[Fedora]

You are asking good questions about profound topics that I will try to answer as briefly as I can while still answering well (which came out not as brief as I originally hoped), without claiming to do justice to them. My short answer is that Mary and John are both special but in different ways, and the spiritual graces they had before Jesus’ public ministry differed from those poured out after the Resurrection. Longer version (and please don’t feel compelled to reply to this long piece in point-by-point detail, but do feel free to comment on whatever strikes you as significant):

Being “overshadowed” by the Holy Spirit pertains to the Spirit’s activity in causing Mary to become pregnant with the Son of God (Luke 1:34-35). John is “filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth” (Luke 1:15), which pertains to his prophetic gift (cf., Luke 1:76), exercised even from his mother’s womb when he leaps at the sound of Mary’s voice and his mother becomes filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesies.

The “overshadowed” phrase (ἐπισκιάσει) also echoes the language used in the Septuagint of the Shekinah glory, one of several parallels between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant in the subtext of Luke 1 (cf. 2 Samuel 6:9 and Luke 1:43 for example). It is one of a long list of things we are told about Mary in Luke 1. A partial list of the qualities Luke attributes to Mary in addition to being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit:

• She is first hailed by the angel as the “one full of grace” (Luke 1:28) even before she conceives Jesus, which is striking in light of passages that say things such as “the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17); John himself likewise contrasts the baptism of repentance he gives with the baptism of the Spirit of the coming Christ (Matthew 3:11, etc.), and elsewhere the Spirit is called the Spirit of grace (Hebrews 10:29), making it remarkable for Mary to be hailed as “full of grace” prior to Christ’s conception. St. Jerome explicates this verse: “And it is well said, Full of grace, for to others, grace comes in part; into Mary at once the fullness of grace wholly infused itself. She truly is full of grace through whom has been poured forth upon every creature the abundant rain of the Holy Spirit. But already He was with the Virgin Who sent the angel to the Virgin. The Lord preceded His messenger, for He could not be confined by place Who dwells in all places. Whence it follows, The Lord is with you.”

• The angel also tells Mary, “The Lord is with you.” This echoes the language of Zephaniah 3:14-15, a Messianic prophecy addressed to the Daughter of Zion: “Sing, O Daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O Daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you. . .”

• Additionally, Elizabeth calls “blessed” both Mary and Jesus the “fruit of [her] womb”. And she is not just “blessed”, but “blessed among women” (Luke 1:42)--an Aramaism indicating she is more blessed than any other woman, which by implication includes Eve who was the most blessed woman ever created prior to her sin and the curse God laid upon her and the fruit of *her* womb in Genesis 3:16--a curse being reversed in this chapter. Gregory of Nyssa comments on this: “Far different then to the news formerly addressed to the woman, is the announcement now made to the Virgin. In the former, the cause of sin was punished by the pains of childbirth; In the latter, through gladness, sorrow is driven away. Hence the angel not unaptly proclaims joy to the Virgin, saying, Hail.” The Church Fathers summed this up by referring to Mary as a new Eve, as early as the second century, when Justin Martyr in Rome, Tertullian in Carthage, and Irenaeus in France are all already aware of this reading of the NT. Irenaeus’ witness is particularly important, because he studied under Polycarp, who studied under the Apostle John, the custodian of Mary after the Crucifixion. He wrote: “For the Lord, having been born "the First-begotten of the dead," [Revelation 1:5] and receiving into His bosom the ancient fathers, has regenerated them into the life of God, He having been made Himself the beginning of those that live, as Adam became the beginning of those who die. [1 Corinthians 15:20-22] Wherefore also Luke, commencing the genealogy with the Lord, carried it back to Adam, indicating that it was He who regenerated them into the Gospel of life, and not they Him. And thus also it was that the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith.”

• Elizabeth is surprised and humbled that she is privileged to be visited by Mary, exclaiming “why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43) She could have instead have properly said of Mary’s son, “why am I so favored, that my Lord should come to me?” But rather than saying this, the Spirit moves her to say how favored she is to be visited by the Lord’s mother, indicating that there is some reason the Spirit wants to draw our attention to Mary even though her son is ultimately the bigger story here. So far in this chapter, Mary has been hailed by angel and human alike, as the Venerable Bede observed: “Mary is blessed by Elisabeth with the same words as before by Gabriel, to show that she was to be reverenced both by men and angels.”

