Jeremiah 7:17-20 Reference to queen of heaven

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Let it be said that the average Catholic pays far too little attention to Our Lady, rather than too much.

My first huge disappointment as a convert was in seeing that I was far more devoted to her than were the cradle - er, cripple - Catholics.

In regard to Marian devotion, it is a sad fact that most American Catholics are no better than protestants.

As I approach my 16th anniversary of conversion this Eastertide, I will certainly be praying for you and your family, Jeanette. Fret not - Our Lady has a way of showing people the light. She is their Queen, too - whether or not they wish to acknowledge the fact! She rules.
 
tjmiller-

Thank you. I must say, that while I am having this battle with family, I myself am having a hard time actually participating in much of anything Marion, except the rosary, which with the help of some CD’s by Fr. Groeschel, I find quite comforting. But I don’t see this at this time being an issue, in that the driving force behind my conversion is the Eucharist. It is primary for me, all other things being secondary.

In time, everything will fall into it’s rightful place. I have come to see the Catholic way as being more an expression of love towards the Mother of Christ, and all the devoted Saints of our Lord, which has never found expression in the Protestant world. I have noticed my ability to open my heart to learning how to love the Mystical Body is growing with each day.

I told my father yesterday, if I can find it possible to love him, and my mother, and all my family and friends, and even my pets, how can it be dishonorable for me to love the woman whom my Savior loved more perfectly than any other son born on earth, or to love any of my brothers and sisters in Christ who have sacrificed so much for Him and led lives of great example for me to imitate in my own journey? There of course was way for him to answer that question. Only the Holy Spirit ultimately can overcome this kind of obstacle, and thankfully, He is on my side!

God Bless,
Jeanette
 
Exactly!

As the cliche goes, “What Would Jesus Do?”

Well, he would honor His Blessed Mother.

The Second Person of the Holy Trinity surrendered unto this Woman his very physical existence, in incarnate dependence. How shall any true Christian offer to her less?

Don’t worry about the theological arguments. Our Lady will look after your affairs, as a Loving Mother. Trust her - you will see!
 
As a convert it seemed paradoxical at first when Catholics would say things like, “Straight to Jesus through Mary,” or “There’s no quicker way to Jesus than through Mary.”

Then I realized that, in a sense, hasn’t God always worked through others to get directly to us?

I mean, take the New Testament for instance, when we read those words tears of joy and feelings of warmth and God’s love come straight into our hearts; nourishing us and refreshing us with the power of God’s Word.

But how did Jesus choose to come directly into our hearts? Through the “intermediaries” of the NT writers 2000 years ago.

As Protestants we didn’t say Paul was a go-between, or extra-layer that God put between us and Him. We intuitively knew that God was blessing us with His grace straight, directly into our hearts through the writings of these writers whom God spoke to long ago. He didn’t choose to talk to us face to face—or should I say He did choose to talk to us face to face, directly through others.

And, by the way, it took six months after Catholic baptism for my heart to catch up with my head. I knew with my head that Maccabees was part of Holy Scripture; but my feelings still held me back for a while.
 
One thing that came to me this morning as I was watching the Rosary on EWTN, that the more Catholics are persecuted for their love of Mary, the more they love her!

And isn’t that true with even Christianity in general? The more you are persecuted for doing that which is virtuous, for loving Christ and standing up for him and his Church, the more you are strengthened and compelled to stand all the taller and stronger.

The more the Protestants protest and in the process, disparage the Mother of Christ, the more the instinct is to those who love her to come to her rescue and defense. What the Protestants are trying to accomplish, they are in fact strengthening in the opposite direction.

The Church’s response to criticism over any of her beliefs has always been to shore them up in a permanent way with official doctrine, it has been that way from the beginning. From the doctrine of the Trinity down to the present day with all the writings coming forth to defend human life from conception to natural death, and with all the Marian and many other doctrines in between.

I am convinced I am coming to the right side of the battle!
 
Jeanette L:
I’m trying very hard to be open to this new culture I find myself in, but the discomfort is still there. To me, as a Christian, I have never had a problem going to Christ. He has always been Savior, Redeemer, King. The notion that adding a layer, viz. going through Mary to get to Christ, just seems like a distraction to me. Maybe it’s because it’s not part of my mindset, I just don’t “get it” yet.

