Posted on 12/31/2007 11:46:28 AM PST by NYer
"Grace", we are taught by Holy Mother Church, "is a participation in the life of God" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1997) – and Mary, the Angel Gabriel declares, is filled with it! Filled with the life of God, participating in the life of God as no other human being in history. She alone is full of grace, she alone participates consummately in the life of God – even before she bore His Son.
Why?
Because she was to bear His Son. It was from Mary that Jesus took His Sacred Humanity. It was from Mary that He took His flesh, becoming like unto us in every way but sin.
How much closer can a human being be to God ... than to have given Him His very flesh ... enabling, yes, enabling God to become man!
Jesus' flesh was not different from Mary's – it was Mary's! ... just as his Divinity was not different from God's, but was, is, God's.
Ponder that a while ... and look at Mary anew, and her place in the scheme of things, in what theologians call, "the economy of Salvation."
She was not just "highly favored" as many current translations inexplicably corrupt the text ,"gratia plena".
Abraham was highly favored by God. Moses was highly favored by God. David was highly favored by God. But neither Abraham nor Isaac, neither Jacob nor David, and not even Moses, were "full of grace" --- that is to say, fully possessed of that participation in the very life of God with which Mary was endowed through her Immaculate Conception in the womb of her mother, St. Anne. She was to bear, to give flesh that was untainted by sin, to the Son of God
Who can possibly be closer to Jesus Christ both in Heaven and on Earth? Who is, ever will be, more one with Him ... than Mary, whose flesh is one flesh with Him since the moment of His conception in her womb, His Incarnation --- and will be for all eternity?
Who is like unto Mary? No man. No other woman. Only her Son.
That we should love her, who loved Him most, is loving Christ Himself in His Sacred Humanity, a humanity inseparable from His Divinity. In Him is Mary as she is in no other; in Mary is Christ as He is in no other!
We cannot love Mary enough. Nor can we separate her from her Son any more than we can separate from Jesus his Divinity from His Humanity.
Look at Mary anew! And if you do not stand back in stupefaction, you are a stone.
Hail Mary! She is full of Grace!
Ite ad Mariam! Go to Mary!
How like unto the Son, the Mother, and like unto the Mother, the Son!
Thanks, tiki!!
I lIke your tagline
You can’t back up your beliefs so you don’t like to be questioned >>
you still can’t keep your fat mouth shut, can You?
You’re welcome, I was reading about her at adoration the other day.
I stole the tagline from someone else’s post but I did ask.
‘You can’t back up your beliefs so you don’t like to be questioned.”
This is reading someone’s mind, which is breaking a Religion Forum rule for posters.
“O marvelous exchange! Man’s Creator has become man, born of a virgin. We have been made sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”
And it was thanks to Our Lady’s “yes.”
Protestants are missing a lot. We prayed for them tonight, that they would come to the fullness of faith.
A hearty “Amen” to your prayer.
How tragic for such a thread to become a magnet for those who hate Christ.
I see you have embraced the classic leftist tactic of projection: accusing those whom you hate of embracing what you have embraced.
But yet you reject the words of the angel Gabriel as recorded in Scripture.
Let Jesus into you life and you will be amazed.
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
Sane art critics consider this painting and this era the high-water mark of painting. It's hard to argue otherwise. Imagine where we'd be today without the modernist movement.
Like those idols of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln I've seen?
and get on your knees in front of the statues and pray to her...
To "pray to a saint" means asking that saint to pray for us; "pray," from the somewhat archaic usage meaning "to ask."
As far as the saints in heaven praying for us goes, it's right there in the Protestant version of the Bible.
Revelation 5:8And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.
It is tradition to honor the mother of Jesus only. NOT central to our faith. It is you who do not understand and that is OK. But attacks like you make are uncalled for and petty.
Many mothers looked to Mary as an example of motherhood......nothing wrong with that - at least these women didn’t look to Hollywood for examples of mothers to follow. Take a look at Brittany Spears and know that would be a disaster. Better to have a statue of Mary or the Holy Family to remind you of good things than pictures of Brittany Spears on the magazines that adorn your coffee tables.
Beautiful!
Thank you! I’m bookmarking this thread on my PC. :)
You forget about the many passages where the Lord commands the making of statues. For example: "And you shall make two cherubim of gold [i.e., two gold statues of angels]; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end; of one piece of the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be" (Ex. 25:18–20), or (1 Chr. 28:18–19), or Ezekiel 41:17–18.
God forbids the worship of images as gods, but he doesn’t ban the making of images. If he had, religious movies, videos, photographs, paintings, and all similar things would be banned. But, as the case of the bronze serpent (Num. 21:8–9) shows, God does not even forbid the ritual use of religious images.
It is when people begin to adore a statue as a god that the Lord becomes angry. Thus when people did start to worship the bronze serpent as a snake-god (whom they named "Nehushtan"), the righteous king Hezekiah had it destroyed (2 Kgs. 18:4).
A small correction:
We do mention Mary at every Mass when we all proclaim together the Creed:
“.....we believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His Only Begotten Son, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of Virgin Mary...”
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