divine King's line. ## [Bathsheba] (verse 6) "David was the father of Solomon *by the wife of Uriah*." There is no polite way to read this part of the genealogy. I have said that David is perhaps the *key* to the list. He is mentioned at the beginning and the end, he is mentioned twice in middle, he is the ancestor of Joseph (legally) and Mary (physically). Even the fact that the generations are counted in fourteens seems to point to David by way of numbering his name according to Hebrew gematria. He is "David the *king*." And there is no way to read the second part of verse 6 without thinking about David the *killer*. Bathsheba does not even get named, and Matthew didn't make a mistake. Bathsheba is referenced, with a Greek article; "David begat the Solomon from *the (her)* of Uriah." Matthew could have written her name, but naming Uriah means we have another non-Israelite, a Hittite. Thought Bathsheba herself was a Jew, she married a non-Jew. This would have been a big enough problem if Uriah had died of some other cause; it would be weird that David married this man's widow. But David made her a widow, and that was after making her an adulterer. These sins of David were not pre-conversion, as we might wish. David was anointed as the king, he had it all, which is part of Nathan's prophetic story (2 Samuel 12:1ff). It was gross sin. It led to systemic problems in his household and in the nation. And *this* is the cream of the kingly crop from which Jesus came? There is no other emphasis here than *grace*. ## Mary (verse 16) "Joseph the husband of Mary, *of whom Jesus was born*, who is called Christ." We ought not take for granted that Mary is named in the genealogy; as I said already, Luke does not name her. Though she is a vital part of the Christmas story, and we'd assume worth mentioning, Luke simply says, Jesus "being the son (was was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli" (Luke 3:23). Luke has nothing against Mary. Luke records much more of Mary's part in the story than Matthew, including her response of belief to the angel and her response of praise to the Lord, called her *Magnificat* in Luke 1:46-55. Mary knew the Scriptures, she understood her part in the great scheme of generational promises, especially to Abraham (Luke 1:55). She knew that she was #blessed (Luke 1:48). She also knew that she was a virgin (Luke 1:34). It seems likely that she was a pregnant, unwed teenage girl. Part of the reason she "went with haste into the hill country" (Luke 1:39) has to be because of the *shame* and humiliation that would have been cast on her, though she did not actually deserve it. One of the criticisms thrown on Jesus was that he was born illegitimately (see John 8:41), and Mary was the obvious target. Joseph was "unwilling to put her to shame" (Matthew 1:19), but he might have been the only one. Though Mary wasn't a “great” sinner, she was not sinless. She was shown mercy and grace. # Conclusion This is a naughty list up to the end. It is the original doom-scrolling; “Oh no, not him too!” There are women, there are immoral women, there are wicked kings, there are Gentiles, they are *all* of them *sinners*. Perhaps this angle on the genealogy is the angle we would prefer to gloss over; the part of the Christmas tree we turn toward the wall. Yet Matthew doesn't tuck these ladies away in an unused decoration box, he gives these ladies prime placement. This is a list that would make “religious” people flush. Matthew lays down a stumbling block right out of the gospel gate. The reason is because Jesus, the King, is the King of *grace*. It is not just majestic glory that is revealed when the King of kings was born, but merciful glory far as the curse is found. Are you a sinner? The incarnation, celebrated as Christmas, is for you. Do you have significant sin in your past? Christmas is for you. Do you have sinful, distasteful, tough relatives in your family tree or coming over to your table? Christmas is for you, and them. Do you need *grace*? Christmas is for you. Are you stumbling? Look to the end of the list! Look to Jesus. If the mask mandate (anachronistic joke) that kicked Joseph and Mary to the lowly stable with ox and ass isn't enough to temper your visions of a perfect Christmas and Hallmark holiday, then consider the genealogy. Cutting paper too short for the package you're wrapping, or finding out that the perfect gift is out of stock is the least of our problems that there is grace for. Jesus did not come to make Christmas great again, Jesus came because things were and are not great. He came not to honorable men, or to make us honorable in the eyes of the world, but to make us jealousable by His grace. ----------- ## Charge Christmas is less than fourteen days away. As you get closer and closer, the temptation is to be more and more frustrated, dealing with an increased number of bad attitudes, and I don't just mean you own. But remember, Christmas means that men are *not* basically good. Christmas means that *sinners* are in the grand scheme of things. Men are broken, the world is broken, your picture-perfect tree and table and family time is as unrealistic as Pelagianism. But the God of all grace sent His Son. This Word made flesh has His Father's glory, full of grace and truth. Celebrate gracefully. ## Benediction: > And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 5:10–11, ESV)

