More questions on Mary

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coolduude

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Hello all,

I’m trying to build a good relationship with our Blessed Mother, so I have some questions.

Why is Mary SO important in the Catholic faith? I asked this in another thread but I’m still somewhat at a loss.

Why are our devotions the way they are?

Why is she called the Queen of Heaven? I know it goes back to Solomon, but I don’t get why Solomon and his mother influence Mary.

How do we know she was Assumed? I think I know the answer here; not sure.

Why/how is she everyones Mother? It seems like a stretch to say it’s because Jesus gave her to us on the Cross, but if that is the answer can the person answering please explain?

Why does she love us? I understand why God does (kind of) but why Mary too?

A little off topic: how do we know we are receiving the signal graces promised to those who pray the Rosary by our Holy Mother to the children at Fatima? (I believe it’s the first promise)

oh, why is she the New Eve? Couldn’t Jesus just have married someone and she would have been the New Eve? (my logic: Adam and Eve were married, so why didn’t Jesus take a bride to be the New Eve since He is the New Adam?)

Note: I am NOT trying to be disrespectful to the Holy Family, Mary, Jesus, etc. I am NOT. I just have SO many questions!

Thank you for your time,
coolduude:cool:
 
If you love someone, don’t you also value the people they love.
Of all women throughout time God chose Mary.God chose her as a woman 'full of grace" full of God’s life. He sure didn’t choose me or any other woman.

For 30 years Mary was the most important human in the life of Jesus Christ, incarnate Son of the living God. As an intant He utterly depended on her, to feed him, change His diaper/nappy, bath Him, and with Joseph, to teach Him to speak, to walk and ordinary life skills…because God chose not to come amongst us, as He could have done, as a glorious fully formed adult. By becoming a little child He made ordinary humanity, ordinary daily life, sacred. He loved His mother…and if we do not, then might He not be a little hurt?

Jesus is Lord of Creation, so that sure doesn’t make His mother the scullery maid! Whether we call her Queen of heaven, or Lady, or simply Mary, as the mother of God incarnate and as choice of God and loved of Jesus, is she not perhaps the greatest of women of all time. By choosing her, the Trisnity has proclaimed so. By loving her, her Son has made her so
 
Mary, woman of faith
When humankind first sinned against our Creator, God immediately condemned the tempter, saying,* “I will make you enemies of each other: you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring. It will crush your head.”* [Genesis 3:15] Mary, whom Jesus made mother of all persons from the cross, [John 19:26-27] please, with the Angels, fight the ancient enemy in our lives, for sake of the redemption that your Son won for us.

You were obedient:* “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let what you have said is done to me.”* [Luke 1:38] You were unselfish and kind. Although yourself pregnant, you hurried to assist your older cousin in her pregnancy as soon as Gabriel informed you of it. God rewarded your faith and love by allowing the Spirit to speak to through Elizabeth*:*
  • “Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why should I be honoured by a visit from the mother of my Lord? For the moment that your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy. Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.”* [Luke 1:39-45]
In you, the Spirit responded,
*“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord *
and my spirit exults in God my saviour;
because He has looked upon His lowly handmaid.
*Yes, from this day forward all generations will call me blessed, *
for the Almighty has done great things for me. Holy is His name, *
and His mercy reaches from age to age for those who fear him.
He has shown the power of His arm, He has routed the proud of heart.
He has pulled down princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly.
The hungry He has filled with good things, the rich sent empty away.
He has come to the help of Israel his servant, mindful of His mercy
—according to the promises He made to our ancestors—
of His mercy to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” *[Luke 1:46-79]

You rejoiced for the blessing given to you Mary, and for those given to all persons through the Child whom you carried in your womb—for we also are descendants of Abraham, by faith. [Romans 4:12] You, in this loving concern for others, interceded for their needs even while on earth, exhorting them to obedient faith like your own, “do whatever He tells you”. He initially reproved you*—“My hour is not yet come.”* [John 2:4, 5] However, He granted your humble request.

