ROBERT November 9, 2014 at 1:25 pm
If you all were simply saying, “hey Mary, say a prayer for me,” and then went about your business, it would be far less troublesome. You guys have popes dedicating the whole world to Mary, you make pilgrimages to pay homage to her, and you paint her as being better able to relate to us than Jesus. That’s just the start. It’s simply not a matter of asking Mary to pray for you and you know it. She displaces Christ in common RC piety, and that is a simple fact.
No, she doesn’t displace Jesus. However, Jesus gave her to us to be our mother. So, we treat her as our mother. We do this in obedience to Christ and to the Word of God in Scripture.
The problem is that you guys don’t know Scripture nor the power of God. Therefore, you deny the will of God with respect to how you should relate to Mary.
First, Scripture tells us to go beyond the letter to the Spirit of the Word:
2 Corinthians 3:6 (KJV)
6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
Because the truths of Scripture are spiritually discerned:
1 Corinthians 2:14
King James Version (KJV)
14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
So, let us go to the spirit of the text in question.
2nd:
John 19:26-28
26 When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! 27 Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home. 28 After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.
Catholics are taught to read Scripture as though God was speaking to us. Now, are you a beloved disciple of Christ? To put it differently, are you a disciple whom Jesus loves?
Catholics would answer, “Yes” to that question and therefore accept Jesus command to take Mary as our mother and bring her into our home (i.e. heart).
Then, you need to be aware of other verses in Scripture.
Genesis 3:15
15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
The seed of the Woman is not just Jesus. Let me show you:
Revelation 12:17
17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Do you consider yourself someone who keeps the Commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus? If so, then you are seed or a child of the Woman. That Woman is Mary. And therefore, Scripture says that all who fight the good fight on behalf of God in Christ, are children of Mary.
We don’t idolize her. We love her as Scripture teaches us to do. As Jesus commands us to do.
It doesn’t make her a goddess. It evidences a pagan belief that matter is evil and that Mary would be sullied by sexual relations that God says are holy and good more than anything else.
Well, the fact is that Mary is the Spouse of the Holy Spirit. It is well known, that Mary is the spouse of the Holy Spirit. What is not as well-known is that Mary is also the bride of Christ. Mary is in the figure, the heavenly Jerusalem, which in another figure is the heavenly church.
Therefore, it is not right that any man should have relations with the Bride of Christ, the Mother of God, the Spouse of the Holy Spirit.
The perpetual virginity of Mary uplifts Christ precisely because His mother is not sullied.
Ezekiel 44:2
Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)
2 And he[a] said to me, “This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it; for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut.
This gate is in a figure the Virgin Mary.
Psalm 118:19-21
Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)
19 Open to me the gates of righteousness,
that I may enter through them
and give thanks to the Lord.
20 This is the gate of the Lord;
the righteous shall enter through it.
21 I thank thee that thou hast answered me
and hast become my salvation.
This is why the Virgin Mary is in a figure, the mother of all the righteous:
Revelation 12:17
Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)
17 Then the dragon was angry with the woman,[a] and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. And he stood[b] on the sand of the sea.
St. Joseph, the righteous, is spiritually one of Mary’s children. Therefore, it is not appropriate for him to have sexual relations with his spiritual mother.
It doesn’t, there’s just no evidence for this biblically, nor can it be traced even to the earliest tradition.
The Bible seems explicit to me concerning the assumption of Enoch. The Bible also seems explicit in explaining why Enoch was assumed into heaven:
Hebrews 11:5 ….for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.
Now it seems to me that this sort of gives us a guideline or Biblical principle. Apparently, God will translate to Himself those who please Him. We know that we all await our translation to heaven body and soul, eventually, in the Resurrection. But apparently, God will translate some to Himself who please Him extraordinarily. Such as, Elijah and Moses ( 4 Kings 2:11; Jude 1:9).
Now, if He did this in the past, why would God not do it in the future. After all, God is absolute and does not change. And isn’t Scripture clear that Mary pleased God:
Luke 1:28 And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women….42 And she cried out with a loud voice, and said: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. 43 And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed art thou that hast believed, because those things shall be accomplished that were spoken to thee by the Lord.
Additional texts which support the translation of Mary to heaven body and soul are these:
Rev 11:19 And the temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of his testament was seen in his temple, and there were lightnings, and voices, and an earthquake, and great hail.
Rev 12:1 And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars:
John 17:24 Father, I will that where I am, they also whom thou hast given me may be with me; that they may see my glory which thou hast given me, because thou hast loved me before the creation of the world.
Psalms 132:8 Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place: thou and the ark, which thou hast sanctified.
I guess your next question is “what does the ark have to do with Mary?”
I’ll let Scott Hahn answer that:
The most prominent scriptural theme in the liturgical text of the Church when it comes to the feast of the Assumption, which we are celebrating happily today. You can see, if you had a missalette that the reading for the Vigil of the Assumption has some text that at first might seem to be rather odd and out of place. For instance, we had a reading from 1st Chronicles 15. It doesn’t mention Mary. All it talks about is how David assembled all Israel and Jerusalem to bring the Ark of the Lord to the place which he had prepared for it. …. And you’re thinking, “Why choose this text? There are literally thousands of texts to choose from, why a text about a box? And all of these guys jumping and singing and dancing around a box, and putting it in a tent and then singing and dancing and offering sacrifices and blessing people in the text?”
Kind of unusual. But then for the Responsorial Song in the Vigil Mass from Psalm 132, the responsorial is , “Lord, go up to the place of your rest, you and the Ark of you holiness.” Now, this isn’t Noah’s ark, this is the Ark of the Covenant. We’ll get a little bit more into the background in just a minute, but why the Ark of the Covenant, and this is an ancient liturgical tradition. These are texts that have been included in the liturgy of the Assumption as far back as we can trace it, and this is like 7th Century, 6th Century. We can’t trace it back much farther than that, but all this historical evidence points to the fact that this has been celebrated from ancient times. So you can’t just say, “Well it popped out of nowhere in the 6th and 7th Century,” because back then Churches were liturgically hyper- conservative. I mean you didn’t just innovate and then say, “Well, we’ve got a new feast.” Then all of a sudden have it catch on in the Church all around the world.
It doesn’t necessarily, it just goes against Scripture.
No, it doesn’t:
Romans 5:14King James Version (KJV)
14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinnedafter the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
- Theotokos – how mary being mother of God makes her a goddess escapes me.
Properly understood, it doesn’t. ….
We understand it properly. It is you who by denying the fact that she gave birth to God, deny the Divinity of Christ. We’ve had this conversation before.
