How do we KNOW that Mary was beautiful?

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lizaanne said:
Thank you - I had just about given up. 🙂

~Liza
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You’re welcome. I have some thoughts on this discussion -

yes, God knows very well about spiritual and physical beauty - He is the creator.

God knows exactly what one might feel like when he or she is ugly or beautiful. Long ago, I asked myself why God did not create me to be not so physically attractive as He did for many others? Now, I know He has a plan for me - He knows me before I was born. He knows me what I would do if I am so attractive. He knows everything.

I’ve realized He cares and loves me so much that He created me the way He know it is best for my soul.

It is our souls that are more precious and beautiful to Him. Our physcial appearances will vanish someday but not our souls.

Is God sensivite about our look? Sure, He does. 😉
  • the Look of our souls.
 
Mary was preserved from original sin and therefore all the defects inherent in the fall of man i.e. death, all manner of mental and physical maladies/defects. That means her physical beauty would have been unsullied and ordered according to God’s perfect will.
 
Still, this doesn’t mean that Mary didn’t have, say, wrinkles. Or calluses. (I know at least one visionary is sure that her hands are the calloused hands of a working woman.) Most likely, her face wasn’t perfectly symmetrical. And so on.

There’s a difference between “not annoyed by consequences of the Fall” and “stuff that God designed in, on purpose”. (Though of course we’re not sure just what’s what.) So there are probably plenty of things which humans don’t see as beautiful, but which are perfectly healthy and natural.

Moving on, if the main point of the thread is how God sees us. God did create the more objective standards of beauty, and so of course He likes physical beauty. It’s a good thing. But it’s not the only good thing, or indeed the best thing.

"But the LORD said to Samuel: “Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected him. Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart.”

We also know that any trials we have in this life will become beautiful jewels in our crown, if we persevere. So, if someone has to deal with not looking all that great here, his glorified body will transfigure that look into a glory. (How, we don’t know. But I’m sure it will happen.)
 
Don’t know.

Don’t care.

She’s the sinless Mother of God.

I’m a relatively handsome, but horribly sinful descendent of Adam.

Even if she looked like a complete hag in reality, I would look up to her. And God would find her almost infinitely more beautiful than me, I’m sure.
 
lizaanne said:
So then - a poor girl who is born to have bad teeth, bad skin, a big bulbous nose and large ears, and thin scraggly hair (all things in today’s society which could be considered unattractive when taken together). Is suffering from sin?

Sorry - I don’t get that. Can you explain further?

~Liza
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I get where she is going. Mary was born without original sin…she was sinless but we were all born with original sin. Relax everyone knowing that you are loved by God because he created you as you are. You are beautiful.
 
After the little children from Fatima had seen Our Lady for the first time one of them could only go on repeting: “What a beautiful Lady, what a beautiful Lady!”. I read about some other Marian apparition that a child asked Our Lady: why are you so beautiful? She reportedly answered: “because I love”.

Of course: what is beauty according to God? I find the Most Blessed Sacrament the highest concentration of beauty here on earth, yet all the splendour of Love is humbly hidden there. Maybe some persons here on earth who do not appear beautiful according to our standars will amaze us in Heaven when we will see the beauty of their soul, which is a limpid reflection of God’s beauty?

In any case: if we are curious about Our Lady’s beauty the best we can do is to strive for holiness. Then we are sure that quite soon we will able to see by ourselves. 😉
 
Actually the beauty and brilliance of the resurrected body corresponds with the degree of holiness and love of God one has attained during their life on earth. Thus the beauty and glory of the soul is reflected by the beauty and glory of the body. 🙂
 
I was surprise to see that of the responses I noticed no one mentioned the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Mary is beautiful in every way immaginable because she is God’s Mother. However, for the more wordly, it might be a very good Idea to purchase a book on our Lady of Guadalupe. It is only one of two “pictures” made by God, the other is the Shroud of Turin. Back to Mary, the true story of how the image of Mary was made will surprise everyone. If you should like a copy of the image, email me at CFLM@optonline.net and I will be happy to send it to all. In the Subgect line please enter CAF Guadalupe. I tried to include the image here but failed.
 
Mintaka said:
"But the LORD said to Samuel: “Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected him. Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart.”
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Ok - this helps explain part of where I’m trying to go with this.

If this is how God sees, then he very well could have made Mary without a beautiful appearance, because it would not have mattered to him what she looked like. If that is the case, what does this say about how we perceive her, if it really doesn’t matter?

Also - And this was my original thought - if God did make Mary with perfect beautiful appearance (I am not talking about a beautiful soul or countenance, we are taking that for granted to be beautiful and perfect), then it must have mattered to God enough to make her so (he didn’t just pull her appearance out of a holy bucket of appearances and randomly assign it to her). If this is the case, then what does it mean for those who are not beautiful in appearance from God’s perspective? Does he not care? Even if he cared enough to make Mary beautiful? This brings us back to the quote above, that God does not see as man sees, but now I need to understand that in terms of the assumption that if Mary was the most visually beautiful woman ever - is that a contradiction? Or do we just not understand God’s intent?

