Hail Holy Queen. I've been interpreting wrong

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Loboto-Me said:
I never thought I would say this 😦 In all of my staunch, proper, catholic beliefs, I never thought I would ever discover in this time in my life, that I have a “Marian Complex”.
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Thomas Aquinas had trouble believing in the Immaculate Conception, so take comfort! 🙂 You have faith in the Church’s teachings; you’re just trying to get your brain to where the Church’s teachings lie right now. That’s just coming to understand things. But you accept these Catholic teachings by faith where you cannot yet by understanding, so you’re not at fault at all :). I personally also have one or two teachings of the Church that right now I’m accepting by faith but don’t have the understanding to grasp their point, and right now my sense of logic contradicts the Church’s teaching. So I trust the teaching on faith and I trust that Jesus will bring my reason along to catch up in this life if He sees fit :).
Loboto-Me said:
My eyes are actually moist thinking about it because before this, I thought I was in tune with every single thing the Church asks of me. I never ever thought I’d have a problem with anything and now God opens my eyes to a spiritual struggle. I hope this is a grace that He’s sending me, hoping and praying that this is a teaching moment for me.

The irony of all this is that I just started on day 2 of the second novena of the 54 day novena.
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Perhaps He wants to bring you closer to Mary through this novena! I don’t know; just throwing that out there.
Loboto-Me said:
Leif, I’ll have to read and re-read your post and re-read it again and again. At the moment, although I want to understand it the way you and St-Louis understand Mary, I just can’t put her in that high a place as St-Louis does :(.
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Often the way I state things is unnecessarily complex. I wish I had the gift of being more concise and clear, but my posts sprawl and are often complicated. You’re not the first person who’s had difficulty with this, I assure you! I’m also pretty darn enthusiastic though, so I’ll be glad to keep trying to clarify that post with shorter ones :).
Loboto-Me said:
I like to think that I love Mary like I love a mother. I understand that Jesus loves her deeply and His wish is for us to love her just as deeply, yet I can’t fathom her as anything other than my sweet mother who will pick me up and point me toward her Son, like a mother who loves her Son would.

I think when we have a certain image in our minds as to exactly who someone is, we have a hard time with it if someone describes them otherwise. I’ve always pictured her as the mediator between Jesus and I when I have a special request, for me or for souls or for other people. I always thought that she could maybe convince Jesus for me.
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All of this is correct. She is all this.

One of the key ideas I was trying to get across is that she embodied all virtues perfectly because she was “Full of Grace.” She resembled her Son as closely as anyone can, because she never sinned but was perfectly virtuous. She was more Christlike than any of us ever could be!

Therefore when we start becoming like Jesus, we are also becoming like Mary, because Mary is so very like Jesus. If we make Mary’s life the example for our lives and pray that we might become like her and possess her virtues, we start behaving as she would behave, virtuously. As a consequence, our lives become her life and we become holy.

That is what St. Louis means when he prays, “Let thy soul be in me to magnify the Lord.” What he means is, “Please pray that I might become perfect like you.” Becoming like Mary is becoming like Christ, and we should want to be like her because every virtue was perfect in her.
 
Verbum_Caro said:
Peter,

That’s interesting. Why do you think some translations omit the second salve? (Not to be a conspiracy theorist about it.)
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Probably the same reason that many other prayers and Mass texts have been “updated” to “simplify and remove unnecessary repetitions” make them sound more like “contemporary conversational English” rather than “slavishly Latinate”. As we see here and elsewhere, whilst the updaters understood what the prayer means, they have intentionally or unintentionally “dumbed down” the prayer and even introduced an ambiguity which people unfamiliar with the original version may misinterpret.

And before some pedantic Latinist corrects me, yes I realise that I should have said that Mater, vita, dulcedo and spes are all in the vocative case (used for nouns referring to the person whom one is addressing) not the nominative case. But as except for masculine Second Declension nouns, none of which are involved here, the vocative is identical in form to the nominative, my point stands.
 
Loboto-Me said:
I call my husband “Sweety” or “Sweets” and he’s definitely a manly man, so I have no problem calling Jesus “My Sweetness”.
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But I guess you would have a problem with one of your husband’s mates calling him “sweetie” or "sweetness’, or with a man calling our Lord that. I certainly would.
 
Lief_Erikson said:
Thomas Aquinas had trouble believing in the Immaculate Conception
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Sorry to nitpick but this incorrect statement is often used as an argument against Catholicism, which I know you didn’t intend.

St Thomas Aquinas believed and assented to the Catholic Truth that our Lady was free from original sin from the first moment of her existence as a human being. His error was that he thought that a human being does not come to life in the womb until the “quickening” when his mother can first feel him moving at about 4 months. Many learned men thought likewise until the early 19th century when biological science conclusively proved that a unique individual human life begins at conception when a sperm cell from his father unites with an ovum cell from his mother.
 
roveau said:
Just chiming in to say that I always took it to refer to Mary. Now I can see that it can also be referring to Jesus.

