Jesus is the Life Preserver. Mary is the Rope He Chose To Reel Us In.

The Most Ancient Tradition | 06-16-2019 | Charles O'Connell

[CharlesOConnell]

In Captains Courageous, with Spencer Tracey, Freddy Batholomew is a blowhard millionaire's son who is socially, poorly adjusted. He uses his father's incredible wealth, to bully his classmates and even his teacher, but he's roundly disliked, and ostracized. While on an ocean liner, he unsuccessfully tries to impress some other boys by eating 5 ice cream sodas. When he has to throw up, to escape the mocking boys, he runs into a lifeboat area to evade their ridicule while purging his overindulgence, and manages to fall overboard into the ocean.

Instances of people falling overboard into the open ocean are rather commonly reported in the news. Usually they are lost, but if by chance their accidents are observed and a life-preserver is thrown to them, is that the end of the story, do we just say, "oh, well, you have a floatation device, you're okay now"?

No, we have to pull them in. The life-preserver, the lifesaver, is only part of the formula for saving their lives. There is also a rope, which must be attached to the life-preserver, and must be used to finally accomplish their salvation.

Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and man. But on the man side of the equation, unlike the radical individuality most typified by J.J. Rousseau, we who life the life of Christians do so in communities. But even then, we do not abide as atomistic individualists. We live our Jesus-oriented life in relation to our fellows. "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching." – Hebrews 10:25.

Jesus' first disciple was his mother, who gave us the total account of his early life and who "treasured these things up in her heart". "A sword will pierce your own soul too, so that the secret thoughts of many hearts might be revealed". On the cross, he gave his mother to John to take in his home, but when you take your master's mother, she takes care of you.

Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.

And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days. …

And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had borne the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon had poured from his mouth. Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. - Rev 11:19 -- 12:17

She forms the body of Christ. She schools her son's disciples. Those who won't attend her school, remain ignorant.

We are in a time when any merely human institution would be washed away. Our churches are going under the shadow of a new Heresy of Ba'al of Peor, as when the Hebrew people were successfully attacked and overwhelmed through human sexuality. Our churches are now pro-gay and as soon as the civil authority authorizes child sex, they will be indistinguishable from the denizens of the town of Sodom: "Bring them out that we may know them".

Jesus' mother forms the few of the elect who will resist being fooled by the great apostasy. Those who will not avail themselves of the lifeline of Mary, will be lost.

[Mrs. Don-o]

You may want to consider that this is, like most Biblical prophecies and images, multivalent. This is to say, it is not a mathematical thing, a one-to-one correspondance, but rather a recurring motif. It may be part in the past and part in the future, or one which predicts another, which predicts (or reiterates) another.

For instance "Daughter of Jerusalem" and "Daughter Zion" overlap with the image of the city of Jerusalem, the Nation of Israel, the penitent, the suffering, the saved; the NT Ekklesia, Mary the Chosen Maiden, Ekklesia the Elect Lady. The Mother of the Messiah, the Woman Clothed with the Sun; the Bride who, with the Spirit, says "Come".

You know there's a lot like that. The 12 sons, the 12 tribes, the 12 Apostles, the 12 wicker baskets full of fragments, the 12 thrones, the 12 stars, the 12 gates, the 12 courses of foundation stone--- this isn't a math problem, MHGinTN, it is a reiteration of a pattern.

It's not just true once, it's true over and over at every scale. Like a fractal.

Song of Solomon 6:8-9

One is my dove,
my perfect one is but one,
she is the only one of her mother,
the chosen of her that bore her.
The daughters saw her, and declared her MOST BLESSED:
the queens and concubines, and they praised her.

Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising,
fair as the moon,
bright as the sun,
terrible as an army with banners?

* * * *

This isn't math, and it's not a policy proposal. This is poetry for the Queen.

[Mrs. Don-o]

May we never resist the Beauty he has prepared for us.

[2nd amendment mama]

Thank you! Bookmarking! Indulgences attached to the Rosary

[Mrs. Don-o]

You will love it when you see how God's prophecies and gifts are a beautiful pattern repeating at every scale.

"He who is mighty has done great things for me."

...Kecharitomene..............

[Mrs. Don-o]

Kecharitomene!

