Posted on 02/24/2010 11:17:16 AM PST by Pyro7480
III. Mary is our Mother and Queen of the New Davidic Kingdom
John 19:26 - Jesus makes Mary the Mother of us all as He dies on the Cross by saying "behold your mother." Jesus did not say "John, behold your mother" because he gave Mary to all of us, his beloved disciples. All the words that Jesus spoke on Cross had a divine purpose. Jesus was not just telling John to take care of his mother.
Rev. 12:17 - this verse proves the meaning of John 19:26. The "woman's" (Mary's) offspring are those who follow Jesus. She is our Mother and we are her offspring in Jesus Christ. The master plan of God's covenant love for us is family. But we cannot be a complete family with the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Christ without the Motherhood of Mary.
John 2:3 - this is a very signifcant verse in Scripture. As our mother, Mary tells all of us to do whatever Jesus tells us. Further, Mary's intercession at the marriage feast in Cana triggers Jesus' ministry and a foreshadowing of the Eucharistic celebration of the Lamb. This celebration unites all believers into one famiy through the marriage of divinity and humanity.
John 2:7 - Jesus allows His mother to intercede for the people on His behalf, and responds to His mother's request by ordering the servants to fill the jars with water.
Psalm 45:9 - the psalmist teaches that the Queen stands at the right hand of God. The role of the Queen is important in God's kingdom. Mary the Queen of heaven is at the right hand of the Son of God.
1 Kings 2:17, 20 - in the Old Testament Davidic kingdom, the King does not refuse his mother. Jesus is the new Davidic King, and He does not refuse the requests of his mother Mary, the Queen.
1 Kings 2:18 - in the Old Testament Davidic kingdom, the Queen intercedes on behalf of the King's followers. She is the Queen Mother (or "Gebirah"). Mary is our eternal Gebirah.
1 Kings 2:19 - in the Old Testament Davidic kingdom the King bows down to his mother and she sits at his right hand. We, as children of the New Covenant, should imitate our King and pay the same homage to Mary our Mother. By honoring Mary, we honor our King, Jesus Christ.
1 Kings 15:13 - the Queen Mother is a powerful position in Israel's royal monarchy. Here the Queen is removed from office. But now, the Davidic kingdom is perfected by Jesus, and our Mother Mary is forever at His right hand.
2 Chron. 22:10 - here Queen Mother Athalia destroys the royal family of Judah after she sees her son, King Ahaziah, dead. The Queen mother plays a significant role in the kingdom.
Neh. 2:6 - the Queen Mother sits beside the King. She is the primary intercessor before the King.
Venerate, worship, adore...
Six of one a half dozen of the other.
When you bow and kneel and pray you are engaging in worship.
Call it what you want, it is worship. A rose by any other name...
The Catholic Church teaches that the entire body of the word of God must be considered, not any single excerpted phrase or verse. It also teaches that within the Scripture there is a hierarchy in which the Old Testament was preparatory for, and was fulfilled by the resurrection of Christ. The Letters and Epistles were to teach and clarify the Word, not to expand or add to the Gospel and the highest lever are the actual words of Jesus and the eye witness accounts of the Synoptic Gospels. This is reflected in the three readings of the Mass.
This teaches us two important things:
1) If you can't support your claim from the Synoptic Gospel and reinforce it from the letters of Paul, James or Revelation you probably have it wrong.
2) John of Patmos is seriously misunderstood when taken out of context.
Six of one a half dozen of the other."
That simply proves your English skills are as weak as your understanding of Scripture.
I didn't insult you, so why did you insist on insulting me? I simply made an observation. I didn't challenge your intelligence or your Enblish skills.
All I know is when you bow down before a statue of a creation, you are engaged in the worship of that creation.
You may disagree with my observation or my conclusion, but it is as valid as your claim that you are not "worshiping" Mary when you treat her as some kind of god. It is an observation. The scripture is clear that you are not to make graven images and bow down to them. Now maybe you believe that particular scripture is not relevant anymore, but I do. God is the same yesterday today and forever.
Main Entry:
| worship | |
| Part of Speech: | noun |
| Definition: | honoring, glorification |
Synonyms: |
adoration, adulation, awe, beatification, benediction, chapel, church service, deification, devotion, exaltation, genuflection, glory, homage, honor, idolatry, idolization, invocation, laudation, love, offering, praise, prayer, prostration, regard, respect, reverence, rite, ritual, service, supplication, veneration, vespers |
My comments were valid in that you don't get to define the terms. The Catholic Church agrees that graven images are not to be worshiped, but the definition of a graven image probably disagrees with yours. A graven image is one that is worshiped, not one that represents and serves to help focus the mind on that which it represents. In the he Old Testament, God ordained or permitted the making of images that pointed symbolically toward salvation by the incarnate Word: so it was with the bronze serpent, the ark of the covenant, and the cherubim. The Catechism teaches;the Christian veneration of images is not contrary to the first commandment which proscribes idols. Indeed, "the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype," and "whoever venerates an image venerates.
