Mary is the star that guides us to holiness, says Holy Father during Angelus [Catholic Caucus]

cna ^ | October 11, 2009

[NYer]

Vatican City, Oct 11, 2009 / 11:27 am (CNA).- Presiding over the Sunday Angelus prayer following the canonization Mass for five new saints, Pope Benedict XVI stressed that "the Virgin Mary is the star that guides" every area of holiness."

In several languages, the Pope thanked the faithful from all around the world who were in attendance at the Mass of canonization. He also remarked that Mary’s fiat – her "yes" - makes her a "model of perfect adherence to the divine will."

The Holy Father then greeted the English-speaking pilgrims present for the canonization. "May these new saints accompany you with their prayers and inspire you by the example of their holy lives."

He also addressed "a group of survivors of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki," and prayed "that the world may never again witness such mass destruction of innocent human life."

"May God bless all of you, as well as your families and loved ones at home."

Finally, the Pope encouraged everyone present to look at "the Mother of Christ with filial trust, asking for her intercession and that of the new saints" for the Church to bring "peace and salvation."

[narses]

I guess Catholics aren’t Christians since this isn’t AT ALL what the Bible says.

Really, what exactly are you struggling with?

[Mad Dawg]

Do you believe in reading the Religion Forum guidelines on Caucus threads?

[Mad Dawg]

Don’t engage! Stand down! This is a Caucus thread, and these targets shouldn’t be here. I’m afraid if we continue to engage we will lose caucus status.

[Judith Anne]

Why is there such argument from non-Catholics on a CAUCUS THREAD???

I don’t even read religion threads anymore, that aren’t caucus, because it’s the same old arguments getting nowhere with people who have NO RESPECT for Religion Forum rules.

And now, THIS protestant evangelization on a caucus thread.

[OpusatFR]

“I will be silent then against the mockers.”

I can’t help myself sometimes. Against, the mockers, well, I’ve given up. Trying to deal with them in charity is beyond my abilities and I do so hate to go to confession and tell Christ, once again, I’ve failed again.

[Judith Anne]

This is a CAUCUS THREAD.

[narses]

“It is a sad commentary that so many Catholics don’t understand the bible.”

Sad? What is sad is your inability to understand even something as simple as the CAUCUS label on this thread. Or something more abstract called THE COMMUNION OF THE SAINTS, part of the Christian Creed and fully suported by the very Words of Our Lord in the very Holy Bible that the Catholic Church assembled out of the writings of the Bishops of the Catholic Church appointed by God to do just that. Sad that hatred, bigotry and ignorance is so often on display even here.

[HighlyOpinionated]

Please Spacejunkie, open your heart a bit.

Have you never wondered what this verse means? Hebrews 6:1 Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God,

WHAT Elementary Things????????? Someone fill me in! I re-read Hebrews and I discover that by the time of this writing, the Hebrew and Greek Followers of Jesus Christ know something they aren't putting in writing because "everyone alive then" knew the "elementary things."

WHO or What entity protected these Elementary Things for those who follow Christ in ages to come??? Where are the Elementary Things written down?

SpaceJunkie . . . they're kept in The Church. The Church which was formed in the Upper Room when Christ Jesus breathed on those there (the 12 plus the women and the 120 followers -- minus Judas). And like it or not, The Universal Church is the Holy Roman Catholic Church (including the 'other lung' The Orthodox Church).

I was brought up Lutheran, went to Parochial School, married a Lutheran Pastor. As a 28 year old, after divorcing the skirt chaser, I went on a Journey to find the Church which holds the Elementary Things mentioned in Hebrews. I ended up in Rome, with Peter. The Church holds the Keys to the Elementary Things . . . . Hallelujah and Amen.

These passages list the Bible Verses, you can check them out yourself.

Salvation:
(Greek soteria; Hebrew yeshu'ah).

