“It is truly meet to bless thee, O Theotokos, ever blessed, and most pure, and the Mother of our God. More honorable than the cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim. Without corruption thou gavest birth to God the Word. True Theotokos, we magnify thee.”
Oddly, for my quote of the theotokion, which I thank you for, I don't know how to format "half lines" as you did. :) In any event, MD wound up his last post with this:
MD: "So I kind of elevate them, and kind of think of them as, well, one of us. In their order, they are my superior. In mine they are my inferior. As children of God, we are brothers and only envy worries too much about who is 'Above" whom."
So as a continuation of my response to MD, I fully agree that AS CHILDREN OF GOD we are brothers, etc. Why shouldn't we just call Mary "our sister in Christ"? She is a child of God too. I mean, I know she is special and different BECAUSE ..... But ULTIMATELY, in this context, should she (and the Saints) be "above" the rest of us?
As far as observing how and what you pray goes, I haven't the slightest doubt that the vast majority of us Protestants (who do so observe) get an impression that you would find in error. :) Now, in no way do I suggest that this is your all's fault, since it would be ridiculous for you to tailor your worship around what us outsiders think. :) I AM saying that it looks to me that perception is at least as much of the problem as substance is. I really like these types of conversations so I can explore where my perceptions "might" be wrong. :)
Having read that, FK, understand that we Orthodox and Latins see her womb as the throne of the universal, beginningless, Creator of all Creation, the Pantokrator and that her outspread arms, as depicted in so many of our icons, enfold all of us as truly her children. We love our mother, FK and in the words of a marvelous prayer, we are wont to flee to her as “poor banished children of Eve.”
I clearly still struggle with this "perception". :) One reason is that if God is our Father, and Mary is our mother, then they would be "co-parents". The Bible uses the parent-child analogy over and over again, presumably because God wanted us to understand it this way considering our limited abilities. Throwing Mary in as the mother really confuses things for me. I know no one is claiming or suggesting that Mary is equal with God, however, I think that God wants ME to think of both of my parents as being equal in that capacity.
So that doesn't seem to hold up as well. God as "Father" is authoritative, all powerful compared to us, wise, experienced, what He says goes, blah, blah, blah. That "fits". However, when my father wasn't around when I was growing up, my mother stepped into the role. In fact, she kicked my butt more often than my father did. IOW, their AUTHORITY was the same over me as I experienced it. So, I have trouble seeing Mary as a mother figure since we all know that the analogy doesn't really fit as most of us experienced our mothers and fathers.
Actually this throw away line is important and plays tag with the next few paragraphs. One the one hand, we agree that everything is gift. But there is an experience, as you say, of participating, of working. If you knew how my stomach used to hurt before I preached and how drained I felt afterwards ... . I had worked, but there was never any thought but that it was God working in me. (And there's that pesky "in" again.) I don't know about you, but when I somehow seem to be involved with a "good deed" I mostly feel a kind of astonished relief. "Wow, I didn't mess it up!"
All I can say is that I have seen writings from the Fathers up to modern Catholics which exhort Mary to a high level of grandeur for her choice to say "Yes"I could be WAY off base here. But I STILL assert that her "Yes," her choice, was a gift. If I praise her, and I do, it is because she is a great locus of a mighty act of God, because through Her, as well as through other stuff, God "does" some of His loving of me.(That's what I was trying to say in the John Elway riff. He'd be a fool and we'd be fools to think that his muscles and reflexes and everything else that makes a good quarterback were something he earned. In what way did he "choose" to love football? And yet there is some "willing" or something very like "willing" in the drills and practice and exercise and study, etc. Anyway Elway is the locus of great football-related graces, and we admire him for that.)
We have to come to an understanding about the "She (or any of the redeemed) could have chosen otherwise" problem. I'm not sure how to proceed except that it occurs to me that I COULD choose to hit myself on the head with my 16oz Estwing hammer.
It is as though all our scheme of thinking, "First you do a good thing, then you 'deserve' or 'merit' a reward or compensation, and then you get the reward," is really an inadequate metaphor for what happens in "real life".
We share the "angels twisting our arms out of their sockets" experience. The angel was doing the work, but even then we had to decide not to resist, from climbing up on the cot or table to not slugging her (with our good arm) when she twisted so much that tears started in our eyes ....
