Tag Archives: Virgin Mary

Did Eve Conceive in Her Ear?

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In the Psalter-Hours of Guiluys de Boisleux (France, after 1246), we see Adam, Eve, and the serpent with the Forbidden Fruit; then we see Adam and Eve hiding their nakedness from God the Son with fig leaves.

But I am afraid that somehow, just as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds may be led astray from the sincerity and the purity you have toward Christ. For if a newcomer preaches another Jesus whom we did not preach, or if you have received a different spirit whom you did not receive [from us], or a different gospel–you tolerate that person well enough. (2 Cor. 11:3-4)

St. Paul says that he betrothed the parish in Corinth to Christ as a virgin is married to her groom. But he is afraid that they will listen to false teachers, just as the virgin Eve listened to the serpent.

That serpent never physically defiled Eve, did he? Yet he did destroy her virginity of heart …. the church is a virgin; she is a virgin now and may she remain a virgin forever. Let her [the Church] beware of the deceiver …. Are you perhaps going to say to me: If the Church is a virgin, how does she produce children [in the font]? She imitates Mary, who gave birth to Our Lord. Did not the holy Mary bring forth her child and remain a virgin? So, too, the Church brings forth children and is a virgin.

St. Augustine of Hippo, On Converts and the Creed

The serpent is described in Genesis as “crafty” and “cunning.” These are insults, not compliments. Today, we might say “shady” and “deceptive.” The serpent lied. Eve listened to those lies and the serpent seduced her. She took the serpent’s words into herself through her ears.

Through her hearing, Eve conceived disease, death, and decay. Through her hearing, the Virgin Mary conceived the Word made flesh. Because Eve listened to the serpent and brought Death into the world, some early preachers suggested that she conceived Cain–who killed his brother Abel–by the serpent whispering in her ear. Contrasting this with the Virgin’s consent to the angel Gabriel’s request that she bear the Word of God, these preachers also suggest that Mary conceived Christ through her ears, by hearing.

The Church gives birth to her children in the font. But these children are conceived by hearing as well. “How are they to believe, unless they hear a preacher? And how are they to hear a preacher, unless one is sent?” (Romans 10:14) Ears and hearing are fundamental to [spiritual] reproduction! Who’d athunk it?!

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin

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In this Georgian icon, we see the Blessed Virgin presented to the priests in the Temple by her parents SS. Joachim and Anna with the young girls who also marched with her in procession; above, we see the archangel Gabriel bringing the Virgin bread from heaven. The Presentation of the Virgin is celebrated in East and West on November 21.

We read of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple when she was three years old in the Protoevangelium of James. SS. Joachim and Anna bring their daughter Mary to the Temple, as they promised to do before she was born, and give her to the service of God. Seven pairs of young girls march in procession with Mary. The priests meet this procession and take Mary into the Temple–into the Holy of Holies!–to live; she joins a community of women who care for the Temple fabrics and vestments. The archangel Gabriel brought the Blessed Virgin bread from heaven each day. When she was older, she was chosen to assist in weaving a new veil to hang before the Holy of Holies; it was while she was working with the purple thread to be used in the weaving that Gabriel appeared to her one last time, asking her to become the mother of Jesus (the Annunciation).

The two things in the story that usually strike people as outlandish or impossible is the assertion that the Blessed Virgin enters the Holy of Holies itself and that she grows up at the Temple, cared for a community of woman in the Temple compound.

The Virgin is said to enter the Holy of Holies because she herself becomes the Holy of Holies–the innermost sanctuary where God dwells. Clearly, it would have been impossible for a three-year old to “accidently” enter the Holy of Holies as it was heavily guarded and protected; the Holy of Holies here stands for the Temple itself in its entirety as well as its being synonymous with the Virgin herself.

The community of women who live at the Temple is alluded to by St. Luke in his Gospel by the Prophetess Anna (in Luke 2), an elderly woman who meets Christ in the Temple when he is forty days old. But the story in the Protoevangelium still strikes many as unlikely. Throughout the Old Testament we read of women who waited at the door of the Temple or the Tent of Meeting in the wilderness (Exodus 38:8; Numbers 4:23, 8:24; 1 Sam. 2; as well as 2 Maccabees 3).

