Sede Sapientiae
Posted on 12/27/2011 8:24:19 PM PST by RnMomof7
Rome, Italy, Dec 8, 2011 / 04:28 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI reflected on the biblical description of a “woman clothed with the sun” in his remarks at Rome's Spanish Steps on the 2011 Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
“What is the meaning of this image? It represents the Church and Our Lady at the same time,” the Pope told the crowd assembled before the nearby statue commemorating the 1854 definition of Mary's Immaculate Conception. “Before all, the 'woman' of the apocalypse is Mary herself.”
The 12th chapter of the Biblical Apocalypse – also known as the Book of Revelation – describes the glorification and persecution of “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”
Though not named, this woman is described as the mother of the Messiah. In poetic language akin to the Bible's other prophetic books, Saint John says she faced the threat of “a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns,” and “fled into the desert where she had a place prepared by God.”
Pope Benedict, offering white roses in his traditional yearly act of Marian veneration, gave listeners his insight into the connection between the Virgin Mary and the Church – portrayed in the Apocalypse through the single image of the sun-clad woman.
“She appears 'clothed in sunlight,' that is, clothed in God,” observed the Pope. “The Virgin Mary is in fact completely surrounded by the light of God and lives in God … The 'Immaculate One' reflects with all of her person the light of the 'sun' which is God.”
“Besides representing Our Lady, this sign personifies the Church, the Christian community of all times,” he continued.
The Church, he explained, is “pregnant, in the sense that she carries Christ” and “must give birth to him to the world.”
“This is the labor of the pilgrim Church on earth, that in the midst of the consolations of God and the persecutions of the world, she must bring Christ to men.”
Because the Church continues to bring Jesus into the world, Pope Benedict said, it “finds opposition in a ferocious adversary,” symbolized in scripture by the “dragon” that has “tried in vain to devour Jesus,” and now “directs his attacks against the woman – the Church – in the desert of the world.”
“But in every age the Church is supported by the light and the strength of God,” the Pope said. “She is nurtured in the desert with the bread of his word and the Holy Eucharist.”
“And in this way, in every tribulation, through all of the trials that she finds in the course of the ages and in the different parts of the world, the Church suffers persecution, but comes out the victor.”
Pope Benedict said the Church should not fear persecution, which is bound to arise, but will be defeated.
“The only pitfall of which the Church can and must be afraid is the sin of her members,” he warned, highlighting the key difference between the Church and the woman who is its prototype.
“While in fact Mary is immaculate – free from every stain of sin – the Church is holy, but at the same time marked by our sins.”
While sinless herself, Mary remains in solidarity with the Church struggling against sin.
“That is why the people of God, pilgrims in time, turn to their heavenly mother and ask for her help,” explained Pope Benedict.
He stressed the world's need for the hope brought by the “woman clothed with the sun” – “especially in this difficult moment for Italy, for Europe and for different parts of the world.”
“May Mary help us to see that there is a light beyond the veil of fog that appears to envelop reality,” he declared.
“For this also we, especially on this day, never cease to ask with filial trust for her help: 'O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you.'”
That picture sort of says it all doesn’t it? The halo of the child is reduced to make room for the full halo of the “queen of heaven”. The child is secondary to the “queen of heaven” just as it is in all pagan worship.
How did Catholics treat them (notice I said Catholics and not Christians ) for doing exactly as Jesus said ? They called them heretics and even had some of them put to do death . How do Catholics treat them now , they curse at them and say they are not followers of Christ (kinda like you just did ) hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wonder if that is why middle eastern Catholics have been so cursed themselves ?
>>Catholic means universal. I’m not going to apologize for what some Western Christians did during the Middle Ages.
I’m not a Western Christian. Anti-Catholic bigots always ignore the fact John Paul II made an atonement for the sins of the past in 2000. They are all stuck in the past.
The modern Messianics have nothing in common with Jesus and his apostles. Their theology is a heretical mixture of Evangelical Protestantism and warmed over Rabinnical Judaism, which differs vastly from the Judaism of Jesus’s time.
Do you follow the Septuagint? The apostles did. All of the OT quotes in the New Testament are taken from the Septuagint version, not from the flawed Rabinnical Massoretic text.
Middle Eastern Catholics cursed. That’s a new one. They have far more in common with apostolic Christianity than Messianic Judaizers.
Your sect is neither Christian nor Jewish. It’s sort of in a no-man’s land between the two.
The one ones pulling a verse out of context and making a theological argument out of it is the Catholic church.
The angel simply tells Mary that she's *blessed* and suddenly she's sinless, ever virgin, assumed into heaven, made queen of heaven, yada, yada, yada......
Stuff that is found NOWHERE in Scripture and a whole church stands on falls on it's doctrine concerning Mary.
THAT'S baloney.
There is nothing about sizes of haloes which has anything to do with amount of honor. In this the present example, the "Queen of Heaven" is secondary and even on an incomparably lower plane, as the creature is lower than the Creator, and the finite lower than the Infinite.
The fact is, that God alone is holy; and other persons (or even places, things, or ideas) are called "holy" only in a secondary and completely dependent way: "Holy Saints," "Holy Bible," "Holy Angels," "Holy Songs and Canticles," "Holy Manna," "Holy Mary."
Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ, who is God and who has come in the flesh. As a human mother, she is bigger than her infant. The picture illustratres that. And that's all that "size" has to do with it.
