Posted on 10/08/2015 8:02:23 AM PDT by Salvation
As a young child I was very close to God. I spoke to Him in a very natural way and He spoke plainly to me. Although I have very few memories of my early childhood, I vividly remember how close I was to God. When early puberty approached, though, I began to slip away, drifting into the rebellious and angry years of my teens. As the flesh came more alive, my spirit submerged.
The culture of the time didn’t help, either. It was the late 1960s and early 1970s and rebelliousness and the flesh were celebrated as “virtues.” Somehow we thought ourselves more mature than our pathetic forebears, who were hopelessly “repressed.” There was the attitude among the young that we had come of age somehow. We collectively deluded ourselves, aided by the messages of rock music and the haze of drug use, that we were somehow “better.”
So it was the winter of my soul. The vivid faith of my childhood gave way to a kind of indifferent agnosticism. Though I never formally left Church (my mother would never had permitted that as long as I lived in under my parents’ roof), I no longer heard God or spoke to Him. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that when I was in high school I joined the youth choir of my parish church. This was not precipitated by a religious passion, but rather by a passion of another kind: there were pretty girls in the choir and I “sought their company,” shall we say. But God has a way of using beauty to draw us to the truth. Week after week, year after year, as we sang those old religious classics a buried faith began to awaken within me.
But what to do? How to pray? I heard that I was supposed to pray. But how? As a child it had been natural to talk with God. But now He seemed distant, aloof, and likely angry with me. And I’ll admit it, prayer seemed a little “goofy” to me, a high school senior still struggling to be “cool” in his own eyes and in the eyes of his friends. Not only that, but prayer was “boring.” It seemed an unfocused, unstructured, and “goofy” thing.
But I knew someone who did pray. My paternal grandmother, “Nana,” was a real prayer warrior. Every day she took out her beads and sat by the window to pray. I had seen my mother pray now and again, but she was more private about it. But Nana, who lived with us off and on in her last years, knew how to pray and you could see it every day.
Rosary Redivivus – In my parish church of the 1970s, the rosary was non-existent. Devotions and adoration were on the outs during that sterile time. Even the Crucifix was gone. But Nana had that “old-time religion” and I learned to appreciate it through her.
Ad Jesum per Mariam – There are some, non-Catholics especially, who think that talking of Mary or focusing on her in any way takes away from Christ. It is as though they consider it a zero-sum game, in which our hearts cannot love both Mary and Jesus. But my own experience was that Mary led me to Christ. I had struggled to know and worship Christ, but somehow a mother’s love felt more natural, safer, and more accessible to me. So I began there, where I could. Simply pole-vaulting right into a mature faith from where I was did not seem possible. So I began, as a little child again, holding my Mother’s hand. And gently, Mother Mary led me to Christ, her son. Through the rosary, that “Gospel on a string,” I became reacquainted with the basic gospel story.
The thing about Marian devotion is that it opens up a whole world. For with this devotion comes an open door into so many of the other traditions and devotions of the Church: Eucharistic adoration, litanies, traditional Marian hymns, lighting candles, modesty, pious demeanor, and so forth. So as Mary led me, she also reconnected me to many things that I only vaguely remembered. The suburban Catholicism of the 1970s had all but cast these things aside, and I had lost them as well. Now in my late teens, I was going up into the Church “attic” and bringing things down. Thus, little by little, Mother Mary was helping me to put things back in place. I remember my own mother being pleased to discover that I had taken some old religious statues, stashed away in a drawer in my room, and placed them out on my dresser once again. I also took down the crazy rock-and-roll posters, one by one, and replaced them with traditional art, including a picture of Mary.
Over time, praying the Rosary and talking to Mary began to feel natural. And, sure enough, little by little, I began to speak with God. It was when I was in the middle of college that I began to sense the call to the priesthood. I had become the choir director by that time and took a new job in a city parish: you guessed it, “St. Mary’s.” There, the sterility of suburban Catholicism had never taken hold. The candles burned brightly at the side altars. The beautiful windows, marble altars, statues, and traditional novenas were all on display in Mother Mary’s parish. The rest is history. Mary cemented the deal between me and her Son, Jesus. I became His priest and now I can’t stop talking about Him! He is my hero, my savior and Lord. And praying again to God has become more natural and more deeply spiritual for me.
It all began one day when I took Mary’s hand and let her lead me to Christ. And hasn’t that always been her role? She, by God’s grace, brought Christ to us, showed Him to us at Bethlehem, presented Him in the Temple, and ushered in His first miracle (even despite His reluctance). She said to the stewards that day at Cana, and to us now, “Do whatever he tells you.” The Gospel of John says, Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs in Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him (John 2:11). And so Mary’s intercession strengthened the faith of others in her Son. That has always been her role: to take us by the hand and lead us to Christ. Her rosary has been called the “Gospel on a string” because she bids us to reflect on the central mysteries of the Scripture as we pray.
