Posted on 12/12/2017 9:05:13 AM PST by Salvation
On the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, it is a chance for us to rejoice in the great mercy of our divine Lord and our blessed Lady. I am drawn to mediate on the miraculous quality of our Lady’s eyes on the tilma.
As many of you know, recent discoveries using modern magnification and ophthalmological equipment have shown the seemingly miraculous reflection of as many as a dozen persons in her eyes. How such tiny and accurate reflections could occur in both eyes at just the angles that human stereoscopic sight requires is mysterious to say the least. Even more, there are claims from eye specialists who have had the opportunity to look into our Lady’s eyes on the tilma that they have an iridescence that make the eyes seem almost alive.
I do not propose to write an article here on all the findings and evidence. You can read more our Lady’s eyes HERE and HERE and also in the video below. Rather I propose a short and simple reflection on two merciful facts.
First that [our] this image demonstrates, in effect that God’s people are the “apple of Mary’s eyes.” Seen there are Juan Diego, the bishop and an assistant, an indigenous family, a woman from Africa and several others. Remarkable; in her own self-portrait, our Lady includes us. In the book of Psalms the cry goes up to God,
Wondrously show your steadfast love,
O Savior of those who seek refuge
from their adversaries at your right hand.
Keep me as the apple of your eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings (Psalm 17:7-8)
Deuteronomy also says of God,
He found Israel in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled them, he cared for them, he kept them as the apple of his eye. (Dt 32:10)
And by his Grace, our Lord has often dispatched his mother to us. She finds un in difficult days, and in difficult places, speaking to us in love and sometimes in motherly warning. But, by the grace of God we are the apple of her eye too.
She came to Guadalupe at difficult time, to summon the Mexicans from the fearsome religious bondage of their ancient and often bloody religions, to Christ, their true and only Savior. The image on the tilma shows so many reflected in her eyes, reflected in love. They were the apple of her eye.
May our Lord be pleased to continue to send Mother Mary to us and remind us that we are loved and that heaven knows our struggles and is concerned for us. May none of us every forget that we are still reflected in Mary’s eyes and in the eyes of God to whom she intercedes for us. What a beautiful mercy.
And the second mercy is that images in her eyes, unknown for centuries in any detail seem to have been put there for us, who live now, to later discover. The same can be said for the Shroud of Turin. It is as if, knowing of cynical and unbelieving times where the physical sciences are almost idolized, Our Lord and our Lady left images that both speak to science and also confound it. How were the image made? How do they have three dimensional effects and display scientific knowledge or techniques unknown in their time?
Both the shroud and the tilma stand up to rigorous scientific investigation. The amazing truths about both images are backed up by science but also defy simple scientific or technical answers. Many of the “imponderable” mysteries were largely unknown in previous eras without photographic and scientific procedures and techniques. It is almost as if they were hidden there, waiting for us.
And that may in fact be the case. It is a love letter to a scientific but often unbelieving time. Despite our sometimes cynical demands for evidence, to our Lord and our Lady, we are still the apple of their eye. They look to us from afar, from an ancient shroud and very old tilma and they seem to say, “I am here for you to see. And I see you, you whom I love. You are the apple of my eye.”
For such mercies, thank you Lord.
A lot of the dogma arise from contentions and the effort to resolve them. Ephesus/Chalcedon had to do with just WHAT Jesus was, for example.
And if you say the “mother” implies "temporally prior to the entire Godhead," and I don't think so, should I NOT explain my view?
By the time Paul was traipsing across the Agora there was a centuries old tradition of asking what things were. Not only that but one finds in Plato an idea approaching that of the Trinity. So Xtians were going to encounter these guys and were going to have to deal with how Plato's “One,” “Indeterminate Dyad,” and “World Soul” were like and how they were unlike the developing Xtian understanding of God. Our side had to be ready to say, “Close, but ...” and “No way!”
We say, Jesus is Lord.” They say, “Okay, who ran the cosmos when Jesus was dying on the Cross?” And we're off to the races.
Or, my Jewish friends say, “It is inconceivable that HaShem be thought of as being subject to temporality; Maimonedes proves it!” So guys like me have to know where we say, “Yeah. It IS inconceivable, and that's why we adopt a posture of reverence when we mention it in our creed at Mass.” But we can say a lot to Jews about Word and God. I view some of my efforts to be like a little trickle of water on a big sand castle. It'll take time ....
And, if you're a masochist, you can read Whitehead's Process and Reality to see the sort of intellectual structure you have to erect to have a God who changes and who does not directly perceive the future in his eternal Now. And you can think about change and read Feser’s The Last Superstition and see what the whole “Prime Mover” (or “Unchanged Changer”) is all about.
In other words, if you're the kind of person who asks, “But what are we really saying, and what are the implications?” and if you sometimes hang with people like that, then ... you start asking what it might mean and what it could not mean to call Mary “Theotokos.”