Woman of faith, although your life held many perplexities and seeming inconsistencies, you treasured and pondered these brief manifestations of divine action in your Son’s life without losing your humble trust. [Luke 2:19-20] For it might have seemed that God could make better arrangements for the conditions of His divine Son’s birth! When you heard of the terrible slaughter of the innocent infants, intended to include Jesus, this massacre devastated your maternal heart on behalf of those other mothers. You trusted and prayed, mourning man’s inhmanity to man, and did not as many do, say “How can God allow this?”
When you fled as a refugee with all the grief, displacement and destitution that refugee families may suffer you still kept faith. Again, you trusted, as He hung dying horribly wounded and humiliated upon a criminal’s cross.

Mary, we thank you for your care of that incomparable Child, whose coming was foretold centuries before. We thank you—for the Child whom you bore and nurtured is Saviour of all humankind! Thank you for your faith, for your obedience, for your faithfulness through all those years when the extraordinary promise made to you might have seemed lost in daily routine.
 
Wow… that’s basically trying to explain the whole Mariology. Countless of threads, books and papers have been used to answer the questions you are asking.

I am glad that you are a proud Catholic and trying to understand and have a better relationship with Mary.

Instead of reinventing the wheels, I suggest that you read some of the wonderful materials that Catholic Answer has to offer.

Tracts about Mary and the Saints.
Article in The Rock on Mary’s Queenship.

The best way to understand Christ is through the eye if his Blessed Mother. Especially during Advent and Christmas, it is a good time to reflect on the incarnation that could only happened through the cooperation of Virgin Mary.

Our journey in studying Mariology leads us in better imitating Christ.

OK… I have to admit that there are many Catholics that put greater emphasis on Mary than on Jesus and to the small percentage of those Catholics, their devotion becoming like worship. However, devotion to Mary should not be like that. Devotion to Mary should lead us to Jesus.

We cannot judge those Catholics who venerate Mary so much as Mary worshipers. They might have a deep thirst of understanding Jesus and feel that only Mary can lead them to Him.

Good luck on your journey, may Mary blesses you as she has blessed me.

God Bless…
 
Woman of faith, pray for us

Dear Mother Mary, you have been honoured, blessed, and gifted by God.

You are our mother because in figure of John, Jesus gave us to you as your children as He hung dying on the cross.

We ask you to speak to God on our behalf, for it was through your faith that Jesus first manifested His power at Cana, thus beginning His work before the appointed time.

Although it concerned neither life nor death, nor eternal salvation but the human feelings of others, He granted your trusting prayer.

Such was your faith, and God’s love for you, Saint of all saints! Therefore, we trust our prayer to Your faith in God!

Please give us your unfailing intercession before God. You see everything that we need in service of God, and all that we desire for each other. You feel the aching of our hearts and hear our longing prayers. You behold our faith, our repentance, and our love.

Stand not silently by, Mother! Our Father, your Son, and the Holy Spirit who overshadowed you and blessed you with our Saviour—They cannot refuse you!
We stand humbly before you, Mother, and entreat you with our hearts, minds, and spirits…Mother!
 
Spiritually, because Jesus bacame brother and gave us His Father as ours, and taught us to pray “Our Father”, spiritually His mother also became ours.

For myself I don’'t get caught up in all kinds of devotional activity. The Eucharist is central, “the source and summit” of life; and I love Mary dearly and trun to her as simply as I do to the Lord. But primarily the Lord.

“The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the source and summit of the whole of the Church’s worship and of Christian life. The faithful participate more fully in the sacrament of thanksgiving, propitiation, petition and praise not only when they wholeheartedly offer the sacred Victim, and in it themselves to the Father with the priest, but also when they receive this same Victim sacramentally.” [Vatican 2 Documents]* *
“The other sacraments, as indeed every ministry of the church and every work of the apostolate, are linked with the Eucharist and are directed towards it. For the Eucharist contains the entire spiritual good of the Church, namely, Christ Himself, our Passover and living bread, offering through His flesh, living and life-giving in the Spirit, life to all who are thus invited and led on to offer themselves, their labours, and all created things together with Him.” [Vatican 2 Documents.9:6]
 
from Catechism of the Catholic Church

**963 **Since the Virgin Mary’s role in the mystery of Christ and the Spirit has been treated, it is fitting now to consider her place in the mystery of the Church. "The Virgin Mary . . . is acknowledged and honored as being truly the Mother of God and of the redeemer… She is ‘clearly the mother of the members of Christ’ . . . since she has by her charity joined in bringing about the birth of believers in the Church, who are members of its head."500 "Mary, Mother of Christ, Mother of the Church."501

