The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Whispers of Mary (with Gayle Somers)

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

Do you know the role that women have played throughout Salvation History? There are many stories of incredible women in the Old Testament who played a significant role in the story of salvation. Jeff Cavins is joined by Gayle Somers to discuss some of these women and how their stories foreshadow the life of Mary. Gayle Somers is the author of Whispers of Mary: What Twelve Old Testament Women Teach Us About Mary. Snippet from the Show Knowing some of the key women in the Old Testament can be very impactful in our understanding of Mary. Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit https://media.ascensionpress.com/?s=&page=2&category%5B0%5D=Ascension%20Podcasts&category%5B1%5D=The%20Jeff%20Cavins%20Show for full shownotes!

Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together in living as activated disciples. This is show 379, Whispers of Mary with Gail Summers. You know, over the years, as we developed the Great Adventure Bible Studies, you start to notice that there are different aspects of that study that you can focus on and you can learn so much more. And I've said over and over that the Bible and Bible study is like an onion, you know, where you have many, many layers to the study. I want to introduce you to a new work as part of the Great Adventure Bible study, a work that I think is going to be transformative. I've been looking forward to it for a long time.

It is called Whispers of Mary by Gail Summers, and it's what 12 Old Testament women teach us about Mary. And I think that this work is so good at bringing out different aspects of Mary. I think you're going to enjoy it. Gail Summers is a longtime friend of mine. In fact, she worked on the Galatian study years ago in putting that workbook together and giving good advice on that study. So I've known her a long time, and this is such a privilege for me to introduce her, Gail Summers. Thanks for coming on the show, Gail.

Thanks so much for having me, Jeff. I'm really delighted to be here. You know, your new book, before we get to the book, Whispers of Mary, which I've got to tell you, this is just holding it. It's a work, you know, it's so beautiful. It's not a paperback. No, people have commented on the art, the cover art. So much so, because everybody has that same reaction. This is beautiful.

This mosaic of Mary is beautiful. And I finally did check with one of the editors at Ascension to see if it was original or whether it was a copy of something. She said, no, it's original. The designer that they had to do the cover designed it especially for this book. And I think probably that's because I touch on the theme of these Old Testament women, their lives and their stories being like little tiles in a mosaic that would one day be fulfilled in the beautiful mosaic of Mary, the mother of God. And so she picked up on that and she drew that

cover. Yeah. Well, I got to say it is stunning. And I get the, I get the logic there now that you say it. You know, the mosaic has all these pieces and there's so many pieces in the Bible that we could focus on. And you've done a beautiful job. Dale, before we get into the book, tell me a little bit about your background, because you've been in the church, you know, I don't know how long now, but you had a very interesting, 29 years. Tell me a little bit about how you became Catholic. Okay. Well, we were Episcopalians, and we had a great friend, Tom Howard, and I think you may know, you know who Tom Howard is, yes. And so he became Catholic. He talked about becoming Catholic for a long time before he actually became Catholic. and we listened to everything that he had to say as Episcopalians, and we found it interesting, but not convincing. So he became Catholic, and he was very low-key.

He didn't pressure us at all. He gave us some things to read that we read, and we felt like we could consider the Catholics as our first cousins in the faith, but we weren't going to become Catholic ourselves. And as time went by in our little church, our little Episcopal church in Massachusetts, there was a great split in the congregation over just the new pastor who had come, a very classic sort of thing that happens often in those churches.

And it was very painful. It was a difficult split. And both sides, we knew both sides very well, and we knew they were devout people, and each side believed that it had the truth. So for me, this became kind of a crisis of, well, how do we know Christian truth? These people pray. They have great fruit in their lives. They're convinced deep inside of themselves that they have the truth. How do we know Christian truth? And that began a journey for Gary and me. And it took a long time. It took us about a total of, well, there were eight years of kind of flirting with the church.

And then two years of real serious study. A friend of ours gave us the catechism. It had just been published in English in the United States. And we read the catechism from beginning to end. And once we finished the catechism, we knew there was no going back. We knew there was no escape. We're going to have to become Catholic. And so we did. We did on Pentecost Sunday in 1995. We became Catholic.

Well, as Cardinal Newman said, to be deep in history, is to cease to be Protestant. And I think it's very, very true, you know, that happened in my life as well. Yes. Did you always have, since you came into the church, a love for the Blessed Virgin Mary? No. No. That's a good question, Jeff.

