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The Roots of the Triumph in
Scripture and Prophecy - Part I
By Laurence D. Behr*

Published in Queen of All Hearts magazine, March-April, 2004
(Reprinted by permission)

            Much attention is paid to the prophetic messages delivered by Mary at Fatima, Portugal in 1917, and to their great significance for our world today.[1] Not only Mary’s portentous messages are significant, however.  The very fact of Mary’s appearances at Fatima, and of her many other approved appearances in recent centuries, strongly supports the beautiful Marian devotions that have always marked Catholicism.  Indeed, for those who believe in them, Mary’s appearances underscore the authenticity of our Holy Catholic Church, which declares those Marian appearances that survive strict scrutiny to be worthy of belief by all Christians.   

            Following the Second Vatican Council an exaggerated ecumenism led many Catholics to downplay Marian devotion, in favor of the “basic” elements of our faith shared with Protestants.  Fortunately, devotion to Our Lady rebounded and is growing, and there have even been encouraging signs of interest in Mary among Protestants.[2] There remain, however, millions of Protestants, especially among evangelicals and fundamentalists, who deeply distrust all things Marian.  Sad to say, some Catholics, both clergy and laity, also still see Mary as her Son was seen—a stumbling block and a source of division.

            Nothing could be less true.  Progress towards reuniting Christianity cannot be bought by denying our common Mother, whose offspring and seed all Christians are:

            So long as some children deny one of their parents, they can never be truly of one mind and spirit with their siblings, whether spiritual or natural, who know and who love both.  Our effort, then, must be to bring Mary to those who know her not; for as Mary herself revealed at Fatima, “Our Lord wishes to establish in the world, devotion to my Immaculate Heart.”

            Early Protestant leaders did not reject the Church’s beliefs about and reverence for Mary, although some disagreed as to the degree or manner in which we ought to honor her.  Martin Luther in particular is known to have had devotion to Mary.  It was only after the false and unscriptural heresy of “sola Scriptura”—only what Scripture explicitly teaches is to be believed—took hold and worked its harm that the Protestant reaction against Mary began in earnest.[4] Thus, “sola Scriptura” has hindered Protestants’ understanding of Mary, although the scriptural basis undergirding all Catholic doctrines concerning Mary has been proven in numerous papal teachings.[5]

            We may hope prayerfully that, with Fatima and the other great Marian interventions in our world, God now has set the stage for the conversion of the Protestants back to the one, true Faith; for when He completely fulfills Mary’s Fatima prophecies, including the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart, she will be vindicated and her disbelievers, converted.  And not only Protestants will be brought to the truth through Mary, but many from non-Christian religions as well.  In particular, the Moslems, who greatly revere Mary and share our belief in the Bible,[6] have been singled out in prophecy for conversion through Mary’s mighty agency.  Mary’s prominent, future role in bringing both peace to the world, and conversions to our Faith, began to be predicted in private revelation even before the “Age of Mary,” said to have commenced in 1831 with the apparitions of Mary to St. Catherine Laboure.  A famous example is Saint Louis de Montfort (1673-1716), who wrote:  

"The power of Mary over all devils will be particularly outstanding in the last period of time. She will extend the Kingdom of Christ over the idolaters and Moslems, and there will come a glorious era in which Mary will be the ruler and Queen of human hearts."[7]

            In the hope then of planting seeds that will bring forth fruit, let us explore somewhat the strong biblical support for Mary’s important role in salvation, and especially for the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart which she prophesied at Fatima in 1917, saying, “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will Triumph, and the world will know a period of peace.”

            Prefigurement is a form of prophecy by which the Holy Spirit foreshadowed, in the people and events of the Old Testament, the greater things to come in the future.  It does not inform us of the things to come, as much as it enables us, when God’s plan is fulfilled, to recognize His hand and design, and to believe with passion and conviction in the things He does.  Well-recognized instances include the bread and wine offered by Melchisedek, and also the Passover meal, which prefigure the Eucharist; Melchisedek himself, prefiguring Our Lord’s High Priesthood;[8] Joseph, sold by his brothers into slavery only to become a great ruler who forgave and saved his brothers, prefigures Christ, Who was crucified by his own, but is their merciful King and Savior; Moses, who led his people out of slavery in Egypt, prefigures Christ leading us out of the darkness of sin.  Jesus himself used prefigurement, when He told the Jews they would receive only “the sign of Jonah”—like Jonah who went into the belly of the whale for three days, Christ would die and rise again on the third day.[9]

           No Christian can deny the importance of prefigurement.  Now then, when God’s plan concerning Mary is being manifested, the time is ripe to contemplate how her great role in salvation was prophesied in Scripture, by prefigurement in great women of the Old Testament. 

            The First Mary.  We begin with Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron.  Miriam was “the first Mary”—Miriam is Mary’s name in Hebrew, and the Douay Rheims Version actually names Moses’ sister, “Mary.”  The very name Miriam or Mary, it is to be stressed, means a royal Lady, an exalted one. [10]   At the Bible’s first mention of her, Miriam/Mary led the Israelite women in a song of triumph, after the Pharoah’s army drowned in the sea.  Her song is one of several by Old Testament women that anticipate Mary’s great Magnificat[11]

   “So Mary the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand: and all the women went forth after her with timbrels and with dances: and she began the song to them, saying: let us sing to the Lord, for He is gloriously magnified, the horse and his rider he hath thrown into the sea.”[12]

            Nothing more is said about the first Mary as having any role in the delivery of the Jews from Egypt, and she might be regarded as unimportant—except that many centuries later the prophet Micah, the same who foretold that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem and would rule the whole earth, [13] rebuked the Jews in the Lord’s name, saying: 

“For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and delivered thee out of the house of slaves; and I sent before thy face Moses, and Aaron, and Mary.”[14] 

            The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt prefigures Christ’s leading the saved into heaven. Moses was lawgiver and ruler, Aaron, a priest. Christ combines the office of ruler and priest in Himself—He is our King and our High Priest.  So, when Micah reports the Lord as saying, centuries following the Exodus, “I sent before thee Moses, and Aaron, and Mary,” is not that for us today a clear indication that Christ, accompanied by Mary, will lead the saved into His Father’s Kingdom? 

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