Mary: Intimate Witness to God's Love Incarnate

By Louis McCall

About the Book
Mary is about the mother of Jesus and the arc of her development from a peasant teenager to an icon in the church, to a bold witness of the of the Gospel who journeys from Jerusalem to Samaria, to the mostly Gentile church in Antioch of Syria, and finally to Ephesus, a major metropolitan city of Asia Minor. This book tells the story of Mary in the style as a memoir while still being faithful to the canon of scripture in the hopes that women who seek to have their voices heard in a male-dominated society will find inspiration and strength. Also, that all readers will gain a new appreciation for the challenges and fears of Mary, her own need for a savior, and her development into an eyewitness for God’s love through his Son Jesus Christ. Mary shows how one woman can start out simply and yet become a giant of faith and model of womanhood.
About the Author
Louis McCall was born in Chicago, Illinois, and attended Northwestern University, where he received a Ph.D. in political science. Later, he also attended the National War College of the National Defense University. Louis was an assistant professor at the Ohio State University in the Department of Political Science prior to a thirty-six-year career in the U.S. Department of State, first as a Foreign Service officer and then as a foreign affairs Civil Service employee where he served as Consul General in Florence, Italy, Chargé d’Affaires in Brunei, U.S. Representative to the Republic of San Marino, and Assistant Inspector General. He lived in or worked in, at least temporarily, more than sixty countries on six continents.
Whether in academia or as a diplomat, Louis found opportunities to live his faith, including part-time ministry of the good news in word and in song, including co-laboring with missionaries, national church leaders, and the underground church. When ministering early in his diplomatic career from the pulpit of a great church in Calcutta, India, Louis said to those in attendance that he had determined not to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ. That has been a commitment he has endeavored to keep over the years. In his final two years at the Department of State, he organized and led the national day of prayer observances in the Department.
Now, in his new career as an author, he has the pleasure of greater freedom in sharing what God has placed in his heart. Louis is active simultaneously in two churches in Washington, DC. One is a multi-site non-denominational church, and the other is a Catholic church where he is a regular cantor, though not a Catholic himself. He has managed this with the blessing and full knowledge of pastors and priests. This has been an outgrowth of his early association with a mixed protestant-Catholic charismatic house-based worship group, his association with the late Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, his charismatic Catholic wife, Lenora, and guest ministry in churches and bible schools of various denominations while living in or working in other countries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Jan 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798890276483

Book preview

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The contents of this work, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of events, people, and places depicted; opinions expressed; permission to use previously published materials included; and any advice given or actions advocated are solely the responsibility of the author, who assumes all liability for said work and indemnifies the publisher against any claims stemming from publication of the work.

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2024 by Louis McCall

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Dedication

images_120_Copy49.png This book is about an amazing woman who had an epic journey from peasant girl to the vessel chosen to be the doorway through which Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, would enter the world, via history’s only virgin birth, as a flesh and blood human being. It then seems fitting for me to dedicate this book to women in my life, including my ancestors.

My dear wife Lenora was raised in an African Methodist Episcopal church. As an adult, she chose to become a Catholic and then continued her faith journey by becoming a part of the Mother of God Catholic Charismatic Community at The Catholic University of America. She also has been an active member of a society that honors Mary. Though I am not a Catholic, I have learned to honor, but not venerate, Mary the mother of the Son of God.

My great great grandmother Caroline was of African descent born into involuntary enslavement within the Creek Indian Nation, also known as the Muscogee, one of the so-called civilized tribes of American Indians that enslaved Africans in the same way as did their white counterparts. Caroline’s husband had been enslaved in Virginia but joined the Union Army as one of the U.S. Colored Troops in the Civil War in a heavy artillery unit. Caroline’s granddaughter Ada was also my grandmother. My other great great grandmother Martha was a white woman of privilege, an enslaver, and the widow of a Confederate soldier killed in the Civil War. She subsequently bore three children, during Reconstruction, to my great great grandfather James William Stepp Woods, but had the two surviving sons take her previous married name as a better way of ensuring that they could have a substantial inheritance of her land in Alabama. Not even Martha had the right to vote in her lifetime. My great grandmother Annie was orphaned when white marshals had a shootout with her family in a corrupt effort to take the family’s land illegally claimed by a white citizen as a pretext to keep her brothers, who were very fair-skinned, from continuing to date white girls. Annie was so traumatized by the event that cost the lives of her parents and caused three of her brothers to flee as fugitives that she hardly spoke thereafter and would not step outside the door of the home of her eventual husband unless a shotgun was by the door.

My mother Catherine, who was very fair, would be taken by my grandfather, who passed for white, to places like Kentucky, where he worked in mines on an itinerant basis as an explosive’s expert. She married very young without finishing high school, but eventually became a minister in a small house church. She was always full of advice, though we lived in poverty most of the time. She lived until just short of her ninety-fifth birthday to see me graduate from a prestigious university with a Ph.D., become a university professor at a major university, and then become a diplomat in the Foreign Service.

During my thirty-six years as a diplomat, I knew and assisted the late Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta in various legal matters in my capacity as Vice Consul, while I was assigned to the Consulate General of the United States of America in Calcutta, India. An immigrant from Skopje, Macedonia, but of Albanian descent, Mother Teresa founded the Order of the Missionaries of Charity. I was amazed by her love for the poor and the dying of Calcutta and her surprising strength and intestinal fortitude to carry out her mission, despite a slender, stooped-over frame and a weak heart, to which she eventually succumbed.

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Photo in 1984 of author with Mother Teresa (center)

I have taken and learned something from these women. That helped me to write this book about the unique woman that Mary was and her journey in this life.

Acknowledgments

images_119_Copy52.png The King James Version of the Holy Bible served as the sourcebook for this fictional account. Although fictional, this book is based on what is recorded in the Bible. Where dialogue is taken from the Bible, it was paraphrased by the author into modern colloquial English. Other dialogue comes from the artistic license of the author.

Scripture quotations and references are from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown and are reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.

I also want to acknowledge the valued assistance of Cindy Vasquez, Ruth Ebisuzaki, Cassandra Johnson, and Claire McCourt. Their wisdom, spiritual insights, and editorial suggestions contributed to improving this book.

Endorsements

images_118_Copy55.png Using Scripture and historical fiction, Louis McCall gives us unique insight into the life of Mary. It will expand your imagination and deepen your appreciation for this amazing woman’s life.

Mark Batterson, Lead Pastor

National Community Church

Washington, D.C.

It is with great enthusiasm and joy that I recommend this wonderful depiction of the life of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ’s mother, Mary. This must-read book is filled with God’s light and revelation presenting Mary’s life from a realistic point of view. The profound author, Louis McCall, so richly reenacted some of Mary’s day-to-day life experiences to help the reader understand Mary’s human point of view. This book is ALIVE! As you read, it will relate to women and men alike to re-live Mary’s and Joseph’s experiences during the time of Jesus’