Is all our "Cooperation" with grace a totally worthless illusion? I'm having an irreverent flash of the heroine in a bodice-ripper who, when embraced, swept away by the ripper of the bodice in question, says, "Yes, yes!" ecstatically (or so we are led to believe, I've never actually READ a bodice-ripper. I'm not even sure what a "bodice" is (Can I get one for the boss-lady at Victoria's Secret?!) I mention this not only for giggles but because at least to the writers of bodice-rippers some act of will in the rippee seems to be a necessary or crowning part of the whole experience.
But, she was the final "decider" on whether Jesus would come into the world, it seems.
Yeah. I think we can't think about this correctly within the human or phenomenological frame of reference. I WILL re-read the relevant parts of Aquinas and see if anything penetrates the cranial cavity. I want to say something like Mary's "Fiat" was the final (in that little exchange) act of grace, like God holding one of those mini blow torches over the creme brulee.
IS there a human will? Is the will in any way important. Does Divine grace make us automata, or lap-dogs, and if so, in what way? Or is will essential to being human. What does it mean to be "Free" is we cannot or do not choose?
Can God "direct" our wills — can we imagine or say this without imagining, since it seems unimaginable — without compromising our freedom?
You've already read ad nauseam all my metaphors and analogies in my effort to find a way to thread this needle between being mere automata and being so free that we really do things and earn merit sua sponte. Yes, there's the Biblical metaphor of being clay in God's hands. But won't we insist that that is a metaphor which incompletely conveys the truth? In GOD's eyes, we are LIKE clay, but are we really no different from clay?
Plus, we read nothing about some chair He built with Joseph having magical healing powers years later.I've read the markt research, and the sales of Preparation H in Nazareth of Galilee PLUMMETED between around 10 AD to around 50 AD. Just sayin'.
I think the woman's faith "catalyzed" the healing. And I suspect that Mary was all the more faithful.
Yet, I perceive that they are thought of as being "above" or elevated over the rest of us.
Honor students. We're ALL students.
Why shouldn't we just call Mary "our sister in Christ"?
Well, we Dominicans are always yapping about "NSPD" (noster sanctus pater Dominicus -- our holy father Dominic) so SOME of it is the lingo of love and appreciation. But in Mary's case, since we are "in" Jesus and since Jesus "gave" her to our "father" John the evangelist, there is more oomph in the direction of calling her" Mother".
As to perceptions by Protestants, First I think many individual RCs are probably superstitious, and more are sloppy in their speech. People of whatever persuasion often refer to images using "personal" language,"Look at this little statue I got." "Oh, she's lovely! Where did you get her?" This always gives me the heebie-jeebies, but at least some of the people who do it are perfectly sound theologically, and some have no theology and aren't Catholic. But this leaves a bad impression.
I know no one is claiming or suggesting that Mary is equal with God,
when the 'orrible brat child was old enough and we were talking about our relationship with God, I said, "Of course, I'm your father. But in another way, I'm your brother, because God is father to both of us." She laughed. She gets it now though.
To bring it back to merit and grace and freedom and will and all that: I am an irascible guy, to my shame. My impulse when somebody cuts me off in traffic or whatever is to show him my middle finger puppet and make various suggestions about the canine ancestry on his mother's side and so forth.
This is not good. Jesus died for that guy, and he may be having a really bad day or life or whatever. So sometime back I decided that whenever I got myself together after confronting death in the form of another motorist, I would pray for the miserable SOB poor unfortunate child of God.
Over time the impulse to show him the puppet has lessened in strength and frequency. The choice to "hold him in the light" becomes easier and less forced. This is not a 'linear function'. I have my good days and bad days.
But speaking 'after the flesh' I made a choice, I make it often, and it is becoming easier to make, and a leetle, teeny, tiny "work of mercy" is becoming almost a habit. I am less likely to take a header into the cesspool of rage. At the same time, I am becoming more aware of how anger and hatred and envy and competitiveness and a veritable swamp of nastiness are going on all the time in me and my thoughts are drowned out by the clamor of noxious peepers.
Simultaneously I see a little good choice leading to a little sort of kind of reward AND I see a bit more clearly how very true it is to say that I am depraved. "On the ground" or "in real time" I see both utter and persistent grace meeting bottomless and foul neediness AND I see a little "good deed" "meriting" a little "reward."
I give up> Who can understand this stuff?