The Smile of Heaven

Mary O’Regan on the significance of the number 13

After I wrote a piece for The Catholic Herald examining Our Lady's strong connection to the number 13, a lapsed Irish Catholic got in touch to tell me I was a neurotic owing to my "obsession" with the number 13. She taunted me that I was only pretending to be a "real" Irishwoman but was too pious at too young an age to be a product of modern Ireland and was therefore a fake.

I chuckled at this because it is owing to my upbringing in Ireland, where I was toughened up by anti-Catholic antagonists, that her onslaught ran like water off me.

However, I am not the first person in history to note the presence of meaningful numbers in and around our Holy Religion. According to the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia, the Church Fathers considered the possible spiritual meaning of numbers in Scripture:

Suffice it to note here that although the Fathers repeatedly condemned the magical use of numbers which had descended from Babylonian sources to the Pythagoreans and Gnostics of their times, and although they denounced any system of their philosophy which rested upon an exclusively numerical basis, still they almost unanimously regarded the numbers of Holy Writ as full of mystical meaning.

Some basic observations about Our Lady and the Number 13 include: Our Lady was the 13th person in the room when the Holy Spirit descended on her and the Apostles. Our Lady gave St Dominic the Rosary in the 13th century and Our Lady appeared on the 13th of the month at Fatima. During the Fatima centenary many of us have reiterated that 13 is close to Our Lady's heart, yet I am unaware of any authoritative explanations from the Church as to why.

The number 13 may also represent the Blessed Trinity itself: there is one God of Three Blessed Persons.

Mary of Jesus of Ágreda, who has been declared "Venerable" but not canonized, wrote in her much pondered Mystical City of God, that the Assumption of Our Lady occurred at 3pm on an August 13.

Any pondering of the significance of the number 13 has to be done in a spirit of holy docility. In a deferential spirit I would like to offer my thesis that the number 13 is a succinct numerical definition of Our Lady's relationship with the Blessed Trinity, the 1 stands for Our Lady and the 3 stands for each Person of the Trinity.

The number 13 may also represent the Blessed Trinity itself: there is one God of Three Blessed Persons. If you look at 13 forwards you may define it to mean one God Who is made up of three Divine Persons, if you look at it from right to left, you have the definition of three Persons in one God. In the Post Communion Proper for the Tridentine Mass of Trinity Sunday we pray to be “made strong... by acknowledging the Holy, Eternal Trinity and its undivided Unity”.

I believe 13 may be a numerical portrait of Our Lady's relationship with each Blessed Person of the Trinity, in that the Three Persons are distinct from each other. In accordance to the distinct nature of each, Our Lady has a distinct status with each Person; Our Lady is Daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son and Spouse of the Holy Spirit.

It may be the number 13 has a double function: 13 may represent the Blessed Trinity and simultaneously represent Our Lady's role with each Divine Person of the Trinity.

If my thesis thus far has any validity, I do not believe I came to it alone. One day I asked Our Lady in prayer, during the Rosary, as to why 13 was special. The dual meaning of 13 in standing for the Blessed Trinity and standing for Our Lady's relationship with each Person of the Blessed Trinity appeared in my mind.

It also appeared to me that 13 is associated with betrayal because Judas was among the 13 people present at the Last Supper. Yet, the number 13 being a hallmark of Our Lady means it has been redeemed as the number of fidelity; Our Lady is the ultimate in total fidelity and loyalty; she never strayed from God by sin, and in complete obedience to God's will she agreed to have the power of the Holy Spirit come upon her so she could bear our Saviour.

Our Lady is the mother of Jesus, who is King of kings; because of this Our Lady is Queen of Heaven because, in the House of David, it is not the wife but the mother of the king who is made queen. Our Lady is the Smile of Heaven, as she is the masterpiece of God the Father's hands who sculpted her sublime smile to give Heaven a feminine charm. Our Lady as Spouse of the Holy Spirit is the Hammer of Heresies, smashing to smithereens false teachings about God because she is the Spouse of the Spirit of Truth.