[MHGinTN]

You just cannot help yourself, you insist on placing the Mother of Jesus in demi-goddess status! The Bride is the Body of All Believers. But it is obviously a waste of time trying to chip through the darkness of Catholicism with someone who pridefully believes they are a teacher ... not teaching the Gospel, but ‘teaching’.

[Faith Presses On]

“Then I would combine all the stacks into one, and say that represents the honor accorded to all God’s creatures (including your mom and dad); and the honor accorded to God is (here I would raise my hand up, up, up) is so high it would go through the ceiling and the roof, and up above the clouds, and then up to the moon (depending on how much the child knows about the dimensions of the Universe) and then so high nobody could reach it, because the honor of God is infinite.”

To me in practice though it seems like Catholics give Mary close to if not the same honor they give to God. From the link I posted:

“Mary is so good. She’s all-loving; she’s all-tender. When you spend time with her and talk to her, pray to her, she has a way of bringing joy and goodness and taking away the sadness.”

[Mrs. Don-o]

"To me in practice though it seems like Catholics give Mary close to if not the same honor they give to God."

Aha! That's it! Right there is the erroneous view, because no matter how much honor is given to Mary, it can never be that infinity of adoration which is God's alone.

Paul says "Give honor to those to whom honor is due" --- but among humans, there are gradations of honor. I'm speaking of a human level: the honor given to your mother is greater than that to your auntie, the honor given to an intern is less than that given to an emperor, etc.etc.

But the honor given to God is greater, not just in degree, but in kind.

Infinity is not just the greatest number: it is not a counting number at all. It can't be used for computation. Infinity minus "n" is still infinity. Infinity + "n" is still infinity. Infinity minus a bazillion is still infinity; and if you could take the number of all the particles in the Universe (adding up all the electrons, etc) and multiplied that number by itself, it wouldn't even count as a calculable fraction of infinity.

It's not

Mary:God::a little bit:a whole lot

It's

Mary:God::a little bit:∞

ANY WHAT'S MORE, it's not "Give all honor and glory to God, except (say subtracting) what you give to His angels and saints (including Mary)" , but it's

"GIVE ALL HONOR AND GLORY TO GOD!
ALL! HONOR! AND! GLORY!"

Because what we give to them, we give also to Him. It is not subtracted from Him. It goes "through" them as through an amplifier, and is reduplicated to Him. It's not subtraction, it's multiplication.

"Behold, all generations will call me (Mary) blessed" and then, instantly, "The Mighty One has done great things for me, Holy is His Name."

My soul MAGNIFIES the Lord."

[MHGinTN]

The soul is magnifying a creature above her status, to demi goddess status. That imagination allows you such erroneous gymnastics would be amusing if it were not so harmful to those a Catholic teacher teaches.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"The soul is magnifying a creature above her status, to demi goddess status."

It is God Who exalts His handmaid, not I.

And not a demigoddess.... not as the world thinks of it.

What do you suppose St. Peter means when he says,

2 Peter 1:4
He has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire.

Or what did St. Paul mean by this?

Ephesians 4:13
until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, as we mature to the full measure of the stature of Christ.

Ephesians 4:24
and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Or what is St. John talking about here?

1 John 3:2
Beloved, we are now children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is.

Demigoddess, you say? Aphrodite in her nightie? The fault with that is, it owes too much to a Wonder Woman comic-book imagery. It's too little. What paltry understanding we have, of what God has prepared for those who love him.

You have no idea.

[MHGinTN]

Sorry, teacher, it is you who have NO IDEA!

Mrs Don-o: "What do you suppose St. Peter means when he says,"

2 Peter 1:4
He has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire.

MHGinTN: When I was born from above, born again, God bestowed upon me the Holy Spirit seal upon my before dead spirit, making me alive in Christ and in God's hands. And He is mighty to keep me His. This is the very same thing He does with any born again believers faithing in Jesus.

Mrs Don-o: "Or what is St. John talking about here?"

1 John 3:2
Beloved, we are now children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is.

MHGinTN: IF you believed in the coming Rapture of ALL believers both living and dead, you would have a basis to understand what 1John3 is saying! You would immediately connect 1John3 to 1Thess 4:13-17 and 1 Cor 15:51-53. To discern such connections requires an alive spirit, for spiritual things are discerned by the spirit not just the intellect.

As Jesus is now, in His fullness, you and I cannot see Him fully for we are of different spacetime coordinates/variables, and He is of greater spacetime variability. Paul tells us in 1Cor 15 that in the twinkling of an eye we shall be changed into the same coordinate variables of Jesus's nature now, in His ascended state.