We have also recently made archeological discoveries that reveal the presence of a 3-story women’s dormitory alongside the Temple and we read in Josephus (an important 1st century historian) that the young women and their chaperones made a Nazarite vow and who lived in this dormitory; he also tells us that these young women (virgins) jumped out of the windows into fires below to avoid being attacked, raped, and killed by the Roman soldiers who pulled down the Temple in AD 70. Jewish sources–such as the Mishnah and the Talmud–tell us that a community of women were, in fact, responsible for the care of Temple linens as well as baking the showbread and mixing the incense to be used.

That the Virgin is presented when she is three-years old relates to the expectation that children were weaned at that age and the prophet Samuel was given to the priest Eli when the boy was three-years old. Heifers and other animals to be sacrificed were also three-years old when given as offerings to God. The archangel Gabriel is said to bring her bread from heaven because she eventually gives birth to the Living Bread, the True Bread come down from heaven. In the meanwhile, she is sustained by a rich life of prayer and devotion to God.

The story of the Presentation of the Virgin makes the point that the two most important signs of the Old Covenant become flesh in the New Covenant: the Torah–the living Word of God–is made flesh in Jesus and the Temple–the place where God dwells and where people can meet him–becomes a woman. The Protoevangelium recalls many details of 1st century Jewish life that were otherwise forgotten for centuries and is more reliable as a source than many people realize.

Sant’Apollinare in Ravenna & the Magi

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Magi leading the Empress Theodora and the wise virgin-martyrs in procession to the Mother of God and Christ in the church of San Apollinaire in Ravenna.

St. Apollinaire was a Syrian, elected to be the first bishop of Ravenna (which was later the Byzantine capital of Italy). As the first bishop of Ravenna, he faced nearly constant persecution. He and his flock were exiled from Ravenna during the persecutions of Emperor Vespasian (or Nero, depending on the source). On his way out of the city he was identified, arrested as being the bishop, tortured and martyred by being run through with a sword. 

The church of San Apollinaire in Ravenna is a masterpiece, a jewel of Byzantine iconography and mosaics. It was erected by the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great during the first quarter of the 6th century. It was re-consecrated in AD 561, under the rule of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, Justinian and his wife, the empress Theodora, appear in the mosaics of the church, each leading a segment of the offertory procession towards the altar during the celebration of the Eucharist.

The mosaics also depict a procession of the wise virgin-martyrs, led by the Three Magi, moving towards the group of the Madonna and Child surrounded by four angels. (The Magi in this mosaic are named Balthasar, Melchior and Gaspar; this is thought to be the earliest example of these three names being assigned to the Magi in Christian art.)  The Magi are wearing trousers and Phrygian caps as a sign of their foreign origin. The gifts which the Magi and the wise virgins bring are reflections of the gifts which the congregation are bringing to present: bread, wine, water for the celebration of the Eucharist and food or clothes to be distributed among the poor and needy during the week.

The celebration of the Eucharist was often seen as a procession or pilgrimage in which the parish journeyed from earth to the Kingdom of God and then returned to earth to minister during the week what they had received on Sunday. During the celebration, the parish stepped outside time to stand alongside the Magi, the priest-king Melchizedek, Abraham and Isaac—all of whom also appear in the mosaics of this church—with the saints and martyrs of all times and places to worship God in eternity (as described in the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelation, which are the first liturgical commentaries). The offertory procession is a visual shorthand to refer to the entire celebration.


The Magi were consistently venerated as the first non-Jews to come and worship Christ so they were considered the patron saints of all Christians of Gentile backgrounds. A shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne Cathedral, according to tradition, contains the bones of the Magi. Reputedly they were first discovered by Saint Helena on her famous pilgrimage to Palestine and the Holy Lands. The remains were first kept in the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople; they were later moved to Milan before being sent to their current resting place by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I in 1164.

What prompts these thoughts about Ravenna, St. Apollinaire, and the Magi? The martyrdom of the saint and the translation of the relics of the Magi to Cologne are both commemorated on the same day (July 23).

Read more about the Magi in previous posts here and here and here.