Posted on 10/09/2007 1:55:33 PM PDT by NYer
"Have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior?" the man asked me earnestly.
I paused for a moment to consider the question. Not because I don't recognize the Son of God as my Lord and Savior, but because my response would say a lot about me and the Church.
We Christians really should have a common language, but the truth is that we don't often communicate with each other well. The trouble is that words have meaning and some words mean different things to different people.
For an Evangelical, for example, "accepting Jesus" refers to a discrete event in time during which a person submits to Jesus' Lordship, and becomes a Christian. The new Christian recognizes Jesus as his Lord and Savior, and usually follows this decision with a prayer asking Jesus to come into his heart.
For a Catholic, "accepting Jesus" is not a one time event, but has many and varied meanings.
"Accepting Jesus" could mean daily conversion of heart where we surrender our lives once again to Christ in the Morning Offering: "Lord Jesus, I offer you my works, prayers, joys and sufferings this day for the intentions of your Sacred Heart and in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world."
"Accepting Jesus" could also mean receiving our Lord in the Most Holy Eucharist where we physically receive His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity under the appearance of bread and wine.
Both of these methods of accepting Jesus speak of personal relationship with the Savior. I have written many times about the communal nature of our Catholic faith, that we are joined to the Church in Heaven (Church Triumphant) and in Purgatory (Church Suffering) through our baptism (cf 1 Peter 3:20-21, Eph 4:5). Being aware of our connection to the rest of the Church is important, but we should not neglect our own personal relationship with our Lord either.
As with most things Catholic, it's not either/or...it's both/and.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church weighs in on the subject of personal relationship Jesus: Because God creates through wisdom, his creation is ordered: "You have arranged all things by measure and number and weight." The universe, created in and by the eternal Word, the "image of the invisible God", is destined for and addressed to man, himself created in the "image of God" and called to a personal relationship with God (#299).
You see, we must neither confine our relationship with Jesus to Holy Mass nor the quiet of our rooms, for Jesus Christ is both King and Brother. While different spiritualities appeal to different people, we must both unite ourselves with the whole Church and present ourselves to Jesus Christ as individuals. To loose one is to diminish the other.
Submitting to the Lordship of Jesus should be more than just a one-time event; instead it is a daily act of love and gratitude for our Lord's sacrifice on the Cross. Our response to His love must never be merely a fond memory of the day we gave our lives to Christ.
Having said all that, we shouldn't loose sight of the need to truly give ourselves over to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The Evangelical's surrender-event is a good model; daily conversion of the heart has to start somewhere...we just must never let it remain there.
So what answer did I give to my earnest evangelist when he asked me if I'd accepted Jesus as personal savior?
I answered, "Yes, everyday."
We not only accept Him every day, we see Him in others.
Putting on my long, blue, one-size-fits-all, sky-blue asbestos anti-flame mantle....
Please show where devotion to Mary was practiced by the Ante-Nicene church fathers. Thanks
Buy the book.
Defense against heresies regarding Christ’s incarnation, etc, is not the same as devotion to Mary. Nice try, though.
So, do you have a problem with Luther’s devotion to Mary?
Your bud Luther agreed, by the way.
Good article. If only he didn’t use “loose” when he means “lose”! I realize using the single “o” to make the “oo” sound freaks people out, but still ...
Why?
**I answered, “Yes, everyday.”**
What I say every time I am asked.
B/c their is scriptural authority. The ante nicene fathers would be next in line.
Meant to say “B/c there is no scriptural athority.”
So if there is no ante-Nicene source that one can find, then what?
“**I answered, “Yes, everyday.”**
What I say every time I am asked.”
Smart person! I live in a Baptist demographic and am at a loss most times as how to respond to a question that implies a discrete one time event.
As in Scripture, so too in the infant Church we see the attention of the faithful rightfully focused first and foremost on Jesus Christ. The divine primacy of Jesus Christ (with its appropriate worship of adoration) had to be clearly established before any subordinate corresponding devotion to his Mother could be properly exercised. Nonetheless, the beginnings of acknowledgement and devotion to the Mother of Jesus is present from apostolic times in the living Tradition of the early Church.
The first historic indications of the existing veneration of Mary carried on from the Apostolic Church is manifested in the Roman catacombs. As early as the end of the first century to the first half of the second century, Mary is depicted in frescos in the Roman catacombs both with and without her divine Son. Mary is depicted as a model of virginity with her Son; at the Annunciation; at the adoration of the Magi; and as the orans, the "praying one," the woman of prayer. A very significant fresco found in the catacombs of St. Agnes depicts Mary situated between St. Peter and St. Paul with her arms outstretched to both. This fresco reflects, in the language of Christian frescoes, the earliest symbol of Mary as "Mother of the Church." Whenever St. Peter and St. Paul are shown together, it is symbolic of the one Church of Christ, a Church of authority and evangelization, a Church for both Jew and Gentile. Mary's prominent position between Sts. Peter and Paul illustrates the recognition by the Apostolic Church of the maternal centrality of the Savior's Mother in his young Church.