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus...
The above is found in the book that Rome compiled.
I wonder what it means?
But you just wrote...
God worked His power through her, and He is unlimited in what He can continue to do through her, or any of us.
Do you conjure up these unbiblcal scenarios on your own; or were you taught them?
I still don’t get it. This has something to do with grammar not being doctrine?
The premise is not that God otherwise refuses to, but that,
“sometimes salvation is quicker if we remember Mary's name then if we invoked the name of the Lord Jesus...[who] does not at once, answer anyone who invokes him, but only does so after just judgment. But if the name of his mother Mary is invoked, her merits intercede so that he is answered even if the merits of him who invoked her do not deserve it.” Thus, "we have recourse, to thee alone, and we beseech thee to prevent thy beloved Son, who is irritated by our sins, from abandoning us to the power of the devil," "we have but one advocate, and that is thyself, and thou alone art truly loving and solicitous for our salvation ... My Queen and my Advocate with thy Son, whom I dare not approach." (From Judge Fairly, p. 5).. And indeed, Mary "had to suffer, as He did, all the consequences of sin," "Jesus and Mary suffered for our sins," thus "We were condemned through the fault of one woman; we are saved through the merits of another woman."
For adding to what the word of God says of the virtuous, surrendered, Spirit-filled graced among women, Mary of Scripture and contrary to it, RCs assert of this demonic (yes) demigoddess that "the power thus put into her (Mary’s) hands is all but unlimited," "surpassing in power all the angels and saints in Heaven," and is actually “like unto Him.” for "when she acts, it is also He who acts; and that if her intervention be not accepted, neither is His," and that " "all in heaven and on earth, even God himself, is subject to the Blessed Virgin," and that "the greatness of the power which she wields over one who is God cannot be conceived," for "she seems to have the same power as God. Her prayers and requests are so powerful with him that he accepts them as commands in the sense that he never resists his dear mother’s prayer because it is always humble and conformed to his will..."
Thus "he who is under the protection of Mary will be saved; he who is not will be lost. " For "the Holy Spirit acts only by the Most Blessed Virgin, his Spouse." "through Whom the Holy Trinity is sanctified." And "through her alone does He dispense His favours and His gifts," and "it follows that there is no grace which Mary cannot dispose of as her own, which is not given to her for this purpose."
Moreover, "Mary has authority over the angels and the blessed in heaven...God gave her the power and the mission of assigning to saints the thrones made vacant by the apostate angels who fell away through pride....all the angels in heaven unceasingly call out to her." o that "After God, it is impossible to think of anything greater than His Mother," to her, Jesus owes His Precious Blood...Next to God, she deserves the highest praise....no creature, can ever be compared to her:"
However, lest you imagine that in Bible times such adulation as kneeling before a statue and praising the entity it represented in the unseen world, beseeching such for Heavenly help, and making offerings to them, and giving glory and titles and ascribing attributes to such which are never given in Scripture to created beings (except to false gods) would constitute worship in Scripture, it is asserted that "we must never adore her; that is for God alone. But otherwise we cannot honor her to excess." This imaginary distinction btwn "hyperdulia" and "latria is consistent with the manner of perverse Cath reasoning by which we are accused of hating the Mary of Scripture by reproving their unScriptural version of her.
1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
Dictionaries are only helpful if you actually read them.
Scripture is only helpful if you actually read it.
“No believers are mentioned coming from Heaven.” Well, you get a shot at a grand slam and popped it up to the infield.
“God worked His power through her, and He is unlimited in what He can do through her, or any of us.”
Sounds nice but is false on its face. God CAN do anything, but He very clearly DOES NOT do “anything”. He sets boundaries and limits and most assuredly did not give any group of believers a blank check to invent their own theology after “tradition”.
Read 1&2 Thessalonians and “tradition” there is always practical, e.g. “Work with your hands so as not to be a burden and to have something to share!” You will find no weirdness or anything that has even a hint of the occult, nor will you find diversions from Jesus Christ. You WILL find that...if you pay heed to lying spirits and doctrines of demons.
“Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.”—2 John 1:9
Abide...in the teaching of CHRIST. Men who form a church are not Christ, and you will notice that every cult or perverted form of Christianity is made up of men who ran ahead and invented their own path while using Christ as a co-signer.
Truth, no question.
5 out of 7 at least, yet submission to the papacy (or even mention of it) is entirely absent, neither as censure for lack of it or commendation for it, despite the many commendations and condemnations. That hardly sounds like a Bible Rome wrote!
