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crazzeto
Guest
There’s a certain problem with trying to interpret the bible in a literalistic manner, when you don’t actually understand what certain words mean or word roots:
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LittleSoldier
Guest
I don’t know much about angels except that there are different types (cherubim, seraphim, etc.) so I looked it up and this is what I found:
“It is as messengers that they most often figure in the Bible…” But in Daniel 7:9-10 it states:
“I beheld till thrones were placed, and the ancient of days sat: his garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like clean wool: his throne like flames of fire: the wheels of it like a burning fire. A swift stream of fire issued forth from before him: thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him; the judgment sat, and the books were opened.” [Douay-Rheims Bible]
Also:
“Bless the Lord, all ye his angels: you that are mighty in strength, and execute his word, hearkening to the voice of his orders.” [Psalms 102:20, Douay-Rheims Bible]
and:
“In the year that king Ozias died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and elevated: and his train filled the temple. Upon it stood the seraphims: the one had six wings, and the other had six wings: with two they covered his face, and with two they covered his feet, and with two they flew. And they cried one to another, and said: Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, all the earth is full of his glory.” [Isaias 6: 1-3, Douay-Rheims Bible], and this sounds remarkably like part of the Mass.
and:
“See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” [Matthew 18:10, Douay-Rheims Bible] and this tends to lend support to the concept of everyone having a Guardian Angel, which I personally find really cool.
www.newadvent.org/cathen/01476d.htm
So I guess that most of the time, at least in the Bible, they are messengers, but may also do other things, although they are always assistants to God. If the angels of the “little ones” always see the face of the Father it would seem (to me) that angels form a bridge from heaven to earth and are in both places at the same time. But I don’t really know this for certain as this is very new to me and I’m just throwing in my two cents. For more info, please follow the link. There is a lot there. I was surprised to find out it’s this complicated and it would be interesting to learn more.
I still don’t know why some angels are cherubim and some seraphim and so on, but I that’s probably best left for another thread.
But Mary isn’t an angel. I still don’t understand why some people believe that praying to her is inappropriate.
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LittleSoldier
Guest
Great post!! I read this earlier today and started thinking about what happens when a little kid asks his mom for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Certainly he isn’t asking Mom to grow the wheat, obtain the yeast and salt and sugar, grow the peanut plants, harvest the peanuts, mash them up, grow the apple tree, harvest the apples, well you get the idea. Mom can’t do these things. She goes somewhere to buy what she needs. We all know that - even the little kid.Hi
I have been missing awhile and finally got caught up. In it all, I did not see an answer to FL, so forgive me for backtracking a bit.
Understanding and context are everything.
If you understand Catholic teaching, then you understand the context of this quote.
Mary’s will is perfect with God’s will. She will never do anything that is not pleasing to Him.
Catholics do not worship Mary or think she has any “special powers” in and of herself. We DO however believe God chooses to work through His Saints, in heaven and on Earth.
So if someone is asking Mary to obtain for them and for us pardon of so many sins, we know HOW she will do this, by praying to God for us.
The only way this is different from asking saints on earth to pray for us is that we know through Christ we are united and we don’t NEED a phone to get through. God allows the saints in heaven to hear us.
How did Mary keep them safe? Through prayer to God.
How will she keep evil away? Through prayer to God.
This is the whole prayer. We KNOW how these things will come about. Through Mary’s perfect conformation to God’s will, which would be through prayer and petition to Her Son.
Yet Christ Himself had Moses and Elijah appear to the apostles in Matthew 17:3. Clearly, there is an element of understanding missing to your interpretation when Christ himself established contact “with the dead”, in the presence of His apostles.
There is a very obvious difference in holding a senace to have a spirit speak through you to gain knowledge and a daughter asking her grandmother to pray for them to the Lord, Our God.
No knowledge of the future being sought, just prayers to God being asked for.
It becomes even more obvious when one looks at the non-inspired writings of the early Church that the early Church clearly understood what “communion of the Saints” really was. ( Link if anyone is interested in reading)
And as I demonstrated, there is NOT much more being asked of Mary, not if one understands FIRST that Mary’s will is always in perfect union with God’s.
It is only when you divorce the teachings of the Church about Mary that anything in those prayers seems scandolous. Mary is not being asked to do anything that does not perfectly conform to His will, prayer and petition are always within God’s will.
And once again, I will ask you to examine the possibility that you may completely misunderstand those prayers since you clearly do not understand the teachings of the Catholic Church in regards to Mary.
