Panagia the Unfading Rose
Posted on 04/11/2008 8:33:54 PM PDT by markomalley
ROME, DEC. 25, 2002 (Zenit.org).- Scholar Scott Hahn roundly rejects the idea held by some outside the Church that Catholics, by honoring Mary, somehow detract from God.
"The glories we honor in Mary are merely her own reflections of God's glory," says the author of books such as "Rome Sweet Home" and "Hail, Holy Queen." Here, the one-time Presbyterian minister spells out his ideas.
Q: Why do you say that Catholics should love Mary a lot more than they do?
Hahn: Because God does! And he wants us to love her as much as he does.
At the time of the annunciation, the angel Gabriel prophesied that all generations would call Mary blessed. In our generation, we need to fulfill that prophesy. We need to call her blessed. We need to honor her -- again, because God did.
Jesus himself, as a faithful Jew, kept the Fourth Commandment and honored his mother. Since Christ is our brother, she is our mother too. Indeed, at the end of John's Gospel, Jesus named her as the mother of all of us beloved disciples. So we too have a duty to honor her.
If we look back into the biblical history of ancient Israel, we discover that the Chosen People always paid homage not only to their king, but also to the mother of the king. The "gebirah," the queen mother, loomed large in the affections of Israelites. And the evangelists are very much aware of this.
In Matthew's Gospel especially, we find Jesus portrayed as the royal Son of David and Mary as queen mother. The Wise Men, for example, traveled far to find the Child King with his mother.
We find the mother of the Son of David portrayed in a similar way in the Book of Revelation, Chapter 12. There she is shown to be crowned with 12 stars, for the 12 tribes of Israel. The New Testament writers, you see, were careful to show us Mary's important place in the kingdom, and how we should love and honor her.
In my personal life, I've found the Blessed Mother to be a great intercessor, as she was at the wedding feast in Cana.
Why should we love Mary more? Because of God's grace -- she exemplifies it! Because of God's Word -- she teaches it! And because she is God's masterpiece. The Scriptures provide too many reasons to love her; I couldn't list them in so short a space.
Q: What are the main objections that non-Catholics present against Marian doctrine and devotion?
Hahn: Some non-Catholics believe that, by honoring Mary, we're somehow detracting from God. We're not. The glories we honor in Mary are merely her own reflections of God's glory.
St. Bonaventure put it very well when he said that God created all things not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to share it. Mary's sinlessness itself was a grace from God.
St. Augustine said: When God rewards us for our labors, he is only crowning his work in us. When God exalted the lowly virgin of Nazareth, he was crowning the greatest of his creations. When we honor Mary, we recognize God's work, and we praise him.
Others object to the Church's dogma of the immaculate conception -- that Mary was without sin from the very first moment of her life. They claim that, if this were true, she would have no need of a redeemer, no need for Jesus. But that's not true. Mary's immaculate conception was itself a fruit of Jesus' redemption.
Even today, we can see that Christ saves some people by deliverance and others by preservation -- some turn away from a life of crime, others are preserved from it by their good upbringing. Mary was preserved by a singular grace. Mary, you see, is dependent upon God for everything. She, by her own admission, is his handmaid.
Some very misguided people try to claim that Catholics make a goddess of the Blessed Virgin. But that is an abominable fiction. As much as we exalt Mary above our own sinful selves, we recognize that she is more like us than she is like God. She is still a creature, though a most wonderful creature. God himself exalted her to show us both the greatness of our human nature and the all-surpassing greatness of divine grace.
Even the early Protestant reformers never called for a wholesale rejection of the Marian dogmas. Luther and Calvin believed, for example, in Mary's perpetual virginity. Luther even believed in the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception, centuries before the Church solemnly defined it. Not until later generations would Christians come to such a far-reaching rejection of Mary's place in salvation history.
Q: How does Mary help us to understand the mystery of Christmas?
Hahn: Well, it's impossible for us to imagine the Christmas story without her. Her consent, her "yes," made that day possible. When God became man, he was born of a woman, born under the law. Christ is at the center of Christmas, but he chose not to be alone at the center. As a baby, he needed a mother to hold him. If we choose to ignore the mother, we can't see the Child.
