Do Catholics think that Mary was the first, or only, person to ever say to God, *Thy will be done*???????
Good grief, that’s the heart cry of every born again believer and we’ve all done it when called to do something at some time in our lives.
It’s the natural response of a regenerated heart, not even a consideration of saying *no*.
Her saying that doesn’t make her any more special than any other believer who’s submitted to God’s will for their life.
God called her to carry the Messiah, He calls us to do other things. We all obey in what God calls us to do. She did her job, I do mine, others do theirs.
It doesn’t make any one person any better than any other.
It’s not WHAT we’re called to do but our obedience to do that counts.
“God called her to carry the Messiah”
God calls all believers to carry the Messiah for a longer term than 9 months:
(Col. 1:27), “To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”
While I think that in order to be chosen by God Mary would have been a woman of real holiness and sincerity, yet this does not necessarily make her more holy than many other woman.
Mary was indeed blessed above all woman, that being due to whom she was to bring forth. Yet just as God brought forth his pure written word through holy but not sinless men, so it is not necessary that the vessel that brought forth Christ must be sinless either. Using that rationale it could be reasoned that the vessel that brought forth Mary herself must be sinless. And yet Christ's lineage includes manifest sinners, as was the "fathers of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen." (Romans 9:5)
Mary was also "highly favored," which Rome chose to translate as "full of grace" (DRB), but which is the same word (charitoō) used to describe believers in Ephesians 1:6.
Greater aspects of Mary's exaltation are that as Christ was sinless, so is Mary said to be; Christ bodily rose from the dead, and so it is said of Mary; Christ ever lives to make intercession for the saints, (Heb. 7:25), and is able to hear an an infinite multitude of supplicants at any given time, and so this is attribute it to Mary.
In defense of this Catholics will argue from silence, that Scripture does not disallow such being attributed to a believer, and that Scripture records some being bodily assumed. However, Scripture also manifests that exceptions among notable people are made evident, from the number of fingers a man has to being sinless. Thus Christ's is said to be sinless at least three times.
Scripture warns against thinking "of men above that which is written" (1Corinthians 4:6), and all in all the preoccupation with exalting Mary in Catholicism has turned a simple, humble, God-fearing holy and honorable woman into a demigodess, with Divine powers and almost unlimited power whose requests for as commands to God, which in type is more pagan than scriptural.
While not all of the supererogation involved in attributions to Mary is official doctrine, it has its implicit assent seem in the lack of censure to even its most extreme expressions, and extreme exaltation even by popes, who themselves can be seen to think of themselves above that which is written.
It doesn't make any one person any better than any other.
GREAT point.
Meanwhile, Scripture rejects the glorification of human beings on their own merit, especially to the wicked point of giving them blasphemous titles like "queen of the universe" and "mother of all mankind."
Mary is not anyone's mother but the children to whom she physically gave birth.
Some rituals and mindless traditions of the RCC are merely foolish and empty superstitions which reveal a lack of trust in God. However, the deification of Mary is a whole different kind of sacrilege where God's word implies the penalty is far more severe.