Posted on 04/29/2017 8:02:13 AM PDT by NYer
As we pray for the success of Pope Francis’ trip to Egypt this weekend, a perfect prayer to use is the oldest known Marian prayer, which in fact, traces back to the pope’s host country.
The oldest known Marian prayer is found on an ancient Egyptian papyrus dating from around the year 250. Today known in the Church as the Sub tuum praesidium, the prayer is believed to have been part of the Coptic Vespers liturgy during the Christmas season.
The original prayer was written in Greek and according to Roseanne Sullivan, “The prayer is addressed to Our Lady using the Greek word Θεοτόκος, which is an adjectival form of Θεοφόρος (Theotokos, or God-bearer) and is more properly translated as ‘she whose offspring is God.'” This helps to prove that the early Christians were already familiar with the word “Theotokos” well before the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus ratified its usage.
Below can be found the original Greek text from the papyrus, along with an English translation as listed on the New Liturgical Movement website:
| On the papyrus, we can read: .ΠΟ ΕΥCΠΑ ΚΑΤΑΦΕ ΘΕΟΤΟΚΕΤ ΙΚΕCΙΑCΜΗΠΑ ΕΙΔΗCΕΜΠΕΡΙCTAC AΛΛΕΚΚΙΝΔΥΝΟΥ …ΡΥCΑΙΗΜΑC MONH …HEΥΛΟΓ |
And an English translation could be: Under your mercy we take refuge, Mother of God! Our prayers, do not despise in necessities, but from the danger deliver us, only pure, only blessed. |
More commonly the prayer is translated:
Beneath your compassion,
We take refuge, O Mother of God:
do not despise our petitions in time of trouble:
but rescue us from dangers,
only pure, only blessed one.
Several centuries later a Latin prayer was developed and is more widely known in the Roman Catholic Church:
| Latin Text Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus nostris, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta |
English Text We fly to Thy protection, O Holy Mother of God; Do not despise our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O Glorious and Blessed Virgin. Amen. |
The prayer is currently part of the Byzantine, Roman and Ambrosian rites in the Catholic Church and is used specifically as a Marian antiphon after the conclusion of Compline outside of Lent (in the older form of the Roman breviary). It is also a common prayer that has stood the test of time and is a favorite of many Christians, and is the root of the popular devotional prayer, the Memorare.
So did Jesus forget this when he said that John the Baptist was the greatest born of women (Matthew 11:11)?
Thank you, very much!
Must be.
But then again, a certain denomination is continually finding fault with what God said in His word and correcting it for Him and informing us of that.
Are you speaking of the Inspired Version?
The one also known as the JST?
https://www.lds.org/scriptures/jst?lang=eng
It is NOT considered to be ‘scripture’ by the powers that be in SLC.
But they STILL cling to the not ‘correctly translated’ KJV.
The Articles of Faith outline 13 basic points of belief of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Prophet Joseph Smith first wrote them in a letter to John Wentworth, a newspaper editor,
in response to Mr. Wentworth's request to know what members of the Church believed.
They were subsequently published in Church periodicals.
They are now regarded as scripture and included in the Pearl of Great Price.
|
THE ARTICLES OF FAITH
OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS History of the Church, Vol. 4, pp. 535—541
Joseph Smith |
|
Color coding explanation:
Added stuff... Changed stuff... Rearranged stuff... Removed stuff...
*(UNDERLINED stuff is the DISTRACTING reference on every tenth word or so that infuses LDS 'scripture' online.)
|
“These type of arguments are not very Christian”
Do an in depth study of the life and words of Jesus.
Use any translation you prefer, or use several.
Pray to the Holy Spirit to show give you wisdom for proper understanding.
(Replying as work allows here, so sorry this is delayed:) Once again, read in context, these prayers are asking her to pray to Jesus for various graces—particularly final perseverance—they do not imply that Mary saves us apart from intervening with Jesus. Nor do they imply that Mary is more merciful than Jesus. However, some people who falsely view God exclusively as a harsh judge can find it easier to approach Mary because of her maternal character, which is one reason for this type of language. And there are passages which speak of Jesus as a judge (for example, Acts 10:42); but since he is a just judge and not an unjustly harsh one, this does not exclude his mercy, which is emphasized in other passages (Matthew 9:13, etc.).
In addition to this, John refers to the members of the churches he wrote to as his "children" (1 John 1:12), so if Mary is John's "mother" as Christ said, any spiritual descendant of John--which all Christians today are via the NT--can rightly refer to Jesus as their ancestral "mother" in the faith as well.