Yeah. Because I came in, Gerey and I both really came into the church on the strength of apostolic authority that Jesus gave to the church. We could see it so clearly in the scripture and being Bible people ourselves. Once you see something in the scripture, that's very clear that Jesus intended to build a church on the apostles, and that church would always have the truth, and the apostles would pass on that authority to those upon whom they laid hands.

Then we got that, and we came in through that door. That's how we became Catholics. This church is the church that Jesus built. We can always have the truth so that whatever the church teaches is true, and if I'm struggling with it, then that's my problem. you know that that's my problem so mary uh we believed everything the church said about mary we believed it wasn't real in our lives right away no no it wasn't i think i don't know you know cradle catholics from infancy mary's always in the picture she's always and the mother of jesus is always there they don't know a life in which mary is kind of a bit player so to speak we did we knew that

that life. We had lived that life for a very long time. And so Mary wasn't really a part of the picture of redemption. So to somehow fit Mary into the whole picture, that took time. It did. And I have to say that it was studying the Old Testament that opened that Mary door for me, studying Genesis, studying what happened in the garden, studying God's promise that he made. that opened the door to Mary. And it is deeply ironic that I should someday write a book about the Blessed Virgin Mary, considering, you know, that it was a journey. And it was.

Well, your book is so beautiful. And just for those who have not seen the book, let me kind of explain it, is the Bible timeline, the Great Adventure Study, is divided up into 12 historical periods. And each period is color-coded. That's the way the Bible is, Great Adventure. Bible and so forth. And what you have done, Gail, is you have given one chapter to every period and it's color-coded. I love it. It's color-coded. And each chapter focuses on one woman from that period that says something about Mary. And that brings up, you know, this whole idea of recapitulative history,

recapitulation. In other words, we have the Old Testament narrative. But then when we come to the New Testament, We see all of these completions, these fulfillments of events, of places, of characters, you know, all of this. And certainly the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus in the New Testament, we see pictures of her in the old. And that's exactly what you have done. What inspired you to write Whispers of Mary? Well, Jeff, you know, actually it became, I didn't start out writing a book. my daughter and I, during COVID, when the churches were closed for everything except Mass, we decided to have a Bible study here in our home. And I told her, I could put together a Bible study

on praying with the women of the Old Testament. Because women always like to study stories about women. And you probably know, I certainly learned over time that Catholics are much less familiar with the Old Testament than they are with the New. So I don't. decided, let's do the Old Testament women. So we started with Eve. And we spent a great deal of time with Eve. She's much more important than just eating the forbidden fruit, as you know. So we spent a lot of time with Eve both in the garden and outside of the garden. And when we really understood everything that happened there, what God had designed in female, the feminine, where Eve fulfilled it, where she didn't fulfill it. We moved outside of Eden and saw what happened out there.

We moved through all the women in the Old Testament, some of them, not all of them, not all of them, some of them. And two things happened. First of all, most of these women in the study, there were women, my friends, older women, and then there were my daughter's friends, younger women with children, I mean, everybody in between. One thing that happened is that most of these women did not know anything about these women, number one. And they were so surprised to find how relevant the stories are, even though they take place over thousands of years, very different circumstances, very different places, but these women spoke to us personally about how to live with God, number one. And then number two, there was always a

moment, at least one moment in every woman's life where we found something familiar to us because of Mary. In other words, these women were whispering to us of the mother that God promised at the very beginning, always whispering about that mother, the mother warrior, because she was going to be in a battle with her son, the one who was promised and who was someday going to show up on the horizon of human history. And so when we got to the end of the Bible study, the women all said, you have got to write this down.

And, you know, I just smiled and nodded whenever anybody said that to me. I had no intention of writing the book. I smiled and I nodded. But my daughter rose up and said, Mom, you have to write the book. If you don't write it, it's not going to get written. Because none of us knew any books about the typology of Mary in the Old Testament.

And so, I mean, what could I say? You know, they rose up with one voice and said to write the book. And so I submitted it to Ascension. And Ascension said, let's write the book. And so I wrote the book. that's how it happened. Oh, that's beautiful. So the comment on that just briefly, I have a lot of books on Mary. I'm looking at them in my library right now, probably a couple of shelves on Mary.

