The Ark of the Covenant

is the mercy seat of God, the seat of wisdom, the bearer of God's word...

Why do Catholics call Mary the Ark of the New Covenant? Answering that question will take us on a journey through the Old and New Testaments.

For example, Luke wove some marvelous things into his Gospel that only a knowledgeable Jew would have understood — a Jew who knew Jewish Scripture and had eyes to see and ears to hear. One of the things he would have understood is typology. So what is typology?

We all know that the Old Testament is full of stories, people, and historical events. A type is a person, thing, or event in the Old Testament that foreshadows something in the New Testament. It is like a taste or a hint of something that will be fulfilled or realized. Types are like pictures that come alive in a new and exciting way when seen through the eyes of Christ's revelation. Typology is the study of these types and their fulfillment.

Augustine said that "the Old Testament is the New concealed, but the New Testament is the Old revealed" (Catechizing of the Uninstructed, 4:8).

The idea of typology is not new. In his letter to the Romans, Paul says that Adam was a type of the one who was to come — Christ (Rom. 5:14). Early Christians understood that the Old Testament was full of types or pictures that were fulfilled or realized in the New Testament.

Here are a few more examples of biblical typology:

• Peter uses Noah's ark as a type of Christian baptism (1 Pet. 3:18-22).
  
  
• Paul explains that circumcision foreshadowed Christian baptism (Col. 2:11-12).
  
  
• Jesus uses the bronze serpent as a type of his Crucifixion (John 3:14; cf. Num. 21:8-9).
  
  
• The Passover lamb prefigures the sacrifice of Christ (1 Cor. 5:7).
  
  
• Paul says that Abraham, in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, "considered that God was able to raise men even from the dead; hence, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back" (Heb. 11:19)...