You can post all of the google excerpts you want but the Catholic Church does NOT worship images, Mary or Saints.
Telling the truth is not a smear. The worship of Mary is nothing short of idolatry and goddess worship. This is forbidden by the Scriptures, not supported by them, as the original poster twisted the Scriptures to try to prove.
That said, when the person "praying to" Mary or another saint specifically and explicitly, in the course of said "prayer", requests Mary or the other saint to "Pray for me" or "Pray for us" I suggest that is strong evidence that the person is NOT "adoring" Mary or the other saint.
From my point of view they look exactly alike.
I think that illustrates a flaw in your point of view.
Ewe? Ewe is a female sheep ...
Perhaps when you kneel, you're always worshipping ... but worship is an act of the mind. Rather than tell someone what's going on in his mind, it would be better to ask. It would be better still to refrain from calling him a liar if his answer is not what one expects.
“The author above demostrates, using Scripture, that just as the earthly Davidic kingdom had a queen, the eternal Kingdom, which has no end, as Luke 1 states, which is ruled by THE Son of David, has a queen.”
There were concubines in the earthly Davidic kingdom as well. Does that mean there are concubines in the eternal kingdom?
Why do you conclude that those are acts of "adoration", rather than, say, reverence, respectful love, or merely circumstance. (I've been known to kneel to pray by the side of my bed before. I'm not worshipping my bed.)
Why do you pray to Mary to pray for you? Is God incapable of hearing your prayer?
And if Mary is nothing more than an intermediator between you and God, why all the praise heaped upon her?
Does not the glory for her work belong to God and God alone?
So when I stand up and put my hand over my heart for the national anthem at a football game, isn't that "worship," too?
BTW, the word "worship" is ambiguous. It means "to greatly honor" (in the antique form of the wedding vows, the groom promised to "worship" his wife!)
Theologians call the worship due to God, "latria". We do not offer "latria" to Mary or anyone else except God. From our point of view, bowing to someone or singing a song about them is not necessarily latria. Latria involves offering sacrifice, for one thing.
The word in Hebrew means "idols" not "graven images". The KJV got it wrong. The most sacred object in the Hebrew religion, the Ark of the Covenant, had two "graven images" of cherubim on top of it, on God's express orders. And you can bet that the Ark was bowed to, knelt before, carried around in ceremonious fashion, etc.
For the same reason I pray to my friends here on Earth to pray for me ... and for the same reason I pray for my friends here when they pray to me.
There are many "models" of the Church ... Family (as in, "dear brother in Christ ...") is often overlooked, but my favourite.
Family look out for each other.
I think the rest of our questions are irrelevant.
It could be. There are a lot of objects of worship. Football can be an object of worship. Money, a car, a rock star.
What I see objectively in all this Mary worship is the same thing I see in those who worship rock stars or movie stars.
BTW, the word "worship" is ambiguous. It means "to greatly honor" (in the antique form of the wedding vows, the groom promised to "worship" his wife!)
True, it is ambiguous. So why do you recoil when I say it sure looks like you "worship" Mary?
Quite honestly I don't see much difference in the way you "worship" Mary and the way you worship her Son.
When you pray to Mary and your prayer is answered, do you thank God or do you thank Mary?
Same argument can be made against asking any other Christian to intercede for you, yet we know that's Biblical.
And if Mary is nothing more than an intermediator between you and God, why all the praise heaped upon her?
Saints are a little more than just intercessors, they are also exemplars of heroic virtue and examples of how to lead a Christian life. And the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph are singularly praiseworthy because of their parental love for Our Lord.
Does not the glory for her work belong to God and God alone?
Yes, with a qualification. Like us, she "has nothing she has not received [from God]" (to quote St. Paul). So all her merit is due to God. "God, in crowning the saints, crowns nothing but his own merits" -- St. Augustine.
Remember, though, we are not Calvinists. We think people have the free will to refuse grace, and, with the aid of grace, the free will to accept and cooperate with grace. The glory for Mary's good use of her free will, most particularly her response to the angel, "let it be done to me according to your word", is fittingly God's and hers as well.
Don't confuse honoring God's saints with worshipping a pagan deity. God's saints are his masterpieces. Just as an artist appreciates praise for his work, God appreciates praise offered to his best work.
Pagan deities are either demons-in-disguise or imaginary. Not the same thing at all.
We have Mary sacrificed at Mass?
I don't get down on my knees, prostrate myself and sing a bunch of praises to my friends before I ask them for their prayers. If they are my friends, they are my friends, not my superiors, they are sinners like myself saved by the grace of God and the glory for any work they do on my behalf belongs to God.
I don't spend hours upon hours day after day saying "Hail Frank, the Lord is with thee..." before and after I make my prayer request known.
I just make the prayer request and if it gets answered, then I praise God.
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