Because we will be changed into the same coordinate system which Jesus inhabits, we will see Him as He really is.

When God walked the earth as Jesus, the disciples asked Him to show them the Father Almighty and they would be satisfied that He / Jesus, is Messiah (John 14). They could only sense God with eyes and ears and touch where GOD inhabited their limits, their spacetime coordinate system AS JESUS.

The coordinate system Jesus's Body is in Now allows Him to appear and disappear and so many other capabilities that you could not comprehend. Even Mary is not yet in that coordinate system that will be revealed to us in the Rapture of HIS CHURCH when we are transformed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye.

You teach a hollow belief system, an 'other religion' (as Paul put it) infected with heresies and blasphemies which have accumulated in Catholicism since the beginning of the second century and were percolating at the end of the first century as attested by the Revelation Jesus gave to John regarding the seven churches, seven gatherings of believers.

[ealgeone]

As Jesus is so is Mary in Roman Catholicism.

Jesus was sinless....so Mary was sinless

Jesus is our Mediator....so Mary is Mediatrix

Jesus is our Advocate...so Mary is Advocatrix

Jesus is our Redeemer...so Mary is Redemptrix

There is more, but you get the idea.

Roman Catholicism has elevated Mary to the status of Jesus.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Scripture is saying we come to share in the divinity of Christ, Who humbled Himself to share in our humanity. It says we participate, and will participate, in the divine nature. That we will mature the full stature of Christ. That we will put on a new self, created to be like God.

There's nothing paltry blasphemous or semi- demi - hemi-goddessy about that.

It's participating in the gifts and the nature of the only God that Is.

[Mrs. Don-o]

You come so close! So close! So close! and then miss it so utterly, thinking it's blasphemy and not the reality our oneness in Christ.

This is what God is giving us (Check out the link, please, a 2 minute read)--- to share in His nature. That isn't just for Mary. It is for all of us, because we are in Christ, and Christ in God, and he (or she) who abides is Love, abides in God, and God abides in them.

So what you call "Roman Catholicism elevating Mary to the status of Jesus," is actually Jesus elevating us into His Nature.

Members of the Body of Christ.

We are IN Him. He is IN us. He shares it ALL with us.

2 Timothy 2:11-12
This saying is trustworthy:
If we have died with him
we shall also live with him;

if we persevere
we shall also reign with him."

By making us part of Him, we all have our share in his cross, in His dying, in HIs rising, in His great and completed work of salvation.

So it's not just for Mary. It's for all who are in Him.

It's so much *more* than what you think it is.

[ealgeone]

So what you call "Roman Catholicism elevating Mary to the status of Jesus," is actually Jesus elevating us into His Nature.

Nice attempt at spin....

No, Mrs.D.....it is Rome that has missed the boat on this one.

Actually, it is Rome that has committed a grave error in their elevation of Mary to the status of Jesus.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Rome" elevates?

No, Christ elevates His beloved--- to sit with Him at His right hand: as Psalm 16 says, "to delights at His right hand forever."

The royal court of the OT provides a model of how a king known for his wisdom and his magnificence, honors his queen-mother:

1 Kings 2:19
Then Bathsheba went to King Solomon
to speak to him for Adonijah,
and the king stood up to meet her
and paid her homage.
Then he sat down upon his throne,
and a throne was provided for the king’s mother,
who sat at his right."

And the Messiah --- being Divine --- is greater than David, greater than Solomon, and a King's greatness is shown in the abundance and nobility of his gifts, in the honors He extends.

Look at how the beloved is treated: "Arrayed in the gold of Ophir, she comes to stand at your right hand."(Psalm 45:10)

Look at how God treats Mary:

"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord....All generations will call me Blessed... The Almighty has done great things for me...He has lifted up the lowly."

Do you think He would honor her less than Solomon honored Bathsheba, when the OT is but a shadow, a type and a prophecy?

It is God who lifts the lowly.

Every great thing He has worked in her soul,"proclaims the greatness of the Lord."

This is why we do not stop proclaiming His greatness.

[Iscool]

You may want to consider that this is, like most Biblical prophecies and images, multivalent. This is to say, it is not a mathematical thing, a one-to-one correspondance, but rather a recurring motif. It may be part in the past and part in the future, or one which predicts another, which predicts (or reiterates) another.