• Elizabeth adds that Mary is blessed in her belief in what God has said to her (Luke 1:45). This is reminiscent of Abraham who believed God and was credited with righteousness (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3).

• Mary then prophecies that “all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48)--a prophecy we already see being fulfilled in her own generation in the passage we were discussing previously from Luke 11:27-28, and which Mary as her prophecy continues ties back to the promise to Abraham’s descendants in Luke 1:55: “He has helped His servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.” Mary also relates this to God exalting her as His humble servant (Luke 1:48), to the great things the Mighty One has done for her (Luke 1:49), to the mercy God extends to those who fear God from generation to generation (Luke 1:50), and to filling the hungry with good things (Luke 1:53), to itemize only some of the things she says in this passage (skipping parts about how God humbles the proud, etc.).

• Zechariah will go on to echo elements of Mary’s prophecy as he praises her son as the salvation of Israel (Luke 1:67-75) prior to praising his own son as the prophet of the Most High (Luke 1:76-79). In the process of this, he implies that “the Most High” is the very “Lord” (1:76) of whom Elizabeth had said back in 1:43 while filled with the Holy Spirit, “why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Mary carries the Lord Himself in her womb, just as Israel carried the Shekinah with the Ark of the Covenant. And if the Ark was so holy that to look upon it was death (1 Samuel 6:19-20: “Who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God?”), how holy must be the Mother of the Lord who carries the Son of God Himself inside her?

So while John is identified as quite special in Luke 1, the chapter ascribes a number of special qualities to Mary that are not ascribed to him. To sum up the essential difference, John prepares the way for the Lord, but Mary carries the Lord Himself, and as befitting this role, she is blessed above all women by being made “full of grace” even before she begins carrying Him. What is said about John elsewhere needs to be read consistently with this, however we end up interpreting it.

This brings us to your question about the indwelling Spirit versus the Spirit filling the OT saints and how that relates to what I am saying about Mary, which is a very good question. The question could be put this way in light of what I elaborated above: if Mary is full of grace etc. before Jesus is born, does this imply she had the indwelling Spirit already (and to broaden the question, what about John and the OT saints)? Now as you indicate, we agree that the NT teaches there was a difference between the presence of the Holy Spirit before and after the Resurrection. For Catholic exegesis, a key verse on the indwelling Spirit is Romans 5:5: “And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” Here the Holy Spirit is linked to agape love aka charity, which Paul identifies as the greatest of the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 13. Catholic theologians relate this to John’s teaching on God as love (1 John 4:8) and to Jesus’ teaching on love of God as the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37): it is the outpouring of the Spirit that conveys the grace to fulfill the commandment to love God, by virtue of God--who is love--pouring His own supernatural love into our hearts in the form of the Holy Spirit, so that what our sinful nature prevents us from doing on our own, God’s own Spirit empowers us to do.

Now does Mary already have this indwelling Spirit before the Resurrection? I am not aware that the Catholic Church has an official position on this expressed in so many words, so I will state my reply accordingly and tentatively. St. Thomas Aquinas does touch on the broader question in relation to the OT saints when he takes up the topic of the mission of the Holy Spirit, and also in his commentary on Romans (which unfortunately I do not see online). He draws a distinction between the Spirit’s invisible mission before Christ came and its visible mission after Christ’s baptism; and he also indicates that there can be an increase of grace with respect to some particular virtue (for instance someone might have a specific gift of the Holy Spirit such as prophecy but be lacking in some other gift). He notes of Christ in contrast to both the OT and NT saints, “To Christ the invisible mission was sent at the first moment of His conception; but not afterwards, since from the beginning of His conception He was filled with all wisdom and grace.” (Note that Aquinas here is talking about wisdom in terms of divinely-infused wisdom and not humanly-acquired wisdom, as Christ did grow in the latter per Luke 2:52, a topic Aquinas takes up under another question). Now this state of being full of grace is true of Christ by His very nature by virtue of being God in the flesh. But what then of Mary, who is not God in the flesh and is only a human being by nature, but who is still declared by Gabriel to be “full of grace” even before Christ is conceived, who has received this fullness of grace as a gift by virtue of being “favored” by God? I believe Aquinas’ argument would imply that she has the fullness of the type of grace related to the Spirit’s invisible mission, but with respect to the Spirit’s visible mission, she will in obedience to her son wait to participate in this phase of the mission until her son sends the Spirit after His Resurrection. Indeed, we see her between the Ascension and Pentecost praying with the Apostles as they wait for God to baptize them with the Spirit (Acts 1:8, 1:14). Note that Christ had already given the Apostles the Spirit in the specific sense of the gift of being able to forgive sins, illustrating Aquinas’ point about degrees of grace (John 20:23, about which Aquinas says this: “Chrysostom himself says that the Holy Spirit was given to the disciples, not for all tasks in general, but for a specific task, that is, to forgive sin. Augustine and Gregory say that the Holy Spirit has two precepts of love: love of God and of neighbor. Therefore, the Holy Spirit was given the first time on earth to indicate the precept of the love of neighbor; and the Spirit was given the second time from heaven to indicate the precept of the love of God.”).

