Help about Mary

[R_C]

I feel that there’s TO much emphasis put on Mary that it detracts from Gods due. So much that I believe Mary herself would rather we focus on God.

Your worry is disproved by the Church herself. Just look at the solemn liturgy of the Church! The Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist! Consider the penitential act:

…therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

See how the Church asks for Our Lady first, then the Angels most perfect, then the Church Triumphant, then the Church Militant, to pray for us in order to obtain forgiveness of our sins?

Consider the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer 1)!

In communion with those whose memory we venerate, especially the glorious ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ, and blessed Joseph, her Spouse, your blessed Apostles and Martyrs…and all your Saints: we ask that through their merits and prayers, in all things we may be defended by your protecting help.

The Church Militant asks for God’s mercy and favor by reminding Him in first place (in primis) of our communion with Our Lady, not just mentioned casually (Mary) but with great reverence (“the glorious ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ”). Notice how saint Joseph is mentioned as “her Spouse”, honored because of who he was in relationship to Our Lady, not to Our Lord! Did the Church err and “take something away which was due to God”, by honoring blessed Joseph as the Virgin’s Spouse rather than, say, the Lord’s foster father?

Consider the Angelic Salutation, the Ave Maria, one of the Church’s most illustrious prayers! “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death”. Why pray such stuff, if it is better to pray directly to God? Consider the Angelus, which the Holy Father prays in public with his own flock at St Peter’s! “Pray for us, o Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ”. Such is the extent of her interecession! The Pope, Christ’s Vicar, and the Church Universal, ask Mary to make us, by her prayer, worthy of the promises of Christ!

And how does anyone get that the Holy Spirit is Mary’s spouse??? The Holy Spirit is God, and isn’t the Church his bride?

Ok, no. The Holy Spirit alone isn’t God. The Blessed Trinity is God. God in three persons. How do the three persons relate to the Blessed Virgin?

God the Father is, indeed, her father.
God the Son is, indeed, her son.
What about God the Holy Spirit? Well, her union with the Holy Spirit is such that she conceives the Son of God. Indeed, an angel of God specifically tells her: " You will conceive and give birth to a son…Spiritus Sanctus superveniet in te (the Holy Spirit shall overtake you)"; and the same angel tells St. Joseph: “what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” What is the Holy Spirit’s relationship with the Blessed Virgin, then? It is essentially a spiritual matrimony. Mind you, the Holy Spirit speaks to His Bride throughout many books of the Old Testament! Consider Psalm 45:

A wedding song. My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.

Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.

At your right side stands the queen, wearing jewelry of finest gold from Ophir!

The king is enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for he is your Lord.

The rich among the people will seek your favor.

The bride, a princess, looks glorious in her golden gown.

What a joyful and enthusiastic procession as they enter the king’s palace!

Your sons will take the place of your fathers: you shall make them princes over all the earth.

They shall remember your name throughout all generations. Therefore shall people praise you for ever; yes, for ever and ever.

Consider the Canticle of Canticles:

Even among…countless young women

I would still choose my dove, my perfect one–the favorite of her mother, dearly loved by the one who bore her.

You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no stain in you.

A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a spring locked, a fountain sealed.

There are …] virgins without number. My dove, my perfect one, is the only one, the only one of her mother, pure to her who bore her.

The young women saw her and called her blessed…“Who is this, arising like the dawn, as fair as the moon, as bright as the sun, as majestic as an army with billowing banners?”

Compare the above with Revelation 12:

A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.

She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter; and her child was caught up to God and to His throne.

This great dragon–the ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, the one deceiving the whole world–was thrown down to the earth with all his angels…When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child…Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring–those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

 

[R_C]

One last note on Our Lady honored as “Spouse of the Holy Spirit” - I can’t quote each saint who employed this term. I can quote St. Maximilian Kolbe, who spoke about this in very sound (yet incredibly deep) theological terms. This may be “non- binding”, but it is not erroneous or unorthodox (quite the contrary).

“The Father begets the Son; the Spirit proceeds from Father and Son. These few words sum up the mystery of life of the Most Blessed Trinity…Who is the Father? [His personal life] consists in begetting, eternally…Who is the Son? He is the Begotten-One…And who is the Holy Spirit? The flowering of the love of the Father and the Son. If the fruit of created love is a created conception, then the fruit of divine Love, that prototype of all created love, is necessarily a divine “conception.” The Holy Spirit is, therefore, the “uncreated, eternal conception”.

The Father begets; the Son is begotten; the Spirit is the “conception” that springs from their love…this infinitely holy, Immaculate Conception.