In the stories leading up to Christmas, we encounter Mary as the model disciple. God found her humility irresistible, and we have to imitate her. God empowered her to love his Son as much as he deserves to be loved. And so we imitate her in that as well. Mary helps us to understand the mystery of Christmas because she received the greatest Christmas present ever, and she gave it to the world, just as we should.
Q: Why do you most converts to Catholicism have such an intense devotion to the Blessed Virgin?
Hahn: I can only speak for myself. I discovered the Catholic Church as not only the family of God, but as my family too. Mary is not only the mother of Jesus, but my mother too.
That's a wonderful discovery to make so late in one's life. So maybe we're making up for lost time! Or maybe we have a special affection for the practices that are distinctive to the ancient Christian faith -- the practices that we missed in our own upbringing.
Scott Hahn will be speaking here next month. I’m encouraging my husband to go, since I’ve seen Dr. Hahn before, but he keeps mumbling about Boy Scouts.
>> That’s about like me praying to my grandmother that passed on. <<
Yeah, it is. Most Americans are Protestant, and yet most have talked to dead people. The difference is that saints in heaven have been purified of anything which separates their will from Christ, and are no longer subject to temptation. So, you can have a best of both worlds when you pray for a saint’s intervention:
1. Like when you ask an earthly person to pray for you, you have the power of praying in unison with another soul.
2. On the other hand, you have the assurance that the other person you are praying with is praying for something that is fruitful towards your own salvation, since being in union with Christ in Heaven, they cannot pray for evil.
And that’s why Catholics call certain saints, “Saints.” It’s not denying that there are saints on Earth. It’s just that there are certain individuals that we are know are in Heaven, and so we know it’s good to ask them to pray for us. You’d want to know you weren’t praying to a soul in Hell amongst the demons to pray for you.
If you’re quite confident of your grandmothers’ salvation, why not ask her to pray for you? But then, wouldn’t it be better still to ask the perfect mother to pray for you?
>> And Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” 6 And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. Compare the two passages. “God just isn’t enough. Bring out the idols.” Some things never change, do they? <<
The difference, of course, was that the Golden calf was an alien god. Catholics pray primarily with SAINTS because we can have full confidence that their wills are united with God. Moses had the Israelites craft a staff with a seraph on it, and the people bowed to the staff, and were healed. How is this not idolatry? Because seraphim are servants of God Most High, and their will is in unison with God’s; the people did not obey the seraph, they obeyed God Most High.
It's called 'double-speak'...Saying one thing and doing another...
No, the difference is no one builds a cememt statue of their grandmother and drops to their knees to pray to the statue...
Protestants don't put their statues (of granny, or anyone else) in a lighted bathtub and stick it in their front yard...
The one thing in common is to elevate something/one to where they are not to be.
Panagia the Unfading Rose
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>> The one thing in common is to elevate something/one to where they are not to be. <<
But, then, that’s the commonality YOU find, not what’s in the bible.
It speaks for itself.
Only in a minority view of the Christian faith and only among those who treasure their own opinion over Scripture and Tradition.
You're right.
Protestant's statues are mostly software, rather than hardware, which makes things tough because physical idols are all Protestants will acknowledge.
“I hold Mary in high regard, just as I do all the Saints of the Bible, but none of them are Deity, so how come people pray to them?”
Because they’re misguided by MAN regarding what the Scripture says. There’s NOTHING instructing us to pray to Mary or any other “saint” but plenty instructing us on how and who to pray to.
Gk Chesterton said the following so beautifully and it pretty much shows that the puritans were bizarre fundamentalists in understanding Christianity,it’s only gotten worse these days
Chesterton writes...
“”When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a newborn child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a newborn child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a newborn child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother, you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows I as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.””
This is the Theotokos of Holy Tenderness Icon which hung in the cell of the very great and much loved Russian saint +Seraphim of Sarov. He was praying before this icon when he fell asleep in Christ in 1833.
1. “as has been said, thinks that eloquence consists in loquacity and considers speaking ill of anyone to be the witness of a good conscience, would begin to blaspheme worse than ever if opportunity of discussion were afforded him.”
This can be applied far and wide around here.
If Scripture told me to do that, I would, but I can't find any Scripture guiding me to pray to any human that has passed on, I direct my prayers to our Hevenly Father though Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
Worth repeating.
Compare the two passages. "God just isn't enough. Bring out the idols." Some things never change, do they?
So, the reformers weren’t perfect.
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