I am glad you have given me the opportunity to explain this. Otherwise, you would have long retained a mistaken impression.
Same old tired defense.
Ex. 20:4 You shall not make for yourself a carved image-...
My eyes and ears don't deceive me. My wife is a former RC. My children went to a RC high school. I watched the school build a grotto that they bragged was wider and taller than the one at Notre Dame University. The grotto had a nice statue of Mary in the middle, no Jesus, and RC's regularly came and bowed down and worshiped Mary. They treat her as if she is God.
At this high school they ended prayers with the words "notre dame".
I've seen the heresy of the RCC and it's loyal followers first hand. I've also been blessed to be able to preach The Gospel to some and I've seen some become Born Again Christians.
You yourself might take a moment to ponder the commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
The problem isn't anyone lying about the heretical beliefs and practices of the RCC and it's members. The problem is since the Reformation Christians have been able to get their hands on Bibles in the vernacular, read them, and see the things RC's do that Christians are told not to do.
You do realize Mary fled into the wilderness with the Christ for about 3.5 years or 1260 days which are two ways of saying the same thing right ?
The woman who gave birth to Christ is hardly a mystery. And all those painting/statues of Mary are paintings of a woman with a crown of 12 stars, with the rays of the sun streaming around, standing on the earth and crescent moon. And sometimes standing on the serpent as prophesied in Genesis.
Your wife is a former Roman Catholic, so what! Catholics who become Evangelicals usually were ignorant about their former faith to begin with.
I’m not easily duped by your polemics.
I’m a former iconoclastic anti-Catholic. So you have no point.
The problem isn’t anyone lying about the heretical beliefs and practices of the RCC and it’s members. The problem is since the Reformation Christians have been able to get their hands on Bibles in the vernacular, read them, and see the things RC’s do that Christians are told not to do.
>>The only thing that happened at the so-called “Reformation” was the Bible was rewritten by polemicists to suit their prejudices.
If anything is heretical, it is the former “Reformation” beliefs that I once held. Protestantism deters clear thinking and is cult-like in its refusal to allow Christians to think through the cliched arguments.
The one ones pulling a verse out of context and making a theological argument out of it is the Catholic church.
The angel simply tells Mary that she’s *blessed* and suddenly she’s sinless, ever virgin, assumed into heaven, made queen of heaven, yada, yada, yada......
Stuff that is found NOWHERE in Scripture and a whole church stands on falls on it’s doctrine concerning Mary.
THAT’S baloney.
ABSOLUTELY INDEED.
usually were ignorant about their former faith to begin with
What tired old UNMITIGATED NONSENSE.
Show us the research and how it was designed.
ROFLOL
I’m a former iconoclastic anti-Catholic. So you have no point.
Embracing heresy doesn't make it true.
A substantial point of Rev 12 is Mary was seen in heaven. Not only does scripture say so but also does the histories of the church.
Just as it was not wrong for Christ or the Apostles to converse with a dead man on the mountain, a man who at the time it happened was said by Holy Scripture to be dead and nothing in sacred scripture then extant said otherwise. That Moses can appear and converse about things happening and things to come and yet it not be necromancy is a clue.
If the disciples held to the view you do they would have been forced to conclude Christ was a necromancer, and of course they didn’t.
As to Mary being dead, not even the patriarchs are dead. He is not the God of the dead but of the living. And even Abraham saw the day of the Christ and rejoiced when it happened.
Over and over again it’s been shown that Catholics replace Christ with Mary.
Anyone who denies any of that, denies the Catholic faith.
What part of that don't you accept? You seem to be inadvertently misinterpreting statements you don't quite understand.
If you fail to wrap your understanding about the idolatries and blasphemies I highlighted in the Pope’s paragraphs above . . . then we are evidently not dealing with the same English I’ve used all my life.
I realize that wholesale bias can be quite blinding.
However, I’ve usually thought of you as a bit above that tendency.
The Pope’s paragraphs were hideous in terms of idolatry and blasphemy.
There’s no amount of weasel worded rationalizations that will excuse them before God Almighty . . . nor even before the AUTHENTIC Mary.
Or you could believe God instead of your pope when God says Christ gave birth to the church...
No, Quix:
I didn’t ask you to take a bunch of out-of-context quotes which you take to be prayers to a goddess or Asheroth. You’ll notice there’s not a reference to goddess or Asheroth in the whole bunch. There’s some quotes which in your ignorance you judge to be prayers to a goddess or Ashaeroth, I suppose. But then, that’s your problem. You presume the voices in your head are reality.
Actually, in a strange way, you demonstrate the precise meaning of Revelations 12. Mary is progenitor and archetype of the Church. What the Church accomplishes by bringing Christ into the hearts of each individual it reveals Christ to, Mary accomplished by bringing Christ into the world. Every marvelous utterance directed at Mary is really an instruction of what the Church is to be, to those who constitute the Church, who are those who declare such utterances.
Each of these wondrous statements is directed to the Catholic reader who understands Christ to be ultimate and primary source of all things, not as an apologetic to the Protestant about the role of Mary.
Isn’t Mary the Queen of Heaven, of Rev. 12? Was there some other sign given, where some other woman gave birth to some other Christ? Yet at the same time, the purpose of Rev. 12 is not merely to glorify Mary, but to, by analogy, use her as an archetype for the Church as a whole.
But in your fevered imagination, you see not the mother of Christ, but Asheroth, which is so very, very sad.
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