The Importance of Mary in Catholicism

[moondweller]

You are thinking temporally, not eternally. The salvific work of the Cross is an eternal event that continues in the Liturgy, as evidenced in Revelation

He was BORN into this world system (cosmos). His work of salvation on the cross began and finished in this time/space continuum - the effects of that work, however, are eternal upon personal belief in him (Jn. 3:16; 5:24; Rom. 6:23; 1 Jn. 5:11). But the work itself had a beginning and an end. A death occurred, followed by a bodily resurrection thee days later. For this reason He said “Do this in remembrance of Me.”

 

[StTommyMore]

He was BORN into this world system (cosmos). His work of salvation on the cross began and finished in this time/space continuum - the effects of that work, however, are eternal upon personal belief in him (Jn. 3:16; 5:24; Rom. 6:23; 1 Jn. 5:11). But the work itself had a beginning and an end. A death occurred, followed by a bodily resurrection thee days later. For this reason He said “Do this in remembrance of Me.”

You misunderstand the Jewish significance of rememberence. For Jesus, who was a Jew, the idea of remeberence was not just to meditate on a past event. Rather it was to make present and participate in a past event. So when we celebrate the Mass, it is making present that sacrifice and we participate in that very sacrifice, as described in Revelation 4.

 

[paul_c]

So Moondweller, after 350+ posts, where has this thread gotten us?
You wanted to know whether Catholicism relies on Mary. I don’t know why you asked this question. You really haven’t shared it with us.

Regardless, we have told you that yes, Mary is important. She was the Mother of Jesus, afterall. She is important to the faith because her son was the messiah and her acceptance of the role of Mother of the Lord started the process of salvation going forward. Her role is woven into the whole fabric of history and without her, history would have been different.

The fact that Mary is important does nothing to diminish Jesus. He is God and can’t be diminished, afterall.

So, have you got what you were looking for? If not, tell us more directly what you are looking for and perhaps we can help you…

 

[moondweller]

You misunderstand the Jewish significance of rememberence. For Jesus, who was a Jew, the idea of remeberence was not just to meditate on a past event. Rather it was to make present and participate in a past event. So when we celebrate the Mass, it is making present that sacrifice and we participate in that very sacrifice, as described in Revelation 4.

Sorry, but you can neither deny nor defy time. No Jew ever made anything that happened in the past present.Ex 12:14 ¶ 'Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it {as} a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it {as} a permanent ordinance."

 

[kepha1]

He was BORN into this world system (cosmos). His work of salvation on the cross began and finished in this time/space continuum - the effects of that work, however, are eternal upon personal belief in him (Jn. 3:16; 5:24; Rom. 6:23; 1 Jn. 5:11). But the work itself had a beginning and an end. A death occurred, followed by a bodily resurrection thee days later. For this reason He said “Do this in remembrance of Me.”

You misunderstand the Jewish significance of rememberence. For Jesus, who was a Jew, the idea of remeberence was not just to meditate on a past event. Rather it was to make present and participate in a past event. So when we celebrate the Mass, it is making present that sacrifice and we participate in that very sacrifice, as described in Revelation 4.

Sorry, but you can neither deny nor defy time. No Jew ever made anything that happened in the past present.

Ex 12:14 ¶ 'Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it {as} a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it {as} a permanent ordinance."

There is no secret about how the Blessed Virgin is related to the Holy Eucharist. It is very simple: except for the Blessed Virgin, we would not have the Holy Eucharist.
The key to this relationship is the humanity of Jesus Christ. God as God, was present in the world from the dawn of creation. The same almighty power by which God brought the world into being is the same almighty power by which He sustains the world in existence and provides for its constant activity.

But something historic happened at the Annunciation. The moment Mary told the angel, “Be it done to me according to Your word,” God began to be present in the world as man. The infant in Mary’s womb was her God become Incarnate. It was the Word made Flesh. It was the Lord of the Universe become a human child.

It was from Mary that the Son of God took our human nature. It was from Mary that the Second Person of the Trinity received His humanity. It was through Mary that Jesus Christ, who is God from all eternity, became man, lived visibly on earth in Palestine and is now invisibly on earth in every church and chapel in the Catholic world where the Holy Eucharist is offered, received and reserved.