Salvation has in Scriptural language the general meaning of liberation from straitened circumstances or from other evils, and of a translation into a state of freedom and security (1 Samuel 11:13; 14:45; 2 Samuel 23:10; 2 Kings 13:17). At times it expresses God's help against Israel's enemies, at other times, the Divine blessing bestowed on the produce of the soil (Isaiah 45:8). As sin is the greatest evil, being the root and source of all evil, Sacred Scripture uses the word "salvation" mainly in the sense of liberation of the human race or of individual man from sin and its consequences. We shall first consider the salvation of the human race, and then salvation as it is verified in the individual man Read the rest here: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13407a.htm

Christ as Mediator:

A mediator is one who brings estranged parties to an amicable agreement. In New Testament theology the term invariably implies that the estranged beings are God and man, and it is appropriated to Christ, the One Mediator. When special friends of God — angels, saints, holy men — plead our cause before God, they mediate "with Christ"; their mediation is only secondary and is better called intercession. Moses, howover, is the proper mediator of the Old Testament (Galatians 3:19-20).



Christ's saving work did not at once blot out every individual sin and transform every sinner into a saint, it only procured the means thereto. Personal sanctification is effected the special acts, partly Divine, partly human; it is secured by loving God, and man as the Saviour did. Christianus alter Christus: every Christian is another Christ, a son of God, an heir to the eternal Kingdom. Finally, in the fulness of time all things that are in heaven and on earth shall be re-established, restored, in God through Christ (Ephesians 1:9-10). The meaning of the promise is that the whole of creation, bound up together and perfected in christ as its Head, shall be led back in the most perfect manner to God, from whom sin had partly led it away. Christ is the Crown the Centre, and the Fountain of a new and higher order of things: "for all are yours; And you are Christ's; and Christ is God's." (1 Corinthians 3:22-23). Read the rest: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10118a.htm

The Blessed Virgin Mary:

The Blessed Virgin Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ, the mother of God.

In general, the theology and history of Mary the Mother of God follow the chronological order of their respective sources, i.e. the Old Testament, the New Testament, the early Christian and Jewish witnesses.

The Old Testament refers to Our Blessed Lady both in its prophecies and its types or figures.



In order to be sure of the typical sense, it must be revealed, i.e. it must come down to us through Scripture or tradition. Individual pious writers have developed copious analogies between certain data of the Old Testament and corresponding data of the New; however ingenious these developments may be, they do not prove that God really intended to convey the corresponding truths in the inspired text of the Old Testament. On the other hand, it must be kept in mind that not all truths contained in either Scripture or tradition have been explicitly proposed to the faithful as matters of belief by the explicit definition of the Church.



Mary in the Gospels

The reader of the Gospels is at first surprised to find so little about Mary; but this obscurity of Mary in the Gospels has been studied at length by Blessed Peter Canisius [17], Auguste Nicolas [18], Cardinal Newman [19], and Very Rev. J. Spencer Northcote [20]. In the commentary on the "Magnificat", published 1518, even Luther expresses the belief that the Gospels praise Mary sufficiently by calling her (eight times) the Mother of Jesus. In the following paragraphs we shall briefly group together what we know of Our Blessed Lady's life before the birth of her Divine Son, during the hidden life of Our Lord, during His public life and after His resurrection.



Mary's Divine motherhood is based on the teaching of the Gospels, on the writings of the Fathers, and on the express definition of the Church. St. Matthew (1:25) testifies that Mary "brought forth her first-born son" and that He was called Jesus. According to St. John (1:15) Jesus is the Word made flesh, the Word Who assumed human nature in the womb of Mary. As Mary was truly the mother of Jesus, and as Jesus was truly God from the first moment of His conception, Mary is truly the mother of God. Even the earliest Fathers did not hesitate to draw this conclusion as may be seen in the writings of St. Ignatius [72], St. Irenaeus [73], and Tertullian [74]. The contention of Nestorius denying to Mary the title "Mother of God" [75] was followed by the teaching of the Council of Ephesus proclaiming Mary to be Theotokos in the true sense of the word. [76]



No one will suspect the early Christians of idolatry, as if they had paid supreme worship to Mary's pictures or name; but how are we to explain the phenomena enumerated, unless we suppose that the early Christians venerated Mary in a special way? [144]

Nor can this veneration be said to be a corruption introduced in later times. It has been seen that the earliest picture dates from the beginning of the second century, so that within the first fifty years after the death of St. John the veneration of Mary is proved to have flourished in the Church of Rome. Early writings

