Blessed Mary, Why Honor Her?
Why would anyone want to honor Mary? After all, Jesus Christ is paramount and we should go directly to Him. We do not need her.....or do we? Let us examine this question with Scripture and with our own GOD given powers of reason.
1. Who is the first person in Scripture to call Mary ‘Blessed’? The first place in the Bible where you will find the answer is Luke 1:28. If your answer is Gabriel, then it is the wrong answer. Gabriel is an Archangel, and the Greek word ‘angel’, means ‘messenger’. So Gabriel was only a messenger for someone, but who? Gabriel was sent by GOD, so it was GOD’s message that Gabriel delivered. If GOD was the first person to call Mary ‘Blessed’, can any of GOD’s creatures do less? Dare you, or I, or anyone else refute a clear statement from GOD Himself? Anyone who attempts to do so is putting himself above GOD. Others in Scripture called her ‘Blessed’ also. Elizabeth did in Luke 1:42, and a ‘woman from the crowd’ did in Luke 11:27. Mary herself said in Luke 1:48, “...for behold, henceforth ALL GENERATIONS ‘SHALL’ CALL ME BLESSED”. Can you dispute the fact that the word ‘henceforth’ means from this moment on, and that the word ‘shall’ is a command, and not a suggestion? If you look up the word ‘Blessed’ in the dictionary, it means, ‘Holy’, held in ‘Veneration’, ‘Revered’. GOD is telling us that Mary is Holy, and she should be venerated and revered. How can any person refuse to abide by this specific command in Luke 1:48 and still claim they follow the Bible?
2. Okay, so she is ‘Blessed’, but that does not mean we need her! Well, what did GOD say through Gabriel in Luke 1:30-33? “You have found favor with GOD.” Right there, GOD ‘venerated’ Mary over all other women. In verse 31 He tells her that she will conceive. Who will she conceive? None other than Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity, who will manifest Himself as the ‘Incarnate Word’. GOD Himself needed Mary to conceive His very own Son, and to carry Him for nine months to term. GOD needed Mary to be the vessel to give birth to His Divine Son. If GOD needed her, can we not need her also?
3. So she gave birth to a male child! She is a mother like any other mother! Why does that make her special? This brings us to a basic theological question. Who is Jesus Christ? We know that He is the second person of the Holy Trinity, the only Son of GOD. We know He is also the ‘Incarnate Word’ as explained in John 1:14, “...the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” John 1:1 teaches us that the “WORD WAS GOD.” Mary gave birth to the ‘Incarnate Word’, and the ‘Word’ was GOD. I ask, to whom did Mary give birth? The only possible answer is that she gave birth to GOD. Some insist that she only gave birth to the ‘humanity’ of GOD, but what does that mean? Jesus Christ was the only person ever born with two natures, one human and one divine. He was but one person however, not two. He could not be a human person and a divine person, as that would make Him two persons. The question then becomes, ‘was Jesus Christ a human person, or was He a divine person’? Back to John 1:1 and 14, the ‘Incarnate Word’ was GOD. Jesus Christ is a divine person. Mothers give birth to persons, each with a nature. They do not give birth to natures. GOD Himself, calls Jesus Christ His divine Son (Heb 1:5-8). Yes, she is a mother like any other mother, but what a difference between the sons.
4. Well, I am still not convinced you said? We have established that Jesus Christ is GOD, that He was born of Mary, and that GOD needed her for this ‘Incarnation’. Let us look at what Scripture says. Jesus Christ did not come to destroy the ‘Law’, but to fulfill it. In Matthew 5:17-20, Jesus stated this and He also said in verse 18-19, “...not one jot or tittle shall be lost from the law till all things have been accomplished. Therefore whoever does away with one of these least commandments, and so teaches men, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven...” He very plainly said to ‘keep the commandments’, all of them. Now don’t you suppose Jesus Christ Himself, kept the commandments that He Himself had written? Of course He did, all of them, for He said:
“If you keep My commandments you will abide in My love, AS I HAVE ALSO KEPT MY FATHER’S COMMANDMENTS, AND ABIDE IN HIS LOVE.”, John 15:10.
