This is indeed a difficult blog to write. Not only because my favorite book on the subject went missing, but I believe, if I write this story just right, millions of souls will convert to Christ ... Posted on 12/12/2009 9:13:32 AM PST by mlizzy
This is indeed a difficult blog to write. Not only because my favorite book on the subject went missing, but I believe, if I write this story just right, millions of souls will convert to Christ ...
"That's fantasy!" you may say, and yet that is EXACTLY what happened when Our Lady of Guadalupe first appeared. It happened in Mexico in December of 1531. Many Catholics have heard the story of how Mary suddenly appeared to the poor peasant Juan Diego on his way to daily Mass. Juan had already converted to Catholicism, and yet Her appearance, Her promise of protection for his people, and Her plea to go to the bishop and ask a Church be built on this spot, certainly seemed utterly fantastic to him. It must have seemed utterly fantastic to Bishop Juan de Zamorraga too, for he asked Diego to go back to Her and ask for a sign.
And what a sign it was! Originally Juan thought that sign was a bouquet of roses (which could not have bloomed in that winter climate) that Our Lady presented Juan with. Yet as beautiful as they were, the roses were a minor miracle compared to what happened next, when Juan opened his cloak (which was protecting the flowers) to the bishop.
For as Juan handed Zamorraga the flowers, the stunned bishop saw that Juan's cloak was now covered with a miraculous image of the Virgin. While St. Thomas Aquinas correctly called the Holy Eucharist "the perfect art, for it is exactly what it represents," this image of the Virgin could be a close second. For this image of Mary (appearing as a pregnant native woman) is far more than meets the eye. It is a miracle ...
(Excerpt) Read more at fightingirishthomas.net ...
You can quit worrying you little head over it...We treat(ed) our Mothers just fine...You can ask the Mothers...
On this day that Catholics celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I can only message that Mary loves us and cares for us all. If you wish to rebuke her love or belittle her in some fashion by denying her importance in the whole Christ Story, you are cheating yourself out of the joy that comes from knowing her along with her Son.
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The thinking, "scientific" (in the good old sense) me sees the problem with this. Maybe we are deluded. Maybe it's a snare of the enemy. What possible canon is there to prove that this joy and "consolation" (which, we should never forget, meant strengthening - like comfort - long before it meant "there, there, you poor pitiful dear) is "valid"? I can think of none.
But part of what fuels these Marian posts is precisely the astonished sense we feelthy papists have that not only are we loved by the Lord who created and set into motion the distant stars and the particles which make the atom, but also by His Mother.
And, this is like a mother's love, in our experience.
Today is kind of a big day for American Catholics because we see a, what shall I say, spectacular, incomprehensibly generous gift in this apparition to a, let's face it, conquered peasant. And the sequel, almost inexplicably, is the conversion to Christianity (even if one thinks the Catholic version is a horrible perversion, one still has to admit that they heard bits of the Bible, they heard -- and believed -- a particle of the wonderful news of the astounding love of God.
Even if one thought of that as a poor beginning to something that would be made far better by Protestant ministrations, still it was a magnificent beginning when compared to sullen disbelief.
Today I was at a memorial Mass for a very wonderful woman who died rich in years and yet too soon. Because it was Our Lady of Guadalupe, there was a kind of barely suppressed Marian aspect to the service.
The sermon, whoever, amounted to a flinging of the gauntlet into Death's face. I listened carefully (the priest is a friend) and there was nothing there a Calvinist might not have said.
And yet I was consoled not only by the Gospel Truth, but (for me unexpected) sense that there was a mother's bosom into which I could weep, not just for the lady who had died, but for my own sins and fears and sorrows.
This gratuitous soothing is something I wish all my friends shared. And that wish is at least part of what drives these Marian posts. We have experiences which, at least in my case, we never expected or imagined. TO us it seems undeniable that they come through the loving intercession of Mary. So of course we want to share that.
You suggested that non Catholic men don't know how to treat their Mothers...You are clueless about that and I'm not interested in your religious superstitions...
Apparently unknown to you , millions of us have somehow found our way to Jesus without the intervention of a supposed aborition ...
And from the testimonies I have read, your aborition seems to lead people to itself rather than Jesus...
Thanks but no thanks...Jesus said', Come unto Me'...That's where I went...
hah,,,aborition=apparition...