A lot of the dogma arise from contentions and the effort to resolve them. Ephesus/Chalcedon had to do with just WHAT Jesus was, for example.
And if you say the “mother” implies "temporally prior to the entire Godhead," and I don't think so, should I NOT explain my view?
By the time Paul was traipsing across the Agora there was a centuries old tradition of asking what things were. Not only that but one finds in Plato an idea approaching that of the Trinity. So Xtians were going to encounter these guys and were going to have to deal with how Plato's “One,” “Indeterminate Dyad,” and “World Soul” were like and how they were unlike the developing Xtian understanding of God. Our side had to be ready to say, “Close, but ...” and “No way!”
We say, Jesus is Lord.” They say, “Okay, who ran the cosmos when Jesus was dying on the Cross?” And we're off to the races.
Or, my Jewish friends say, “It is inconceivable that HaShem be thought of as being subject to temporality; Maimonedes proves it!” So guys like me have to know where we say, “Yeah. It IS inconceivable, and that's why we adopt a posture of reverence when we mention it in our creed at Mass.” But we can say a lot to Jews about Word and God. I view some of my efforts to be like a little trickle of water on a big sand castle. It'll take time ....
And, if you're a masochist, you can read Whitehead's Process and Reality to see the sort of intellectual structure you have to erect to have a God who changes and who does not directly perceive the future in his eternal Now. And you can think about change and read Feser’s The Last Superstition and see what the whole “Prime Mover” (or “Unchanged Changer”) is all about.
In other words, if you're the kind of person who asks, “But what are we really saying, and what are the implications?” and if you sometimes hang with people like that, then ... you start asking what it might mean and what it could not mean to call Mary “Theotokos.”
Why not just appeal to John 1:1-14??
In other words, unless your faith is the stripped-down, completely sleek, "Jesus and me and nothing else" version, you're damned?
How do you know you make the cut? Seriously? How do you know, how can you be ABSOLUTELY certain, that you haven't added *anything* at all -- not faith in yourself, not faith in your Bible study, not faith in your pastor, not faith in your spouse, not faith in your prayer life -- to faith in Christ?
You hold us up to a standard you can't even meet.
The council of Ephesus clearly explained what "mother of God"/"Theotokos" meant:
... we confess that the Only begotten Word of God, begotten of the same substance of the Father, True God from True God, Light from Light, through Whom all things were made, the things in heaven and the things in the earth, coming down for our salvation, making himself of no reputation (καθεὶς ἑαυτὸν εἰς κένωσιν), was incarnate and made man; that is, taking flesh of the holy Virgin, and having made it his own from the womb, he subjected himself to birth for us, and came forth man from a woman, without casting off that which he was; but although he assumed flesh and blood, he remained what he was, God in essence and in truth.
And since the holy Virgin brought forth corporally God made one with flesh according to nature, for this reason we also call her Mother of God, not as if the nature of the Word had the beginning of its existence from the flesh.
That's the Catholic belief. When you accuse someone of believing that Mary is the mother of the Father or the Holy Spirit, you're not talking about what Catholics believe.
Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. John 5:24 NASB
Very nice, Mr. Dawg, Mr. One. But I have been puzzling myself, perhaps you can tell me, τί èστι, what is this logos, this word? Does the God have vocal chords, or perhaps papyrus and ink? In what sense can I understand a "word" of the God ...
-- Please hold on. Line 3 is lighting up. Oh, it's a Jehovah's Witness. Quick, hide the Xmas tree.
So, your King James Bible is wrong. As Socrates shows, when people speak of the one God, in Greek, they use a definite article. But the third clause of John 1:1 is καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. If it referred to God himself it would be ὁ θεὸς. So it should be translated, the word was a god.
-- Y'all keep going. But I'm going to see Star Wars. Hey, Eagle, wanna come with?
In the third clause...which is the subject?
Greek often puts the subject last, at least Attic Greek does, and I guess Koine does too. So, kai theos hÄ“n ho logos would be rendered and the word was ... God. I really am nowhere near good enough at the minutiae of Koine usage to tackle the JW’s point. But obviously a great many people think they’re mistaken. If I had nothing else to do I would blitz the word Theos in the NT and maybe the LXX and the early fathers and see if a generalization could be made. Socrates’s question is the fun one. Put a quarter in the slot (or a beer in the glass) and I’ll spew a lecture and meditation on the IndoEuropean root “leg” and the significance of our calling the person at the bank a “teller.” I think the root idea is NOT “gather,” as some say, but “sort,” as in sorting sheep and goats. When we “gather” we don’t pick up everything. We say “this, but not that.” What do you do when pages take forever to load? I play solitaire ... which is a stylized game of sorting. What does God do once the chaos is there? He sorts, light from dark (thus giving divine precedent to laundry) and dry-land from water. The ALMOST primal act is sorting! And Understanding in the OT is often “BINah,” which derives from a word meaning to divide! Second beer and we get into the “sorting” of the Son ... Im really off to the movies now. TTYL.
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