Posted on 01/01/2022 7:55:54 AM PST by MurphsLaw
Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God
Luke 2:16-21
Friends, today we celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God.
St. Irenaeus says that, throughout the history of salvation, God was trying on humanity, gradually suiting divinity and humanity to one another—preparing for the Incarnation. All of that preparation was a prelude to the Israelite girl who would say yes to the invitation to be the Mother of God.
To say that Mary is the Mother of God is to insist on the density of the claim that God truly became human. As Fulton J. Sheen commented, Mary is like the moon, for her light is always the reflection of a higher light.
Catholic theology has drawn a further implication from Mary’s status as Mother of God—her role as Mother of the Church. If she is the one through whom Christ was born, and if the Church is indeed Christ’s Mystical Body, then she must be, in a very real sense, the Mother of the Church. She is the one through whom Jesus continues to be born in the hearts of those who believe. This is not to confuse her with the Savior, but it is to insist on her mission as mediator and intercessor.
+++The shepherds went in haste to
Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph,
and the infant lying in the manger.
When they saw this,
they made known the message
that had been told them about this
child.
All who heard it were amazed
by what had been told them by
the shepherds.
And Mary kept all these things,
reflecting on them in her heart.
Then the shepherds returned,
glorifying and praising God
for all they had heard and seen,
just as it had been told to them.
When eight days were completed for
his circumcision,
he was named Jesus, the name given
him by the angel
before he was conceived in the womb.+++
Bishop Barron is baffling.
“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;”
1 Timothy 2:5 KJV
“Little Children, keep yourselves from idols.”
• Apostle John
Would Catholicism crumble without their mythos?
—> Would Catholicism crumble without their mythos?
We’ll, it wouldn’t be Roman Catholicism without it.
It’s the one true faith. It’s all true.
No worries. Believe the myth as you will.
Like the myth that Jesus founded one church, it failed almost immediately until 1500 years later when a neurotic former priest rediscovered it?
Believe that and you have no foundation for Christianity. Might as well worship George Washington. What he established longer than Jesus did.
—> Like the myth that Jesus founded one church, it failed almost immediately until 1500 years later when a neurotic former priest rediscovered it?
That would be more myth.
Christ came to die and resurrect to save all who would entrust themselves to Him.
His church is comprised of all who are saved - of every denomination - living or passed to glory.
In every age from the beginning, God has had his people. Even when Rome slaughtered them.
That isn’t the history.
Those who were Jesus’ disciples and many other believers of that period in the first century followed the Holy Spirit to establish the Church, first in Jerusalem, and then including other churches in different cities.
At the beginning, when the Church was the smallest, it was also the purest, most powerful church, and it had to be. It was being established in a very hostile world.
Once there were churches in different locations, and the earliest leaders began to be taken home to be with the Lord, error came into the church a little bit at a time, especially through the leadership. The problem of false shepherds goes all the way back to ancient Israel.
But that didn’t mean that the Gospel wasn’t being preached and people weren’t being saved from Hell through Christ. Paul wrote that even if some men preached the Gospel from evil motives, at least the Gospel was still being preached. One’s pastor can be an absolute false teacher and false prophet, but if there’s enough of the truth preached for someone to genuinely respond to Christ, and that person does so sincerely, then it doesn’t matter if the pastor is corrupt.
The visible Church also suffers corruption when it becomes a religion and part of the government, if not the governing power itself. But again, that doesn’t mean that the Gospel is lost or that genuine Christians aren’t being created.
People in Europe often underwent forced mass conversions. Countries came under Catholic rule. Since it was mass forced on people, many likely accepted it like a dog accepts wearing clothing. They weren’t truly converted in their hearts. Yet some people were. So Christianity and the Gospel spread. And that was good.
Yet in the absence of true supernatural conversion of the hearts of just about everyone under its rule, the cost of the Church being a worldly government is moral compromise, dilution of doctrine, and hidden treachery and conspiracy. It’s like Satan’s rebellion in Heaven. Those who reject Christianity, but are forced to live under it, will try to undermine it.
What’s more, for the sake of worldly governing, a religion developed that got away from teaching and mentoring people in God’s Word. That is what Luther discovered and brought to the world. He realized that knowledge of God through His Word was being kept from the laymen.
At the proper time in God’s plan, He brought His Word out to the Christian world. The elemental foundation had already been laid for it by the centuries of Catholic rule across Europe, and many Christians recognized His Word as life-giving water for their deep spiritual thirst.
This was but one development in God’s work in the world, to bring people to Himself, through His Son.
Believe in your works of fealty to rituals and beads and prayers to the dead ... and you find out too late that you have failed at your striving to obtain eternal life. Eternal Life is a gift from God to ALL who have turned their will to Jesus, not to some magic based ORG.
So why listen to someone whose belief system popped up 1500+ years later? Are you one of the 30k+ denominations who can’t even agree with each other, except that you think the Catholic Church is wrong?
That’s pretty telling isn’t it?
—> So why listen to someone whose belief system popped up 1500+ years later?
Don’t know anyone who does. The believe what God says in Scripture.
—> Are you one of the 30k+ denominations who can’t even agree with each other
There are millions of smorgasbord Catholics who pick and choose what they are going to believe or disbelieve.
LOL, nice try but you fail. My belief is based in The Word of God not the imaginings of men seeking to garner power over people via an ORG such as Catholicism rife with pagan practices and rituals copied to suck more people into the ORG empowering the ORG.
I think the two biggest myths, bigger than Mary, are confession and purgatory. Without these, the whole church comes crashing down. I know, when I was a Catholic, back when there were giants in the earth, I had some nice conversations with Noah, 😀😊🙃🤗👍 I used to hate to go to confession, because when I told the priest my really racy sins, sometimes (occasionally) I thought he was getting his jollies, by asking me probing questions about my sin life. I was not amused, however, so I just lied to the priest in the confessional. That was probably a mortal sin of sacrilege, but I didn’t care. I was not going to tell him about my private sins. 🤗
How about this one?
Good luck keeping them secret from God.
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