For the attitude of the Churches of Asia Minor and of Lyons we may appeal to the words of St. Irenaeus, a pupil of St. John's disciple Polycarp [145]; he calls Mary our most eminent advocate. St. Ignatius of Antioch, part of whose life reached back into apostolic times, wrote to the Ephesians (c. 18-19) in such a way as to connect the mysteries of Our Lord's life more closely with those of the Virgin Mary. For instance, the virginity of Mary, and her childbirth, are enumerated with Christ's death, as forming three mysteries unknown to the devil. The sub-apostolic author of the Epistle to Diognetus, writing to a pagan inquirer concerning the Christian mysteries, describes Mary as the great antithesis of Eve, and this idea of Our Lady occurs repeatedly in other writers even before the Council of Ephesus. We have repeatedly appealed to the words of St. Justin and Tertullian, both of whom wrote before the end of the second century.

As it is admitted that the praises of Mary grow with the growth of the Christian community, we may conclude in brief that the veneration of and devotion to Mary began even in the time of the Apostles.

More information here: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15464b.htm

Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary:

Devotion to Our Blessed Lady in its ultimate analysis must be regarded as a practical application of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. Seeing that this doctrine is not contained, at least explicitly in the earlier forms of the Apostles' Creed, there is perhaps no ground for surprise if we do not meet with any clear traces of the cultus of the Blessed Virgin in the first Christian centuries. The earliest unmistakable examples of the "worship" — we use the word of course in the relative sense — of the saints is connected with the veneration paid to the martyrs who gave their lives for the Faith. From the first century onwards, martyrdom was regarded as the surest sign of election. The martyrs, it was held, passed immediately into the presence of God. Over their tombs the Holy Sacrifice was offered (a practice which may possibly be alluded to in Revelation 6:9) while in the contemporary narrative of the martyrdom of St. Polycarp (c. 151) we have already mention of the "birthday", i.e. the annual commemoration, which the Christians might be expected to keep in his honour. This attitude of mind becomes still more explicit in Tertullian and St. Cyprian, and the stress laid upon the "satisfactory" character of the sufferings of the martyrs, emphasizing the view that by their death they could obtain graces and blessings for others, naturally and immediately led to their direct invocation.



The existence of the obscure sect of the Collyridians, whom St. Epiphanius (d. 403) denounces for their sacrificial offering of cakes to Mary, may fairly be held to prove that even before the Council of Ephesus there was a popular veneration for the Virgin Mother which threatened to run extravagant lengths. Hence Epiphanius laid down the rule: "Let Mary be held in honour. Let the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost be adored, but let no one adore Mary" (ten Marian medeis prosknueito). Nonetheless the same Epiphanius abounds in the praises of the Virgin Mother, and he believed that there was some mysterious dispensation with regard to her death implied in the words of Revelations 12:14: "And there were given to the woman two wings of a great eagle that she might fly into the desert unto her place." Certain it is, in any case, that such Fathers as St. Ambrose and St. Jerome, partly inspired with admiration for the ascetic ideals of a life of virginity and partly groping their way to a clearer understanding of all that was involved in the mystery of the Incarnation, began to speak of the Blessed Virgin as the model of all virtue and the ideal of sinlessness. Several striking passages of this kind have been collected.

* "In heaven", St. Ambrose tells us, "she leads the choirs of virgin souls; with her the consecrated virgins will one day be numbered."
* St. Jerome (Ep. xxxix, Migne, P.L., XXII, 472) already foreshadows that conception of Mary as mother of the human race which was to animate so powerfully the devotion of a later age.
* St. Augustine in a famous passage (De nat. et gratis, 36) proclaims Mary's unique privilege of sinlessness
* In St. Gregory Nazianzen's sermon on the martyr St. Cyprian (P.G., XXXV, 1181) we have an account of the maiden Justina, who invoked the Blessed Virgin to preserve her virginity.


More information here: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15459a.htm

[NYer]

The Bible is clear in NOT praying to the dead. This is the occult.