Or am I just whacked and need to give it up already? :rolleyes:

You see - I do realize that appearance does not matter when we enter the kingdom of heaven. I’m just asking these questions because it’s something that is making me go - hmmmmm - and I am wondering what others think. 😃

~Liza
 
Peterdiago said:
No, you are infering that.

What I am stating is that we have no assurance that the apparitions bear any resemblance to what Mary actually looked like. Hence, we cannot make any statements about what Mary looked like based on them. If all the apparitions are beautiful, it does not mean that Mary was.
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Is there a mother out there that thinks their newborn child is ugly?

I still have not found out if the Mystical City of God is truth or not but in that book Mary was made of everything perfect and beautiful because she was to be the Mother of God. I think love should be the issue and not beauty. I see someone distorted and crippled and I think they are the most beautiful, wonderful person God created. They are special. As I said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I as one believe that nothing that God created is ugly.
 
Liza;

All of the standards of physical beauty are human standards. There are a great many. Don’t be fooled by the fashion magazines into thinking that there is only one kind of physical beauty.

Some men prefer fat women, because they look happy. Some men prefer slender women because they look energetic. Some men prefer short women because they look cute, while others prefer tall women because they look graceful. There are also a range of ideas about hair colour (is it true that blondes have more fun?), eye colour, skin colour, etc.

Children have different ideas about what makes their mother the most beautiful woman on all the earth than their fathers do.

As the old Indian chief said, “If everyone had the same taste, everyone would want to marry my wife.”
 
jmcrae said:
Don’t be fooled by the fashion magazines into thinking that there is only one kind of physical beauty.
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LOL!!! I’m hardly “fooled” by fashion magazines! That just makes me laugh! :rolleyes:

~Liza
 
lizaanne said:
Ok - this helps explain part of where I’m trying to go with this.

If this is how God sees, then he very well could have made Mary without a beautiful appearance, because it would not have mattered to him what she looked like. If that is the case, what does this say about how we perceive her, if it really doesn’t matter?

Also - And this was my original thought - if God did make Mary with perfect beautiful appearance (I am not talking about a beautiful soul or countenance, we are taking that for granted to be beautiful and perfect), then it must have mattered to God enough to make her so (he didn’t just pull her appearance out of a holy bucket of appearances and randomly assign it to her). If this is the case, then what does it mean for those who are not beautiful in appearance from God’s perspective? Does he not care? Even if he cared enough to make Mary beautiful? This brings us back to the quote above, that God does not see as man sees, but now I need to understand that in terms of the assumption that if Mary was the most visually beautiful woman ever - is that a contradiction? Or do we just not understand God’s intent?

Or am I just whacked and need to give it up already? :rolleyes:

You see - I do realize that appearance does not matter when we enter the kingdom of heaven. I’m just asking these questions because it’s something that is making me go - hmmmmm - and I am wondering what others think. 😃

~Liza
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I don’t know if this will be helpful to you or not.

Have you ever noticed that Mary normally looks like the race of the person to whom she is appearing.

We are motivated by how others look. People often feel a kinship with those who are look like as they do, but are sometimes in awe of those who are beautiful. Because he wants so to draw us to him, God is willing to use the visual methods that are most likely to have an emotional response in us.

So Mary would appear like a beautiful young black woman if she appeared in the depths of Africa and a lovely, blonde woman if she appeared in Norway.

Neither of these vision are what she actually appeared like on earth. After all, she was probably a middle aged, brown woman who had worked hard her whole life.

But God knows that we tend to care about physical beauty, so he uses it to reach us.
 
Please, contemplate the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe; it was made by God, not man. I wish I knew how to attach a picture, for I have the most beautiful copy of the original. I know how to do it with MS outlook, but doing it i have failed. Help
 
Carmelo said:
Please, contemplate the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe; it was made by God, not man. I wish I knew how to attach a picture, for I have the most beautiful copy of the original. I know how to do it with MS outlook, but doing it i have failed. Help
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It has to be posted to an actual web site, and then you can link to it from the web site. PhotoBucket allows you to do this.
 