What makes your approach, would you say, different, given your Protestant background, and now your Catholic background? Well, I think two things, really. First of all, the typology, and not just typology, you know, not just going through the stories and saying, you see how this kind of foreshel That is Mary. That's a great thing. That happens in the book. But one of the points, one of the real desires that I had in writing the book is to try to show how much Mary was a woman of scripture, how much she was a woman of scripture. The place of scripture in her formation, and therefore, you know, by analogy, the place that scripture should have in our own formation. So in each chapter, we really listen to the woman's story.

We let her tell us her story. We listened very carefully. We think about her relationship with Mary. What did she foreshadow in Mary? And then, you know, we think about the woman's place in our, what is she saying in our lives. So the typology, the typological approach, I think, I tried to fill a gap that I saw. I didn't know any books on the typology of Mary. lots of books on the typology of Jesus.

We've heard lots of homilies on Moses. You know, Jesus is the new Moses. Jesus is the new David, the new Solomon, but not very much at all about Mary as the new Hannah, the new Esther, the new Judith, the new Deborah, the new Eve. So I tried to fill that gap, number one. And as you've already pointed out, I think the other unique feature is that it is key to the Great Adventure timeline

so that we go through each era of salvation history. I think it's important for us to see that in every important moment, so to speak, in salvation history, there was a woman as well as men. And not in that kind of, I am woman, I am, hear me roar, not that kind of woman. But women who stay within their vocations, women who didn't have to become men in order to do great things. You know, that's the whole sweep of salvation history that gets us to Mary, when we find Mary, humble, quiet, quiet in the New Testament, we're not surprised. We've been prepared for women who can step in to a heroic moment and then step back again

because they're helpers, they're not the movers and shakers. Does that make sense? Yes, it's absolutely beautiful. No, I love that. Thank you. One question I have for you before we take our break, and that is this, you know, both of us have heard from people that particularly our good Protestant friends, non-denominational friends, who do have a relationship with the Lord and no doubt love the Lord. But oftentimes we'll say, well, you know, Mary is just simply another woman in the Bible. She is the one that, yes, gave birth to Jesus,

but we can't make a bigger deal out of that than just a woman. And don't you Catholics kind of worship her? What would you say to someone who said those things? Yes, okay. So, of course, I would have said the same thing. You know, as a non-Catholic, I would have said the same thing. I would have looked at the New Testament, assuming that that's where you start to understand Mary.

And I would say, you know, in fact, I did say, you know, Mary's important. Obviously, Mary is an important person, but she's kind of a bit player. I mean, she shows up periodically. She doesn't have much to say. She doesn't really do very much. And so I came to the conclusion that the exalted teaching of Mary in Catholic life was the result of sentimentality. You know, it was just, you know, Catholics have a tender heart for the mother of Jesus.

We all have tender hearts for our mothers. And so for me, it was sentimentality that had gone over the top. But when I became a Catholic, when I became a Catholic and saw that the church never has begun in the New Testament to understand Mary, the church has always begun in the book of Genesis, always from the very beginning, seeing Mary as the New Eve. So that when you begin in the right place, when you spend time with what God had in mind when he designed both masculine and feminine to be his image and likeness in creation, And you see who they were in the garden, how they fell, who they were outside the garden, what the promise of God was, what the promise of God was, that someday a mother and her son would be on his side completely, and they would finish the battle started there. It says an enormous amount about who Mary is when she finally does show up. And when you start with that promise of a mother and son in Genesis and then go through the Old Testament and you're seeing all these men and women who are types of the ones to come, when you get to Mary, she's not an intrusion into the story. She's a fulfillment of the story, which is a very different thing.

And so the place, the exalted place for Mary really does depend, I think, on beginning in the right place, not. just looking in the New Testament, but starting in the beginning, just like we do with Jesus. I mean, Jesus himself started in the beginning to help the Jews understand who he was. So we would do the same with his mother. And I think that's the answer to why it's so confusing to Protestants who look at just the few passages only in the New Testament and say, nah, you know, she's just a person like us. Well, maybe not. Maybe not.

Well, I think that is such an important point. And I just want to reiterate that, that one of the things that makes your book so interesting and I think insightful is the fact that you have taken an approach that is historically the approach of the church. And that is, don't start in the New Testament and come to your conclusions, but take into consideration the whole of Scripture, starting in Genesis, and then you're going to see. And the truth is, I think people do do that, that are not Catholic, but they don't. they're not aware of it.