Mary’s relationship to her Son has not changed since the Annunciation. As His Mother, she remains the Mother of Divine Grace, through whom He pours out His blessings on a sinful world. As Pope John Paul II observed in Redemptoris Mater, “Mary guides the faithful to the Eucharist.”

 

[kepha1]

last post reference: therealpresence.org/eucharst/pea/virgin.html

 

[StTommyMore]

Sorry, but you can neither deny nor defy time. No Jew ever made anything that happened in the past present.Ex 12:14 ¶ 'Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it {as} a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it {as} a permanent ordinance."

This is the danger of not taking the cultural context into account. At every Passover, the memorial was an active participation in the Exodus, and making it present. It has to do with the Jewish concept of what a memorial truly is. You cannot base your hermeneutic exclusively on your own experience, when the message was originally delivered to first century Palestinian Jews.

 

[GaryTaylor]

You have a problem with false dichotomies.

First, no Catholic considers Mary to be ‘equivalent’ to Christ. Mary is a creature. Christ is Creator.

Second, do you love your parents? Why? Why spend one minute of ‘devotion’ to mere human beings instead of Christ?

Well, you’ll say, in loving my parents (as the commandments tell us to do), I am showing my devotion to Christ.

So ‘showing devotion’ (to a parent, a spouse, a child) is not ‘taking away’ from Christ.

Oh, my father (rest his soul) has been gone over 40 years now. He hasn’t stopped being my father though, and I haven’t stopped loving and respecting him as my father. So those in heaven are still ‘part of the human family’.

By my still retaining love and devotion to my dear departed dad, am I somehow ‘taking away’ from the devotion I give to God? Not hardly.

You remind me of some people I’ve known in life who feel that a person has a ‘finite’ capacity for love, and that if, for example, their spouse has a child, that the ‘love’ the spouse gives the child is ‘taking away’ from the ‘fund of love’ that the deluded spouse thinks is exclusively’ his.’ They can’t seem to grasp that one can have ‘infinite’ love and that with the addition of a child, instead of ‘taking away’ from the love already there, the person’s capacity for love actually increases to embrace that child or further children.

We have an infinite love for Christ, but along ‘with’ that infinite love for Him we can also have a ‘lesser’ love for our family, our friends, our fellow humans. . . including Mary and the saints. By loving them fully we ‘increase’ our capacity to love Christ to the HIGHEST level.

Well Spoken!

 

[moondweller]

It was from Mary that the Son of God took our human nature. It was from Mary that the Second Person of the Trinity received His humanity. It was through Mary that Jesus Christ, who is God from all eternity, became man, lived visibly on earth in Palestine

But keep in perspective Mary’s words:Luke 1:38 And Mary said, "Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word."Not “by me.”

As His Mother, she remains the Mother of Divine Grace, through whom He pours out His blessings on a sinful world.

IOW, without Mary there’s no Catholic religion. Without your “Mother of Divine Grace” (a Catholic moniker, not Biblical) no Divine blessings can be poured out on this world (a Catholic dogma, not Biblical). In the Catholic cosmos, all Divine blessings come through Mary. Is this what Mary meant when she said “…may it be done to me?”

 

[Fair_Lady]

Elaborate

From Exodus 20:"3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. ’

And here’s the reason why:
" 6 You alone are the LORD;
You have made heaven,
The heaven of heavens, with all their host,
The earth and everything on it,
The seas and all that is in them,
And You preserve them all.
The host of heaven worships You.

 

[Fair_Lady]

…without Mary there’s no Catholic religion. Without your “Mother of Divine Grace” (a Catholic moniker, not Biblical) no Divine blessings can be poured out on this world (a Catholic dogma, not Biblical). In the Catholic cosmos, all Divine blessings come through Mary.

Now I see where you’re going with this, MD…interesting. Knowing this makes it a little easier to understand why there is such devotion to Mary.

