Mary is the New Eve sent to crush the head of the serpent. Mary is the Mother of all Generations given to us at the foot of the Cross through the beloved disciple John. Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant more precious than the golden ark of old, carrying within herself the divine Treasure, the New Covenant Himself. It is in this way that she ascends the hills of the countryside to meet her older cousin Elizabeth.
Salvation history reminds us of the broken reality of our human nature. God created us with hearts to love and intellects to choose Him or another, from covenant to covenant. God is a God of mercy, restoring covenant after covenant until sending His own Son to restore and renew all covenants in the new covenant for all ages.
We begin in Genesis. God made a covenant in the Garden of Eden; humanity rejected the covenant[1]. God makes a covenant with Noah and restores the covenant demolished by man in the Garden. After the flood Noah breaks the covenant and gets drunk and falls asleep naked in his tent[2]. God makes a covenant with the Israelites. They get impatient while Moses is on Sinai and worship a false god. Moses smashes the covenant and goes back up the mountain to have it restored. This covenant is contained in part by the Ten Commandments and is later concealed in an ark as a place of glory and respect. Even as this covenant is stored in an elevated place, God continues to fulfill and establish covenants with humanity that are thrown away, such as with David and his infidelity and murderous act.
God, in His great mercy, once and for all sends His own Son, concealed in a new Ark, to establish the new and final covenant that cannot be broken. It cannot be broken by humanity because Christ will both establish this new covenant at the Last Supper and carry out this new covenant in His passion, death, and resurrection.
When we close our eyes and meditate on the image of the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, we see a young girl with an older woman, sharing in a celebration of life deep within them. If we look deeper we see an expression of love extended from the infant Lord to all generations from infants to elders. Mary makes haste to see Elizabeth in the hill country. We see in this image the likeness of the hastening of David to that same region to the ark and upon his arrival he dances before the Lord.[3] Mary hastens and the infant John, the new Elijah sent to prepare the way of the Lord, dances within the womb before the new Ark.
Here we have the restoration and beginning of the new covenant in the new Ark, the womb of Mary. “The Ark is the place par excellence of the presence of God, being kept therein the tablets of the Law, the flowering rod of Aaron, and a vase full of manna. Now, the Blessed Virgin Mary is the reality of all that the ark contained in figure, because Mary is she ‘who bears in herself not the word of God written ‘on stone’ (the tablets of the Law), but the very word of God, the Logos, made flesh, become her son; who carries in herself not the ‘flowering rod of Aaron, but the flower of Jesse’; who carries in herself not the manna, figure of the Eucharist, but the very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Eucharistic Christ, adorned by the golden cherubim!”[4]
In His great love and mercy, the Father extends His grace in the womb of the new Ark, to all generations from covenant to covenant. How beautiful the new Ark—more pure than any gold or silver, containing within Her an infinite treasure!
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