Of course, it is also entirely absent in any letters to the churches, despite the many issues, commendations and condemnations, problems and remedies. The closest there is to such is that of Paul's voluntary presentation of his ministry to the apostles in Jerusalem (not Rome. Paul does not even include Peter among the 35 souls he mentions in Rm., 16), but in which Peter is named after James, and is the only apostle publicly rebuked after Pentecost, by the same man of God whose ministry he affirmed, along with James and John. (Gal.2) E
ven regular pray for Peter in particular is not enjoined, nor is their any manifest preparations for a providing for a successor, nor any mention of one for the martyred James. (Acts 12:1,2)
None of which takes away from the street-level leadership of Peter among the brethren, though never manifestly ruling over them (James is the one who provides the Scripture-based conclusive judgment in Acts 15, confirmatory of what Peter briefly testified to and exhorted, and Paul preached).
But it is starkly contrary to the propaganda of the NT church looking to Peter as the first of a line of infallible heads reigning in Rome as their exalted supreme head.
Which is not of Scripture, and which propaganda even Cath scholarship provides testimony against .
Thanks God for His light.
Obviously, it is not earthly mediators and intercessors that are excluded, but heavenly ones btwn God and man, which the Spirit only states Christ is. (1Tim. 2:5) .
Now prayer is a most common practice in Scripture, with approx. 200 prayers by believers being inspired and recorded by the Holy Spirit, all of which are addressed to God, and which presupposes and often examples that God can directly hear all such from Heaven, His Throne, and respond.
For prayer to created beings to be Scriptural, you need to provide just one prayer by a believers addressed to someone else but God.
Failing that, you need to at least show created beings in Heaven as hearing prayers addressed to them and responding on a regular basis (angels and elders offering prayers in memorial before the climatic judgments of revelation will not do it).
You need to also show kneeling before a statue and praising the entity it represented in the unseen world, beseeching such for Heavenly help, and making offerings to them, and giving glory and titles and ascribing attributes to such which are never given in Scripture to created beings.
You also should show communication by those on earth with created beings of Heaven taking place without requiring both to somehow be in the same realm, as God does not need to be, Heaven being His throne. (Mt. 5:34; cf. Rv. 16:17)
Failing this, you cannot justify prayer to created beings by extrapolating this from earthly relationships, as we neither hear mental prayer, nor is there any manifest correspondence btwn all earthly relationships and those btwn heaven and earth, but instead their are manifest limitations. That believers (the distinction btwn 2 camps of heavenly "saints" and mere believers in "purgatory" is artificial) in Heaven can even hear prayers is speculative at best, as only God is shown being able to do so.
As you cannot establish what is needed to support prayer to created beings in Heaven as Scriptural, you must rest it upon "tradition," that amorphous ecclesiastical ectoplasmic "body" out of which so much Cath doctrine is channeled.
This was the post (#79) with your original assertions:
The love of a created, sinful, being is better than the Creator's love??I don't see the word "better" any where in his sentence. I do see the words"more natural, safer, and more accessible. My Thesaurus does not give any of them as a synonym for "better".
And this is the text from the article being discussed:
But my own experience was that Mary led me to Christ. I had struggled to know and worship Christ, but somehow a mother’s love felt more natural, safer, and more accessible to me. So I began there, where I could.
Now, explain why it is, then, according to rules of language, that you say “better” isn't a legitimately-interpreted implication of what the Monsignor wrote because a thesaurus doesn't list “better” and the terms and expressions he used as synonyms. Wikipedia says this, for one thing:
“Although including synonyms, a thesaurus should not be taken as a complete list of all the synonyms for a particular word.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesaurus
And the issue isn't even one of synonyms. It's a matter of comparison words:
Comparison is a feature in the morphology of some languages, whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected or modified to produce forms that indicate the relative degree of the designated properties. The grammatical category associated with comparison of adjectives and adverbs is degree of comparison. The usual degrees of comparison are the positive, which simply denotes a property (as with the English words big and fully); the comparative, which indicates greater degree (as bigger and more fully); and the superlative, which indicates greatest degree (as biggest and most fully).[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_(grammar)
The Monsignor used comparatives, and the way to tell if his comparatives imply something better, is to look at the words in the context in which he used them. Comparatives often do imply something better. After a very cold day, an expression like “it's warmer today” is often meant to mean the weather is better today in that particular sense. But for someone who really loves to ski, “the days are getting warmer,” "warmer" in that case might actually imply something bad.
Now again, the Monsignor uses comparatives, in which while the presumed positives are that Jesus' love is to some extent natural, safe, and accessible, he contends that to him, at that point in his life, Mary's love was “more natural,” “safer,” and “more accessible.”
I stand by my original comment.
As is your choice.
Many of my original comments have been proven wrong.
(It’s tough being a Prot!)
While just before this, very precise numbers of folks are counted!
It has been my experience that the only thing stopping prots from becoming Catholics is stubborn pride.
Where is Jesus coming from and what does it mean that God will BRING WITH HIM? If the dead in Christ are not where Jesus is, what does it mean that God says He will bring the dead in Christ WITH JESUS when He comes in the air?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.