I’m a big fan of Mariology. Any chance I can get my hands on a good book that dives into her life, her life after her Son’s crucifixion, or gain a better understanding of how the Church treats her, I will not hesitate to get that book. A new one has come out and it’s a whopper.
Why the fascination with Mary? Well, I am Catholic after all, but it wasn’t always so. I’m a convert and I as many like me will state, Mary was a stumbling block. I, too, asked, “Why the fascination with Mary—she’s just like the rest of us.” But as we know and must all eventually admit, Mary is anything but alike to the rest of mankind. Unparalleled in grace, St. Augustine famously remarks that “Mary conceived the Son of God in faith before she conceived him in the flesh.” — De Virginitate. Her faith and virtue make her the chosen Mother of God, but also the Mother of the Church.
With that, I’ll also pause to tell readers about one of my favorite book series. My unofficial title for this series is the “mysteries” books from Ignatius Press. I’ve got most of them, and they are without equal. The ones sitting on my shelf are:
Guadalupe Mysteries: Deciphering the Code
Vatican Secret Archives: Unknown Pages of Church History
Fatima Mysteries: Mary’s Message to the Modern Age
Witness to Mystery: Investigations into Christ’s Relics
As you can see, these books are centered around topics shrouded in mystery. Some of the topics are controversial and others are more familiar, but the books never fail to present interesting facts and details that bring the truth into light while also increasing the personal faith of the reader. They’re also gorgeous, as you’ll in the links above: hardcover, heavy pages, full color imagery on matte.
So, I got the description for another book a few weeks back and my spidey senses started to tingle. “This feels similar to the “mystery” series books, I think I’ll look a little closer.”
Yup, I nailed it.
The new book Mary, Mother of God: In Search of the Woman Who Changed History is exactly part of this mystery series. And while a few books in the broader collection in the “mystery” series cover Mary’s apparitions, this follows many important and unknown details of her life and what the Church has experienced since her Assumption into heaven.
Take for example the House of Mary in Loreto, Italy. I’m generally familiar with the popular story: Mary’s real house was miraculously transferred from the Holy Land to the Italian slopes of the Adriatic Sea. I also feel like I’m well-studied on the “real history,” that the Angeli family, a family of medieval wealth, were the owners of the structure since it’s appearance on the peninsula and had maintained watch and responsibility for the structure for centuries, giving strong credence to the belief that these “angels” were the ones who brought the house over brick for brick. I’m also familiar with a few intricate details like the source of the wooden beams and bricks that match those from the period in the sector of the Holy Land, but have never been able to speak with any enormous intelligence beyond this.
This book changed that.
The book gathers and presents every conceivable nuance that would give a person cause to doubt the reality that this truly is the house of Mary. They present the chemical evidence presented by universities, the dating results from top researchers, the exact style and source of cut on each brick, the Christian graffiti on bricks visible to pilgrims today (who would have a keen eye to identify!), and the artifacts left by the original laborers who manually laid each brick in sequence so many years ago. There is so much more within the pages, so many additional details that shed light on the origins, whereabouts, and “who-done-it” type of questions.
And each topic is filled with this level of detail. From in-depth studies of the city of her birth to the death of Joseph, her Dormition, how Islam treats Mary, and continuing with her many stunning apparitions, this book covers it all with stunning detail inside almost 375 pages. Readers will be absolutely impressed, perhaps even blown away by the facts historians have passed on and what excavations have uncovered.
Check out this book and put it on your wishlist soon—you will be happy with what you, too, uncover about the most important woman in history.