In fact, God has not, because he at times has given it—for example, when he had Moses and Elijah appear with Christ to the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:3). What God has forbidden is necromantic practice of conjuring up spirits. "There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, any one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. . . . For these nations, which you are about to dispossess, give heed to soothsayers and to diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you so to do. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren—him you shall heed" (Deut. 18:10–15).

God thus indicates that one is not to conjure the dead for purposes of gaining information; one is to look to God’s prophets instead. Thus one is not to hold a seance. But anyone with an ounce of common sense can discern the vast qualitative difference between holding a seance to have the dead speak through you and a son humbly saying at his mother’s grave, "Mom, please pray to Jesus for me; I’m having a real problem right now." The difference between the two is the difference between night and day. One is an occult practice bent on getting secret information; the other is a humble request for a loved one to pray to God on one’s behalf.

[NYer]

She was HUMAN, not GOD. All the dead are still dead until Jesus Christ’s return. Then the dead in Christ will rise first.

Many people are under the impression that one is not quite human if he or she is sinless. On the contrary, it is when we sin that we fall short of what it means to be fully human. Since we are made in the image and likeness of God, we are called to love as God loves. This is why Christ fully reveals man to himself, as Vatican II says. He shows us what it means to be perfectly human.

In the beginning, God created no one (neither angel nor human) with sin, and yet no one was equal to God. When Adam and Eve sinned, they acted in a manner that was beneath their dignity as beings made in God’s image and likeness. It was their sin that detracted from the glory of God, not their original sinlessness. God’s goodness is most clear when he sanctifies his creation by entering into it fully with the life of his grace.

This is why the sinless souls in heaven give the most glory to God. The unique glory of the Trinity is manifested most clearly in heaven—where is he surrounded by sinless beings. In their sinlessness, God has made them most fully what he intended for them to be. In Mary’s case, her sinlessness gives the most glory to God, since his work is made perfect in her. She is his masterpiece.

The Church does not hesitate to profess that Mary needed a savior. God can "save" a person from a sin by forgiving them, or by providing them the grace never to fall into that particular sin. A person can be saved from a pit in two ways; one can fall into it and be brought out, or one can be caught before falling into it. Mankind is saved in the first manner, and Mary in the second. Both are saved from the pit of sin. If Jesus wished to save his mother from the stain of sin, what is to prevent him?

[NYer]

Well I’m a Lutheran and find it sad that so many of my fellow Catholic friends are misled into a false belief regarding Mary.

Which false belief is that?

I also do not believe any man is infallible, including the Pope.

What is your understanding of papal infallibility?

[Seniram US]

Not sure what would scare anyone. As I understand it, the Baby Jesus was born of the Blessed Mother and of her blood as well, which makes her not a vessel, but the mother of Jesus who is the second person of the Blessed Trinity.

[Mad Dawg]

NYer,

Shall we abandon the protection of Caucus status and take up the cudgels? It’s your thread, what’s your preference?

[AnAmericanMother]

Apropos for this discussion - one of the oldest Marian antiphons hails the Virgin as "star of the sea".

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli
Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti,
Surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti,
Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem
Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore
Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.

-Hermanus Contractus ("Herman the Cripple")

Loving Mother of our Saviour,
hear thou thy people’s cry,
star of the deep and Portal of the sky!
Sinking we strive and call to thee for aid:
Oh, by what joy which Gabriel brought to thee,
Thou virgin first and last, let us thy mercy see.

A more literal translation (out of that handy little volume, Chants of the Church)

Dear Lady, the Redeemer's Mother, who the open heavenly portal dost remain, And the star of the sea, assist in their fall those to rise who care among thy people; Thou who didst bear, while Nature marveled, thy holy Maker: Virgin before and after, from Gabriel, from his lips, receiving that Ave, on sinners have pity!

We have it in rehearsal right now - the Palestrina setting.

Alma Redemptoris Mater (Palestrina)

[Lorica]

..I should say prove to me where the Bible tells us to pray TO or FOR the dead.

It doesn’t.

2 Maccabees, one of the books Luther removed from your Bible, saying "I am so great an enemy to the second book of the Maccabees… that I wish they had not come to us at all."