So they will start with David and then begin to see that, well, Jesus is the son of David. But they'll start with Jesus and then go back. But what you've done is you have taken the entire Bible together. And that's when all the pieces of the mosaic start to come together. It's kind of like the impressionist artist. You know, it's dabbles of paint, dabbles of paint. And then it doesn't look like much close up, but you stand back. And it's like, wow, that's beautiful.

I know. I thank you, Jeff, for seeing that in my book. You know, that's part of the reason why I start the book with a painting of Anna the prophetess, and I end the book with a Botticelli painting of the Madonna and the book. To me, you know, the artistic rendition of what's beautiful in Scripture can speak to me. And the way that you've just described it as a little dab of paint here, a little dab of paint there. And then when Mary, at the annunciation, you know, when Gabriel appears to marry and begins to speak to her, then the painting comes alive. And we finally get the fulfillment of everything we've been waiting for since the Garden of Eden, really. That's so true. I'll tell you what, we're going to take a break. When we come back from our break, Gail, I want to get into, you know, in what ways do Old

Testament women in your book point to Mary? and I'm going to also ask you that really good question, and that is, do you have a favorite in the Old Testament? I'm ready. You're ready. Okay. Okay. You're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show. Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz.

I want to let you know about an exciting announcement that could revolutionize the way you listen to the Bible in the air and the catechism in the year. Ascension has released a new Bible and Catechism app called the Ascension app. No, here's what you get. In this app, you get the entire text of the Great Adventure Bible. This is incredible. You also get the entire text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as long with the Catechism in your podcast and the Bible in your podcast and transcripts for each episode. If you're like, I'm tired of listening to that guy. I just want to read it.

There's complete transcripts from each and every episode. One thing that makes this app incredibly unique is that it includes special features that make connections between the Bible and the Catechism so crystal clear through color coded references and all these links. The hyperlinks are amazing. I tried it out and I'm like, oh my gosh, it kind of has changed the way. read through the catechism, kind of change the way I read through the Bible. These features will help you navigate the Bible and catechism even more seamlessly so you can get more out of your experience. Also, the app provides almost 1,000 answers to Bible questions. The people who listen to the Bible in the year, they wrote in with their questions. Almost a thousand answers. And those

answers come in the form of audio clips, video clips, as well as resources excerpted from some of Ascension's published works. If you want to download this app for free, super simple. Just go to the app store in search for Ascension app. I am telling you, if learning about the Bible and the catechism is important to you, then this app will change your life. Welcome back. We're talking with Gail Summers today, and she wrote an amazing book called Whispers of Mary, what 12 Old Testament women teach us about Mary. And it is really good. Ascension just put this out. It's actually an extension of the great adventure Bible studies. And 12 chapters, You know, there's 12 periods in the Bible timeline, 12 chapters, 12 women, all color-coded.

It is truly a mosaic that comes together in clear, clear 2020 vision when you look at the Blessed Virgin Mary. And I just love it. Gail, I got to ask you, in what ways do the Old Testament women in your book really point toward the mother of Jesus? That's way to do this, I think, is to give you some examples. When Gabriel spoke to Mary and presented God's plan to her, it became clear that she was going to have to take a risk. She was engaged to be married to Joseph. They were not living together yet. And yet she was going to become pregnant, not by Joseph.

Now, we know from Joseph's story that the Jews would have recognized this as adultery. There would have been a penalty, a death penalty. If not the death penalty, certainly a ruined reputation. for her and her family forever. So she faced a great risk, a life and death risk. But she's not the first woman in salvation history to face a life and death risk. There was Rahab. There was Judas. There was Esther. These women also faced life and death risks to do God's will. And so we have to wonder, when we get to Mary, and she's facing a life and death risk, did these women's stories and the courage that they had, the faith that they had, the outcome of their

courage and their faith, were these stories in Mary's mind when she was able to say, let it be done to me according to your word. That's one example. Another example would be when Mary was so excited about her pregnancy, on the Feast of the Visitation, this is we're recording us on the Feast of the Visitation, as appropriate, when she visited Elizabeth, she was so full of the joy of the Lord. She bursts into a prayer song, you know, the Magnificat, which is a song that we're still singing today. So, but Mary is not the first woman in Salvation history to sing a prayer song.