What drives us to “communion of the Saints”? Christ. Just as we know that when 2 or three gather in His name, we know that we can “gather” with his saints even alone in our rooms.
God IS absolutely sufficient to meet our needs and we know this to be true which is why we ask the saints in heaven to unite their prayers with ours seeking Him!!!
So it’s kind of like this when we pray to Mary. We know that, like us, she is nothing without God. When we (the little kid) ask Mary (Mom) for help, we don’t expect her to answer by performing a miracle (I don’t even want to go there as that is definitely another thread). We know that everything she does is because of God and it is God that she prays to, for us.
I’d also like to point out to Fair Lady that when we say the Rosary the opening prayer is to God and the closing prayer is to God. Every prayer to Mary in the Rosary is a prayer for intercession (“Pray for us sinners,” “Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us…”) And it is all done in the name of God.
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crazzeto
Guest
In actuality, they’re always delivering a message from God. Mary would not have been an angel because she wasn’t delivering a “message” from God so much as she was literally delivering (i.e. child birth) the very living Word of God. Angels on the other hand would merely be delivering a specific message from God, for instance with (by tradition) St. Michael delivered the message to go around the city of Jericho 7 times so that the wall would fall, or Gabrial delivering the message to Mary that she would bear the living Word of God in her womb. Or even the prophits them selves, they too were angels in that sense.
One more problem with Christian’s interpetation of the word Angel is that she believes that the “dead in Christ” (i.e. we humans) become “angels” like Michael, Gabrial, Raphel etc. But we never actually become them, we can’t become an “angel” (Cherebum, Serephem) any more than we can become a dog or a cat, it simply isn’t our nature.
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LittleSoldier
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I know that Cristian’s definition is problematic. I just wanted to clarify a bit. And your definition, using the wordage, is correct. I probably shouldn’t have even posted because it is taking the thread off-topic if we discuss angels too much.
I agree that we can’t become angels. We aren’t created as angels - we are created as human beings, even though we can sometimes deliver messages from God. I think lots of people, especially children, think it would be wonderful to become an angel (and I agree) but it is not our nature.
And Mary is not (and never was) an angel.
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crazzeto
Guest
Off topic strictly speaking, but in a certain sense no. All this ties back to an argument regarding the definition of Saints and Angels which goes back to whether or not the Saints can hear our prayers to begin with, of course tieing back to the OP rather neatly. That’s why it was worth commenting on, for the purposes of the conversation the definition of just what a Saint is and just what an Angel is becomes important in this sense.
Someone called “saint” isn’t just a very pios person, and “saint” isn’t merely a title in the sense that “sir” is merely a title (for an individual who has been knighted). A Saint is an individual who is in the presense of God exerienceing the beatific vision, this person is not now, nor will they ever be an angel assuming we’re in fact talking about an individual born human who lived a life here on earth.
These persons prayers are in fact heard by God, the bible states this clearly. As we have both pointed out (you a little more directly), if this wasn’t the case, then death and going to heaven sounds a little more like hell than heaven. Being cut off from the rest of the body of Christ, your prayers aren’t heard, you’re boxed up on your own unheard, uncaring about the rest of the body of Christ.
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LittleSoldier
Guest
I agree.
I just don’t want the thread to stray too far from the OP. I know that all threads do because that is just the way it goes, but I could start posting things about cherubim and seraphim and all that just because I find it fascinating but not because it’s relevent (sorry, not thinking too clearly today).
Where did everybody else go?
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Fair_Lady
Guest
Hi
I have been missing awhile and finally got caught up. In it all, I did not see an answer to FL, so forgive me for backtracking a bit.
I haven’t been around much lately either. Life happens and sometimes it just gets downright busy.
In response to the prayer to Mary that states: "“Obtain for them and for us the pardon of so many sins.” you said:
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davidv
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LittleSoldier
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AmbroseSJ
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Fair Lady:
It says so in the Apostles Creed. That creed dates back to the Apostles themselves. “We believe in the communion of Saints.” The communion of Saints means the Saints can communicate with each other. This was a fundamental belief from the time of the Apostles until these latter days when doubters thought they would decide for themselves what was and was not true about Christianity based on their own private judgment.
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LittleSoldier
Guest
Fair Lady, I am not quoting anything you have said, but at the end of my last post I said I wanted to say something else.