One of the points that Kolokotronis has made to me before is that there is an element of emotional attachment involved with ‘Mariology’ that A) I obviously do not relate to, and B) makes it counterproductive to discuss.
I need to learn to avoid the temptation...for what I write is generally received right up there with “Your Mama wears combat boots!” and kills any productive discussion. It isn’t intended that way, but its like a happy mother showing you a picture of her baby, and you replying, “Looks like a little red faced dwarf!” True or not, you don’t advance anything.
Maybe someday I will learn...
;>(
Gotta love it! NOT how to make friends and influence people.
I think that you are pointing out the other side of the alleged "good" that I am trying to describe. The "personal" relationship that we think we experience with the saints, and with Mary in particular, requires of us feelthy papists a certain emotional self-discipline if we're going to discuss the whole Mary and Saints thing with people who think it wrong or at least questionable.
And, if it ain't true, it does follow that it's a pretty remarkable sort of self-induced psychopathology. And that's sort of unsettling. The nice thing about being a convert is that I had to work through all that from the outside in. Yeah, it COULD be a sort of projective technique, substituting icons for ink-blots, but after a while I decided to dare to hope that it wasn't, that the "one body", "communion of the" saints stuff was worth believing in, with all the bells and whistles.
Lame analogy: I gave someone I am "sponsoring" into full communion two encyclicals by J2P2. I handed them to him at the "Enquirers Class" (Hereinafter RCIA, Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) last week, explaining that I didn't have the time even to do what I called "Guy gift wrapping" - namely: leaving them in the paper bag they came in.
People in general, guys in particular, like to cut to the chase, the bottom line, the final score. When we think about Christian stuff, we think that way. "Okay, 'Jesus is Lord, He loves me, He has saved me;' how could I possibly need to know anything else?" Guy gift wrap is quite enough, since what really matters is the present.
So try giving your wife something in guy gift wrap. Call me when you get out of the hospital.
The wrapping, the frills, all that is, to some of us (mostly of the female persuasion,) a sign that every single aspect of the present, was filled with thoughts of not only supplying your need but delighting you, filled with love and wanting you to know that you are loved.
(Of course, a lot of this is just proof the women are aliens.)
Well, I might suggest, that's all, just a suggestion, that maybe "need" is not exactly the right way to look at it. The thrill of the Song "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" is that all the guy asked for, all he NEEDED, was ONE yellow ribbon, and his beloved's response was to festoon the place with hundreds of them. One would have been quite sufficient, and had one been all that he got, he would have been a fool to ask for more.
So, sorta kinda in the same vein, the gift, the sufficient gift, the all we need gift, is being grafted into the Body. But God makes it spectacular, with little fillips, and curls and flounces and braids and sparkles and rainbows and fireworks world without end!
One of my wise-guy lines (rapidly becoming obsolete) is "Being Catholic is just like being Christian, only in Technicolor!"
Again, this is meant to be a kind of description. It's not intended to be polemical or persuasive.
Weird! For us, a little demonic interference at the celebration, reminiscent of Bierce's (I think) definition of a Puritan as someone who is afraid that somebody somewhere might be having fun.
BTW: Did you read the article on which this thread is hung? It really does seem that something amazing is inand on this tilma, and, to carry my further analogy, the gift of the miraculous roses is almost lost in the wonder of the wrapping.
No, no “hit and run” here.
I state the facts and leave it to people like you to make fools of themselves stating otherwise.
Pearls before swine comes to mind.
I will not get in the gutter with you.
My denomination is not a faith...We have no faith in our church...All our faith is in our risen Savior...
We have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ...There is nothing we could get out of putting a cracker in our mouths that would increase that personal relationship...
We have the same Spirit (part of the Trinity) within us that your popes claim to have guiding them and the same Spirit that raised Jesus to Heaven...
What's the point in a wafer that goes into and through your system in 20 minutes??? How does Jesus get from your intestines to your soul???
Well more than half of all Catholics don't believe that your wine and bread turns into the flesh and blood of Jesus...I'd guess many of you guys are Catholics because you were born into it and many more are Catholics because of the sense of the religious surroundings, ie, the priests with the robes, the beautiful building, paintings, chants, etc...
Our faith in Jesus is a simple faith...It is us, and Jesus...Can you have a relationship with Jesus without all that 'religion'???
