Posted on 05/05/2002 11:30:36 PM PDT by nickcarraway
by Mark Shea
How I Changed My Mind About Mary
5/6/02
It once seemed perfectly obvious to me that Catholics honored Mary too much. All those feasts, rosaries, icons, statues and whatnot were ridiculously excessive. Yes, the gospel of Luke said something about her being "blessed" and yes I thought her a good person. But that was that.
No Mary, No Salvation
People who celebrated her or called her "Mother" or did all the million things which Catholic piety encourages bordered on idolatry. It was all too much. Jesus, after all, is our Savior, not Mary.
However, after looking at the gospel of Luke afresh and thinking more and more about the humanity of Jesus Christ, some things dawned on me. For it turns out that Luke said more than "something" about Mary. He reports that God was conceived in her womb and thereby made a son of Adam! This means more than merely saying that Mary was an incubator unit for the Incarnation. It means that the Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity derives his humanity--all of it--from her! Why does this matter? Because the entire reason we are able to call Jesus "savior" at all is because the God who cannot die became a man who could die. And he chose to do it through Mary's free "yes" to him. No Mary, no human nature for Christ. No human nature for Christ, no death on the cross. No death, no resurrection. No resurrection, no salvation. Without Mary, we are still in our sins.
Too Much vs. Just Enough
This made me see Mary very differently. The Incarnation is vastly more than God zipping on a disposable man-suit. He remains man eternally. Therefore, his joining with the human race through the womb of Mary means (since he is the savior of us all), that she is the mother of us all (John 19:27). Moreover, it means that her remarkable choice to say "Yes" to the Incarnation was not merely a one-time incident, it was an offering of her own heart to God and us. Her heart was pierced by the sword that opened the fountain of blood and water in Christ's human heart, for it was she who, by the grace of God, gave him that heart (Luke 2:35; John 19:34).
Seeing this, I began to wonder again: If Catholics honor Mary "too much", where did we Evangelicals honor her "just enough." Mary herself said "henceforth, all generations will call me blessed." When was the last time I had heard a contemporary Christian tune on the radio sung in honor of Mary? Or a prayer in church to extol her? How about a teensy weensy bit of verse or a little article in some magazine singling out Mary as blessed among women? Aside from "Silent Night" was there anything in Evangelical piety which dared to praise her for even a moment? I was an Evangelical for seven years and I never saw so much as a dram of it.
St. Luke? Is That You?</>
So the question became for me, "How could we talk about something being 'excessive' when we had virtually no experience of it ourselves?" What if it was we Evangelicals who were excessive in our horror of Marian piety and Catholics who are normal? Judging from the witness of the early Fathers and even of Martin Luther (who had a very robust Marian devotion and whose tomb is decorated with an illustration of the Assumption of the Virgin into Heaven) it seemed to me that it was we Evangelicals who were excessive in our fear of her rather than Catholics who were excessive in their devotion.
"Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."
There. That didn't hurt a bit. In fact, I think I heard St. Luke pray it too!
I'm sure that if you look deep enough you can find many things that make Catholics look bad, and anything taken out of context can "look" bad. Catholic devotion to Mary, Mother of God, is not worship. We respect and love her as our Mother, the Mother of Jesus Christ, full of grace, who devoted her life to God and her Son, Jesus Christ. She is to be respected as the mother of us all, the Second Eve.
God bless.
You think she was used by God as some cheap tool?
If you don't believe in immaculate conception, then you believe the Gospel is wrong.
Huh? New one on me.
yet:
- singing to Mary
- praising Mary
- praying to Mary
- devotion to Mary
- thanking Mary
is not worship of Mary.
Does the Catholic Church have an official definition of worship?
I've never sung that song in Church...I'm sure that if you look deep enough you can find many things that make Catholics look bad...
Just for the record, I pulled that hymn out of the US Armed Forces Book of Worship, which is a compilation of Catholic, Protestant and Judaic Hymns. I'm assuming that the song is pretty mainstream since a panel of Catholic chaplains would have had to put it there. (Maybe someone else can attest to how common the hymn is.) I admit that the language in this hymn was the worst, but the language in the other hymns weren't all that different.
- sings to his wife
- praises his wife
- is devoted to his wife
- thanks his wife
does he worship his wife as God or is he a good husband?
I fail to see how this song elevates Mary to divinity, and if Catholics thought Mary was divine, why do they hide it? Wouldn't that be blasphemous. These arguments sound like what a Pharisee would say to Jesus.
You don't have to "elevate Mary to divinity" in order to give her worship that is due to God alone. I agree that there are earthly aspects of praise, thankfullness and devotion that I would heap upon my wife, but this song does not have in mind those earthly aspects:
She is mighty to deliver.
Psalm 18:2 The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
Call her, trust her lovingly.
Psalm 31:1 In You, O LORD, I put my trust; Let me never be ashamed; Deliver me in Your righteousness.
Gifts of heaven she has given...All the gifts she gives to men.
James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. (Did James forget the step where the gifts go through Mary?)
1 Timothy 2:5. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
There is no one else in the mediation process.
Jesus died on the cross. So you say that Jesus, ``knows not a thing and has no part in what's happening where we are.'' Interesting.
I'd be interested in how you would explain to Jesus that you consider his Mother a doorpost.
If Mary were without sin.. why would she know that she needs a savior?
The Church has a simple and sensible answer to this difficulty. It is this: Mary, too, required a Savior. Like all other descendants of Adam, by her nature she was subject to the necessity of contracting Original Sin. But by a special intervention of God, undertaken at the instant she was conceived, she was preserved from the stain of Original Sin and certain of its consequences. She was therefore redeemed by the grace of Christ, but in a special way, by anticipation. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception thus does not contradict Luke 1:47.God bless.
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Prot Theology: "But by a special intervention of God, undertaken at the instant she conceived"
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The biblical accounts clearly emphasize the miraculous nature of Mary's impregnation. Please explain why a second miracle, unrecorded in the Bible, needs to be posited. An omnipotent God can, and I believe did, miraculous preserve the Saviour from the taint of original sin at the point of Mary's impregnation.
And of course without Mary's parents there would have been no Mary and therefore no Christ. And without her grandparents, there would have been no parents. And don't forget Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And without Adam and Eve there would have been no Abraham. And of course without the dust of the earth there would have been no Adam.
Ok, it's not my intention to bash. I just don't find this particular part of his argument to be very compelling.
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