“I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting. In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. ** But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. ** For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”
[1 Timothy 2:8-14, KJV]
It seems clear to me that Paul is stating that women are not to teach. He is also saying that womenn should not wear gold or pearls (at least not while praying). Do you ever wear gold or pearls when you are praying? Ever?
Here you are teaching men and going completely against what Paul said you are to do (or rather, not to do). This is straight from the Bible, King James Version, so it must be true, right? It must be the word of God, right?
When you teach here,* by providing your interpretation of scripture* (and that is just one example) you are going against the wod of God, right?
So why are you doing this??
“I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting. In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. ** But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. ** For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”
[1 Timothy 2:8-14, KJV]
It seems clear to me that Paul is stating that women are not to teach. He is also saying that womenn should not wear gold or pearls (at least not while praying). Do you ever wear gold or pearls when you are praying? Ever?
Here you are teaching men and going completely against what Paul said you are to do (or rather, not to do). This is straight from the Bible, King James Version, so it must be true, right? It must be the word of God, right?
When you teach here,* by providing your interpretation of scripture* (and that is just one example) you are going against the wod of God, right?
So why are you doing this??
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Young_Thinker
Guest
Would not anyone not want to pray to Our Beautiful Lady? She is the Mother of God, and I believe that there is no greater woman in existence. I wish that everyone would love Her as much as some of us do. Recently, I have begun to question whether or not She was ascended to Heaven after having died. I have come to the conclusion that She was alive, since why would She, Christ’s mother, be denied the experience that Elijah and Enoch? She is a goddess, not literally but still, in a way, a goddess, the Queen of Heaven.
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Monte1945
Guest
In the Catholic Church we feel that when we read the scriptures which say:
“The prayers of a righteous man avails much”
It is an indication that from the sanctification of one’s spiritual Growth
one becomes more righteous… We feel that from this idea some of
the past saints of the christian faith have a more powerful prayer then
we might and we see all Christians living or not as still in the Mystical
Body of Christ (The Kingdom of God on earth) and they can pray for
us on the other side… such as it is written in:
Rev. 5:8
8 And when he had opened the book, the four living creatures, and the four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints:
From this we feel that the past saints or late Christians are able to take our prayers
to God as the ancients are carrying these above mentioned prayers to the Lamb… (Jesus)
This is what the scriptures indicate to a catholic…
What does it indicate too you?
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Monte1945
Guest
If we receive our "Original sin from being born through our parents… then
Jesus’s mother could not have original sin in her, as she would have passed
the sin onto Jesus… It is that simple… how do you explain the fact that he
was born of a human mother, and did not have sin from that birth through her?
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Young_Thinker
Guest
Muslims do not have a concept of original sin but believe that Maryam was sinless all of Her life. I, for one, do not think that one should would not go that far, since it is seemingly equating the Virgin with Jesus. However, Muslims, of course, do not even believe that He was divine, so they have some rather “odd” ideas.
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adstrinity
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Personal experience.
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Cristian_B
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I don’t believe in the ‘original sin’ theory. I don’t believe that when we are born we are born with a sin. You are born with the consequences of Adam’s sin (or ‘original sin’), but the punishment does not pass from father to son. We all feel the consequences, but a baby is born sinless.
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crazzeto
Guest
St Paul most certainly believed in the “theory” as you put it, of original sin:
drbo.org/cgi-bin/d?b=drb&bk=52&ch=5&l=12&f=s#x
drbo.org/cgi-bin/d?b=drb&bk=52&ch=5&l=17&f=s#x
drbo.org/cgi-bin/d?b=drb&bk=52&ch=5&l=21&f=s#x
I’m curious, for what reason do you think God sent his only begotten son to the world? And when do you think the promise of a saviour was first made. Upon my reading of Genesis I see it in Chapter 3:
drbo.org/chapter/01003.htm
Original sin, with an original promise of salivation at the same time. More over, what do you make of all this talk of being “born again” in the bible if there is no original sin? Why do we need to be a new creation in Christ?
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Cristian_B
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I see nothing about a supposed original sin in those quotes.
For our redemption and for the defeat of Satan.
We must be born again in order not to sin. Because even if you have all your sins forgiven, you must still kill the sinful ‘you’ and be born a righteous ‘you’. Because if you have no sins (sins forgiven), but you have a sinful ‘you’ (nature) you will sin in the future, but if you have a righteous nature you will not sin in the future. The being born again this is not about the forgiveness of sins, because you are forgiven as a sinner, but it is about not sinning in the future.
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