By no means! God is a spirit; sex requires a body; and God was not incarnate before Christ's birth. Nor does God require physical procreation to create life, for in Genesis we see Him creating human life from the dust and then taking Eve from Adam's rib. But the image of Israel and the Church as God's spouse appears in Scripture, and this imagery is used of God's relationship with Mary in Luke 1. In 1:35 when Gabriel tells Mary that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and the power of the Most High will "overshadow" her, the word typically translated as "overshadow", ἐπισκιάσει, has a connotation referring to a Jewish nuptial canopy-like covering under which a bride and bridegroom were betrothed (along with other connotations tying it into the cloud over the Tent of Meeting and Ark of the Covenant in Exodus 40:34-35 and anticipating the cloud at the Transfiguration in the Synoptic Gospels, all passages in which the same word is used). Early Christian commentators reading the original text in Greek noticed these connections.
Mary was married to Joseph, legally his wife, when the angel came with the Annunciation.
She was married to Joseph at the time of the Annunciation and was faithful to him in the normal sense, but she was a consecrated virgin faithful to God in a spiritual sense analogous to the way that the Church is God's spotless bride (Ephesians 5:25-32, Revelation 19:7, 21:2f). This is why she expressed surprise at Gabriel's announcement: "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" (1:34) It would not make sense for her to ask this question if she and Joseph were having sex after their marriage, because in that case the answer to how she would become pregnant would be obvious.
Besides, how can you Catholics call Mary *God's wife*? You all have her listed as His mother. Did God marry His mother?
In one prayer we more specifically call her, "most beloved Daughter of the Eternal Father, admirable Mother of the Son, most faithful Spouse of the Holy Spirit." She is the spouse of God's eternal aspect in a symbolic/spiritual sense and the mother of God Incarnate in the literal sense, just as Christ has a divine nature as the Son of God as well as a human nature as the Son of David (Romans 1:3-4).
BTW, the only “Queen of Heaven” the Bible mentions, is in Jeremiah, chapters 7 and 44. I suggest you read them, if you’re allowed to read the Bible by yourself. In both these chapters, the queen of Heaven is referred to as an IDOL.
See my replies #530-531 with respect to your first paragraph. With respect to your second, in addition to the illegitimate Queen of Heaven Jeremiah mentions, referring to Astarte/Ishtar worship, there is also a legitimate Queen of Heaven in Revelation 12:1 clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. (Similarly, Scripture refers to both Lucifer and Jesus as the Morning Star--compare Isaiah 14:12 with Luke 10:18 and Revelation 22:16--a phrase used by pagan worshippers to refer to Astarte/Ishtar's male counterpart but reappropriated to refer to Christ in the NT: Christ is the true Morning Star where Lucifer is the counterfeit, per 2 Corinthians 11:14 where Satan masquerades as an angel of light. Similarly, Astarte/Isthar is an impostor, Mary is the true Queen of Heaven.) There is also the Queen Mother of Israel in 1 Kings 2:19, where we see King Solomon bowing to his mother before she sits down at his right hand, illustrating that there is a proper type of bowing that is not idolatrous. Early church commentators on Scripture considered both this and Queen Esther to be types of Mary.
Getting away from personal issues and back to your Scriptural point, it sounds like you are conflating the keys Jesus gives Peter in Matthew 16:19 with the binding and loosing authority he gives him in that verse and that he extends to the other apostles in 18:18. But he does not mention the keys in 18:18, so it can be debated whether binding and loosing should be viewed as distinct from the keys or as the explication of the keys. Either interpretation is compatible with the Catholic position, because the Catholic teaching is not that only Peter's successors have binding and loosing authority--indeed, the Catechism states that the entire college of bishops as the successors of the Apostles have this authority, per 18:18 where all the Apostles have this authority--but rather that Peter was given this authority first because he was the leader of the Apostles. We frequently see Peter exercising this leadership role throughout the Gospels (in addition to Matthew 16, we have passages such as Matthew 14:22f where Peter is the one who walks to Jesus on the water, Mark 9:5 where Peter is the one who speaks up at the Transfiguration, Luke 22:32 where Jesus singles out Peter as the one who will strengthen his brothers, John 20:5-6 where John waits for Peter to enter the tomb, John 21:15f where Jesus reinstates Peter as the one who will feed his "sheep" in emulation of Jesus the Good Shepherd, etc.), as well as various passages in Acts where he takes a leadership role (as the first to evangelize both the Jews and the Gentiles, as the one who speaks back to the Sanhedrin, as the one who denounces Ananias and Simon Magus, as the one who initiates the Council of Jerusalem--a leadership role Luke sums up by referring to "Peter and the other apostles" in 5:29).