So...chapter two. We've been together for a few pages; it's time for me to make things really awkward. Let's talk about sex and religion! I promise, no matter what you have going on in your sex life, there really is hope for you in the story of Mary. (Seriously! I'm not kidding!!!)If you grew up in church culture, you are probably geeking right now about how inappropriate it is for me to talk about the VIRGIN Mary alongside our modern sex struggles in our sex-crazed culture. If you're geeking, I imagine it's because most of American church culture has tried to control sexual behaviors through fear. Fear leads to shame and I believe shame has led us to the mess we are currently in.How have we gotten to the place where a gay teenager's biggest fear is the rejection he will face from church culture? How have we gotten to a place where some churches rally around an abusive pastor while his victims are pushed aside? How have we gotten to the place where Christians still support institutions which repeatedly cover up sexual abuse? I'm no expert, but I know we didn't get here by doing a great job loving people the way Jesus did!One time, I did a talk about shame and sexuality for a women's ministry. In my talk, I ranted about victims of child molestation being shamed more than the perpetrators. Afterwards, several people told me they had been molested and were always afraid of people finding out their secret because of how they would be judged! I was shocked by the response. There were less than a hundred people there, and my speech was mostly a venting rant, but it resonated with people.This is absolutely crazy! It makes me literally want to vomit to think about how many people are living with this kind of shame for decades. It's even more horrendously sickening when the shame is coming from the people who claim to be following Jesus and should be sharing hope for survivors of abuse.Let me just tell you right now, struggles with sexual issues can be more damaging than many other struggles because they are so close, personal and private. Sex gives us powerful ties to people and when those people are evil and abusive, it warps our sense of who we are.But listen closely: what these struggles don't do is lessen how much God loves and accepts us. God desires the best for you. In his perfect plan, I believe that sex was supposed to help us bond with our spouses (because relationships are tough and he wanted to give us something super awesome and fun to emotionally link us together). But we mess up his ideal all the time. I believe it grieves his heart because he wants better for us. I believe it hurts our ability to know him because shame competes with his voice of hope for us. But, guess what? He loves us anyway!So, crazy as I am, I'm sharing all of this because the second story in the book of Luke is the story of the Virgin Mary.Now, if you are like any other sane, rational person, then right now you are thinking something along the lines of “What the heck does the story of the virgin Mary have to do with shame and struggles surrounding sex?”Well, there are two glaring points from the story of Mary which will fill you with peace and hope when you begin to grasp them.First, the hyper-focus on Mary's virginity is quite insulting to the incredibly strong woman she was. Her story was meant to be a story to inspire us all. Her story is the story of a young peasant who stood strong through many trials because of the extreme gritty hope she had.The second point we should get from the story of Mary is that, the God who created this entire universe did not use his power or the importance of his plan to redeem humanity as an excuse to use anyone. As you will see when we look at her story, God sent messengers to ask Mary to be part of his plan and he uplifted her. He didn't use her. He honored her.How can American churches claim to represent him while using people? I do not believe for one second that the sexual abuse and the way it has been mishandled in church culture by the previous two generations is remotely representative of what the Bible teaches us about following God. No religious figure or institution is more important than the dignity of a human being.Mary's story is amazing, powerful, inspiring and real. It needs to be heard. The sanitized version of the perfect, pale, timid, woman walking around in a bubble of holiness that many churches tell presents little hope for us in our modern world. She is held up as the ideal none of us can ever attain to. This ideal led to a whole tradition of bad teaching about sex and purity. The ideal has been used to shame people into submitting to a controlling church culture which is sickeningly tragic. The worship of Mary's purity forgets about the prostitutes and “not sexually pure” survivors in Jesus' family heritage. Worst of all, the sanitized version misses the point of Mary's story. The virgin birth was never meant to be the emphasis of the birth story of Jesus. It's just one sign that Jesus was the Messiah, but certainly not the most powerful one. Because let's be real, there's no way to prove it. (Thankfully, Jesus fulfilled around 300 other prophecies!)Also, just to be clear, (and more awkward!) ancient religions were filled with stories of gods lusting after women, having sex with them and tossing them to the side. Luke was writing to an ancient Roman audience. His readers grew up believing in Zeus. Remember him? The super lusty god who created half the problems in the universe by sleeping with humans and angering his goddess wife Hera? The Roman Emperors claimed to be “sons of gods” who had sex with whoever they wanted to. So, as uncomfortable as it is for Christians to talk about, God having a son with a woman would not have been shocking