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Posted on 12/07/2011 8:24:20 AM PST by Salvation
28. “Hail, full of grace”: literally the Greek text reads “Rejoice!”, obviously referring
to the unique joy over the news which the angel is about to communicate.
“Full of grace”: by this unusual form of greeting the archangel reveals Mary’s
special dignity and honor. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church “taught that
this singular, solemn and unheard-of-greeting showed that all the divine graces
reposed in the Mother of God and that she was adorned with all the gifts of the
Holy Spirit”, which meant that she “was never subject to the curse”, that is, was
preserved from all sin. These words of the archangel in this text constitute one
of the sources which reveal the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception (cf.
Pius IX, “Ineffabilis Deus”; Paul VI, “Creed of the People of God”).
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It should also be pointed out that the Bible did not exist in the form of a single volume as it does today, but as separate scrolls and codices each containing one book. And they were fairly expensive, since they were handwritten, even though —astonishingly—looking as though they were printed, so great was the skills of the scribes. Even a Church might not have all the books of the Bible. Until the 4th century, many were not likely to have St.John’s Revelation. In the 4th Century the Emperor did order the production of tens of bound volumes of Scripture. So probably some of the more important churches had already done the same thing. But not until the 380s do we find a definitive listing of the books of the canon.
You confuse extravagant language with the dogmas of the Church. First, note that the Virgin has always been regarded as an exaulted person, because she is, after all, the Mother of the Lord, not like Elizabeth or Hannah, the mother of a prophet. And if Jesus is divine but also a man, then her role in the hypostatic union is enormously important. As she is fully human, she is the guarantor of the humanity of the Lord. But as he is divine, her role is as a witness to the part that the Father and the Holy Spirit played in the incarnation. Many evangelicals today object to the title of Mother or God, which I grant you is misleading, and the Eastern Title “Theotokos, meaning God-bearer , is more accurate, for its implies that it is through her that God entered the world in the form of a human being. No wonder that the cult of Mary “took off,” in the 4th Century, after the Church repudiated the teachings of Arius. But long before this, the Church help up Mary in high honor, because she was, as I have said, the proof that Jesus was not a spiritual being but a man. Further, that she was EverVirgin because the birth of Jesus was unlike any other human birth. This was already being said in the 2nd Century, as a response to the Gnostics.
looks like someone needs to take their meds.
Here’s the way I was taught to understand Mary’s sinless status: God her Savior preserved her sinless. She did not do this on her own, it was done for her from her immaculate conception, so that she could be a pure mother for His only begotten Son, Who is our Savior. He lifts us out of the pit, but God prevented her from falling in, in the first place.
She is indeed special, among all created by God. She is not a goddess, she is human kept from all stain of sin by God, her Savior. She acknowledges this in the magnificat you quoted from Luke.
“Mary and the Saints are to be honored, not worshipped. However, their intercession can be extremely powerful and emulating their virtues can put us on the road to Heaven.”
It never ceases to amaze me how many anti-Catholic bigots can’t seem to grasp this concept.
Then again, bigots aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.
I am curious as to why you cling tighter to the unsubstantiated stuff that you were taught years ago, then to reading the Bible today and clinging to the KNOWN Word of God?
The Word of God in the Bible was established and codified by the same Church you decry. You want to take that gift but ignore everything else she offers you.
Wrong. The Word of God was established by the Holy Spirit of God. The books/letters of the New Testament were all written in the first Century. The Roman Catholic Church came to existance when the Christian church at Rome merged itself with the Roman government around the 4th Century.
I accept the gift of God in Christ Jesus. I reject any heresy that doesn’t square with the Word of God.
St. Luke specifically tells us that the angel Gabriel greeted Mary with the name/title: Full of Grace.
If the Blessed Mother who is full of grace is dead, then we’re all screwed.
Immaculate Conception Feast Day Blessings!
I don’t believe you are really curious. I think you already think you know it all.
Right under where it tells us to pray to "Mary."
8^\
Funny. Christ said that when you call your brother a "fool" (raca) it is the same sin in God's eyes as killing him. Ever wonder why so many Catholics can't grasp that?
No matter how tempted I am, or how great the justification, oe how perfectly it fits, I do not call anyone “fool.”
So, give us the post number of a Catholic calling anyone a fool.
No, I don’t know it all and I am curious as to why adults just blindly accept what was told to them as children and don’t do some personal study when they are older.
I can understand and respect children who accept on faith what those adults in authority told them to believe and why. I can’t understand adults who, when shown obvious contradictions between their beliefs and what they believe to be the Word of God, they take their beliefs (that they got when they were younger) over the Word of God.
Either the Bible is the Word of God, which would mean it is accurate, consistant, and not full of confusion, or it is just a partial construct, put togather by flawed mortal men with biases. IF the Bible is just a partial construct filled with biases, then how can you put ANY faith in the oral traditions of similar men born hundreds of years AFTER Christ? It makes no sense to me.
If you read the Church Fathers -- especially the Apostolic Fathers, the ones who knew the apostles personally such as Clement, Ignatius of Antioch, and Polycarp -- it is clear that the liturgical, theological and administrative structure of the Church was already in place.
And these men were hard at work compiling the Bible long before Carthage and St. Augustine.
We have thousands and thousands of pages of their writings and letters, it's not something that you can just assume didn't happen.
I was born to a Jewish mother and a non-Christian father. I became Catholic in my 30s.
So far, I haven’t seen any contradictions in my Catholic beliefs. I do not regard protestant anti-Catholic sola scriptura propaganda as proof of anything, as protestants disagree among themselves so often and flagrantly as to be laughable, not worth bothering wit.
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