Monday, August 4, 2008

Quick message to Mary marginalizers

You know who I mean. I want to address one point in your same tired old arguments, which is where you choose to interpret Jesus' rebuke of someone in the crowd blessing Mary as being rebuke of her. You could not be more wrong and if you really read scripture without a big fat beam in your eye you'd realize that Jesus was using that opportunity to not rebuke Mary being blessed (who is obviously blessed if you bother reading what Gabriel said) but to extend the mantle of being "family" to include all those faithful to God.

Second, you might want to actually get to the part in the Gospel where Jesus rebukes someone who calls Jesus "good." Does that mean Jesus is not good? Think quickly, O great Bible scholars! Jesus asked him why he calls him good, when only God is good. Um, that's called making a greater point. So whenever you run around spewing that Jesus rebuked the blessing of Mary, be sure to tack on to your spew that Jesus also rebuked a man who called Jesus "good." And then march up to any Christians you know and tell them that Jesus is not good, and that's "scriptural."

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For the rest of you looking in on these types of "Christian" squabbles, here is the gist of the problem. Certain non-Catholics do not understand praying for intercession to anyone, including Mary. In other words, they do not understand that prayer to Mary or the saints is not worshipping them, but asking them to "put in a good word for them." They get all haughty and say that prayer should only go to Jesus (often they don't mention God himself as being the object of prayer, by the way, as God was for Jesus, since Jesus never prayed to himself).

So they do not believe that the saints, including Mary, have an ongoing interest in the world and "loving influence" (for lack of a better word) with Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit. So they do not see the point and get all haughty at the idea that Catholics understand that the communion of saints is real, ongoing and eternal, and that prayer to them is a plea for help with piety, strengthening faith (of which there is no better example than a saint in trying to maintain human piety to God, while Jesus is the model of obedience), and that prayer to saints is not worship but an attempt to seek and share their access to grace, which they were given by God.

Also, obviously, these same detractors do not believe in any of the visions of Jesus Christ or Mary since the resurrection and ascension of Jesus 2000 years ago. So they deny their ongoing interest and involvement in the world, and obviously deny that Mary has a real part. So they ignore that Mary has appeared to people in certain very valid instances (Guadalupe, Fatima, Lourdes) and thus deny her role as a mediatrix or intercessor through Jesus, not "instead of him."

Jesus is King and Mary is his Mother. The Bible is full of scripture explaining the significance for intercession of the Mother of the King among flawed humans. They refuse to understand the perfection of the Holy Family in heaven when they detract from Mary.

Hey, if you think "praying to Mary" is so bad, enjoy your well informed "knowledge" that gosh, I guess nothing good will come from those who pray to her or to the other saints. I mean, if it's so bad, I guess that you can be smug that those who pray to Mary or the other saints will "get theirs" when God tells them that "they took away from the glory of his son!" Oh wait, but you Mary detractors don't pray much to God himself do you? I mean, all to Jesus right? Just as he showed you in the scriptures, to only pray to him? Hmmmmmm.