…] Intelligent creatures love him in the conscious manner; through this love they unite themselves more and more closely with him, and so find their way back to him. The creature most completely filled with this love, filled with God himself, was the Immaculata, who never contracted the slightest stain of sin, who never departed in the least from God’s will. United to the Holy Spirit as his spouse, she is one with God in an incomparably more perfect way than can be predicated of any other creature.

What sort of union is this? It is above all an interior union, a union of her essence with the “essence” of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in her, lives in her. This was true from the first instant of her existence. It was always true; it will always be true. In what does this life of the Sprit in Mary consist? He himself is uncreated Love in her; the Love of the Father and of the Son, the Love by which God loves himself, the very love of the Most Holy Trinity…Among creatures made in God’s image the union brought about by married love is the most intimate of all (cf. Mt. 19,6). In a much more precise, more interior, more essential manner, the Holy Spirit lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the depths of her very bring. He makes her fruitful, from the very first instant of her existence, all during her life, and for all eternity.

This eternal “Immaculate Conception” (which is the Holy Spirit) produces in an immaculate manner divine life itself in the womb (or depths) of Mary’s soul, making her the Immaculate Conception, the human Immaculate Conception. And the virginal womb of Mary’s body is kept sacred for him; there he conceives in time- because everything that is material occurs in time- the human life of the man-God. …]

In the Holy Spirit’s union with Mary we observe more than the love of two beings; in one there is all the love of the Blessed Trinity; in the other, all of creation’s love. So it is that in this union heaven and earth are joined; all of heaven with all the earth, the totality of eternal love with the totality of created love. It is truly the summit of love.

If among human beings the wife takes the name of her husband because she belongs to him, is one with him, becomes equal to him and is, with him, the source of new life, with how much greater reason should the name of the Holy Spirit, who is the divine Immaculate Conception, be used as the name of her in whom he lives as uncreated Love, the principle of life in the whole supernatural order of grace?

 

[R_C]

Onto binding teachings now

First - are Papal documents binding? Yes.

Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum, s. Pius PP. X

can anyone fail to see that there is no surer or more direct road than by Mary for uniting all mankind in Christ and obtaining through Him the perfect adoption of sons, that we may be holy and immaculate in the sight of God?

the Son of God made man, being the “author and consummator of our faith”; it surely follows that His Mother most holy should be recognized as participating in the divine mysteries and as being in a manner the guardian of them, and that upon her as upon a foundation, the noblest after Christ, rises the edifice of the faith of all centuries.

Could not God have given us, in another way than through the Virgin the Redeemer of the human race and the Founder of the Faith? But, since Divine Providence has been pleased that we should have the Man-God through Mary, who conceived Him by the Holy Ghost and bore Him in her breast, it only remains for us to receive Christ from the hands of Mary.

Hence whenever the Scriptures speak prophetically of the grace which was to appear among us, the Redeemer of mankind is almost invariably presented to us as united with His mother. The Lamb that is to rule the world will be sent - but He will be sent from the rock of the desert; the flower will blossom, but it will blossom from the root of Jesse. Adam, the father of mankind, looked to Mary crushing the serpent’s head, and he dried the tears that the malediction had brought into his eyes. Noë thought of her when shut up in the ark of safety, and Abraham when prevented from the slaying of his son; Jacob at the sight of the ladder on which angels ascended and descended; Moses amazed at the sight of the bush which burned but was not consumed; David escorting the arc of God with dancing and psalmody; Elias as he looked at the little cloud that rose out of the sea. In fine, after Christ, we find in Mary the end of the law and the fulfillment of the figures and oracles.

And that through the Virgin, and through her more than through any other means, we have offered us a way of reaching the knowledge of Jesus Christ, cannot be doubted when it is remembered that with her alone of all others Jesus was for thirty years united, as a son is usually united with a mother, in the closest ties of intimacy and domestic life. …Mary…sharing as she did the thoughts and the secret wishes of Christ she may be said to have lived the very life of her Son. Hence nobody ever knew Christ so profoundly as she did, and nobody can ever be more competent as a guide and teacher of the knowledge of Christ.

Hence it follows, as We have already pointed out, that the Virgin is more powerful than all others as a means for uniting mankind with Christ.