to Luke's original audience.What would have been absolutely 100%, mind-blowingly, core-rockingly shocking to Luke's ancient Roman audience was the way that God had a son through Mary. First, Mary was a peasant woman. Women had few rights in that day. Women in poverty were disposable playthings for men in power, especially the Roman men Luke was writing to. In striking contrast to the way they used women, God sent a messenger to Mary to get her permission. Just mull that over in your mind for a little while. I don't think we can ever fully wrap our limited minds around this detail of the story. Many ancient Romans probably responded to Luke's story by laughing at the idea of a god so highly honoring a peasant woman.We see how much God honored Mary in Luke 1:28, when the angel greeted Mary and called her “highly honored.” The angel revealed God's plan to bring his son into the world through her. Mary was understandably scared, so the angel reassured her as he explained God's plan. Mary agreed to the plan and even though she was scared, she said “may all of this be fulfilled” Luke 1:38 (NIV), demonstrating that she wanted to be part of this plan.And then there is the act of conception... I think Luke knew this would bother his ancient audience as much as it bothers us today. As awkward as it must have been, the gospel writers questioned Mary about how it happened. In Luke's description, he used a Greek word: episkiazo. This word meant “to surround with brilliant light”. Many Bible translations use the word “overshadow” because the idea is hard to translate. The idea was that something was creating such bright light that it caused everything around it to seem shadowy. It's the word New Testament writers frequently used to describe God's presence. It referred to an uplifting, holy, empowering, beautiful, experience which edified the person. It was not in any way a creepy instance of God using people the way humans use each other. God elevates people who choose to follow him. He elevated Mary. She was not an object to be used by a petty god. She was a young woman who was being empowered to be a fierce survivor in a harsh world.I need to camp out with this part of the story for another minute. As I write, I feel like I can sense little old judgmental ladies cringing. But I have to write this. This isn't the closed world my parents grew up in. You and I can't maintain the delusion that church people used to present. We have seen how cruel and awful this world can be, especially when it comes to sex. As I've already mentioned, we all know tons of stories of religious people sexually abusing those they have power over. It's sadly common. No good person should want to have anything to do with a god who even hints at promoting such things. Sorry. Not sorry if this offends your religious sensibilities, but my religious sensibilities are offended by people covering up abuse and shaming people over sex issues.I absolutely believe that Luke gave us these details about the story of Mary to provide a startling contrast to the gods and the culture of the ancient Roman (and modern American) world. The Creator of the Universe had a plan to save all of humanity and he did not find it more important than the dignity of a peasant woman. He did not use her for his pleasure. He empowered her to be part of his plan. Therefore, if anyone covers up abuse because they think their mission, agenda, or institution is more important than an individual, they are not representing the God of the New Testament! God's extreme value of people is the point of the virgin birth!Consider all the ways, God valued and empowered Mary. Mary needed to be empowered because her path was not an easy one! She had unbelievable struggles, gut-wrenching fears, doubts, and eventually “had a sword pierce her own soul.” But when it was all over and she was asked to tell her story, she was able to look back on everything she had been through and say, “My soul glorifies the Lord, and my heart rejoices in God my Savior.” Luke 1:46 (NIV)Our struggles and traumas are obviously very different from Mary's. And if you are like me, your mind is screaming at you about how much more your struggles are caused by your own bad decisions and not the more honorable trials of a hard path. I get that. I wrestle with that a lot, too. My mind instantly rejects finding inspiration from Mary because I'm far from living the kind of life that causes people to put up statues of me and worship my purity. But God doesn't make that distinction. That's a distinction from which Jesus came to free us. It's a judgment religious people make, but not God. He loves all of us: virgins AND those of us whose sex lives could inspire an MTV series with ten seasons worth of escapades.When we choose to follow him, he enables us to be bold in our struggles. Even when those struggles are X-rated in their origins, God will help us when we turn those struggles over to him. He wants to empower us to follow him, even when we are the cause of our struggles. He wants to give us power to stand strong when life is beating us down. He will give us hope in the worst situations and give us purpose even when things don't change. We just have to learn to hear his voice and understand his incredible acceptance of us.I pray you see this as you consider how hard and powerful Mary's story really was:First, let's just take a minute to consider the extreme emphasis on virginity in the culture in which Mary lived. Ancient Jewish people took virginity so seriously that a woman who was found not to be a virgin on