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To: lastchance

Anyone with a relationship with Christ is blessed.

Mary isn’t the only one in human history to be used by God and be blessed by it, nor does it by default imply perpetual virginity, no matter what the gender of the person used by God.

I don’t know where this concept that sinlessness=virginity came from but there’s just nothing I can find in Scripture to support it.

God made man and woman and performed the first marriage and blessed it. It was very good. Even with the ability to procreate, as He intended mankind to do.

A normal husband/wife relationship is honoring to God.


179 posted on 05/31/2011 6:41:13 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: metmom

My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden,
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with His arm:
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree.
He has filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich He has sent empty away.
He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy;
As He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to His posterity forever.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen

Magníficat ánima mea Dóminum,
et exsultávit spíritus meus
in Deo salvatóre meo,
quia respéxit humilitátem
ancíllæ suæ.

Ecce enim ex hoc beátam
me dicent omnes generatiónes,
quia fecit mihi magna,
qui potens est,
et sanctum nomen eius,
et misericórdia eius in progénies
et progénies timéntibus eum.
Fecit poténtiam in bráchio suo,
dispérsit supérbos mente cordis sui;
depósuit poténtes de sede
et exaltávit húmiles.
Esuriéntes implévit bonis
et dívites dimísit inánes.
Suscépit Ísrael púerum suum,
recordátus misericórdiæ,
sicut locútus est ad patres nostros,
Ábraham et sémini eius in sæcula.

Glória Patri et Fílio
et Spirítui Sancto.
Sicut erat in princípio,
et nunc et semper,
et in sæcula sæculórum.

Amen.

She became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed on her as pass man’s understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among which she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in heaven, and such a Child . . . Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God . . . None can say of her nor announce to her greater things, even though he had as many tongues as the earth possesses flowers and blades of grass: the sky, stars; and the sea, grains of sand. It needs to be pondered in the heart what it means to be the Mother of God.

(Commentary on the Magnificat, 1521; in Luther’s Works, Pelikan et al, vol. 21, 326)


181 posted on 05/31/2011 6:46:46 PM PDT by narses ("Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." Chesterton)
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To: metmom

“A normal husband/wife relationship is honoring to God”

I agree with that statement and have no quarrel with it.

Catholics and Orthodox do not believe that our belief in the Perpetual Virginity of Mary in anyway shows we think less of marriage and in anyway dishonor it.

We believe that Mary is unique amongst all of God’s creation in being chosen to bear Chris the Savior. We don’t think her special status was only temporary and ended with the birth of Christ. She is unique not because of what she did but because of what God did. It was Christ who sanctified her womb. This we believe does set her apart and to us it follows it set her marriage to Joseph apart from most marriages.

Simply put such a unique contact with the very God renders Mary holy in a way no other human will ever experience.


184 posted on 05/31/2011 6:53:38 PM PDT by lastchance ("Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis" St. Augustine)
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