Saint Luke in his Gospel took great strides to delineate Our Blessed Lady as the New Ark of the New and Everlasting Covenant, the human Tabernacle of the Lord.Notice some of the scriptural parallels:
In the Old Testament are these words:
‘The cloud covered the tabernacle of the testimony, and the glory of the Lord filled it’ (Exodus 40:32).
And in the New Testament:
‘The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God’ (Saint Luke 1:35).
In the Old Testament:
‘And David was afraid of the Lord that day, saying: How shall the ark of the Lord come to me’? (2 Samuel 6:9).
In the New Testament:
‘And whence is this to me that the Mother of my Lord should come to me’? (Saint Luke 1:43).
In the Old Testament:
‘And David danced with all his might before the Lord: and David was girded with a linen ephod. And David and all the house of Israel brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord with joyful shouting, and with sound of trumpet’ (2 Samuel 6:14-15).
In the New Testament:
‘Behold as soon as the voice of your salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy’ (Saint Luke 1:44).
In the Old Testament:
‘The ark of the Lord abode in the house of Obededom the Gethite three months’ (2 Samuel 6:11).
In the New Testament:
‘Mary abode with her about three months’ (Saint Luke 1:56).
Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Summa Theologica that ‘Mary would not have been a worthy Mother of God if she had ever sinned’, thus we must profess with the Doctor Angelicus: ‘You are wholly beautiful, my love and without blemish’. We are sinners, and so, we can also say with Saint Elizabeth: ‘Whence is this to me that the Mother of my Lord should come to me’? Nevertheless Our Blessed Lady would like to be invited to our house, not only the house in which we reside where she can guide us in family matters and parenting skills, but also the inner house, the temple of the soul. She brings Jesus with her. There she perpetually sings her Magnificat. And since she stayed in the house of Zachary for three months, we know that when invited, she will always arrive with a charitable heart. Let us permit Our Lady and her divine Son to take up residence at our inner house, where together they can clean this house of all temporal desires, that this house may always be called a ‘house of prayer’ (Saint Matthew 21:13).
