Hot answers tagged virgin-mary
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Credit to H3br3wHamm3r81 who actually found this link.
According to Catholic Answers, it was because of God's salvation that she was able to be born sinless and remain sinless.
Paraphrasing, God saved her pre-emptively, preventing (or perhaps keeping/preserving) her from sinning in the first place, something no human could do without God's protective ...
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The Magnificat or the Canticle of Mary (Luke 1:46-56) mirrors Hannah's prayer found in 1 Samuel 2:1-10 so closely that one would have to think that Mary found her words in through reflecting on scripture.
And Hannah prayed: And Mary said:
My heart exults in the LORD, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the ...
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Catholics love Mary, as you may know. And this particular detail of the Wedding of Cana reaffirms the Catholic devotion to Mary as an intercessor.
The Gospel reveals to us how Mary prays and intercedes in faith. At
Cana, the mother of Jesus asks her son for the needs of a wedding
feast; this is the sign of another feast—that of the wedding of the
...
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She was probably between 13 and 14 years old according to the Catholic Encyclopedia in the section entitled "Mary's pregnancy becomes known to Joseph":
From the age at which Hebrew maidens became marriageable, it is possible that Mary gave birth to her Son when she was about thirteen or fourteen years of age. No historical document tells us how old she ...
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Key to answering this question is that no mainstream Christian denomination thinks they are actually worshipping any person other than the Triune Godhead - God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
From the outside, however, accusations are often made in this regard.
To the uninitiated, veneration of the Saints can look like worship.
To the ...
7
Mary Makes No Request
It is important to note that Mary never specifically asks Jesus to make wine, but simply states the situation.
It is possible she understood that Jesus had the power to do something, because she does tell the servants to do whatever he tells them to do. Still, there is no direct request by Mary, and it is evident that Mary does not ...
7
I don't want to plagiarize, but there is a very good Catholic article on this here.
In summary, the significance of swaddling clothes lies both in the fact that it is humble, common, ordinary, and also that it ties to Solomon - specifically the Wisdom of Solomon 7, 3-6.
7:3 And when I was born, I drew in the common air, and fell upon the
earth, ...
7
According to the Bible, Mary is not explicitly mentioned after Acts. There is no record of her death or non-death. Further, since she was very young when she gave birth, it is conceivable that she would have outlived many of the original authors. Either way, any information about Mary after about 40 AD cannot rest on Biblical justification.
And I think that ...
7
Luke records Mary's faith on the occasion of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-56). Gabriel informs her (v35) that "the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God", and she replies (v38) "let it be done to me according to your word". When Elizabeth addresses her as "the mother of my Lord" (v43), Mary proclaims with the Magnificat (vv46-55), ...
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The bee represents Mary, the mother of Jesus. (In fact, it's a fairly safe bet that just about anything represents Jesus or Mary or both.) Other versions of the Exultet text make this explicit; the "Franco-Roman version" has a long we-love-bees section, as recorded by Thomas Forrest Kelley in his The Exultet in Southern Italy (OUP, 1996), p38, concluding ...
6
I was reluctant to post this answer in view of a good answer posted by @David but thought it would be better if it is clarified a little more.
The essence of original sin consists in the deprivation of sanctifying grace, and its stain is a corrupt nature. Mary was preserved from these defects by God's grace; from the first instant of her existence she was ...
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Part of the Litany of the Holy Name of Mary:
Mary, house of God, pray for us
Mary, sanctuary of the Lord, pray for us
Mary, altar of the Divinity, pray for us
Mary, Virgin Mother, pray for us
Mary, embracing your Infant God, pray for us
The Holy Table would be the altar. Calling the altar the Holy Table is mostly an Eastern Catholic and ...
5
The Immaculate Conception is not the same as the miraculous conception of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Immaculate Conception refers to the conception of Mary: Mary was conceived (by her mother, Saint Anne) being full of sanctifying grace and free of any stain of original sin.
It does not refer to any of the following, which Catholics also ...
5
"Protestantism" is the name of a movement. "Protestants" are people who are part of that movement. It's the same relationship as between the words "Catholicism" and "Catholics". Catholics are the people who are part of Catholicism.
The problem is that your definition of Protestants is far too narrow. Protestants don't pray to Mary (mostly - there are a few ...
5
Orthodoxy has a Tradition of the Dormition of Mary wherein it is belived that she didn't die but merely fell asleep and was assumed into Heaven. Catholic teaching neither affirms nor contradicts the Dormition but we have another tradition which is written in one of the apocryphal gospels ascribed to St. Thomas but written hundreds of years a after his death. ...