…all we who are united to Christ, and as the Apostle says are members of His body…have issued from the womb of Mary like a body united to its head. Hence, though in a spiritual and mystical fashion, we are all children of Mary, and she is Mother of us all…

When the supreme hour of the Son came, beside the Cross of Jesus there stood Mary His Mother, not merely occupied in contemplating the cruel spectacle, but…entirely participating in His Passion, that if it had been possible she would have gladly borne all the torments that her Son bore…And from this community of will and suffering between Christ and Mary she merited to become most worthily the Reparatrix of the lost world…and Dispensatrix of all the gifts that Our Savior purchased for us by His Death and by His Blood.

It cannot, of course, be denied that the dispensation of these treasures is the particular and peculiar right of Jesus Christ, for they are the exclusive fruit of His Death, who by His nature is the mediator between God and man. Nevertheless, by this companionship in sorrow and suffering already mentioned between the Mother and the Son, it has been allowed to the august Virgin to be the most powerful mediatrix and advocate of the whole world with her Divine Son (Pius IX. Ineffabilis).

The source, then, is Jesus Christ “of whose fullness we have all received” …But Mary, as St. Bernard justly remarks, is the channel…

We are then, it will be seen, very far from attributing to the Mother of God a productive power of grace - a power which belongs to God alone. Yet, since Mary carries it over all in holiness and union with Jesus Christ, and has been associated by Jesus Christ in the work of redemption, she merits for us de congruo, in the language of theologians, what Jesus Christ merits for us de condigno, and she is the supreme Minister of the distribution of graces.

These principles laid down, and to return to our design, who will not see that we have with good reason claimed for Mary that…as beyond all others initiated to the secrets of his Heart, and as the distributor, by right of her Motherhood, of the treasures of His merits…she is, for all these reasons, a most sure and efficacious assistance to us for arriving at the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ.

Hapless are they who neglect Mary under pretext of the honor to be paid to Jesus Christ! As if the Child could be found elsewhere than with the Mother!

Other documents: Ineffabilis , Adiutricem, Fidentem.

 

[PeterJohn]

R_C, thanks for trying but your realy not helping. I asked not for Maximilian kolbs words, just binding words. All papal documents are not binding. A Popes teaching is not dogmatic no is it infallible unless he intentionally makes a binding statement ex cathedra. I’m not sure the document you cited qualifies honestly.

Your replys to my question are exactly what I mean when I say things about people putting TO much emphasis on Marian things. I feel like as I try to ease into these teachings, you cram it down my throat. Maybe you didn’t try to, and maybe I’m sensitive, but that’s what’s happening here. So if you could let someone else teach here, that be great. Thanks.

 

[marywarfield]

R_C, thanks for trying but your realy not helping. I asked not for Maximilian kolbs words, just binding words. All papal documents are not binding. A Popes teaching is not dogmatic no is it infallible unless he intentionally makes a binding statement ex cathedra. I’m not sure the document you cited qualifies honestly.

Your replys to my question are exactly what I mean when I say things about people putting TO much emphasis on Marian things. I feel like as I try to ease into these teachings, you cram it down my throat. Maybe you didn’t try to, and maybe I’m sensitive, but that’s what’s happening here. So if you could let someone else teach here, that be great. Thanks.

How do you put too much emphasis on Marian teachings?
My understanding as Catholics there is no such thing
as too much emphasis on Marian teachings.

 

[ynotzap]

I also have trouble saying the rosary. When meditation subjects are offered between decades I start thinking of the subject and fail to say the rosary. I simply say it because Mary requested us to say it. I do try to enter the mind of Mary by imagining the great love she has for her Son, and I imagine that she would want us to have the same love for Him, so In a sense I unite myself with her in Faith when I approach Jesus in prayer and Communion. I even ask her to submit my prayers to Him, and to prepare me to receive Him, I offer her the poverty of my spirit. I know when a person is sincere, no matter the poverty of the spirit, it is accepted. Like a child who offer it’s mother a weed flower, she puts in a vase and puts it on the window sill. The mother is so delighted with the gift and love of the child.

 

[R_C]

R_C, thanks for trying but your realy not helping. I asked not for Maximilian kolbs words, just binding words. All papal documents are not binding. A Popes teaching is not dogmatic no is it infallible unless he intentionally makes a binding statement ex cathedra. I’m not sure the document you cited qualifies honestly.

Your replys to my question are exactly what I mean when I say things about people putting TO much emphasis on Marian things. I feel like as I try to ease into these teachings, you cram it down my throat. Maybe you didn’t try to, and maybe I’m sensitive, but that’s what’s happening here. So if you could let someone else teach here, that be great. Thanks.

