As a Catholic I celebrate this day with great joy...however...I had an interesting conversation the other day with a "born again Christian" who goes to Calvary Chapel and decided to inform me that Mary means nothing in spiritual and biblical terms...all she did was give birth to Christ...she never did anything herself that changed the spectrum of the bible...she was just "chosen" to give birth.
I find it fascinating how I am constantly ragged on by "fellow Christians" because I pray to Saints and to Mary...whom they (they being Baptists, Lutherans, Episcopalians etc..)say they are worthless to pray to because only God can answer our prayers...nobody else.
Guess they never read the story of the Wedding of Cana in the Bible where Mary first interceded with her son for the groom and bride who had run out of wine???
Go figure??
I'm always tempted to tell someone who says that: "When you meet Jesus in Heaven, you be sure to repeat to him that you believe his mother is 'nothing special'". Up to now, I've managed to hold my tongue...
I had the same problem until I asked them about the wedding at Cana.....Mary intervened on behalf of the wedding host..Even Jesus stated it was not His time to perform miracles..She got Her Son to do this...ANNNNND,it was only for some wine...Its interesing to see non catholics wiggle out of explaining that intercession is wrong but oh yeah,it happened in the bible....
They say that because it is biblical.
1 Timothy 2:5
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
Yea, God's little incubator.
God's glorious plan involves His Will to send His Son to die on the cross for just one, JUST ONE, sinner - as they will say.
Not that this plan was thought out in eternity as an integral whole that involves anything important like taking into account His whole humanity, including His conception and birth. Or His Mother for that matter.
Christ loved His Mother. To be a follower of Christ, best to do the same.
So according to the person you spoke with " Mary means nothing in spiritual and biblical terms" Yet at the same time he said " she was just "chosen" to give birth."
To buy his premise I would have to believe that God chooses in a random, unknowing, blinded and indifferent manner. He does in other words indeed play dice with the universe.
But the very assumption of your friends argument goes against what has been revealed to us in Scripture about the Nature of God. How can an all powerful, all knowing, all seeing God do anything randomly?
How can a loving God and father be indifferent to how He interacts with us? It also contradicts an idea central to Christian teaching. That our relationship with Christ is not only Corporate but Personal. We are called by name and Christ died for my sins and saves me. It is because of the love that God has for each and everyone of us that He came down from heaven and became man. This is not a God of random indifference. But a loving Father that knows His children and acts always for their good.
So Mary was "just chosen", eh? All the same, the fact remains that G_d chose Mary over anyone else means that He considered her most worthwhile. Who's going to argue with G_d Himself?
I am a Born-Again, (now a Presby with a new respect for the Catholic faith, thank you blessed John Paul the Great) but one willing to respect the Blessed Virgin Mary. It may be that G_d alone answers prayers, but He choses the saints to help listen and carry out, kind of a heavenly conduit.