Posted on 01/10/2011 10:41:33 AM PST by NYer
Let me share a little bit of a Hymn some of you may recognize, “The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord...”
No one on earth, no human soul in heaven has anything to do with it. Not a single bit of tradition. No one to stand between me and my Savior.
It is Jesus Christ and me.
No ... and don't twist my words. Have you ever asked anyone to pray for you? Then you addressed a solemn petition to your friend. Asking someone to pray for you is far more serious than asking your friend to join you for drinks at the local bar.
And the person who writes the article did far more than just ask Mary to "pray for her". Get it yet?
I'm glad, though, that you have such confidence that you can stand on your own, without any friends (on earth or in heaven) to help you.
Me, I'm a bit diffident when approaching the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, so if I have a friend (or several friends) by my side to encourage me and steady my trembling knees, that is a good thing.
O Mary Conceived Without Sin, Pray For Us Who Have Recourse to Thee. St Anthony of Padua, Pray For Us. St Therese of Lisieux, Pray For Us.
ABSOLUTELY FALSE. I have ZERO confidence that I can stand on my own.
I put ONE HUNDRED PERCENT confidence in the righteousness of CHRIST.
If you think Christ is not a friend in Heaven...well, that is a fairly large problem for you.
Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won,
With all her sons and daughters
Who, by the Master’s hand
Led through the deathly waters,
Repose in Eden land.
Interestingly enough, the author (an Anglican minister and Oxford man) wrote another poem called "The Knight of Intercession". Make of it what you will.
Christ is the Good Shepherd, but also the Righteous Judge, who will come at the end of time when the heavens thunder and the earth gapes. I ask my friends to help me so that I may be fit on that day to stand with the sheep - even the least of them - and not the goats.
Your friends are not the help you should seek. They will not make you fit. Only righteousness makes one fit in the direct presence of an all-powerful, all-just and all-holy God.
Righteousness is to be found in no other. "There is NO OTHER NAME UNDER HEAVEN" (Isaiah). Christ's blood is what will save you. Don't look elsewhere.
I posted my petition to God and he brought to mind the torn temple veil and promise of the advocate with the Father. As for ETWN, I can’t get it since i shut off cable TV.
I went thru the Bible with quite a few translations available with an open mind with the notion if I was shown some justification for Mariology as the Catholics confess it, I would begin to take their claims seriously. (Being as the Bereans who checked every doctrine via scripture to see if would be true) I never found any direct evidence of scriptural support for the “traditions and writings” of various church theologians and popes who affirmed Mariology and proclaimed her sinlessness and ongoing intercessional authority to be true Christian doctrines.
On the otherhand I would never state the belief that all Catholics are nonchristians just like Catholics need to be careful about stating that all Protestants are “anathema” or outside of Grace. RN mom of 7 has a very compelling story on her FREEPER page about how she was drawn from Catholicicsm to a Protestant belief system. I’ve read other unique stories about how some found Christ via a confession of faith and the partaking of the Catholic Eucharist. Other stories I’ve read spoke of Catholics and Protestants joining Eastern Orthodox rites.
My point is, the Holy spirit blows where it wills, drawing the children of God into this ministry or that ministry, may draw some to be Catholics, others Protestant, even some Orthodox. We raise theological dust and forget the Christ who loves us and the Father who made us, but it is the Holy Spirit that carries that dust away ....for the Shekinah glory of God shall be made manifest, the knowledge of that Glory shall cover the Earth as the waters cover the seas!
The purpose of church and fellowship is to help one another towards righteousness. "Comfort one another and edify one another" as St. Paul says in 1st Thessalonians.
Of course you do. The only difference is that our communion extends to the Church Triumphant (in Heaven) as well as the Church Militant (on Earth) and the Church Suffering (in Purgatory).
This is veering from the topic at hand.
Yes, God's love is to be displayed. The community of saints on earth (whom Paul is referring to) needs edification because it is still enduring the sinful effects of the world, but this in no way extends to depending on one another when it comes time to stand before an Almighty God.
Christ's death alone has provided the righteousness needed to stand in the day of Judgment.
wu, your words have called a Biblical story to my mind.
Jesus was going about curing the lame and the blind and the lepers. There was a man who was a paralytic and he wasn’t able to go on his own to seek Jesus for a healing. So his friends took the initiative for him. They made a hole in the roof and lowered his pallet until he was placed at Jesus’ feet. It was there that he was cured.
It was his friends who were faithful and cared for him who made it possible for him to meet Jesus and to be cured.
His friends were intercessors for him.
The same can be said for the story of the centurion who sent his foot soldier, as an intercessor, to Jesus to ask for a cure for his daughter.
Yes, and that's why we ask the saints in heaven to edify and encourage us -- because they no longer endure the sins of the world. And Christ is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. So they, who are in heaven, help us to endure.
No, Paul was saying the believers on earth should edify each other. You are reading more into the scripture than what is clearly meant.
You have given me more proof that Catholics do not pray only for the saints to intercede for them. They pray for the saints theselves to edify and encourage them, believing that those who have already passed on have power to do so.
This is similar to the buddhists in Singapore I encountered who pray for their dead ancestors' help in life.
Hate to break your bubble....but she believes all the more in being born again through Baptism!
Christians do things for each other all the time and they are exhorted by the scripture to do so.
If you are somehow trying to use your examples to prove that these people asked for help from beyond the grave, there is no inkling in your examples that this is true.
And at the Transfiguration, Christ conversed with Moses and Elijah, long dead by earthly reckoning. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
But this does not mean they have authority to help us.
The point of that scene of the transfigured Moses and Elijah may be opposite of that which you intend...the point was to censure Peter when he mistakenly gave Moses and Elijah too much attention...and God certainly never told Peter to pray to them.
It's so easy to depend on other sources than God in prayer. As I pointed out...this is common in religions like Buddhism and easy to slip into..it dilutes dependence on God and it's easy to go from there to idolatry.
However, Jesus told us how to pray. He never told us to pray to anyone other than God.
"Authority"?!! They're still bound by love of neighbor (that includes us!), as they are by love of God -- that's why "the greatest of these is charity", because faith will become knowledge, hope will be fulfilled, charity is eternal.
You seem to picture Heaven as structured something like IBM or a government bureaucracy, isolated individuals jockeying for position and indifferent to the fate of others -- we see the saints in Heaven as extended family -- "the Communion of Saints"!
It's so easy to depend on other sources than God in prayer. As I pointed out...this is common in religions like Buddhism and easy to slip into..it dilutes dependence on God and it's easy to go from there to idolatry.
Now, that's just silly!
And that includes crossing back over into the temporal to act in response to our petitions? I think not.
Now, that's just silly!
No, that's reality.
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