Why is it wrong to love Mary prt2

[Singinbeauty]

Being the father of three girls I find the text I highlighted in bold puzzling. Being a father the only way I would punish one of my girls is if they actually did something that I deemed wrong. I would not punish them for something that I didn’t mind them doing regardless of what they felt their conscience was telling them. That’s the thing about the human conscience, for it to be proper the conscience needs to be developed with sound teaching. In other words that analogy makes no sense.

So what’s the difference between the story and them doing something that IS actually wrong? See, in the story my mind and heart told me that my Dad did not want me to do those things but I did it anyway, KNOWING that it was wrong. If your daughters think something is wrong - even if you don’t see it that way but they don’t know this - and they do it anyways it IS wrong because of the defiance. What’s to stop them when it is actually something that is wrong in your eyes? There is no difference.

In regards to Mary of course she would not have ill will for any of us to give glory to God.

I am glad we can agree on this.

But that’s not the question.

The question is if God minds for His children to glorify Him in her whom He has made the mother of His Son.

The Protestant answer is ‘yes’. That answer comes from a very respectable, albeit misplaced, fear of idolatry.

I call the fear misplaced because it is a fear that blinds those to not accept what the Holy Spirit has done through this humble virgin from Nazareth.

In the New Dispensation God does not horde His glory, He doesn’t need any more glory than which He already has; that which is already infinite. And He is in no way threatened by sharing His glory with those in whom He has glorified as sons and daughters in His Son.

Instead God, the Father through the Son and in the Spirit, has poured out His glory to His children. This grace started with Mary and continued through the apostles, martyrs, and saints down to this very day. We glorify and honor Mary because God has already done so. And we glorify God in Mary because it is through her ‘yes’ that our salvation was manifested in human form.

The Protestant response to this glorification of Mary by God always seems like a response of jealousy. “What did she do to deserve that?”, is the question I hear most. My answer is always “Nothing, that’s what makes it so wonderful!”

The point is that God didn’t have to, but He wanted to, and so He did. And we should be happy not only for Mary but for all others who are given such graces unmerited.

God wants us to love her, because after all He loved her first and wants us to join Him in His love of her. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This love is what it means to be “in Christ.” We love her in Christ, and therefore we love Christ.

God Bless.

Until I can know within my heart, mind, and soul that God wants me to participate in parades, prayers, believing she can heal me… etc. I will not do these things. My praise, prayer, song, believing that He can heal me… etc. is going STRAIGHT to God because He and He alone is worthy. None other. I don’t think she has a problem with this…

 

[The_GreyPilgrim]

Until I can know within my heart, mind, and soul that God wants me to participate in parades, prayers, believing she can heal me… etc. I will not do these things. My praise, prayer, song, believing that He can heal me… etc. is going STRAIGHT to God because He and He alone is worthy. None other. I don’t think she has a problem with this…

Maybe, but realize this:
She heals because He allows her to. She IS worthy because He has made her worthy in Him. Do you not read scripture when Jesus says:"[20] “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word,
[21]** that they may all be one**; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”(John 17:20-21)

She hears the prayers and gives grace because Jesus allows her, along with the rest of the angels and saints in heaven, to cooperate in His work of salvation. Does He have to allow this? No. But He wants to. How do we know this?

Read Revelation when it speaks of the Woman that is the Bride that is the Great City that is the Ark of the New Covenant. All these point to a Person: Mary. She is the Personification of all these things most especially the Church.

Read how the prayers of the elders and the martyrs are taken by the angel and mixed with incense and taken to God who in return answers their prayers.

Read in Hebrews of how Paul reminds us how we are surrounded by “so great a cloud of witnesses”. That cloud-remember Jesus’ transfiguration-is the same Glory Cloud-Hebrew shekinah that approached Moses on Sinai. Paul is saying that those who have gone before us in Christ are in His glory. His Glory is their glory as well.

Believe me when I first joined the Catholic Church I had an aversion to any devotion to Mary or the saints. But once I opened my heart the the beauty of the truth of her role not only in salvation history, but to the continuing work that she carries out with her children in the name of her Son; once I opened myself up to her love-the same love in which she gives her Son-I knew that I truly belonged to the family of God.

God Bless