It is also clear from the number of representations of the Blessed Virgin and their locations in the catacombs that the Mother of Jesus was also recognized for her maternal intercession of protection and defense. Her image was present on tombs, as well as on the large central vaults of the catacombs. Clearly, the early Christians dwelling in the catacombs prayed to Mary as intercessor to her Son for special protection and for motherly assistance. As early as the first century to the first half of the second century, Mary's role as Spiritual Mother was recognized and her protective intercession was invoked.
The early Church Fathers, (also by the middle of the second century), articulated the primary theological role of the Blessed Virgin as the "New Eve." What was the basic understanding of Mary as the "New Eve" in the early Church? Eve, the original "mother of the living," had played an instrumental, though secondary role, in the sin of Adam which resulted in the tragic fall of humanity from God's grace. However, Mary, as the new Mother of the living, played an instrumental, though secondary, role to Jesus, the New Adam, in redeeming and restoring the life of grace to the human family.
Let us examine a few citations from the early Church Fathers that manifest this growing understanding of Mary's spiritual and maternal role as the "New Eve," who as the "new Mother of the living," participates with Christ in restoring grace to the human family.
St. Justin Martyr (d.165), the early Church's first great apologist, describes Mary as the "obedient virgin" through whom humanity receives its Savior, in contrast to Eve, the "disobedient virgin," who brings death and disobedience to the human race:
(The Son of God) became man through the Virgin that the disobedience caused by the serpent might be destroyed in the same way in which it had originated. For Eve, while a virgin incorrupt, conceived the word which proceeded from the serpent, and brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary was filled with faith and joy when the Angel Gabriel told her the glad tidings.... And through her was he born….
St. Irenaeus of Lyon (d.202), great defender of Christian orthodoxy and arguably the first true Mariologist, establishes Mary as the New Eve who participates with Jesus Christ in the work of salvation, becoming through her obedience the "cause of salvation for herself and the whole human race":
Just as Eve, wife of Adam, yet still a virgin, became by her disobedience the cause of death for herself and the whole human race, so Mary, too, espoused yet a Virgin, became by her obedience the cause of salvation for herself and the whole human race.... And so it was that the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by Mary's obedience. For what the virgin Eve bound fast by her refusal to believe, this the Virgin Mary unbound by her belief.
The teaching of St. Irenaeus makes evident the Early Church's faith and understanding that Mary freely and uniquely cooperates with and under Jesus, the New Adam, in the salvation of the human race. This early patristic understanding of Mary's unique cooperation appropriately develops into the later and more specified theology of Marian Coredemption.
St. Ambrose (d.397) continues to develop the New Eve understanding, referring to Mary as the "Mother of Salvation":
It was through a man and woman that flesh was cast from Paradise; it was through a virgin that flesh was linked to God....Eve is called mother of the human race, but Mary Mother of salvation.
St. Jerome (d.420) neatly summarizes the entire patristic understanding of the New Eve in the pithy expression: "death through Eve, life through Mary."
The Second Vatican Council confirms this early understanding of Mary as the "New Eve" by the Church Fathers, as well as the Fathers' certain testimony to her active and unique participation in man's salvation:
Rightly, therefore, the Fathers see Mary not merely as passively engaged by God, but as freely cooperating in the work of man's salvation through faith and obedience.... Hence not a few of the early Fathers gladly assert with him (Irenaeus) in their preaching: "the knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience: what the virgin Eve bound by her disbelief, Mary loosened by her faith." Comparing Mary with Eve, they call her "Mother of the living" and frequently claim: "death through Eve, life through Mary" (Lumen Gentium, No. 56).
The Christian witness of the first centuries of the Church also provides us with examples of direct prayer to Mary as a means of intercession to the graces and the protection of her Son.
For St. Irenaeus, Mary is an "Advocate," or interceding helper, for Eve and for her salvation. St. Gregory Thaumaturgis (d.350) depicts Mary interceding for those on earth from her position in Heaven.
St. Ephraem (d.373), the great Eastern doctor and deacon, directly addresses the Blessed Virgin in several Marian sermons. Direct prayer to Mary is also found in a sermon of the great Eastern Father, St. Gregory Nazianzen (330-389). (9) By the last part of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, we have numerous explicit examples of direct prayer to the Mother of God, for example in the writings of St. Ambrose, as well as by St. Epiphanius.