her marriage night could be stoned to death. During Mary's lifetime, Israel was under Roman rule, so they were not allowed to execute women for such offenses, but the judgment was still there. Consider that Mary was pregnant and unmarried in this society. It's challenging for women even today; it was devastating in Mary's day. Unfortunately, she didn't get to walk around with a halo shining on her, declaring that she was following God. She was judged and shunned just like any other woman in her society would have been. (Except that God graciously sent an angel to convince Joseph it was OK to marry her.)And that was just the beginning of the struggles this amazing survivor faced.Most of us know Luke's story in chapter 2:1-7, where Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem before baby Jesus was born and struggled to find a place to stay. Every Christmas nativity set shows how Mary ended up giving birth to Jesus, the Son of God, in a stable. It is one of the most beautiful pictures of God's heart for humanity. He chose to come be one of us and enter the world as a helpless baby in a place where animals ate and did their business. It wasn't the stuff moms dream of when they plan their babies' birth stories; it was dirty, hard, lonely and amazing.In verses 8-20, the story gets even crazier and more awesome. Most of us know about the shepherds showing up soon after the birth of Jesus. It's depicted in most every nativity scene: cute little shepherd boys with adorable little lambs to add to the quaint picturesque scene of Jesus' birth.Only shepherds were dirty, stinky outcasts. They did one of the worst jobs in their society. They slept outdoors and hung out with a bunch of other outcasts. People generally viewed them as dangerous or at least suspicious. They were about as far as you could get from being accepted by the religious leaders of their day. It's a glaring statement of how God feels about religion. The religious scholars were poring over Scripture, memorizing prophecies about the coming Messiah, and God sent angels to the religious outcasts and told them where to find Jesus.This is one of the most crazy-awesome things in the world to imagine. Can you picture Mary, camping out in a stable just after giving birth to Jesus? Then a bunch of thugs showed up to worship Jesus. It must have been mind-blowing for her. This isn't how kings are supposed to be born, and those certainly weren't the people you'd expect to be his messengers. (And the shepherds certainly weren't going to help her reputation!)I LOVE picturing the next part of the story! The shepherds went around telling people about Jesus, glorifying and praising God. Considering their status, I imagine it being like a gang running around the streets telling people about this little baby being born and how God was doing something new and amazing. I tend to picture a homeless person with a shopping cart chasing down a snooty lady, cornering her, scaring her out of her mind, then telling her about Jesus with a handful of swears in there. That's not exactly how it went, but pretty close.The story then takes a leap forward a few weeks. In verse 22, Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple for a purification ritual and dedication. While they were there, a priest named Simeon came up to them and took baby Jesus in his arms and praised God. Simeon had faithfully served God his whole life and was filled with joy just in seeing Jesus and knowing God was going to do a great work through him. Simeon spoke highly of Jesus and then spoke to Mary.Simeon said, “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too” Luke 2:34-35 (NIV).Let's think about what Simeon said from Mary's perspective. Think about all the things a new mom feels when she holds her infant in her arms. As you look at a precious child so unable to care for themselves, somehow, everything in you wants to protect them. I still feel that way about my kids even though they are grown. The mama bear side of me will still go off on anyone who tries to hurt them in any way. To me, nothing in the world is worse than imagining my kids suffering.Now, imagine mama bear Mary standing with her infant in her arms. Simeon looks at her and says, “This child is going to cause powerful people to fall and lowly people to rise. People are going to speak out against him and it will show where their hearts are. And as he goes through all of this, you are going to experience such devastation that it will feel like a sword has pierced your soul.” (Luke 2:34-35 CFV*)If Mary didn't have miraculous peace at this moment, I don't believe she would have continued. At this point, I feel like I'd be saying, “Uhmmm, excuse me Simeon. That's not a very good blessing. This is the Messiah. How about you try again….”But God's message to his followers is never that our path will be easy. He tells us we will have meaning and He will be with us. The Americanized version of following God, which focuses so much on physical comfort and praise from people, would not have helped Mary much in the ordeals she would endure as she raised Jesus.For example, we know from Matthew's (and other non-biblical scholars) account of the early life of Jesus that within a few years of his birth, King Herod tried to have him killed. Mary and Joseph had been warned and escaped to Egypt where they lived as refugees for several years until Herod died. After Herod's death, Joseph and Mary brought Jesus back to Israel but were afraid to return to the region of Bethlehem because Herod's son had taken his place, and he also