With respect to Matthew 11:11, recall that Jesus often had to repeat His teachings more than once before they sunk in even when He was teaching His own disciples; so it would not be inconsistent if he reinforced things John had already taught, particularly if his audience included listeners with varying familiarity with John’s teachings.

Finally with respect to your last point, other believers can be equal to Mary in the general sense of hearing the Word of God and keeping it and being blessed, but there are also degrees of understanding and obeying the Word of God. Hence Paul advises the Corinthians to eagerly desire the greater gifts (1 Corinthians 12:31), and he prays for the Ephesians “that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19) Likewise, the Parables of the Sower and the Talents teach that some reap greater harvests than others, even among the saved. When James and John asked to sit at Christ’s right and left, Jesus indicated that those places had been reserved (Matthew 20:23). When John later saw heaven, he saw this: “Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm. A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.” (Revelation 11:19-12:1)

So much for attempted brevity!--evidently not one of my spiritual gifts today :-) Off to work now.

[CommerceComet]

My short answer is that Mary and John are both special but in different ways, and the spiritual graces they had before Jesus’ public ministry differed from those poured out after the Resurrection.

I agree that both John and Mary had special roles and were equipped to fill them. I see no Biblical evidence that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in John and Mary is different in nature than what is available to believers today. I have no doubt that these two resisted the Holy Spirit to a far lesser degree than almost all believers throughout time but the indwelling process appears to be the same.

I would disagree that the nature of the their indwelling (or that of the OT saints) was different than the indwelling of the Holy Spirit post-Resurrection. I think that they exhibited the indwelling of the Spirit in a way that was not common in believers of the age but was made widely available after the Resurrection. The Holy Spirit indwelt them in the same manner that He has always indwelt His saints.

Longer version (and please don’t feel compelled to reply to this long piece in point-by-point detail, but do feel free to comment on whatever strikes you as significant):

Thanks. I really wasn't going to do a point-by-point response.

So while John is identified as quite special in Luke 1, the chapter ascribes a number of special qualities to Mary that are not ascribed to him.

Protestants don't dispute the fact that Mary was special. It's the extra-biblical excesses of Catholics with which we have problems. I bring up Matthew 11:11 as caution to Catholics to "rein it in" a bit on the Mary adulation. The words of her own son don't seem to put Mary on the same pedestal. Luke 11:27-8 seems to caution balance in the Mary adulation that is frequently lacking in Catholic circles.

and as befitting this role, she is blessed above all women by being made “full of grace” even before she begins carrying Him. What is said about John elsewhere needs to be read consistently with this, however we end up interpreting it.

I strongly disagree with this. While you provided some specific examples of "full of grace", you haven't proven that it is different in nature than an indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I am not obligated to read Scripture through the lens of your speculation. Particularly, when your speculation requires me to explain away an explicit statement of the Lord. That is the problem that I have with Catholic scholarship on this topic (and other uniquely Catholic positions). Far too often the scholarship is an exercise in eisegesis rather than exogesis. I can accept that Mary is blessed among all women because Scripture tells me so just as I can accept that John is the greatest born of woman because Scripture (through the direct statement of our Lord) tells me so. If the statement that John ranks higher on a spiritual scale than Mary offends you, then maybe it is because you have some incorrect preconceptions about Mary. Such an assessment of Mary is not to diminish her status but to correctly view it. Mary is a great saint.