Hail Mary

[hermitcrab]

Hi… that is so kind of you, but my days of debating and questioning are long over now, thankfully. Old person now and simply in Jesus.

This hermitcrab has found a shell that will never be grown out of.

Too joyfully occupied with living with Jesus and living His love.

I listen and pray for all here.

Hiya Hermitcrab lol

a member on here recommended this book to me a while back and I’m reading it now…it’s basically a catholic and a protestant sitting down together and arguing their way through the majoy dividing issues surrounding Mary.

Even though I still find it seriously confusing the book’s helped me see other points of view loads and maybe think about changing some of my own ideas slightly…not all though If you have a spare few nights maybe

Mary: A Catholic-Evangelical debate.

amazon.com/Mary-Catholic-Evangelical-Debate-Dwight-Longenecker/dp/158743072X/ref=sr_1_1/102-3854562-9831351?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173028087&sr=8-1

S

 

[Eireann]

Hi Eireann

I seem to be ok with all forms of prayer by the living…my stumbling block is when it comes to praying to or through the living dead.

If I am praying then it would take the same ammount of time to just pray directly…

I read somewhere that God is glorified by His saints, anyway…

Saint Paul To The Thessalonians 1:10 When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be made wonderful in all them who have believed; because our testimony was believed upon you in that day.

**
Psalms 67:36** God is wonderful in his saints: the God of Israel is he who will give power and strength to his people. Blessed be God.

secondly this is just something I have never ever seen done or heard done by anyone in 23 years…so it is so alien to me that I found it hard to take on board. This is really at the core of my problems at the moment. I seem to associate any dead person, and praying to anyone ‘not of this world’ as some kind of blespheme…although I have stated elsewhere aswell that this is something that is obvioulsy a personal hangup rather than something I can support Biblically or morally.

I’d have the same problem if I thought they were dead, but are they ? **Luke 9:30 **And behold two men were talking with him. And they were Moses and Elias,
31 Appearing in majesty.

I think a fair few protestants that I know would also feel the same way simply because the idea of praying to the saints is just not practiced…unless I missed church that day lol. It’s certainly not something I’ve been brought up around…hence my reaction

Take care, S

Well I would probably be feeling the same way, but I’m from a Protestant mother, (convert) a Catholic father who I never saw in Church except for the funeral of my mother.
I often think I’d love to experience what a Protestant convert to the Catholic Church experiences.

I find it a bit odd that some people carried handkerchiefs and aprons from Paul to sick people, and the demons fled and diseases were healed, they didn’t go directly to God.

If I thought for one moment I wasn’t in the Church Jesus started, I’d be out of it in a whistle.
I guess when you a cradle Catholic you hardly think about it, so I suppose some of us do take it for granted.

I pray for Christian unity, it can’t be good from an onlookers point of view to see all the squabbling, and we can find some common ground, and the common denominator is Jesus.

Anyway a question, aren’t there places in the Bible about the prayers of just men having power with God ?

And God Bless you both in your search for truth, excuse me I’m on a rant.

 

[LilyM]

Hi Eireann

I seem to be ok with all forms of prayer by the living…my stumbling block is when it comes to praying to or through the living dead.

If I am praying then it would take the same ammount of time to just pray directly…

Well if you think of them as ‘living dead’ then they sound like zombies or something, no wonder you find it awkward to pray to them or through them.

They are not ‘living dead’, they are simply living. They have passed from living on earth to living more fully in heaven. Now the fact is Christ himself has commanded us all, as members of his body united by our kinship to him and to each other through him, to pray for each other.

That’s why he taught us to pray ‘OUR Father’, not ‘My Father’, and for ‘OUR daily bread’ and to ask for forgiveness for OUR debts/trespasses/sins rather than to talk about MY daily bread and MY debts/trespasses/sins.

Now this is as much for our benefit as anything else - it reminds us that we ARE all united as one body of Christ and that the needs and problems of any one member really affect us all.

Very simply we Catholics extend this notion to those members of the Body of Christ who are living in heaven as well as those on earth - after all, Christ has but the one body, has he not? If his body has both heavenly and earthly members, what of it? We are all still united to each other and those in heaven are just as surely affected by our concerns as we are by the concerns of others.

 

[Abira]

Well if you think of them as ‘living dead’ then they sound like zombies or something, no wonder you find it awkward to pray to them or through them.
.

lol lol ok wording corrected lol

as for the rest of your post; I think that even though I can acknowledge that on an intellectual/head level I cannot feel it in any emotional way. This is probably going to take me a long time to be able to think outside of everything I’ve been brought up to know.

S

 

[bpeters1]

Hi

I don’t know if this has been brought up before (and I apologize if it has!) but does anyone know if there’s any theological significance to the Hail Mary ending in “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death” rather than “deaths”?

I’ve prayed it since I was a small child and only recently came to notice that “death” is prayed in the singular. It seems to me that “deaths” would be more appropriate since (not to sound morbid, but…) the majority of people praying the Hail Mary at any given time are most likely doing to be dying during different “hours”. Is “hour” meant here in a non-literal manner? What single “hour” of death do we as Christians share?

Or is this simply a translation issue? Does “hora mortis nostræ” refer to individual hours of death? (I’m not a Latin buff!)

Thanks

 

[Eileen_T]

Each of us has an “hour” of our death, even though it is different for everyone.

That hour is the very last chance Satan has to wrench our soul away from God and he will make every attempt to do so. Who knows what goes on inside the mind of even an unconscious person?

I remember reading on a famous convert who was buried in an avalanche. After he was rescued he realised that he didn’t even think about praying the whole time as he was so panicked.

He then remembered the Hail Mary’s he had been taught and all the rosaries he had prayed. And was comforted to think Mary had been praying for him at a time when he couldn’t.

 

[HailMary]

Hi

I don’t know if this has been brought up before (and I apologize if it has!) but does anyone know if there’s any theological significance to the Hail Mary ending in “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death” rather than “deaths”?

I’ve prayed it since I was a small child and only recently came to notice that “death” is prayed in the singular. It seems to me that “deaths” would be more appropriate since (not to sound morbid, but…) the majority of people praying the Hail Mary at any given time are most likely doing to be dying during different “hours”. Is “hour” meant here in a non-literal manner? What single “hour” of death do we as Christians share?

Or is this simply a translation issue? Does “hora mortis nostræ” refer to individual hours of death? (I’m not a Latin buff!)

Thanks

John 2:4

(And) Jesus said to her, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? **My hour **has not yet come.”

In this context, it was referring to the entire public minstry of Jesus Christ. So the “hour” of death in the Angelic Salutation can mean those last hours when our senses are failing, everything goes dark, and we are tempted to despair by the Miserable One. You want Our Blessed Lady there like She was there at the Cross for Her Divine Son.

 

[bpeters1]

Thanks for your replies; wonderfully said. I’m still curious why it’s “hour”/“death” instead of “hours”/“deaths”, though. It seems to me like “hours”/“deaths” would make more sense (since each person undergoes unique temptations during his or her own final “hour”).

Does stating “now and at the hour of our death” in the singular rather than plural attest to a theological unity of which I am just being ignorant?

Just curious!

 

[Eileen_T]

All I can think of is that the Hail Mary is prayed privately as well as in groups.