 

[GreggAlvarez]

Moondweller,
Once again you have completely FAILED to understand anything I or other Catholics have ever said. I could not care less if you disagree because it is true. Your arguments are getting COMPLETELY ridiculous, absurd, childish, naïve, immature… Pick your favorite one. Before you were saying that the words spoken by Gabriel will be fulfilled “through” her (which we agree with) and now you are changing your position to oppose Catholic view which WAS your view anyway. Who is the hypocrit here? You say those things are not biblical yet you provide ZERO proof. It would be a different story if there were at least reasonable proof. You throw everything we say about Mary way out of proportion. If proportion were the Earth, then you would be at the most distant quasar. You disregarded my argument completely but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and think you did not see it. Without Mary, no Jesus. No Jesus, no Catholicism which amounts to no Christianity. Which means EXACTLY this: Without Mary, no Christianity. Without Mary, no Catholicism. Without Mary, no Protestantism. All because of this one simple clue: Without Mary, no Jesus. Even your idea of Sola Scriptura proves this.
Picture this different world: We can all agree that the same exact God would exist and we can all agree that if it were the same God, then the same Scriptures would exist because the Word of God would still be God and hence the same God as we have here and now. But I will grant that Mary did not exist. Jesus would not have been born because Scriptures do not support that He was born by anybody else besides Mary. I could also grant that Mary did not consent and said, “Let it NOT be done…” As per the previous argument, Jesus could not have been born because God would not have gone against her free will.

I really hope you understand that we too worship Jesus and love Him just as much as you do if not more. In fact, we love Him so much that we believed Him when He gave Mary to His beloved Apostle John and took that as “Hey, it is not by chance that He gave His Mother to the beloved of Apostles, so there MUST be a reason beyond what it says… There were 12 Apostles and it could not have been by chance that the only Apostle there was the beloved one.” as opposed to “John just happened to be the one of twelve Apostles there and Jesus just wanted someone to care for His Mother until she passed and nothing more because Scriptures are only mere words and there are no reasons beyond what it says, so one-twelfth is more than enough for anybody to believe that Mary is no more important than me or John or anybody else.”

 

[GreggAlvarez]

About the statues argument, Ex. 25:10-22, 33-36; 26:1; 1 Kgs 6:23-7:51; 2 Chr 3:10-4:22.

And again, we do not worship these statues. We do not worship Mary or any other saint. Our worship is to God alone. Devotion to Mary, the angels and saints and family and friends on Earth does not equate to worship. Nor does veneration. We believe that heaven is not a vault that God keeps locked up where God cannot hear their prayers until the end of time. We believe that those in heaven are more alive than those on Earth and are intercessing for us. And we believe Mary is Queen of Heaven because of the Old Testament pre-figurements.
I do have a serious question though. Why are these doctrines so bad? Aside from Scriptures because obviously we have different views on Scripture. We say Scriptures support it and you all say it does not so it would be useless to use Scriptures. Perhaps if we did not use Scriptures in this argument, we can get somewhere.

 

[Pax]

The following is taken from the old Baltimore Catechism which should help clear up some of the nonsense that is circulated against the Church and worship.

*214. Does the first commandment forbid us to honor the saints in heaven?

The first commandment does not forbid us to honor the saints in heaven, provided we do not give them the honor that belongs to God alone.

For, behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. (Luke 1:48)
215. Why do we honor the saints in heaven?

We honor the saints in heaven because they practiced great virtue when they were on earth, and because in honoring those who are the chosen friends of God we honor God Himself.
216. How can we honor the saints?

We can honor the saints: first, by imitating their holy lives; second, by praying to them; third, by showing respect to their relics and images.

Brethren, be imitators of me, and mark those who walk after the pattern you have in us. (Philippians 3:17)
217. When we pray to the saints what do we ask them to do?

When we pray to the saints we ask them to offer their prayers to God for us.
218. How do we know that the saints will pray for us?

We know that the saints will pray for us because they are with God and have great love for us.
219. Why do we honor relics?

We honor relics because they are the bodies of the saints or objects connected with the saints or with Our Lord.
220. When does the first commandment forbid the making or the use of statues and pictures?

The first commandment forbids the making or the use of statues and pictures only when they promote false worship.

Thou shalt not have strange Gods before me. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. (Exodus 20:3-4)
221. Is it right to show respect to the statues and pictures of Christ and of the saints?