Brother, I did mistake sensitivity with being hardened and unwilling to accept something that sounds scandalous to your ears, like so many who were unwilling to stay after the Lord said: “my flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed”. Perhaps you are, as you state, trying to ease into these teachings. I am, unfortunately, no man of pastoral qualities whatsoever. Ignore my flaws and imperfections for the sake of truth, for what I state is, in fact, not my own, and it is not erroneous.

It is not entirely correct to state that “A Popes teaching is not dogmatic no is it infallible unless he intentionally makes a binding statement ex cathedra”. Allow me to let someone else explain why…Fr John Trigilio, Jr. and Fr. Kenneth Brighenti (who wrote a brilliant introduction to papal infallibility) and Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton (writing on the doctrinal authority of Papal encyclicals).

The pope can exercise his papal infallibility in two ways. One is called the Extraordinary Magisterium, and the other is called Ordinary Magisterium. …]

The second way that an infallible teaching is taught to Catholics is through the Ordinary Magisterium, which is the more common and typical manner, hence the reason why it’s called ordinary.

This teaching of the popes is consistent, constant, and universal through their various documents, letters, Papal encyclicals, decrees, and so on. It is never a new doctrine but rather one that has been taught ubique, semper et ab omnibus (Latin for everywhere, always and by all). In other words, when the pope reinforces, reiterates, or restates the consistent teaching of his predecessors and of the bishops united with him around the world, that’s considered the Ordinary Magisterium and should be treated as infallible doctrine.

It remains a fact that Encyclicals are not ex cathedra pronouncements. They are, however, the consistent teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium, which is equally infallible when it concerns faith and morals and reiterates the constant, consistent, and universal teaching of the popes and bishops. Their content requires religious submission of mind and will of faithful Catholics around the world. So-called dissent from Papal teaching in encyclicals is not part of Catholic belief.

These documents have come to be recognized as the most frequently used vehicles of the Holy Father’s ordinary teaching of the flock entrusted to his care.

Some of the text-books used in our seminaries today give no special consideration whatever to the doctrinal authority of these documents. Others content themselves with a sweeping over-simplification and blithely dismiss all the encyclicals as “non-infallible” pontifical statements. A third group of authors, more scientific in their approach to this problem, maintain that these documents contain some infallibly true teachings, doctrines presented as infallible on the authority of the encyclicals themselves. Even within this last-mentioned group, however, we find most frequently little detailed explanation of the various norms by which we can recognize infallibly authoritative statements of the Holy Father’s ordinary magisterium in his encyclical letters.

All the theological works dealing with this subject make it perfectly clear that all Catholics are bound seriously in conscience to accept the teaching contained in these documents with a true internal religious assent. They all insist that even in this portion of his ordinary magisterium the Holy Father has the right to demand, and actually has demanded, a definite and unswerving internal assent to his teaching from all Catholics.

An astonishingly large number of prominent theologians … content themselves with an examination of and a theological demonstration for the formula by which the Vatican Council defined the Holy Father’s infallibility. As a group these writers frequently give the impression that they consider only those truths proposed by the Holy Father solemni iudicio as infallibly defined, to the exclusion of those truths which he sets forth ordinario et universali magisterio. The distinguished theologians who deny the papal encyclicals the status of infallible documents teach, none the less, that the faithful are bound in conscience to accord these letters not only the tribute of respectful silence, but also a definite and sincere internal religious assent.

This authority (of the papal encyclicals)…is the teaching of the supreme pastor and teacher of the Church. A man must not be content simply not to contradict it openly and in a more or less scandalous fashion. An internal mental assent is demanded. It should be received as the teaching sovereignly authorized within the Church.

I wish to cause you no further grievance. Please do forgive me if my words came across as gall rather than as honey. It is written that we will be hold accountable for every word, and I already have quite a price to pay. I only wanted to share with you some of that which I learned in a very long time, but perhaps it is impossible to transplant a tree where a seed is needed. Please say a prayer for me and I will be very grateful.

 

[Magdalen2013]

R_C, thanks for trying but your realy not helping. I asked not for Maximilian kolbs words, just binding words. All papal documents are not binding. A Popes teaching is not dogmatic no is it infallible unless he intentionally makes a binding statement ex cathedra. I’m not sure the document you cited qualifies honestly.

Your replys to my question are exactly what I mean when I say things about people putting TO much emphasis on Marian things. I feel like as I try to ease into these teachings, you cram it down my throat. Maybe you didn’t try to, and maybe I’m sensitive, but that’s what’s happening here. So if you could let someone else teach here, that be great. Thanks.

Have you read Scott Hahn’s Hail Holy Queen: The Mother of God in the Word of God?
You might find what you’re looking for there.