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Add me. This is a really interesting thread. Thanks for posting it Loboto:)
 
Loboto-Me said:
Wow, it seems I’ve been interpreting it RIGHT afterall… or at least I have father Serpa who agrees with my view that Mary is the mother of Mercy (Jesus Himself who is our life, our sweetness and our hope)

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=428187
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Loboto-Me,

I think that might just be an “off the cuff” opinion from Fr. Serpa. I’m not sure he analyzed the prayer closely. As noted above the Latin can only be read in one way, and the traditional commentaries (St. Alphonsus, for instance) aren’t bashful about pointing out that the prayer is ascribing to Mary the title of “our life”, etc. Fr. Serpa’s first instinct was the correct one, I think. Although, maybe instead of hyperbole it would better be described as devotional language?

VC
 
It’s hard to regard Mary as “Our life” if indeed she is not “Our Life”. This however does not mean that the prayer of the church is at fault, or St Alphonsus, it merely indicates that there are deficiencies in our devotions.

What can often be forgotten is that the church IS the Body of Christ. The physical body of Christ depended upon Mary for life. Her womb nourished him while he grew, she brought him into the world, she fed him milk from her breast and reared him as a young child.

She does all of these things for us also. When we are new born babes of Christ and are being fed the milk of the word it is Mary who is intricately involved in the dispensing of these graces from heaven. She nurtures us as we grow in the faith just like she did the infant Jesus.

The body of Christ cannot grow without Mary. Therefore Mary deserves our particular devotion which is in no way opposed or detracting from the devotion of Jesus but is simply another way of expressing devotion to Jesus and to God.

The other aspect is that Mary rules in glory as Queen over heaven and earth. Much of the symbolism of royal authority is lost on us but it harks back to the days when the vassal’s life depended upon his favour from the King.

As Mary is sovereign Queen with almost complete power over her domain, therefore it is almost impossible for us to venerate her enough, or to overestimate her power, or to underestimate our own desperate need for her favours. This is why the Church grants her special status and why we give to her hyperdulia whereby she is reverenced above every other created thing.

Sadly we have all to one degree or another been poisoned by the infiltrations of protestantism. Today virtually every kind of reverence for any holy thing has been lost to protestants. They allow only Latria which is worship of God. What they fail to understand is that everything is relative. When we esteem the Saints and Angels so HIGHLY and Mary EVEN HIGHER then our worship of God is the HIGHEST esteem by a matter of degrees.

Whereas if we lack regard for holy creatures and things then our worship of God itself becomes smaller.

So by regarding Mary with the highest of esteem we therefore love honour and worship God all the more because we understand that he is inestimably greater than Mary. So if the Saints are not High and Mary Higher then God does not need to be very high in order to be the Highest.

In the Annunciation the highness of God was referred to many times.
“2 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest:”
“the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee”

Then it is said
“For he that is mighty hath done to me great things”

Then it is said
“My soul doth magnify the Lord”

So it is the work of the Highest to do great things for Mary. By doing these great things for Mary HER SOUL actually enlarges and makes greater the LORD, the HIGHEST. The Highest is made Higher, larger, more magnificent.

That is why Catholics pray the magnificat because they understand that in magnifying Mary that God himself is magnified as a consequence. This principle was show forth by the Power of God himself.

Therefore by making Mary our life, by consequence our soul is joined with hers and we magnify the Lord together in unity and singularity of purpose.
 
excubitor, I like your way of thinking. It does make it much easier to say the words of the prayer and associate them to the Holy Mother when you explain it like you just did.

She doth magnify the Lord
 
Hmmn…if this is true, then the St. Anne Novena I’ve been saying isn’t correct…

“Good St. Anne, mother of her who is our life, our sweetness and our hope, pray to her for us and obtain our request.”
 
In the Queen of Heaven,

When we pray the Salve Regina, we are not refering to Jesus as “our life, our sweetness, and our hope…”, but we are refering them to Mary. Of course, there isn’t anything heretical in calling Jesus that but, the Salve Regina is completely referred to Mary. Nobody can say that we shouldn’t call Her our life becuase the CHurch itself accepted this prayer. Luther already called this prayer ‘scandolous’ as he pretended that it attributed to the Blessed Virgin the attributes of God, which, of course, we know it doesn’t.

I mean, why scruple to adress the Blessed Virgin with your whole sincerity? How can God be pleased when we do not do our best efforts to please the Blessed Virgin? Aren’t we supposed to honor Her with hyper-dulia? We give to the Siants the honor called dulia yet, we give to the Blessed Virgin the honour of hyperdulia.

I said I’m working on a project dedicated to the Blessed Mother. I’ll be back.
philipmarie

For love of the Blessed Virgin.
 
Loboto-Me said:
excubitor, I like your way of thinking. It does make it much easier to say the words of the prayer and associate them to the Holy Mother when you explain it like you just did.

She doth magnify the Lord
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I would highly recommend that you read Saint Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion to Mary. excubitor’s explanation is Saint Louis’ explanation, and it was one of the biggest influences on the late John Paul II, and it changed my life- the way I approach my Lord, His Church, and the sacraments. I am far less afraid to approach Mary with the honor she deserves, just like they did at Cana.

amazon.com/True-Devotion-Blessed-Virgin/dp/1905574304/ref=pd_sim_b_7

If you don’t have the money to buy this book, send me a PM While it’s available free online, everyone needs a copy of this to hold in their hands.
 
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