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To: kosta50

But, you see, Mary did what we can't do – love God with all her heart and mind and soul. There was no other devotion in her life, but God.

No doubt that Mary loved G-d will all her heart, mind and soul. But everything else you said is speculation. It IS possible to love G-d with your heart, mind and soul AND have beautiful G-d santioned sex with your spouse. I'm like this....... if it can't be found in scripture, I'm not going to put my faith in it. What about this scripture?

Mathew 13:55-56 Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?

Why would Jesus be called Mary and Joseph's FIRSTBORN son? I see those in the scripture so, more than likely, Mary went on to do what married women do, that is to procreate with her husband. That doesn't make her sinful, it makes her normal but still highly favored of G-d.


919 posted on 12/09/2006 8:39:46 AM PST by brwnsuga
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To: brwnsuga; kosta50

"No doubt that Mary loved G-d will all her heart, mind and soul. But everything else you said is speculation. It IS possible to love G-d with your heart, mind and soul AND have beautiful G-d santioned sex with your spouse."

Well of course it is! But here's something to think about. The Fathers taught that our created purpose, from Adam and Eve down to you and me and the rest of us, is to become "like God", which is to say that we will come to a point where we become sharers in the uncreated eneregies of God (but not His Essence since, as +Gregory Palamas notes, God allows no sharing of his Essence). In order for this to happen, we need to fully "die to the self" so that our existence becomes totally focused on God. Our human, loving desire for sexual relations with our spouses is a marvelous thing and in no way sinful, yet the fulfillment of those desires necessarily involves, at least for most of us, a degree of self-fulfillment even as we are obeying God's command to be fruitful and multiply. A life of chastity involves a conscious overcoming of our Post Fall nature at a most basic level. In Orthodoxy we say that our celibate monastics are our spiritual Olympians because they have received sufficient grace to move beyond acting on their physical desires, sexual and otherwise in many cases. The Desert Fathers have left us many examples of this. +Mary of Egypt is an excellent example of a saint who so overcame her fleshly nature that she became, while alive, wraith-like. She had so advanced in theosis that her physical being began to fade away along with her will.

By venerating the Theotokos for her perpetual virginity, The Church is in no way denigrating married life and the physical joys of love within marriage. Its not a zero sum game.


923 posted on 12/09/2006 9:01:21 AM PST by Kolokotronis (Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!)
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To: brwnsuga; Kolokotronis
No doubt that Mary loved G-d will all her heart, mind and soul. But everything else you said is speculation. It IS possible to love G-d with your heart, mind and soul AND have beautiful G-d santioned sex with your spouse

You are missing the concept of "holiness," and besides, Kolootronis answered this part quite exhaustively.

What about this scripture?

This issue has been discussed ad nauseum in numerous previous threads and, earlier, even on this one.

936 posted on 12/09/2006 11:57:46 AM PST by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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