Posted on 10/08/2015 8:02:23 AM PDT by Salvation
As a young child I was very close to God. I spoke to Him in a very natural way and He spoke plainly to me. Although I have very few memories of my early childhood, I vividly remember how close I was to God. When early puberty approached, though, I began to slip away, drifting into the rebellious and angry years of my teens. As the flesh came more alive, my spirit submerged.
The culture of the time didn’t help, either. It was the late 1960s and early 1970s and rebelliousness and the flesh were celebrated as “virtues.” Somehow we thought ourselves more mature than our pathetic forebears, who were hopelessly “repressed.” There was the attitude among the young that we had come of age somehow. We collectively deluded ourselves, aided by the messages of rock music and the haze of drug use, that we were somehow “better.”
So it was the winter of my soul. The vivid faith of my childhood gave way to a kind of indifferent agnosticism. Though I never formally left Church (my mother would never had permitted that as long as I lived in under my parents’ roof), I no longer heard God or spoke to Him. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that when I was in high school I joined the youth choir of my parish church. This was not precipitated by a religious passion, but rather by a passion of another kind: there were pretty girls in the choir and I “sought their company,” shall we say. But God has a way of using beauty to draw us to the truth. Week after week, year after year, as we sang those old religious classics a buried faith began to awaken within me.
But what to do? How to pray? I heard that I was supposed to pray. But how? As a child it had been natural to talk with God. But now He seemed distant, aloof, and likely angry with me. And I’ll admit it, prayer seemed a little “goofy” to me, a high school senior still struggling to be “cool” in his own eyes and in the eyes of his friends. Not only that, but prayer was “boring.” It seemed an unfocused, unstructured, and “goofy” thing.
But I knew someone who did pray. My paternal grandmother, “Nana,” was a real prayer warrior. Every day she took out her beads and sat by the window to pray. I had seen my mother pray now and again, but she was more private about it. But Nana, who lived with us off and on in her last years, knew how to pray and you could see it every day.
Rosary Redivivus – In my parish church of the 1970s, the rosary was non-existent. Devotions and adoration were on the outs during that sterile time. Even the Crucifix was gone. But Nana had that “old-time religion” and I learned to appreciate it through her.
Ad Jesum per Mariam – There are some, non-Catholics especially, who think that talking of Mary or focusing on her in any way takes away from Christ. It is as though they consider it a zero-sum game, in which our hearts cannot love both Mary and Jesus. But my own experience was that Mary led me to Christ. I had struggled to know and worship Christ, but somehow a mother’s love felt more natural, safer, and more accessible to me. So I began there, where I could. Simply pole-vaulting right into a mature faith from where I was did not seem possible. So I began, as a little child again, holding my Mother’s hand. And gently, Mother Mary led me to Christ, her son. Through the rosary, that “Gospel on a string,” I became reacquainted with the basic gospel story.
The thing about Marian devotion is that it opens up a whole world. For with this devotion comes an open door into so many of the other traditions and devotions of the Church: Eucharistic adoration, litanies, traditional Marian hymns, lighting candles, modesty, pious demeanor, and so forth. So as Mary led me, she also reconnected me to many things that I only vaguely remembered. The suburban Catholicism of the 1970s had all but cast these things aside, and I had lost them as well. Now in my late teens, I was going up into the Church “attic” and bringing things down. Thus, little by little, Mother Mary was helping me to put things back in place. I remember my own mother being pleased to discover that I had taken some old religious statues, stashed away in a drawer in my room, and placed them out on my dresser once again. I also took down the crazy rock-and-roll posters, one by one, and replaced them with traditional art, including a picture of Mary.
Over time, praying the Rosary and talking to Mary began to feel natural. And, sure enough, little by little, I began to speak with God. It was when I was in the middle of college that I began to sense the call to the priesthood. I had become the choir director by that time and took a new job in a city parish: you guessed it, “St. Mary’s.” There, the sterility of suburban Catholicism had never taken hold. The candles burned brightly at the side altars. The beautiful windows, marble altars, statues, and traditional novenas were all on display in Mother Mary’s parish. The rest is history. Mary cemented the deal between me and her Son, Jesus. I became His priest and now I can’t stop talking about Him! He is my hero, my savior and Lord. And praying again to God has become more natural and more deeply spiritual for me.
It all began one day when I took Mary’s hand and let her lead me to Christ. And hasn’t that always been her role? She, by God’s grace, brought Christ to us, showed Him to us at Bethlehem, presented Him in the Temple, and ushered in His first miracle (even despite His reluctance). She said to the stewards that day at Cana, and to us now, “Do whatever he tells you.” The Gospel of John says, Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs in Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him (John 2:11). And so Mary’s intercession strengthened the faith of others in her Son. That has always been her role: to take us by the hand and lead us to Christ. Her rosary has been called the “Gospel on a string” because she bids us to reflect on the central mysteries of the Scripture as we pray.
Well said.
In regard to this thread I will add.
1) When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, Jesus did not direct them to Mary but to the Father. He invites us to come directly before him with the word Father.
2) The Lord thy God is a jealous God. He does not want anyone or anything to be between Him and us.
Perhaps the Holy Spirit is leading me here to help correct these errors.
Well said, too.
“The Lord thy God is a jealous God. He does not want anyone or anything to be between Him and us.”
And that’s not because He’s a tyrant, but for our complete spiritual fulfillment as creatures.
It’s the work of the Holy Spirit to lead us to Christ.
Jesus said that was one of the reasons that the Holy Spirit was given, to reveal Him to the world.
Jesus never mentioned Mary in that role.