As already referred to, the most complete ancient prayer to the Blessed Mother historically preserved is the Sub Tuum Praesidium (250 A.D.):
We fly to your patronage,
O holy Mother of God,
in our necessities,
but deliver us from all dangers.
O ever glorious and blessed Virgin.
Ah! You've located one of my areas of ignorance: I know little about the Ante-Nicene Fathers. If I were researching this question, though, I'll tell you one of the first places I'd look: Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture, by Jaroslav Peliken.
That, and studies of the earliest liturgical hymns; and books on the catacombs, which are full of devotional clues of various kinds. I do know there are inscriptions like "Beata Maria semper virgine, ora pro nobis."
I know some of the Greek Marian hymns are very ancient. Kolokotronis, can you help us out?
I've raised before the question of whether Catholics and protestants read the Bible the same way and mean the same thing by Biblical "proof". To what canon do we appeal to say that one should read the Bible THIS way and not THAT?
Once again I'd suggest that nature and experience do not "prove" Newton's Laws. When we assume them as axiomata, we find we can go a long way to making reasonable arguments about what we see and even good predictions about what we might see. When I assume "two natures in one person" (a notion I can hardly understand) Scripture comes together in a way it doesn't when I don't. As I deepen my devotion and increase my personal practice of devotion to Mary and other saints, my life especially my prayer life, comes together (or is less incredibly scattered) than when I don't.
And, while it may not be true that absence of evidence is never evidence of absence, it is, perhaps, true that the nature of extra-liturgical devotion that it would not be so chronicled, discussed, and detailed as liturgical devotion, It may well be that there were not popular Marian devotions spread far and wide, as the rosary is, in the ante-Nicene period. That is not an argument that some less defined or more inchoate devotion to Mary as premiere among the redeemed did not exist.
It is all the more possible (I won't say likely) that absence of much conversation or writing about the cult of Mary arises from the absence of controversy. Or, perhaps, when controversy arose in the early days, it soon gravitated toward and clustered around the great theological issues of the nature(s) and person of Christ and the like. So the controversies or conversations wouldn't get down to the "You don't actually PRAY to her, do you? Eeew! Icky! Well then, HOW?" level. They'd be spending all their energy on, "What's a hypostasis anyway, and where can I get one?" So it would make sense that when the big issues were settled and the church slipped into periods of apathy, complacency and corruption, then there would be guys like do Montfort and de la Roche and the rest. After all they could afford to take for granted that the big hairy questions were more or less resolved, so they had the luxury of dealing with extra-liturgical stuff.
Does that at least make a little sense?
In the meantime, we have this question of the role of a "conversion experience" in the life of a Christian and how one can talk about it and experience it. That seems to be the major topic here. Mrs. Don-o's comment is not only explicitly Marian, it also claims a vital personal relationship with the Lord and some of the great company of saints. That seems to be an assertion ore closely related to the thread.
/ pomposity off
?
Another promising area to research would be the various very ancient "Rejoice, O Pure Virgin" canticles from the Bright Week Orthros. And all that beautiful stuff in Syrian, Chaldean and Coptic.
Liturgical treasure hunt!
If the two natures of Jesus Christ are challenging, how much more so the Trinity!
In response to Mrs. Don-o's comment:
And all that beautiful stuff in Syrian, Chaldean and Coptic.
I offer the following from the 6th century Rabbula Gospels.
This icon of Pentecost is adorned by a large blue vault which represents the realms of heavenly glory. Above the arch grow trees which symbolize the garden of paradise. The Spirit of the Living God, depicted as a dove, descends from the heavens, and enters earthly realms to rest over Mary who is speaking with the apostles. Beneath her veil is the typical Syriac head cloth to hold the hair in place. Lively tongues of fire, another symbol of the Spirit, overshadow the apostles.
To the right and left of Mary is an intense concentration of red to suggest the fullness of the divine life gifted to her by the Holy Spirit. Her presence is not mentioned in Acts, but the artist imagined Mary as "the mother of the infant Church" in this Pentecost event - the oldest known in Christian art.
The 6 th century Rabbula Gospel Book is a rich and lasting Syriac-Maronite treasure for the Christian world. These paintings invite the viewer to encounter the God of Mystery-Presence in Jesus Christ. They are prayer and contemplation transformed into art which influenced the Byzantine and Roman Churches. Yet this tradition is not a fossil of the centuries but a living inspiration for contemporary Church art.
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