Ephesus

Today I saw Ephesus, where St. Paul preached to 24,000 people in an open theater.  Where St. John the Evangelist brought the Virgin Mary ("'Behold your mother' and from that day he took her into his home.")  Where St. John wrote the Gospel according to John, and where he died and was buried.  Where Mary lived out the last years of her life in a home high on a hill above the bustling city.  Where the Council of Ephesus decided in 431 AD to acclaim Mary as "theotokos," as the Mother of God, as a way of describing exactly who Jesus is: one person (not 2) who is both God and man, therefore it is right and proper to call Mary the "Mother of God."  Ephesus, a huge city of a quarter of a million people at the time of Paul, John and the Virgin Mary.  Ephesus, a very ancient city, had a very long history before Christianity of devotion to a mother goddess, Artemis of the Ephesians.  Such an ancient devotion was turned upside down by the advent of belief in Jesus Christ.  How fitting that God so arranged it that the Mother of God would come to live in this city so the new Christians could switch their devotion to the Lord Jesus and have His mother as one of their residents!  After the city was destroyed by a series of earthquakes and the advance of Islam into the area, the local resisdents had such a devotion to Mary that even to this day the Muslims have as strong devotion to Mary and visit the site of her home on top of the nearby high hill.  By the way, in the Book of Revelation Ephesus is one of the 7 churches of the Apocalypse.  Ephesus is commened by the Lord and then told to repent, and if not, her lampstand would be removed.  Ephesus is no longer a Christian city.  In fact, the city was destroyed.  A somber thought, n'est pas?