Miriam sang a prayer song. Judith sang a prayer song. Deborah sang a prayer song. Hannah sang a prayer song. So when Mary sings her prayer song, she's standing in a long line of women. who used their feminine voices this way. And then finally, I would think that another wonderful picture of Mary in the Old Testament, when Mary's standing at the foot of the cross and she's watching her son tortured and die,

she's completely silent. We don't hear a word from Mary, but there was a woman in Old Testament salvation history who did watch seven sons die in one day, tortured, just, I mean, brutally. tortured. She was not silent. That mother spoke. And she said wonderful things to her sons. So we look at those things. What did she say to her sons? On the day when Mary is standing at the foot of the cross, quiet, is she remembering that courageous mother and how she encouraged her sons to die for the glory of God? That's kind of how they do it, how it happens. Gail, you have done a great job of just wetting our appetite as far as the women in the Old Testament

and how we find the fulfillment in Mary. A couple more questions. One, Gail, is that there's a lot of hurting people today. There's a lot of people who, particularly I'm talking about women right now, who are facing situations in their life that are very difficult. It could be health, it could be emotions, it could be a relationship. Their children, their husband, their friend, just different things that are going on. in their life. How do you see your book helping women grow closer to Mary and stronger in their

faith? In other words, what can an understanding of Mary do to help them in this modern setting that they find themselves in? Well, one of the things that we do in the book is we take very seriously what Jesus said when it was on the cross to the apostle John. He said, Your Mother. Behold your mother. We know that Behold is a bigger word than just look at. Behold, when we think of John the Baptist saying, Behold the Lamb of God, or even Pilate, before Jesus was crucified, saying, behold the man. So Jesus is saying, behold your mother. So in the book, we do a very slow beholding of our mother through. the lives of her mothers in faith. And the value of doing this is that we actually know very little about Mary's thought

life and her emotions while she's going through the gospel, right? We don't really have as much commentary as we would love to have. But when we start with Old Testament women, their circumstances were so varied that just about everything that a woman can experience, no matter what it is, is somehow addressed in all of the 12 lives that we see. And because each woman, we give each woman some time to speak to us, that becomes a time of personal reflection on how what we've seen in this woman's life can help us through whatever it is that we're going through. So that by the end of the book, when we actually are on Mary, and we're thinking about not so much how much the women foreshadowed Mary,

because we've been doing that in every chapter. When we get to the last chapter in the book, we're looking primarily at what times, when were there opportunities for Mary to think about these things? And we'd kind of trace out the opportunities that she had to ponder. So in the end, you know, what happened to me? I'll just talk about what happened to me when I was writing the book, okay? Because by the time I got to the Mary chapter, I worried about writing the Mary chapter from the beginning of the book. The Mary chapter, I felt like was going to be the hardest chapter

for me to write. Because what do you say about Mary that hasn't already been said? You know, what do you say? So I had to put that aside and just keep working on each story, each story, each story. When I got to the Mary chapter, I found that there was a lot to say because I felt that I knew perhaps a little more of her inner life. Mary was formed on these stories. So she was formed on these stories, just as Jesus was formed on the stories of the Old Testament types. That's why he used them so frequently

when he was trying to help the Jews understand who he was. So knowing Mary and what formed her helped me to understand what might have been going on in her inner life that we would love to ask her, but we just have a very limited report of what she was thinking and what she was feeling and what she actually said or did. So because we're familiar now with lots of different circumstances in life, you know, having a child die, risking your life to obey God, knowing when your heroic moment has arrived, think about Judith and think about Deborah. These women who knew that their heroic moment had arrived that everything in their

lives had prepared them for this one thing. They stepped into it. They did it. And they stepped back. Mary was able to do that at the wedding at Cana. That was a heroic bone in her life. And if you don't know any of the background of what these other women had to go through when you get to it, it's not going to be as full and rich as it is when we do it that way. That's for sure. You know, thing I also really appreciate about your book is you are incorporating the catechism into your writing. For example, in the introduction paragraph 489, throughout the old covenant, the mission of many holy women prepared for that of Mary. And that's sort of, you started off with, okay, that's, that's everything right there. That's the thing. That is the theme of the book. Yeah, yeah. And then

Jeremiah 1516, your words were found and I ate them and your words became to me a joy. and the delight of my heart. And the use, Gail, the use of artwork like Rembrandt's Anna is so beautiful. And the thing I like about Rembrandt's Anna is it's very hard to see her face. Exactly. And it's so, so I'm thinking to myself, if I was a woman, I'm thinking, there go I. That could be me, you know. Right, right.