For instance "Daughter of Jerusalem" and "Daughter Zion" overlap with the image of the city of Jerusalem, the Nation of Israel, the penitent, the suffering, the saved; the NT Ekklesia, Mary the Chosen Maiden, Ekklesia the Elect Lady. The Mother of the Messiah, the Woman Clothed with the Sun; the Bride who, with the Spirit, says "Come".

Naw...The Daughter of Jerusalem is only ever a reference to God's chosen people, Israel...Anything is is just wishful thinking...

[Iscool]

Mary,

Gate of Heaven

This one invalidates all of the other titles given to the mother of Jesus...

Joh 14:6  Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

.Joh 10:9  I am the door (gate): by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.  

Joh 10:1  Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. 

The mother of Jesus, Mary, is not the gate to anywhere that has anything to do with Jesus...

Gorgoepekoos (the Quick-To-Listen)

Joh 10:27  My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: 

1Co 8:3  But if any man love God, the same is known of him. 

Heb 7:25  Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. 

Eleousa (the Merciful)

Heb 4:16  Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. 

Catholics tell us it is Mary who sits on the throne of grace...

Eph 2:18  For through Mary him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.

It's crazy that there are Catholics who teach this stuff...It's crazier that there are people who believe it...

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Naw...The Daughter of Jerusalem is only ever a reference to God's chosen people, Israel...Anything is is just wishful thinking."

Not necessarily so: types, motifs and images are not essentially a single one-on-one correspondence.

You can compare this to "Israel", which can can mean one man, Jacob; or can mean the physical land of Israel (Ha'aretz Israel) or the *people* of Israel (Am Ha'aretz, people of the Land), or the 10 Northern Tribes, o uneducated country people (as contrasted tothe priestly and scribal classes), or even be extended to the whole Hebrew nation no matter were they live.

In a similar manner, "daughter of Jerusalem (or Zion)" can mean the actual physical, geographic territory of the capital city

Isaiah 16:1
" Send them forth, from Sela across the desert, to the mount of daughter Zion

Isaiah 10:32
Even today he will halt at Nob, he will shake his fist at the mount of daughter Zion, the hill of Jerusalem!

Or it can mean the haughty women of the city:

Isaiah 3:16
The Lord said: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with necks outstretched, Ogling and mincing as they go, their anklets tinkling with every step

Or it can mean all the people of Israel:

Lamentations 2:1
How the Lord in his wrath has abhorred daughter Zion, Casting down from heaven to earth the glory of Israel, Not remembering his footstool on the day of his wrath!

Sometimes it means the military might of the nation. Look at Micah 4. In verse 10, God warns that the daughter of Zion will suffer as much as a woman in labor. But in verse 13, He promises vengeance. The weak, powerless woman will become a bull with horns of iron and hoofs of bronze that will crush its enemies: she represents the armed forces of the nation.

The thing to keep in mind is that in poetry, personifications are not often individual people and are images are never quite cemented in. They can be "types" that recur.

For instance, even the Beloved Woman in the Song of Songs can represent a favored member of Solomon's harem, OR his one beloved bride, OR the Church, OR the believer's loving soul, OR even the personification of the female warrior:

"Who is she who cometh forth, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners!" And as the Israel personification moves into the NT, the "Daughters of Jerusalem" may be Christ's female disciples, those who mourned HIm as He walked carrying His cross:

Luke 23:28
Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children

And in the end this female figure, Jerusalem, is none other than the Church!

Galatians 4:26
But the Jerusalem above is freeborn, and she is our mother.

Hebrews 12:22
No, you have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and countless angels in festal gathering

Revelation 3:12
“‘“The victor I will make into a pillar in the temple of my God, and he will never leave it again. On him I will inscribe the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God, as well as my new name.

Revelation 21:2
I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Daughter Zion -- isn't she beautiful!!

[MHGinTN]

It is tragic, for these teachings are leading people away from the broken and contrite spirit that God will not caste out. The works, the sacramental trail, the devotions to dead and to the Mary of Catholicism, all these are devices inveigled into Christianity by traditions of men, and are heresies. To teach them as The Gospel is blasphemous.

Pride drips from some of these catholic posts where doing is emphasized, as if merit may be earned by devotion to the Catholic Mary, or to various dead men called Catholic Saints.