That’s a man made fabrication.
Nothing she is mother of His human side not His divinity She is a sinner like you and me. A redeemed Child of God.
Devotion given to Mary is devotion not given to God.
Prayer given to Mary is prayer not given to God.
Anything given to Mary that rightly belongs to God and God alone, robs God of His glory and makes an idolater out of the person.
Mary is not the mother of God.
She’s the mother of Jesus.
Hail full of Grace, Blessed are you among women. Her womb contained the divine Jesus, the Son of God, God would not put His Son into the womb of a sinner stained with sin. No way.
Non Catholics confuse the Immaculate Conception, Mary was conceived that way, not for Mary, but for Jesus. However, she did reap the reward of being immaculately conceived as she was “full of grace” and “blessed among women”
it’s a shame how non-Catholics think so little of Jesus and the way he was brought into this world.
Why not? How else would He share fully in our humanity?
God sent His only Beloved son into a sin cursed world to die for it. Why does where He lived for 9 months matter?
it’s a shame how non-Catholics think so little of Jesus and the way he was brought into this world.
In your dreams. We just don't buy into the unscriptural Catholic fabrications about Mary and her alleged immaculate conception and alleged perpetual virginity.
Do Catholics really think that Jesus couldn't handle being carried by a sinful mother?
That God really thinks that His son is too good to associate with ordinary riff-raff like us?
What a petty God and a weak Jesus Catholics have.
OK. So if it is your position that Jesus is not fully God and fully man then you’re the heretic, an arianist. Not that I’m calling names. Just saying.
“As the mother of God what would she be queen of?”
To make that argument, you are using “mother of God” in that way which Catholics claim they don’t.
Luke 1:43 “And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Every occurrence of the word “Lord” in the immediate and surrounding context refers to God. The Ecumenical Council of Ephesis (AD 431) defined her unique relationship to Christ and honored her with the title “Mother of God.” So where is it in the catechism or anywhere else that I, as a Roman Catholic, am not to believe that Mary is the mother of God?
“Hail full of Grace, Blessed are you among women. Her womb contained the divine Jesus, the Son of God, God would not put His Son into the womb of a sinner stained with sin. No way.”
In your belief. And what is it based on?
Do you recognize that Jesus touched the leper, the unclean leper?
God cannot be sullied. People can, but God can’t.
YOU and I are not clean.
To be Christians, God puts His Spirit in us. It’s completely repugnant to God’s nature to come in contact with sinners, yet He does it to save us. That’s His sacrifice, His great eternal sacrifice.
The Gospel means God showing MERCY to EVIL, spiritual evil, and bearing with us despite our EVIL natures. Have you ever felt ashamed of your sin in the past, and felt how acutely God must have been totally repulsed by what you did, yet He holds out forgiveness to us, and doesn’t destroy us when we act evil and beastly before Him?
Given that Christ came into the world to show God’s mercy, and make His mercy available to the wicked, us, then it makes more sense that He was born to someone who was a true Christian, a true person of faith - she knew she was a sinner, in need of God’s forgiveness, and she walked humbly before Him.
Hail full of Grace is what Gabriel called her. I heard it explained once that Jesus could do anything he wanted to for his mother because he is God. And being God he is not bound by time - always was, is and will be. So he’s like, I want my mother to be born without original sin and wow, she is born without original sin. She is the holy vessel, the tabernacle of the messiah. Why is that threatening to you?
Not to mention a necromancer. 😆
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
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It’s true that mothers have strange holds on their children no matter what our age. Something to think about!
The Greek behind this does not support the catholic claim on the sis lessens of Mary. Cathokic apologists know this. It’s why they admits there is no direct support for the IC.It's too late to double down on this false claim, ealgeone. Your bluff has been already been called.
Do you know that God comes into contact with sinners?
Have any thoughts on how our vile, rebellious natures appear to Him?
Speaking for myself, I’m a sinner against God. I’ve done things in my life that I’m thoroughly ashamed of before God, because I know they are pure spiritual ugliness to Him, prideful, filthy and perverse, and the response of His righteous nature to them is WRATH, His perfectly righteous wrath.
And yet, despite my sins, which are as scarlet, God bore with me through them, and is also willing to touch me. He is willing to allow His Spirit to come into this unclean vessel, and cleanse. But first He had to bear with it, and then He had to touch it to cleanse it.
And that is the case for every human being. Do you have sins you are horrified to think of, but also realize that God, the perfectly holy God, will lay aside His sense of justice, His abhorrence to sin, to touch you out of mercy?
Yes, Mary is a tabernacle, in a sense, of the New Testament. And as the New Testament says believers are the temple of God, we are also tabernacles.
If you are going to look to the Old Testament tabernacle and compare Mary to it, then do it properly. Don’t assume that what goes for one goes for the other, because as the New Testament talks about, the two are not the same. Some things might mean something similar, but some attributes of each tabernacle might point to the differences between the two covenants.
One tabernacle was of wood, dead wood. If it was anything like the modern illustrators try to make out, it is even somewhat coffin-like. The other tabernacle, Mary, and even other Christians, are living beings made in God’s image. There is difference right there. So you need to prove that because the Old Testament tabernacle couldn’t be improperly touched (as it represented God’s Holiness), then necessarily Mary needed to be holy. Because the New Testament, which is the Old Testament revealed, is about faith in God’s mercy, that we aren’t perfect in obeying God’s laws, we’re not and never will be by our own efforts holy, but that God, IN HIS GREAT MERCY, will come to us, touch us and cleanse us anyway, despite us being sinners.
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