**I. MARY’S MOTHERHOOD WITH REGARD TO THE CHURCH **
**Wholly united with her Son . . . **
**964 **Mary’s role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it. “This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ’s virginal conception up to his death”;502 it is made manifest above all at the hour of his Passion:
Thus the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross. There she stood, in keeping with the divine plan, enduring with her only begotten Son the intensity of his suffering, joining herself with his sacrifice in her mother’s heart, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this victim, born of her: to be given, by the same Christ Jesus dying on the cross, as a mother to his disciple, with these words: "Woman, behold your son."503
**965 **After her Son’s Ascension, Mary "aided the beginnings of the Church by her prayers."504 In her association with the apostles and several women, "we also see Mary by her prayers imploring the gift of the Spirit, who had already overshadowed her in the Annunciation."505

**. . . also in her Assumption **
**966 **"Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death."506 The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians:
In giving birth you kept your virginity; in your Dormition you did not leave the world, O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life. You conceived the living God and, by your prayers, will deliver our souls from death.507
 
**. . . she is our Mother in the order of grace **
**967 **By her complete adherence to the Father’s will, to his Son’s redemptive work, and to every prompting of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary is the Church’s model of faith and charity. Thus she is a “preeminent and . . . wholly unique member of the Church”; indeed, she is the “exemplary realization” (typus)508 of the Church.
**968 **Her role in relation to the Church and to all humanity goes still further. "In a wholly singular way she cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope, and burning charity in the Savior’s work of restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reason she is a mother to us in the order of grace."509

**969 **"This motherhood of Mary in the order of grace continues uninterruptedly from the consent which she loyally gave at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation … Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix."510
**970 **"Mary’s function as mother of men in no way obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power. But the Blessed Virgin’s salutary influence on men . . . flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on his mediation, depends entirely on it, and draws all its power from it."511 "No creature could ever be counted along with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer; but just as the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways both by his ministers and the faithful, and as the one goodness of God is radiated in different ways among his creatures, so also the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this one source."512
 
from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

**II. DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN **
**971 **“All generations will call me blessed”: "The Church’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship."513 The Church rightly honors "the Blessed Virgin with special devotion. From the most ancient times the Blessed Virgin has been honored with the title of ‘Mother of God,’ to whose protection the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs. . . . This very special devotion . . . differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and greatly fosters this adoration."514 The liturgical feasts dedicated to the Mother of God and Marian prayer, such as the rosary, an “epitome of the whole Gospel,” express this devotion to the Virgin Mary.515

**III. MARY - ESCHATOLOGICAL ICON OF THE CHURCH **
**972 **After speaking of the Church, her origin, mission, and destiny, we can find no better way to conclude than by looking to Mary. In her we contemplate what the Church already is in her mystery on her own “pilgrimage of faith,” and what she will be in the homeland at the end of her journey. There, “in the glory of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity,” "in the communion of all the saints,"516 the Church is awaited by the one she venerates as Mother of her Lord and as her own mother.
In the meantime the Mother of Jesus, in the glory which she possesses in body and soul in heaven, is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise she shines forth on earth until the day of the Lord shall come, a sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim People of God.517
**IN BRIEF **
**973 **By pronouncing her “fiat” at the Annunciation and giving her consent to the Incarnation, Mary was already collaborating with the whole work her Son was to accomplish. She is mother wherever he is Savior and head of the Mystical Body.
**974 **The Most Blessed Virgin Mary, when the course of her earthly life was completed, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven, where she already shares in the glory of her Son’s Resurrection, anticipating the resurrection of all members of his Body. **975 **“We believe that the Holy Mother of God, the new Eve, Mother of the Church, continues in heaven to exercise her maternal role on behalf of the members of Christ” (Paul VI, *CPG *# 15).