It is right to show respect to the statues and pictures of Christ and of the saints, just as it is right to show respect to the images of those whom we honor or love on earth.
222. Do we honor Christ and the saints when we pray before the crucifix, relics, and sacred images?

We honor Christ and the saints when we pray before the crucifix, relics, and sacred images because we honor the persons they represent; we adore Christ and venerate the saints.
223. Do we pray to the crucifix or to the images and relics of the saints?

We do not pray to the crucifix or to the images and relics of the saints, but to the persons they represent.*

God bless.

 

[JustaServant]

From Exodus 20:"3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. ’

And here’s the reason why:
" 6 You alone are the LORD;
You have made heaven,
The heaven of heavens, with all their host,
The earth and everything on it,
The seas and all that is in them,
And You preserve them all.
The host of heaven worships You.

Please explain how these verses relate to the topic.

 

[paul_c]

Quote:
Originally Posted by moondweller

You both (Fair Lady and Moondweller) only hear what you want to hear. Apparently, the truth doesn’t matter to you. You set up strawmen and argue against them.

Nevertheless, I will once again explain the truth on this matter. If you won’t accept it, there will be others that do.

First, Moondweller, Mary IS important to all of Christianity, not just Catholicism. She was afterall, singularly selected to be the Mother of the Lord of all the woman that God ever created. We are devoted to Mary because she was the first to say “yes” to Christ and because of all she did not only for Jesus but for us as well. Many, many people have come to worship Jesus through the efforts of Mary. Remember in John’s gospel where Mary instigates the first miracle (turning water into wine). And remember all those people that have come to know Christ through the Marian apparitions at Guadalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima). Mary leads us to Jesus. She does not displace Jesus and our recognition of Mary does nothing to diminish Jesus. He is God and can’t be diminished by anyone. Its simply too bad you both live in a world where you can’t recognize the merits of others without impacting your ability to worship God. Not everyone has those limitations…

 

[paul_c]

From Exodus 20:"3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. ’

And here’s the reason why:
" 6 You alone are the LORD;
You have made heaven,
The heaven of heavens, with all their host,
The earth and everything on it,
The seas and all that is in them,
And You preserve them all.
The host of heaven worships You.

First of all, Catholics don’t worship other Gods in violation of the first commandment. When we venerate the Saints, including Mary, we are recognizing their merits and looking to emulate them. This is different than worshiping God, who we place first in our lives. And thats really the message of the first commandment: Put God first in our lives. Not Money, not fame, not power. But God. When we follow the saints toward God, we are still putting God first…

 

[JustaServant]

You both (Fair Lady and Moondweller) only hear what you want to hear. Apparently, the truth doesn’t matter to you. You set up strawmen and argue against them.

Ya think?

 

[adrift]

From Exodus 20:"3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. 1
1 Then God delivered all these commandments:
2
"I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
3
You shall not have other gods besides me.
4
You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth;
5
2 you shall not bow down before them or worship them.
1
1 Then God delivered all these commandments:
2
"I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
3
You shall not have other gods besides me.
4
You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth;
5
2 you shall not bow down before them or worship them.

Interesting trandslation. What one are you using? The translation I am familiar with is

1
1 Then God delivered all these commandments:
2
"I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
3
You shall not have other gods besides me.
4
You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth;
5
2 you shall not bow down before them or worship them.

Explain what it means to “serve” them?

 

[EricFilmer]

Moondweller…

You disregarded my argument completely but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and think you did not see it. Without Mary, no Jesus. No Jesus, no Catholicism which amounts to no Christianity. Which means EXACTLY this: Without Mary, no Christianity. Without Mary, no Catholicism. Without Mary, no Protestantism. All because of this one simple clue: Without Mary, no Jesus…

Hey Gregg,

Take a moment to compare your statement here with what DavidFilmer stated way back in Post #2 when this thread began. As you can see, MD’s question has been answered over and over again (by you, me and others), and whatever he’s trying to wrangle from this, he does so with one of the lamest excuses for scholarship that I have had the displeasure of witnessing in the CA forums. In light of all this, I think this thread (which is starting to reach the 400 post mark) has pretty much been an utter waste of time. MD is not really interesting in asking Catholics what we believe, he’s trying to tell us what we believe, based on nothing more than his poorly conceived opinions.