Hello JMCRAE,

Thanks for the help. You may now see the most beatiful woman that has ever been born at cflm.blogspot.com (please copy and paste)
Please let me know if it works as it should and what you think of the picture. Thanks
 
as i’m typing this i have EWTN playing in the background and the narrator just said, “Santa Maria de Guadalupe” after i read “Santa Maria de Guadalupe” on the pic of cflm.blogspot.com
it’s now 10:10AM and it seems they’re playing a documentary on her. i have a special devotion to Our Lady 😃
Carmelo said:
Please, contemplate the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe; it was made by God, not man. I wish I knew how to attach a picture, for I have the most beautiful copy of the original. I know how to do it with MS outlook, but doing it i have failed. Help
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i didn’t think much of her until i heard the history behind her, but mostly the scientific evidence and all the cool details and wonders in the image.

geocities.com/anthonybrach/guadalupe.html
http://www.geocities.com/anthonybrach/guadalupe.jpg

sancta.org/
sancta.org/eyes.html
ewtn.com/jp99/image.htm
daily-word-of-life.com/ol_guadalupe.htm
 
We know Mary is beautiful because her parents told us so.

Miryam (Mary’s name) is only mentioned in the Old Testament once, and that is the sister of Moses. Why would Ss. Joachim and Anna choose to name their only daughter Miryam with such little history behind the name? It could only be because the name was so befitting her. And what does the name mean?
The Name of Mary
Mariam and Maria are the later forms of the Hebrew miryam; miryam is not a compound word consisting of two nouns, or a noun and an adjective, or a noun and a pronominal suffix, but it is a simple though derivative noun; the noun is not formed by means of a prefix (m), but by the addition of a suffix (am). Presupposing these principles, the name *miryam *may be derived either from marah, to be rebellious, or from mara, to be well nourished. Etymology does not decide which of these derivations is to be preferred; but it is hardly probable that the name of a young girl should be connected with the idea of rebellion, while Orientals consider the idea of being well nourished as synonymous with beauty and bodily perfection, so that they would be apt to give their daughters a name derived from mara. Mary means therefore The beautiful or The perfect one.
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What does that say about the rest of us who aren’t physically attractive? It says that we have a skewed view of attractiveness. We are all made in the image and likeness of God and it is our own passion and lust which lead us to refuse to see that beauty in all the people around us and to instead reduce them, or ourselves, to objects. It is not the sins of others that blind us to this beauty, but the training we have received from our culture, encouraging us to sin ourselves. Our current culture views stick figures with dark tanned skin, large breasts, and bleached hair as beautiful. In other times and cultures, the ideas of beauty included being overweight and pale-skinned because they denoted economic success, having no curves and a flat chest, having no eyebrows, or having extremely wide hips and bottoms. The many contraptions we have created in order to force women to live up to this objectification, at the cost of their own dignity and many times life and health, shows us that this “lack of beauty” is not a punishment from God, but a self-inflicted standard.

It challenges us to redefine our culture’s definition of beauty, or at the very least, our own, to bring it into alignment with God’s definition of beauty.

Here is an article which discusses that.
Beauty’s Ugly Spot
Beauty is no more defined in terms of abstract ideals such as “truth” (Keats), “essence” (Lawrence), “exuberance” (Blake), “genius” (Oscar Wilde), or bliss. Today, the concept of “beauty” has grown into a flourishing global industry which treats beauty and the female body as commercial equivalences. Sheer paradox. Worldwide, a woman’s “Agency” and “Empowerment” are advocated, while a consumerist culture traps women within the ambit of market exchange relations.

A tall, thin frame perched confidently on stiletto heels … . Is this the ideal, contemporary image of womanhood? If it is, is it worth it, asks B. REGINA PAPA.
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wow cool! lately ive been meeting a lot of girls named Mary or Maria (i think i know like 6 or 7 now) and ive been saying that it’s the most beautiful female name in the world because of Our Lady.

i wonder what it means when you keep getting all these signs from our precious mommy…
 
Woodstock said:
What does that say about the rest of us who aren’t physically attractive? It says that we have a skewed view of attractiveness. We are all made in the image and likeness of God and it is our own passion and lust which lead us to refuse to see that beauty in all the people around us and to instead reduce them, or ourselves, to objects. It is not the sins of others that blind us to this beauty, but the training we have received from our culture, encouraging us to sin ourselves. Our current culture views stick figures with dark tanned skin, large breasts, and bleached hair as beautiful. In other times and cultures, the ideas of beauty included being overweight and pale-skinned because they denoted economic success, having no curves and a flat chest, having no eyebrows, or having extremely wide hips and bottoms. The many contraptions we have created in order to force women to live up to this objectification, at the cost of their own dignity and many times life and health, shows us that this “lack of beauty” is not a punishment from God, but a self-inflicted standard.

It challenges us to redefine our culture’s definition of beauty, or at the very least, our own, to bring it into alignment with God’s definition of beauty.
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Thank you, Woodstock, you finally went where I was hoping this conversation would go.

I KNOW that our Blessed Mother is beautiful. I’ve never once questioned that. So I thank you for finally taking this in the right direction - what does beauty from God mean.

~Liza
 
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