Now what about ‘honor thy father and thy mother’? Don’t you think He kept that one too? There is certainly ample Scriptural evidence to show that He honored His Father, and there is evidence that He honored His mother as well. In fact, He, GOD Himself, must have obeyed His mother’s, everyday living, ‘mother to child’ commands as He was growing up. This is shown in Luke 2:51, “And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was SUBJECT to them.” That is a very profound verse if you think about it. In effect it says, that for many years, the ‘Creator of the Universe’ obeyed the commands of a little Jewish girl, by the name of...Mary. Jesus also acted on her suggestion that the wedding guests were out of wine at Cana, by performing His first public miracle when He turned water into wine in John 2:1-5. Jesus Christ therefore kept the commandment ‘honor thy mother’, as well. If Jesus Christ honored His mother, can we do less? Jesus Christ loves His mother like any good son would. He will defend her from all attacks against her. If you have not honored Mary, what will you tell her Son after you have taken your last breath, and when you meet Him face to face, and He asks you why? Remember, at that point in time, the ‘GOD of Mercy’ becomes the ‘GOD of Justice’. Then it is too late to correct the injustice done to the Mother of GOD. St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort said it best in his book ‘True Devotion to Mary’, “Let no one presume to hope for the mercy of GOD, who dares to slight or offend GOD’s mother.”
5. In Summary:
a. GOD called Mary Blessed, and He venerated her.
b. GOD needed her to bear His Divine Son.
c. GOD chose Blessed Mary above all women.
d. Blessed Mary gave birth to the divine ‘Incarnate Word’.
e. As a child, Jesus Christ obeyed the commands of His mother.
f. Jesus Christ honors His very own mother.
g. Jesus Christ will defend His mother as any good son would. Doesn’t that make Blessed Mary special?
Does not this make her worthy of our honor? Can we do less than what GOD Himself did? Does any man or woman have the right, or the authority, to say we should not honor Blessed Mary? I have given you the Scriptural authority to honor her. Ask the person who tells you otherwise to show in Scripture where it says not to honor her. Jesus Christ was the only person in history who was able to choose His own mother. Why did He choose Mary? Because she is spec
1) We are all blessed. Jesus said so in the Sermon on the Mount. Why don’t we pray to each other and venerate each other?
2) We don’t need her. God didn’t need her. Any woman who was a virgin of the house and lineage of David would have done.
3) The nature of the Son does not make any difference to the nature of the mother.
4) Jesus honored His birth mother as we should honor our own birth mothers. She’s not anyone’s mother but those to whom she gave physical birth, Jesus and His siblings.
“Does not this make her worthy of our honor? “
Honor? Yes. But you can honor someone without venerating them to the point of worship and praying to them, which are unscriptural because such actions are reserved for God alone.
“Ask the person who tells you otherwise to show in Scripture where it says not to honor her. “
Show us in Scripture where is SAYS to honor her.
Nonsense.
What a slippery pile of rationalized heresy.
Where’s this GREAT PURPORTED CHRIST EMPHASIS on HONORING MARY
WHEN
in a culture where and when HIS following response would have been interpreted as far more a slap in Mary’s face than it reads even in ours—when He evidently did not comply with his disciples’ encouragement to cut His teaching short and attend to His mother, blood siblings et al.
AND INSTEAD
VERY POINTEDLY SAID TO THE CONTRARY—THAT THOSE WHO
DID THE WILL OF THE FATHER
WERE HIS MOTHER, BROTHERS, SISTERS . . .
That does NOT fit your purported fantasy of building this huge sky scraper of a pseudo-Mary caricature goddess on top of the foundation of a toothpick splinter that is the noisy straw dog about Christ honoring his mother. Balderdash.
Sure He honored her in a fitting way. That’s a huge difference in your skyscraper of nonsense built on the splinter of a toothpick for a foundation.
Even at 12 He was no longer BUSY HONORING MARY—but WAS ABOUT HIS HEAVENLY FATHER’S BUSINESS—to her distress—which as God, He likely knew about, indeed, knew would happen.
There were some other Jews who were trying to fuss about the people praising Jesus.
Christ would have none of it. He said the rocks would cry out were they silent.
Another place speaks of God’s ability to raise children of Abraham up from rocks.
GOD ALMIGHTY could have certainly made a hundred varieties of a virgin maiden devoted to Him from any number of common Israeli rocks. She was NOT indispensably NEEDED.
God is NEVER put in a box NEEDing a person for any reason by any means.
He has an infinite variety of ways to achieve His goals.
God chose Mary. She did her task.
Task over. Fini.
Get over it.
Catholics consistently misread the word Blessed.. the word is not an adjective it is a verb ... it is not BLESS ED as Catholics pronounce it, it is blessed.The angel was telling Mary she was blessed by God.. It did bot have to do with HER..it had to do with God
She was blessed by having the honor to carry the Savior ...THAT was the point. Not that she was sinless ...