vatican.va/archive/catechism/p123a9p6.htm
 
I can demonstrate, I suppose, how I’d approach Mary. I wrote the prayer in an earlier post when trung to find my own path to Mary. The following, I guess I could say that seeking Jesus was given a special dimension by approaching Jesus though Mary at the foot of the Cross. Of course I approach Him directly, but there is perhaps a sentitivity particular to His Mother. You mightn’t like my approach, but it may trigger you to an approach of your own

Woman, behold your Child

Dear Mother,please intercede with the Father that I may growin worthy fraternity with Jesus, for this kinship was His dying wish. So deep was this astonishing desire, that He bridged earth to heaven for me by the racked sufferings of His soul, mind, and body.

As His humanity strained to shattering point, He knew even then my sins and faults, which He understood and forgave even as He suffered. He knew that I do not comprehend the heinousness of offence against God or against others whom He lovingly created. He knew that I could not grasp the greatness of His act of incarnation and immolation, of His redemption of us, of me. For selfishness and worldliness dims the human soul’s limited perception regarding truth and love.

He, this suffering Being subject to all human vicissitude and weakness, was aware—with pain that deepened His own—of the anguish that filled your being and drenched your face with unconscious tears of love and distress as He died for me. He knew the depth of your pain—poignant with memories of the best of sons, of the greatest of men—loving, wise and innocent, compassionate, beloved, and vibrantly human. Disfigured beyond recognition, He died for me in apparent failure and disgrace, yet He still asked your maternal love for me, inviting me to loving fraternity. Your love, transcending all, accepted me wholly.

Lovely Lady, pure crystal of divine glory, I humbly slip my hand in yours with obedient trust. I feel unworthy, sinful, wondering and hopeful. Why has He, this wonderful, promising, intelligent young man allowed Himself to be degraded and destroyed, emptied in loving endurance that escalates throughout indescribable torment—piercing your soul? Why has He done this for one such as me, who am so insignificant and sinful! Yet He draws me into His household and gives me His own Mother and His divine Father.

Gentle Mother, most blessed, you were chosen from amongst all women to cooperate in the incarnation of the only begotten of the most high God! You were entrusted with His nurture, His moulding and protection from conception until the beginning of His public ministry. Now your suffering eyes are filled with love and pity that calm the shame, confusion and discouragement that might otherwise overwhelm me.

Mother, intercede that what He has done, and all that He promises, be fulfilled in me and in everyone for whom I pray. Please lead me to love your Son and our God as He has loved and to cherish others with such love. Lead me to give my paltry all to Him in humble, obedient, creative service. Let this small gift be blessed in your maternal love for me and in the intercession of the entire heavenly household. Thus may I live for His glory, offering atonement, gratitude and petition for us poor sinners—so that His joy and delight in me, and yours, is as great as His suffering for me, and yours.

Mother as gift to Him for such undeserved love, please obtain of the Father, that whenever Jesus looks upon me He knows only gladness, finding in me for Himself…the pleasure of an innocent child…the love and nurture of Nazareth with you…the intimacy and repose of a perfect Bethany. Let Him know with thrilled awareness, that His blood and torment, and your tears, are not wasted to me nor to souls whom His salvation reaches through me.
 
Sometimes you just need your mother. The wonderful thing is how marvelously God expresses Himself through the Blessed Virgin Mary. She neither takes away nor infringes on God’s majesty - quite to the contrary, she compliments it!

Don’t you know that Our Lord is unfathomably greater than we can possibly conceive? Because He is so mysterious, He expresses Himself to us hard-headed humans in ways that we can understand.

Mary, the Blessed Virgin, expresses a maternal and loving side of God that He wants us to understand about Himself. It should be no wonder why She has the power and respect that the Church rightly gives Her. 😉 For God alone gave it, and we are the better for it!
 
One thing to consider:

Mariology (the doctrine about Mary) is actually a part of Christology.

It’s really about Who JESUS is.

As far as her Assumption, this is a very old tradition. It’s significant that there are NO tombs of the Virgin with her body therein. It was believed by ALL the pre-Reformation Churches (and some of the early Reformers) for centuries before it was (in my mind, unnecessarily) dogmatized by Pius XII.
 
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