Okay, we are going to talk about Mary and the Saints! This area is one of the biggies separating most Protestants (except for Anglo/Catholic Anglicans) and Catholics. The Orthodox are closer to Catholic faith and practice in this area but there are some differences in emphasis which I will not go into here.
Now before I started my journey towards the Catholic Church, I didn't give Mary much thought at all. She had the kid, mission accomplished, now get her off the stage. She was an accessory to any crèche set sitting next to the manger looking adoringly at the God/Man baby lying in it.
I did go so far as thinking highly of her for being willing to endure for God's will and plan the probable gossip going on in her community about her alleged indiscretions and what a good man Joseph was to go ahead and marry her anyway. I mean the Bible says that even Joseph had his doubts until an angel set him straight. (See Matthew Chapter 1) But that was about it for my thoughts about her.
Catholics on the other hand highly revere her (but not worship) and call her the Queen of Heaven, the Mother of all Christians/the Church, the Blessed Mother and the Mother of God. They regularly ask for her intercessions, confide in her and have a relationship with her as they do with Jesus.
So how did I come to adopt the Catholic view of Mary? Gradually. And it is based largely on Scripture.
I noticed for the first time as I was re-reading Revelation 12 that the woman even though she is not identified by name in the passage is obviously Mary and that her male child is obviously Jesus. The Protestant commentators just identified her as symbolically representing Israel. And Mary definitely does represent Israel but she is still Mary, the mother of Jesus. And she is in the sky standing on the moon wearing a crown. Hmmm... that suggests royalty, a queen or more precisely the queen-mother for she is the mother of the King of kings and Lord of lords, the one who will rule all nations with a rod of iron, Jesus.
And someone else is in the sky. A great, red dragon who is identified as the Devil, Satan and the Accuser. And he is seeking to devour the child and destroy the woman. An all-out war breaks out that seems to be taking place back and forth across time and simultaneously in heaven and on earth. And the sky appears to be heaven from which Satan and the angels that follow him are cast down from as they lose the war against the angelic host led by Michael the archangel. Satan is also unsuccessful in his attempts to destroy the mother and child and he is furious and the chapter closes with this verse.
"17 Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus."
Hey, that's us Christians! We are offspring of the woman, of Mary and of Israel too, through her. I understood that I was Mary's child, too. I also saw that this passage was one of the places where Catholics got the idea that Mary is Queen (or Queen-Mother) of Heaven and Mother of All Christians/the Church.
I think I will stop here because I want to write in bite-size chunks for my readers. I also want to make a few things clear as to my purposes in writing about my journey. I want my readers to know about and hopefully understand my journey. I also hope they will be able to learn things that will help them in their walk with Jesus as I have been helped. I also hope to help Christians from the three major branches understand and respect one another.
I have a bit more to write about Mary and how she has helped me along the way to follow her son, Jesus. Then I will address the Saints.
No comments:
Post a Comment