Mary: The New Ark of the Covenant in Revelation 11:19-12:6

Argues, through exegesis of Revelation 11:19-12:6, that the Ark of the Covenant appearing in the heavenly temple and the Woman clothed with the sun are linked by John's repeated use of ophthe ("appeared") and should be read, at one level, as a figure of Mary, the Mother of the Messiah, without excluding the complementary reading of the Woman as Israel or the Church. The study marshals typological parallels between Exodus/2 Samuel and Luke's Annunciation and Visitation narratives, patristic testimony from Hippolytus to John Damascene, the Catechism's language of Mary as "Ark of the Covenant," and the commentaries of Benedict XVI and Robert Barron to support the Marian interpretation.