Yeah. I'm glad you've picked up on that. You know, that's part of the beauty. I have that painting right next to me right now. And that's the beauty of that painting. The light is coming from over her shoulder, and it's on the book. And her hand is just so tenderly placed on the book. This would be the scriptures.

Not that the scriptures would necessarily have been written in that form, but that's what Rembrandt used to show her relationship with the Old Testament and her love for it. And that's why she spent all over time in the temple. And she became this cloistered woman, this cloistered widow, whose simple life she lived in the temple became the first evangelist for Jesus in Jerusalem.

You end with Botticelli's Madonna of the book, and that is one of the, that's classic. Yeah, it's a beautiful painting for so many reasons. Well, I got to ask you, as we wind this up, and I can talk to you for hours. We could do a show on every single chapter,

but I've got to ask you the question that I know our friends listening are wanting to know, and that is you've got 12 women, and it all adds up to Mary, we're pointing to Mary, but which of these 12 women is Gail Summers' favorite auntie? Okay. Well, it's a great question, and I'm going to have to say that, and this is true, this is a true story, that I can't say that I have a favorite,

and I have a reason why. Okay. The fact is, as I worked, as I worked on each woman's story, there was always something in that woman's story that spoke to me deeply. And I'll give you some examples. That's probably the best way to even describe this. First of all, Eve. Now, Eve, if only people would spend more time thinking about Eve,

both inside the garden and outside the garden. Eve lost two sons in one day. One was murdered and one was sent away from the presence of the Lord and from her presence forever. A mother does not know any greater grief than losing one child, but to lose two children at the same day. That strikes at the very core of who we are as mothers. Now, in my life, several years ago, our son, who was 33, died suddenly and tragically. And it was really the darkest day of our lives. It was the darkest day of our lives. We were absolutely devastated. But I was very interested to look at Eve's response to this tremendous suffering

that she undoubtedly experienced. And you don't find that in the garden. It's outside the garden. When the two sons are gone and she gets pregnant with Seth, the first words out of her lips are, God has given me another son. In other words, the very first thing that Eve says is God has been kind to me. God knows I'm a broken woman. God knows what I have lost. God has given me another son. Of course, E became my favorite.

Then moving on to Sarah, moving on to Sarah. Now, Sarah made some big mistakes in her life. But God used those mistakes. I mean, think about Sarah, you know, laughing at what the angel said, God's messenger, what the angel said to her about the son. that was going to be born. She laughed in his face. She laughed so loudly that he could hear her outside the tent. But then, you know, there was a day when she gave birth to Isaac, and Sarah said, God has made laughter for me. So God did not reject Sarah in her laughing, her disbelief,

her skepticism. In fact, he reversed that laugh. The laugh that became her embarrassment became the laugh of great joy, the laugh that Sarah wants to share with all generations who come after her. She became my favorite. That's a beautiful thing. She made a mistake. God used the mistake.

I've made mistakes. I could say my testimony is the same as Sarah's. He's used my mistakes. And I have a feeling you've got 10 more after that. Yeah, well, yeah, I could go on. So what happened is I can go on and say that in every, I don't have a favorite,

because in every woman's store, there was something that I would not have wanted to miss. And I hope that's understandable. I'd feel like I would be short-changing any of them if I picked out one. That's how close I felt to these women after I finished writing about them. I love talking to you.

Thank you. One of the mistakes that we can make when a book like this comes out, it's not a mistake on your part, it's not a mistake on the publisher's part. It's not a mistake on the women's part that are reading the book. The mistake is on the part of men who don't think that kind of book would be for them.