believed Jesus was a threat.That's a traumatic first few years of motherhood for Mary!In the last story of Luke chapter two, Luke's annoyingly, sparsely detailed ancient writing skips forward all the way to when Jesus was 12 years-old. Here we read the story of Mary and Joseph taking Jesus to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. This was the most important religious festival for the Jews. Everyone went to Jerusalem to observe Passover. Because of the crowds, people traveled together with everyone from their town. As Mary and Joseph were returning home, they naturally assumed Jesus was with the crowd from their hometown. However, when they began to set up camp for the night, they began asking where Jesus was and no one knew.We don't know how frantic Mary was at this point. Luke doesn't share this detail. All she had already seen had to have entered her mind. Herod had killed all the baby boys in a town because of Jesus. Surely, she wrestled with some fear at this moment. Did she remember that prophecy; was this the moment when a sword would pierce her soul?Mary and Joseph returned to Jerusalem and searched for Jesus. They didn't find him until the third day.When Mary and Joseph found Jesus, they were astonished to see him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers. Jesus was wowing these religious leaders with his insights. This wasn't something Mary and Joseph could have trained Jesus for. In their strict culture of religious elitism, sitting among the teachers this way, wasn't something any twelve-year-old of their time should have been comfortable doing. Though Mary was amazed at what Jesus was teaching and surely intimidated by the powerful religious leaders, frustration seems to have been her strongest emotion as she interrupted their conversation to tell Jesus she and Joseph had been frantically searching for him.Jesus' replied to her:Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?” But they did not understand what he was saying to them. (Luke 2:49-50 NIV)Jesus' response seems quite odd at first. At the time, Mary didn't understand what he was saying. But looking back, his reply is incredibly beautiful. I imagine God orchestrated this event for Mary. We don't know what happened to Joseph, but there are no reports of him being around when Jesus was crucified. Most likely, Joseph had died by then. As Mary went through the extreme trauma of seeing her son being unjustly accused, beaten, and then crucified, I wonder if Jesus' words echoed in her ears. I wonder if she remembered all God had already brought her through. I bet she still hoped something good was going to come from this. Even though her eyes and everything in her was telling her it was over, I bet she remembered all the times she had feared it being over before. I bet she remembered her frantic three-day search and wondered if Jesus was still somehow doing the work God sent him for.We don't know much more of Mary's story. But it's important to know she wasn't journaling about all of these events as she went along. What we know of her story is what she shared with writers who interviewed her after Jesus had been crucified and resurrected. Understanding all she had endured makes her reflections on her story more beautiful. In Luke 1:46-55, Luke records the reflections of this amazing survivor this way:“My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.From now on all generations will call me blessed,for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name.His mercy extends to those who fear him,from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.He has brought down rulers from their thronesbut has lifted up the humble.He has filled the hungry with good thingsbut has sent the rich away empty.He has helped his servant Israel,remembering to be mercifulto Abraham and his descendants forever,just as he promised our ancestors.” Luke 1:46-55 (NIV).Read this reflection and think about all that Mary had been through. She had seen her son be wrongly accused, betrayed by those closest to him, beaten and crucified. She had lived a tough life and was a widow. Yet she started out her reflection with “My soul declares how great God is.” She had an amazing peace with all that had happened to her. She had fully looked at the horror and evil of this world, but she also saw something more. I believe the resurrection and constant presence of God in her life gave her hope and peace as she reflected on a lifetime of experiencing how hard and cruel this world can be.Her hope is the same hope we are all called to no matter how hard our lives are or how many mistakes we've made. God values us. Me and YOU. He values every aspect of our lives. He wants to empower us in this harsh world. He wants us to know him. He wants to give meaning to all of our struggle as we find hope for more. He cares about our value more than we can fathom. As you follow him, your life may still be very hard. But one day, you will be able to reflect on all you have overcome with the same grateful victorious attitude Mary had because you know Jesus and the power and purpose of his resurrection: to show us how much God values us.

The Paranormal MD's headquarters are located in Schaumburg, Il. Mary Marshall is the founder and director of the organization. Though Mary is on a hiatus from paranormal investigations at the moment, her focus is on teaching paranormal courses at colleges and other institutions, her research, and speaking at paranormal and cryptid conferences and events. Mary is an author and esteemed paranormal investigator. 

