I have read that passage which doesn’t. It barely mention anything that souls cannot hear.
Do you want to take that challenge when you die?
Jesus did have power. He is God made flesh, and he did verbally instructed the dead to rise and they did so. Likewise, Peter did the same. He verbally told Tabitha to rise and she did.
You are free to believe that. Asking saints to pray for us does not imply that we don’t need God. It mainly ask the saints to pray with us.
We don’t know who isn’t saved, but we can know that certain people are, by whether they died a good death, or not.
The point in the passage is that there is a separation between the 2. One goes to his eternal home while the other stays in this world. No mention or inkling that each was to communicate with each other.
i don’t look at it as some kind of challenge but as something the scriptures don’t teach,
Would you agree that some kind of special power was involved here?
If he repentent the last few seconds of his life, with contrite heart, he will be in heaven. If he died in venial sin, he would be in purgatory, so the prayers of the faithful is needed to loose them from their sins.
Praying to saints is acceptible and recognized by the Catholic Church.
This brings up another issue. We pray for the dead in hopes they will be lose from their sins. Even the Jews today pray for the dead called the Mourners Kaddesh, same with Orthodox Christians, they pray for the dead.
There isn’t. The fact that Jesus spoke ot Lazarus and rose from the dead is clear. That fact that Peter told Tabitha to get up is pretty clear.
God did. Souls can communicate. They aren’t mute souls.
I would be one of them.
I will relate the story of my friend Danny, who died of lung cancer in 1994.
Exactly. I don’t ask anything to my dead relatives. It’s a pity though I don’t know enough about my grandmother or grandfather. I do know I trust in God’s mercy.
One of the reasons that the church does not generally encourage praying to deceased family members as though they were saint (the circumstance I list being an exceptional situation) is because it is expected we pray for our dead.
How can you be sure that your pastor will not forget to comply with your request? You can’t be sure. :nope: With Mary we can be absolutely sure. If we ask her to pray for us in the Lord’s name, she will do it. :yup: And she does have the ability to hear and answer our prayers, for she exists body and soul in heaven with her divine Son. Mary is immersed in the Beatific Vision of God, so our prayers to her involve Him. Praying to Mary is praying to God with her, for she is in such close communion with Him and has been ever since the Holy Spirit overshadowed her in the Annunciation.
Anyway, Albert Einstein regarded the human imagination greater than human knowledge. If, for instance, Christopher Columbus had never first imagined that the earth was round, he would not have set sail and learned with absolute certainty that our planet was not flat, as most other people had imagined at the time. We cannot infer something potentially knowledgeable if we have no faculty of imagination to begin with. Intuitive knowledge requires an imagination. The Holy Spirit enlightens the Church by way of human intuition granting her a share in divine knowledge. Theological speculation relies on it as the Church develops her doctrines within the bounds of Sacred Scriptures and Sacred Tradition. Peter intuited the divinity of Christ by the grace of God. :bowdown2: He made his profession by initially imagining things Jesus had already said and done. For him the world was round. He knew Jesus was the Son of God before he set sail. Columbus would not have risked sailing over the edge of the world if he hadn’t been sure of the planet’s actual shape. In a similar vein, the Catholic sees the Word of God as something round. The divine truth is not what it appears to be on the surface, something flat. There is something in the entire picture that suggests otherwise. To discover the fullness of this truth experientially, he sets sail and explores beneath the surface of appearance to discover for himself and confirm his belief. The Protestant fundamentalist, on the contrary, looks at the Bible and perceives it as something flat. He is either unable to penetrate and break through the surface of appearance or refuses to accept the belief that the fullness of divine truth lies beneath the surface or over the horizon so to speak; either he has no imagination or deliberately denies it. He will not discover the truth until he admits to himself that the world is in fact round and sets sail to prove it. 
I think you are misunderstanding the use of the word “prayer” in this context. It is no different than Paul, when he asks fellow believers to pray for him.
I think you are misunderstanding the use of the word “prayer” in this context. It is no different than Paul, when he asks fellow believers to pray for him.
You are just misunderstanding the nature of intercessory prayer. Asking another believer to pray for you does not in any way detract from your own prayers to God. Or, maybe you don’t know how the Hail Mary prayer goes?
And the criterion for “oral tradition” is that it was taught by the Apostles from the beginning. You have yet to prove any of the Apostles taught the IC and sinlessness of Mary.
That’s quite an assertion, G. And you know this how?
Absolutely. That’s why one must interpret according to its context and not read extra-biblical doctrines into the text…
What you’re saying here, G., is that one is not to strive to allow the Scriptures to speak for themselves, but one must conform the Scriptures to the “right teachings” of the “teaching authority” of your church. In context Lk. 1:28 states absolutely nothing about Mary’s conception, but instead the One she is about to conceive through the power of the Holy Spirit. For this reason the angel Gabriel addressed her as “favored one” and explains his greeting in vss. 30-31.
Of course this is all based upon speculation on your part. However, Luke states nothing about her being immaculately conceived or sinless either in his Gospel account or his historical account of Acts. Those extra-biblical Marian dogmas, embraced over time by Catholicism, were formulated by human reasoning subsequent to the Apostolic age (unless you can prove otherwise). How would Mary herself know she was immaculately conceived? How would her mother even know? Such knowledge would have required divine revelation. So, AGAIN, to whom, personally, did God reveal this alleged conception? Who (which Apostle), according to your “oral tradition,” did God personally reveal this otherwise impossible to know bit of information about Mary?
Well, this is especially true of Marian dogmas such as her IC and sinlessness. Things which no man could observe. Human reasoning doesn’t cut it. And from the research I’ve done, subjective, human reasoning is their source, not objective divine revelation.
You missed my point. By “own” it I meant to whom did God personally reveal it? Historically no Apostle claimed such knowledge about Mary.
It’s not “how” Abraham was accounted righteous. Personal faith in the Lord was why God reckoned it (his faith) to him as righteousness:Gen. 15:6 "Then he (Abraham) believed in the Lord; and He (the Lord) reckoned it (his faith) to him as righteousness."The righteousness of the redeemed believer is not inherent or accomplished, it’s foreign. It’s a “righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith” (Phil. 3:9)
Scripture doesn’t say that the “merits” of Christ were applied to Elijah and Enoch “in advance.” But rather God “overlooked,” “passed over” sins previously committed until they were dealt with, once for all, at the cross of Christ. God had his Judgment Day on ALL sin 2000 years ago - including Mary’s (Jn. 1:29).
Well, the only so-called “proof” you have is your teaching authority which says believe it because we tell you to. You’ve got to do better than that, G.
The sign appears in heaven but the events shown in the heavenly sign take place on earth.I have to take issue with this. The woman is already IN heaven! This being apocalyptic literature, it is counterproductive to take the images literally or confine them to the space time continuum. However, John opens the passage saying “the heavens were opened” and that he “saw a woman clothed with the sun”. She may be the heavenly Jerusalem, the pure Bride of God…