Yeah. Let me ask you, Gail Summers, what's in it for me? What's in it for men? Well, first of all, men need to know this history. They need to know that this is part of salvation history. They need, and a lot of times the stories remind us of what men are called to do and are often tempted. not to Jew. I mean, think of particularly of Deborah's story. You know, very few people even know Deborah's story. Debra's story is that God wanted Israel to go to war, and they

were very ill-prepared. I mean, they were just farmer soldiers with fighting with farming hooks. So he told Deborah to go to Barack and say, you've got to lead the army. We're going to fight the enemy. And so Deborah went to Barack and told him that what he needed to do. And Barack failed. Barack was actually the commander of the army. He was supposed to step up. But Barack said, I'm not going without you. If you don't go, I don't go. Which was just a colossal failure on his part. It's true that Deborah was a judge. It's true that God spoke to Deborah, but it's not true that God said Deborah was supposed to go and lead the battle. It was true that Barack was supposed to leave the battle. And so she said to him, I'll go with you, but you're not

going to get the glory from this battle. A woman will. And it turned out to be not Deborah herself. So reading the stories, when we find women like Judith, same thing. Judith told the elders of her town what they needed to do, Bethulia, and they said, nah, we're not going to do that. We're going to give God three days. Or, you know, if he doesn't make it rain, we're not, we're going to just capitulate, we're going to give up. And so because of the failure of men, to do what they're actually called to do, women step in. I think men need to be familiar with that history. I do believe that.

And so when men, in fact, you know, one of the best things that's been said about my book, I mean, absolutely, I consider this to be the best compliment that I've gotten or will get on the book, was when the censor, the archdiocese of Philadelphia, read the book because he was going to give it the imprimatur. He wrote and said that this, he said, even though I'm not in the target audience for this book, I found it so informative and so helpful and so inspiring. And I said, wow, here's a man, first of all. He didn't have any personal interest in reading this book.

He only read it to find some error in it. He didn't find any error, and he loved the book. To me, I mean, if a priest in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia can say that he learned something, He actually got inspired by this book. Do I need to say more? Well, I bring that out because, you know, the issue about men, because so often we tend to think that women's issues are women's issues and men's issues are men's issues.

But when it comes to scripture, issues are for everybody. We all can learn it. And it would be like a woman saying, well, what can I learn from the Old Testament? There's all these men in the Old Testament, you know? Well, unfortunately, there is that. You know, some people do say that, but we know that's not right. right right right so this is for everyone so i'm going to suggest here that obviously women are going to buy this book and it's going to be a great gift but i would suggest that it's a gift for men as well

and that men should read this to better understand this perspective that is has been hidden in a way it's like behind a veil for so long and you have taken that veil and you have just you've taken it to the side and now we can see things more clearly so thank you where can people learn more about Whispers of Mary? Well, they can go into the ascensionpress.com slash Whispers of Mary website and buy the book. Yeah. Okay. And one thing, too, Jeff, I just want to mention, too, that my husband does a men's Bible study every Friday. He's been doing it for about 25 years. And the men and his Bible study bought the book. They bought several books. I mean, some men bought three copies of the book. So it is quite possible for men who love the scripture to be interested in a

scripture book. Well, I love it. And I think it's going to, I think it's going to be very fruitful. I do. You've done a great job on it. Thank you. So, well, God bless you. And by the way, I'm going to put that in the show notes where people can get the book. But thank you again. And by the way, thank you for, what was it, 20 years ago that you worked on the Galatians. The Galatians study. Yeah. And then before that, you know, way back, we worked on a Genesis Bible study online. And you came to visit in Phoenix. And I'll never forget, you talked to me, told me about the priest who said you were going to make a difference in the way Catholics know scripture. He had a word from the Lord. And it was a long time ago.

And I can remember thinking, well, yeah, Jeff, you know, the proof is in the pudding. We'll see. And all these years later, all these years later, he was right. You have made a tremendous difference. I know so many people who have benefited and love the scripture because of the work that you have done. So that word of prophecy, yeah, the proof wasn't the point. A lot of good people behind me, you know, Ascension throughout all these years. And so that's, I'm blessed.

I'm blessed to have such good friends like you. So thank you for coming on the show. You're welcome. It's fun. Yeah. And I'm really curious as to what all my friends listening are going to think about the book, because I know it's going to be a benefit to them. So let's close in, let's close in prayer.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. Jesus, I thank you for Gail. And I thank you for the book, Whispers of Me. Mary, I thank you, Lord, for her work. And this is such an honor to your mother who you've given to us as a mother. I pray that this book will find its way into the hands of people who desperately need to understand these aspects of salvation history, of revelation, and the beauty of the mother that you gave to us at the cross.

Thank you, Jesus. Thank you. And we ask, again, for the prayers from our mother, Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy Lord Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God. Pray for us sinners. Now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Amen. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you, Gail. Thank you.