The Paranormal MD's headquarters are located in Schaumburg, Il. Mary Marshall is the founder and director of the organization. Though Mary is on a hiatus from paranormal investigations at the moment, her focus is on teaching paranormal courses at colleges and other institutions, her research, and speaking at paranormal and cryptid conferences and events. Mary is an author and esteemed paranormal investigator. 

Grace Lanni of All About That Brand is joined by Mary Schneider, a resonance repatterning therapist who studied with the founder of the work. Though Mary was a PR person 20yrs ago – updating her business and personal brands has been an accomplishment this year paving the way to her global business delivery. Go to Mary’s website to download a powerful free paper: http://repatternit.com/

Grace Lanni of All About That Brand is joined by Mary Schneider, a resonance repatterning therapist who studied with the founder of the work. Though Mary was a PR person 20yrs ago – updating her business and personal brands has been an accomplishment this year paving the way to her global business delivery. Go to Mary’s website to download a powerful free paper: http://repatternit.com/

How do we knew when a body is truly dead? Modern science shows us that the body dies slowly, not all at once as we used to suppose. It takes time. The body is a rather vast and complex ecosystem of enzymes, processes and functions that rarely, if ever, stop all at once. With our modern sensors and advanced medical knowledge, we usually determine the moment of death as the time when the brain ceases to show any sign of activity. However, if the heart stops beating and breathing ceases, there's just no way that a body can function much longer. Today, an coroner always double-checks to makes sure the recently deceased is actually and fully gone, but in the past, not so long ago, we did not have the precise knowledge that we have today. What follows is a horrific example of what may have happened on a rather regular basis in the days before electricity. The thin line between life and death was often out of focus and those whose task it was to pronounce a person living to dead may have had a tough time getting it right all of the time. The Howe family was one of the oldest founding families in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Of note is their founding of the Wayside Inn at Sudbury, Massachusetts which was later lovingly restored by Henry Ford.  It is also famous for Elias Howe's invention of America's first lockstitch sewing machine in 1846. Such a family had established itself as memorable by the time they settled in Damariscotta, Maine  after the War of 1812 and began their strange association with the phenomenon of American Spiritualism that ushered in one of New England's saddest and possibly darkest burials. Colonel Joel Howe, the family patriarch and veteran of the War of 1812 had nine children, all curious, well-read and very interested in the new ideas of science and invention beginning to take hold in the popular imagination. Of particular interest are son Edwin and his little sister, Mary Howe.  Author Harold W. Castner who researched the legend for Yankee Magazine, actually interviewed people who were present and witnessed the events that passed in the Howe family home, fourteen people, in fact. Their stories corroborated the events described in local newspapers in the Newcastle and Damariscotta area at the time.   The Howe Family made their income from the stagecoach tavern known as the Howe House Inn. It was in that house that the family began their attempts at communication with the dead. This might sound like something out of a 1960s Hammer horror film, but the Spiritualist Movement in America was a bona fide religious organization that still exists today. It first appeared not far from Maine in the 'burned-over district" of upstate New York with the Fox sisters and their supposed communication with the dead. Devout spiritualists at the time were often protestants who were using the idea of a life beyond the physical form in which a person could still learn and grow and, to the great interest of the believers, could communicate from beyond the veil with the living. Fueled by the written works of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer,  spiritualists believed that there is not a single Heaven for all to enter, or even a single, solitary Hell. Instead, there was a hierarchy of both, much like  Dante's leveling of the Underworld in  his Inferno. Spiritualists ascribe to the idea that the spirits of the dead act as a kind of network of connections between God and his living world. Through the souls of the deceased, Spiritualists believed that they could commune with the Almighty.  In order to speak directly with the dead, one needed a medium, a gifted living person who could, through a kind of self-hypnosis, get themselves into a mental or spiritual state that was amenable to contacting the dead. Once that state of mind was achieved, the medium became the terminal in the network that connected both worlds. All you had to do was sit quietly and ask questions. If someone on the 'other end' was willing, the medium spoke or wrote your answer.  This practice still exists today, but in 1882, it was all the rage. In the forty years since its birth in New England, Spiritualism had grown into a recognized religious organization. Which brings us to young Mary Howe and her brothers and sisters, all living together under the same roof in Damariscotta. The family was gifted with the ardent belief in life after death coupled with a kind of ingenuity of invention that was the hallmark of a 19th century Yankee. Brothers Edwin and Lorenzo crafted a 'perpetual motion' machine and a way to counterfeit half dollars.   