Could you define "fact"? Or is that too guttery for you? Could you explain how stating things which are not true about us Catholics and then expecting to be believed is reasonable?
Could you state precisely what is "in the gutter" about the things I posted?
Certainly someone who did not "rejoice in the evil" would not merely hurl charges like "in the gutter," but would substantiate them and explain what exactly was "in the gutter" about the behavior he was demeaning so that the poor, ignorant, benighted papist could amend his ways.
This is why a certain class of those who attack us is almost entirely without credibility. They say things about us that aren't true. They make vague and incomprehensible charges not only about our Church but about ourselves. They consider it somehow beneath them to try to express themselves in a way which is understandable. Then they disparage those who ask them to support and substantiate their wild accusations.
If it's "in the gutter" to back up your statements, to show what their claim to truth is, then maybe the gutter isn't such a bad thing to be in. What I mean by "hit and run" is the posting of wild and inaccurate accusations and the failure to make any effort to support them when they are challenged. You may think that's evangelism. It seems more like little boys throwing mud at somebody dressed for church, m9issing their target, and then running away.
Is it the superstition of your cult that the mere articulation of accusation will bring about conversion in the elect? Does this sect believe that merely citing verses from Scripture, no matter how irrelevant, is enough to demonstrate the superiority of one's views?
How very interesting! How very sad is a mistaken sense of one's own correctness supported and defended by a wall of truculent unwillingness to support what one says!
So? Because some people don't believe something therefore it's not true? Because many are called, but few chosen, there is something wrong with the call or the chosen ones? Because there are bad Catholics, there are no good Catholics? What does the immature or even absent faith of some, even of many, have to do with anything? Clearly a great number of Americans do not believe the founding ideas of the Constitution or the Declaration. That's a reflection on them, not on the founding documents.
Besides, have you SEEN any of the buildings lately? The average modern catholic church is a monstrosity!
And, you know what. I don't believe it when Protestants ask, "How does Jesus get from your intestines to your soul???" If they really wanted to know, they could find out pretty easily. I mean the thinking is not exactly a no-brainer, but we don't hide it either. The question has been asked more than once in the past couple of millennia.
And, as to simple faith and all that, it is no where required to understand the thinking realted to Eucharistic doctrine. It is enough to believe, to take Jesus at His word.
You may recall He did NOT say, "This is a representation, a symbol, the virtual presence, a reminder, a sign of my body."
He is reported to have said, τουτο εστιν το σομα μου. Yes, I know he probably spoke Aramaic, but the Bible being inspired and our faith being simple and all, we're not going to try to reconstruct the Aramaic. We'll accept what is given, an that is, simply, This is my body.
And, simply, because He said: "τουτο ποιειτε εις την εμην αναμνησιν," we do it.
We are too simple to claim that NOT doing it is obedient to the Lord whose commands we trust. We are too simple to claim that when He says it "is" a thing, our scholars and thinkers can tell us it isn't really what He said it is, and He didn't say what the Bible says he said.
Been there, done that...You might get a jolt if you drink some Jolt, but I never got a thing out of eating the wafer...And it didn't appear that anyone around me did either....
But whatever didn't happen, it was over in 20 minutes...Guess I needed to get in the back of the line so I could get another fix...I'd hate to think I got a 20 minute fix of Jesus and had to wait til the next Mass to get me some more...
You guys have to keep coming back, keep coming back to get some more...And your kids and entire family have to keep coming back to your church because that's where Jesus is...
He is reported to have said, τουτο εστιν το σομα μου. Yes, I know he probably spoke Aramaic, but the Bible being inspired and our faith being simple and all, we're not going to try to reconstruct the Aramaic. We'll accept what is given, an that is, simply, This is my body.
And He is also the door...And, He is the Way...And He is the Rock...And He is bread...And He is meat...
Jesus didn't leave instructions on how you guys are supposed to turn bread and wine into His body and blood...Maybe that should have been a clue...
And, as to simple faith and all that, it is no where required to understand the thinking realted to Eucharistic doctrine. It is enough to believe, to take Jesus at His word.
HaH...Go on with your religion blindfolded, eh??? Apparently that's what they operated on for years until Marty Luther took the blindfold off...No thanks...God didn't preserve His words so we could blindly follow some religion...
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