I don’t have a problem with asking Mary or the Saints to intercede in prayer. I don’t get it when I hear someone say that the way to Jesus is through Mary. I’ve just never had a problem going to Jesus before I became Catholic, without that extra layer. It doesn’t make sense to me, and I am trying to make sense of it. :confused:

Jeanette
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I think it gets out of hand very easily - a lot of Catholic writing does suggest, or even assert, that we cannot go to Christ except through Mary - such as the “True Devotion” of Louis de Montfort.​

We do not need to do so - Jesus was available to sinners, lepers, Gentiles, and all sorts of people during His Life on earth, and said “Come to me, all you who are heavy-laden, and I shall give you rest”. AFAIK, He has not withdrawn any of that, or any part of his mercy to sinners.

If He is thought to be as unapproachable as too much Catholic writing makes Him, the devotion to His Sacred Heart tells a different story.

I have no quarrel with the principle underlying the veneration of Mary - but when the practice of it leads to an obscuring of the words and deeds attributed to Christ in the NT, it is time to say so. There has been a lot of very distorted devotion to her at times, and this is very rarely admitted. That does not make it any less a fact. One is not obliged to pray to her.

There are reasons to reject the principles underlying devotion to Mary - but relying on Jeremiah 7. 16-20 and 44.15-25 is a poor reason. Few if any of the practices mentioned are or were practiced by Catholics.

It could well be that the “Queen of Heaven” was the goddess Asherah, or a form of her, and that she was given the same status in “popular devotion” as she had in Canaanite practice; the status of supreme goddess. Which would mean that, in Judahite popular religious practice, she was regarded as a female equivalent of the God of Judah; as his consort. Since kings were regarded as sons of the supreme god, she may have been worshipped with prayers for the well-being of the Jewish king, as his divine mother; for the king is spoken of in the Psalms as the “son” of JHWH.

Asherah was certainly worshipped alongside Baal; she was certainly the wife of El, the supreme god in Canaan; El and JHWH had similar positions and functions; JHWH was very like Baal in some respects; and Israel was in constant, close, contact with its Canaanite neighbours. Most of this could be established from the OT alone. It would have been fatefully easy for [con]fusion between the husbands of Asherah with JHWH, to lead to thinking of her as the divine wife of JHWH; everything pointed to that being all but inevitable. Confusingly, the title “Baal”, “Lord”, is used for a god who is not El, but the son of El - Baal is not originally a supreme god; the Canaanite and Biblical usages differ. Asherah is what El and Baal have in common.

JHWH is
  • a god who brings fertility - like Baal
  • a warrior-god - like Baal
  • a supreme god with a heavenly court of “holy ones” - like El
As the patron god of Judah, he could very easily have been thought of as having for wife the goddess who is
  • Baal’s wife (in the OT)
  • and El’s wife in the Canaanite texts.
El was superceded by Baal, which is why the Greeks and Romans knew of supreme gods of various places who were called Baal, but not of El.The meaning of Baal’s title, which does not in itself imply that he was a supreme god, could be very naturally taken as meaning that he must be.

Babylonian or Assyrian influence is a possibility, but their influence was not as sustained or continuous as that of Canaan; & it seems better to look for a Q.o.H nearer to Jerusalem than further away.

A last piece of evidence - there was a Jewish temple in Egypt, where Yahu, the Jewish God, was worshipped with his wife, the warrior-goddess Anath. This was after the fall of Jerusalem; it is quite a commentary on the situation described in Jeremiah 44. Anath & Asherah - Anath is often thought of as the daughter of El - were eventually fused to become the goddess known as Astarte. A goddess who was both goddesses would have had a great deal in common with the god of Judah - she would have been a warrior like Anath, and a supreme goddess like Asherah. And she would have been very much at home in Egypt, with plenty of other supreme goddesses to chat to: gods had very busy social lives.

So the two Jeremiah passages are very interesting for the glimpses they give us of popular religion. ##
 
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