The Catholic Church does not teach that this pre-eminent position among the Apostles places Peter and the Papacy beyond correction by the other bishops. The Pope is bound by Scripture, by the Tradition of the Church Fathers, and by the authority of the Magisterium--summed up by saying the Pope is bound by the Rule of Faith--and the other bishops are perfectly within their bounds to correct him when he violates this, just as Paul corrected Peter as recorded in Galatians, just as Cardinal Burke has warned Pope Francis that he can expect a formal correction if he does not respond to the dubia he was issued.
As for the first centuries of the church: yes, the other bishops also held authority, but they looked to the bishop of Rome to settle disputes. 1 Clement, written by a 1st-century bishop of Rome who was with Paul at Philippi and who succeeded Peter in that capacity after Peter and Paul's execution, wrote to the Corinthians about how the apostles designated successors and a policy of choosing their successors: "Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, and there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry." Irenaeus, the second bishop of Lyon, who studied under John's disciple Polycarp, refuted the Gnostic heretics John warned about by appealing to the authority of the Roman church and its successors: "Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say, ] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its pre- eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere. The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the Epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing [in his ears], and their traditions before his eyes. Nor was he alone [in this], for there were many still remaining who had received instructions from the apostles. In the time of this Clement, no small dissension having occurred among the brethren at Corinth, the Church in Rome despatched a most powerful letter to the Corinthians, exhorting them to peace, renewing their faith, and declaring the tradition which it had lately received from the apostles. . .To this Clement there succeeded Evaristus. Alexander followed Evaristus; then, sixth from the apostles, Sixtus was appointed; after him, Telephorus, who was gloriously martyred; then Hyginus; after him, Pius; then after him, Anicetus. Sorer having succeeded Anicetus, Eleutherius does now, in the twelfth place from the apostles, hold the inheritance of the episcopate. In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. And this is most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, and handed down in truth. . ."
He was surprised the point where an angel had to intervene, per Matthew 1. See my #530-531 for a fuller response on this topic.
Jesus actually says he has not "found" anyone in Israel with such great faith, indicating those people he has found/encountered in the previous part of his Galilean ministry. This does not include his mother who knew him from birth and knew full well about his ability to perform miracles (hence her inaugurating his public ministry by requesting a miracle from him in John 2 before the incident with the centurion), nor do I think Jesus means to place the centurion's faith above Moses or Elijah's or various other OT prophets with this statement. Jesus frequently used figures of speech and formulaic statements, which seems to be the case here. His main point is that the pagan Centurion's faith puts Jesus' Israelite doubters to shame.
Catholics do quote the Centurion every Mass before receiving the Eucharist, though, so we do take his example of faith and humility as a role model. And prior to that, in the opening part of the Mass, we ask our brothers and sisters who are present as well as "all the angels and saints" to pray for us, which would presumably include the Centurion.
The commandment not to kill prohibits that. There is no commandment, "Thou shalt not ask saints to pray for you." That is a man-made prohibition with no Scriptural authority behind it.
Nope, because none of those quotes in context teach the worship of Mary. A number of them are lifted without accreditation from a book by St. Alphonsus de Liguori which quite explicitly does not advocate worship of Mary. In general, those quotes are emphasizing the efficacy of Mary's intercessory prayer to her Son, as I mentioned in an earlier post.
See #530-531 for my comments on this topic.
No Mother of GOD in evidence.
Jesus is God, so this is an obvious deduction. But your comment illustrates why the early church councils felt the need to emphasize that Mary was the Mother of God (Θεοτόκος): denial of this logically leads to a denial of either Jesus' full divinity or his full humanity. To quote Cyril of Alexandria's response to the Nestorian heresy: "I am amazed that there are some who are entirely in doubt as to whether the holy Virgin should be called Theotokos or not. For if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, how is the holy Virgin who gave [Him] birth, not [Theotokos]?"
See #530-531 for my general response on this topic. But you raise another important technical point which is actually very interesting to me (and is something St. Thomas Aquinas pondered using different language). If God did *not* take an ovum from Mary, what sense does it make to call Jesus a descendant of David, the Son of David (per Matthew 1, Luke 3, Romans 1:3, etc.)? He didn't get his DNA from Joseph--no sperm was used--God doesn't need any to create life, as we saw in Genesis 2. So no adultery was involved. Mary gave consent to a spiritual espousal, not a carnal one.
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