There are only two saints I have real affection for, the first is Our Lord's Blessed Mother and the other is John the Baptist.
The Magnificat is one of the most beautiful prayers ever, and I think that Mary's plaintive cry to God, her thanks for raising the lowly and lowering the haughty hearkens back to some of the Psalms, where David is praising God for smiting his enemies and the proud and the unjust. There is a continuity there that I really like.
However, I was never really able to form a bond with her as the creature that Catholics assert she is or was. When I would kneel before her statue, I was never able to formulate a natural dialogue. I was always asking myself how to phrase my prayer, should it be "dear Mary, please relay the following to Jesus for me..." Always very, very unnatural for me.
Part of the reason for that is because as a kid a nun had put it in my head that I was immoral, and she also put it in writing, so I never knew how I could approach this creature who was sinless from beginning to end. How could it be possible for me, filthy inside as I was, to approach this pure figure? It wasn't as if she could forgive my sins, only Jesus could do that, and as I grew to have a deeper relationship with Jesus, to approach her seemed unnecessary, and also seemed to take something away from the Power and Glory of Christ. That, coupled with my sense that the unclean couldn't approach the clean, made her somewhat of an impediment to me in my relationship with Jesus.
Also, in Scripture, the dialogue that Jesus has with his Mother seems a little on the harsh side, and so you never get from Scripture anything near a mirror image of the way Our Lord's Blessed Mother is asserted to be by Catholicism. But neither can I totally forget her.
The Passion of The Christ did an excellent job in portraying Mary as a Mother, the scene where she is soaking up His Blood in anguished fervor is how I see Our Lord's Blessed Mother: The Mary of the Magnificat and of her Son's Passion.
And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.
These Scriptures really speak to me, Dr. E., thanks.
Write a book, AG. You are one of His poets.
Hello AlbionGirl -
I gather from your post that you grew up in Catholic schooling. I thought I had been taught by Catholics on this thread that priests had the full and literal authority to forgive sins, that such power had been delegated to them, through successors, all the way back to the Apostles. (I have been arguing with them about this throughout this thread. :) I just wanted to ask you if you are referring to what you were taught then, or what you believe now? Thanks, and nice to meet you. :)