Mary devoted her intellectual hunger toward her faith and the family discovered that she had a strong gift as a medium. Her fame spread throughout the Spiritualist community and beyond. Like so many people who have attended a seance or had their palms read, many visitors to the Inn were simply curiosity seekers wondering what this spiritualist stuff was all about, but some were as devout as the Howes. What they discovered when they attended one of Mary's trance sessions might be a quiet conversation with a loved one, a long session of silence, or they might be treated to something quite theatrical. Once, convinced that she was graced with the gift of flight, Mary Howe jumped off the stairs, her arms spread wide like a bird wings, her mouth speaking in a strange, inhuman tongue. When she landed in a heap at the bottom of stairs with a broken ankle and a panoply of bruises and scrapes, it only served to increase her popularity as THE medium to visit if you wanted speak with Uncle Albert about where he buried his money. A witness to one of the Howe sessions was author Castner's own grandmother. Her question to Mary was a simple one: when would her relative return from his visit to New York. Mary's answer was mumbled and quiet, but she communicated, "I can see him clearly. I see many lights! Wait! He will not return! When all those lights appear, he will die!" According to Castner's grandmother, Mary's prediction came true. Her relative died of apparent heart failure as he witnessed the first nighttime illumination of the lights on the Brooklyn Bridge. One can only imagine how quickly that story spread throughout the community. Though Mary entertained many guests with her sessions, she also practiced another kind of spiritual connection with the world of the dead: she claimed that she could travel there. Her trances were deep, lasting much longer than any visitor could stay. Many mediums in the 1880s did not explain exactly what they were doing or how they achieved their mystical trances, but today we might classify these as self-hypnosis sessions or even as out-of-body experiences. They would need the help of others because their body would remain in an apparent state of sleep for long periods of time. During that time, they would fall into a deep sleep and then, into something deeper, sometimes for days. In order keep the spiritual journeyer's body warm, they practised a strange habit. Normally, the infrared energy created by a sleeping body can be easily captured by blankets and even on the coldest night, the body's own chemistry will keep itself warm. Not in the case of some of these mental journeyers, like Mary Howe. As she lay on her couch or bed, we never discover which, they would lovingly surround her with stones they had warmed on the stove. These stones maintained, they claimed, enough body heat to keep the medium's body preserved and ready for when he or she returned from their spiritual wanderings and could reinhabit the body. It was claimed by those attending the bodies that these medium were indeed still alive, even though no breath fogged a mirror and no heartbeat could be found. Such practitioners might be doubted if it weren't for our own modern understanding of both the coma state and the trances that various shamans enter in indigenous societies around the world. Mediums who practiced this deep type of trance almost always came out of them fully refreshed with no apparent harm to their physical body. If you waited long enough, they always woke up. Which makes the story of Mary Howe so mysterious. In 1882, in her house on Hodgdon Street, Mary entered one of her deep trances. This was a commonplace happening and her brother Edwin knew the routine. He would keep the stones warm and keep replacing them around her body until she awoke and told of her journeyings to the other realm. By this time, Mary's trances were an item of curiosity and many people visited the house to see her lying supine, her mind elsewhere. Edwin welcomed his neighbors and friends in to witness his sister thus. One can imagine the conversations, the cups of tea, and the convivial nature of the guests as they wondered about where she was and who she was visiting. Perhaps someone voiced the question, "What might happen if the spirit found itself astray and lost its way back to its earthly vessel?" People marveled when they visited after a week and still, she hadn't returned to her body. Edwin reassured everyone not to worry - that this was not unusual. But after two weeks had passed, someone must have asked the question, "Is she in a trance, or is the poor girl dead?" Dr. Robert Dixon was a man of science. He did not relish the idea of visiting the Howe household when the sheriff ordered him to make the determination. There were laws, as well as common sense, that dictated that a dead body was a source of disease and must be buried as quickly as possible. Funeral homes existed, but in 1882,  it was common practice to lay out the deceased body of your loved one in your own parlor so that friends might visit to say one last goodbye.  This is almost exactly the scene that the good doctor witnessed when he entered the Howe home. Edwin admitted Dr. Dixon and led him to the room in which the body of his sister lay in her trance. He explained to Dr. Dixon that the stones were arranged thusly to keep her body warm. Dixon did note that the body did not present as though rigor mortis had set in. The skin was supple and the flesh of her cheeks was both warm and flexible. Edwin assured the doctor not to worry. His sister was merely in a trance. The body had been lying in a warm room for two weeks and there was no smell of putrefaction evident.   