2 Maccabees 12:

40 But when they found on each of the dead men, under their tunics, objects dedicated to the idols of Jamnia, which the Law prohibits to Jews, it became clear to everyone that this was why these men had lost their lives.
41 All then blessed the ways of the Lord, the upright judge who brings hidden things to light,
42 and gave themselves to prayer, begging that the sin committed might be completely forgiven. Next, the valiant Judas urged the soldiers to keep themselves free from all sin, having seen with their own eyes the effects of the sin of those who had fallen;
43 after this he took a collection from them individually, amounting to nearly two thousand drachmas, and sent it to Jerusalem to have a sacrifice for sin offered, an action altogether fine and noble, prompted by his belief in the resurrection.
44 For had he not expected the fallen to rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead,
45 whereas if he had in view the splendid recompense reserved for those who make a pious end, the thought was holy and devout. Hence, he had this expiatory sacrifice offered for the dead, so that they might be released from their sin.

[Seniram US]

Maybe the same sources can tell us about the saints canonized by the Protestant faiths or are those Protestant churches named after saints, those saints canonized by the Catholic Church?

[AnAmericanMother]

Thus C.S. Lewis (no Catholic - a Belfast Church-of-Ireland man in fact):

"Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age, the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to him?"

-Letters to Malcolm

[NYer]

Shall we abandon the protection of Caucus status and take up the cudgels? It’s your thread, what’s your preference?

It's a conundrum. As Bishop Sheen said: "There are not more than 100 people in the world who truly hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they perceive to be the Catholic Church." Though the thread has been labeled 'caucus', that has not stopped some of our more devout fundamentalist brother christians from following their conscience and trying to "save us". At times such as this, it is commensurate upon us to show them the way home.

[Mad Dawg]

Dear Highly,

Very nice post! Wowsers!

It’s important to the underpinnings of Protestant thought to remember that they step through Church History with 7 league boots, touching down only to pick up what suits and, mostly, glossing over the period from Nicea-Constantinople to the Wittenburg chapel door.

[AnAmericanMother]

I would like to know more about the other guys the Pope canonized. I mean other than Fr. Damian.

Here ya go:

Benedict XVI then gave a brief description of each of the five newly-canonized saints: a bishop, a Trappist brother, two priests and a nun.

Archbishop Zygmunt Szczesny Feliński of Warsaw, founder of the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary, was committed to evangelization and support for the poor, defending the oppressed during the Russian occupation of Poland, and was sentenced to 20 years in exile in Jaroslaw on the Volga. "His gift of himself to God and man," the Holy Father said in Polish, was "full of confidence and love," and "becomes a shining example for the entire Church."

To those younger generations today who "are not satisfied with what they have," the Pontiff gave the example of Rafael Arnaiz Baron, who came from a wealthy family and was a bit "of a dreamer." He died when he was 27 years old, a Cistercian oblate, considered one of the greatest mystics of the twentieth century.

The Pontiff next spoke of Dominican Father Francisco Coll y Guitard, founder of the Congregation of Dominican Sisters of the Annunciation Blessed Virgin Mary. Through his preaching, the saint spread his love of the Word of God and the Sacrament of Reconciliation among people especially the young.

Father Damian, the famous apostle of lepers, at 23 years of age left Flanders, Belgium to go on a mission to modern day Hawaii. "Not without fear and loathing," Pope Benedict underlined, "Father Damian made the choice to go on the island of Molokai in the service of lepers who were there, abandoned by all. So he exposed himself to the disease of which they suffered. With them he felt at home. The servant of the Word became a suffering servant, leper with the lepers, during the last four years of his life."

He continued, "To follow Christ, Father Damian not only left his homeland, but has also staked his health so he, as the word of Jesus announced in today's Gospel tells us, received eternal life."

The figure of Father Damian, Benedict XVI added, "teaches us to choose the good fight not those that lead to division, but those that gather us together in unity."

And finally, the Pope spoke of St. Mary of the Cross, of the Little Sisters of the Poor, and her "wonderful work to help the most vulnerable elderly." He noted that her initiatives and goals are "still valid today, given that many elderly people suffer from multiple poverty and loneliness, sometimes even being abandoned by their families."

From this thread.