4
There are some debates about this because these genealogies do not have every name along the branches but certain representative names. Most sources I have encountered think Matthew proves Christ was legally entitled to the throne of David as a legal ancestor to David through his father by law. Luke on the other hand traces the the physical lineage through ...
4
It is funny to me that the Bible does not mention in any prophecy that the mother of the Messiah would be a redeemer or mediator or queen of anything. All biblical scripture before Jesus points directly to Him, and all scripture after Jesus tell us about his ministry and finished work on the cross. This man made belief that Mary is all these things is not ...
4
I believe the issue of "adoration" versus "veneration" is a game of semantics that Catholicism has created in order to continue their glorification of Mary.
According to the Athansian Creed, "Fides autem catholica haec est: ut unum Deum in Trinitate, et Trinitatem in unitate veneremur", which Wikipedia and most other English translations of the Athanasian ...
4
You are presenting a false dichotomy. "Prays to" does not mean "worships", and, along those lines, "worship" does not always mean what we think of when we think of "worship."
If by "worship" you mean "provides honor due to God" then I will say that it is sinful to place a Saint at so high a level. Perhaps this is what happened when John saw the Angel. If by ...
3
Luke, the author of the gospel that bears his name and also of Acts, was an exceptional historian of the classical mold. Roman and Greek history was a little different than what we expect from the field. Wikipedia suggests a typical approach:
In Roman historiography commentarii is simply a raw account of events often not intended for publication. It ...
3
Did Mary realize that she was sinless before the Annunciation?
No. If I cannot remember my sins, the only reasonable conclusion is that I forgot my sins, or that I was ignorant of having sinned, not that I was without sin. The same is true of Mary. She could not have known that her life so far had been free of sin, even if she could not remember any sins. ...
3
Your statement was absolutely correct.
The Athanasian Creed states,
Est ergo fides recta ut credamus et confiteamur, quia Dominus noster Iesus Christus, Dei Filius, Deus pariter et homo est. Deus est ex substantia Patris ante saecula genitus: et homo est ex substantia matris in saeculo natus.
which is translated into English as,
Therefore, the ...
3
As we read the Nativity Story, (esp Luke 2: 7-20)
Ponder the questions? Why did the angels go to the shepherds first? Why are swaddling clothes twice mentioned, "And this shall be a sign unto you, ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger."
I gave a talk a week ago, on the shepherd seeking the lost sheep, when I found the ...
3
There has been no traditional answer to this question that I'm aware of. All of the commentaries I'm familiar with echo the same sentiment: That it seems odd that she would expect Him to be able to do something about the lack of wine, even though supposedly, she had never seen Him work a miracle yet. All of the commentators seem to be scratching their ...
3
It's just what people do with newborns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swaddling
We found that wrapping our children with slightly stretchy fabric blankets when they were infants tended to comfort them and help them sleep better than when their limbs would flail about.
3
Nobody will mind if I quote a 1850 year old document at length here right? If you don't read it with any context it might seem kind of strange. The Protoevangelium of St. James is definitely apocryphal, but that doesn't make it bad and it certainly shows evidence of an age old tradition (and a good one).
And her months were added to the child. And ...
3
Although Mary is the Mother of God, she is not his mother in the sense that she is older than God or the source of her Son’s divinity, for she is neither. Rather, she is the Mother of God in the sense that she carried in her womb a divine person—Jesus Christ, God "in the flesh".
If this is not so then it is like saying that Mary did not carry God in her ...
3
The difference between Protestants and Protestantism isn't the same as the difference between an optician and an optometrist or the difference between a Pontiac and a Buick.
It's not a level of the same sort of thing with different priorities or anything.
It's the difference between Catholics and Catholicism or Communists and Communism or sadists and ...
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One point I always like to stress to my Catechism class because I think it really shows a lot about who Jesus and Mary are is that she is, as the Litany of Loreto says, the
Ark of the Covenant
The Ark held God within it and physically held a few mementos of desert wanderings (According to the tradition the Book of Hebrews uses in 9:4)
which had the ...
3
The Protoevangelium of James, an apocryphal Gospel probably written about AD 145, Says that Joseph used a donkey to bring Mary to Bethlehem
The day of the Lord shall itself bring it to pass as the Lord will. And he saddled the ass, and set her upon it; and his son led it, and Joseph followed.
Protoevangelium of James:17
So we know that from very ...
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