Though she appeared to be alive, Dr. Dixon knew that all living people had two things in common: they breathed and their hearts beat. Neither was true for Mary Howe. Knowing that life did not inhabit a body that was neither pumping blood nor breathing, he had no choice but to pronounce her dead. Of course her brother protested. So did many in the town who were used to her strange trances. That evening, a deputation on three men entered the Howe household and transferred Mary's body into a coffin. Protesters waiting in the community determined that the authorities were about to bury a living woman. With the authority of the law behind the sheriff, there was little anyone could do. Dr. Dixon, the sheriff, and the undertaker began the process of burial. However, the owner of the Hillside Cemetery, Benjamin Metcalf, possibly refused permission to bury Mary in his ground. He was one of those in town who believed that she was possibly still in one of her trances  and he would not be a part of such a horrific misdeed. Glidden Cemetery in nearby Newcastle would have to serve as her final resting place, but once at the cemetery, no one could be found who was willing to dig the grave for the very same reason. With determination to finish this episode, the doctor, sheriff and undertaker rolled up their sleeves and grabbed the shovels. After the grave was dug, the undertaker's assistant began to realize the possibility of what was about to happen and he refused to help lower the coffin into the ground.  Realizing that they were going to receive no help from anyone else, the three men took it upon themselves to lower Mary into her final resting place. They did not mark her grave, again possibly because they did not want anyone from the community to undo their official work and retrieve her from the cold, cold ground. To this day, no one knows her true final resting place. Today, people are pronounced dead usually after all brain function ceases. The body can be kept alive in a state similar to Mary Howe's state in 1882. However, in 1882 Dr. Dixon might not have been able to determine without a shadow of a doubt that Mary might have been in a deep coma. In such cases, the heart beats very slowly and respiration is neither deep nor easily perceived. Is the comatose person aware? Can a comatose person reawaken after weeks or months. The answer is yes, if their body is being properly fed and if fluids are being administered. But in 1882, there was no way of keeping Mary hydrated or her body fed if she was in a deep coma, or what her brother referred to as a trance. Is it possible that Dr. Dixon and his two compatriots buried poor Mary Howe alive? One must assume that it is possible. In fact, when one considers the incidence of comas in the modern world and tries to determine the number of coma cases that must have occurred in the past, it is quite possible that a large number of comatose people were buried alive, given their incomplete knowledge of the condition. This is why some people chose tombs instead of graves and why some had strings attached to external bells so that, if a person awoke entombed, they could tug on the string and be 'saved by the bell.' Burial would be a faster death due to lack of oxygen.  Given Mary's supple flesh,  the lack of rigor mortis, the lack of the odor of death, and her previous trance experiences, it is not only possible that she was buried alive, but probable. In 1888, six years after the possible living burial of Mary Howe, the Fox sisters of upstate New York, whose interactions with the spirit of a dead peddler supposedly buried in their cellar started the Spiritualism movement in America, confessed in public on several occasions that they had made the whole thing up.  The movement did not lose any ground after their confession. True believers merely brushed them off. Years later, upon the renovation of the Howe Inn , various contrivances were found in the walls: wires with no discernable connection, pipes that led to or from no water source, and other devices whose function defied explanation. This discovery makes for a strong case that many of the trance sessions held by the Howe brothers and sisters were merely parlor tricks after all, perhaps with brother Edwin in an upstairs room moaning through a pipe that led to a hollow space in the wall, amplifying the voice of a long dead relative, strange and distant. As the days and weeks passed, members of the Newcastle community avoided passing the cemetery if they could. Children were frightened and held their breaths as they passed. One can imagine the quiet of an early evening when the sun bathed the darkening world with a fire in the western sky and the wind died down leaving a deep silence, that perhaps, if you listened carefully, you might hear the quietest of sounds and wonder, is that a moan or a cry? Has Mary Howe finally awakened from her trance?  

The Lord Jesus Christ came into this world as no one else before or since. Though Mary was a virgin, she conceived the Son of God when the Holy Spirit overshadowed her. Thus He was fully God and fully human.

The Lord Jesus Christ came into this world as no one else before or since. Though Mary was a virgin, she conceived the Son of God when the Holy Spirit overshadowed her. Thus He was fully God and fully human.