Can you find the Church?

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bbbbbbb

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I dont know where you get that idea

In Orthodoxy, this is the opening set of prayers, called the Trisagion (or Three Holies):

Glory to thee, O God, glory to thee.
O heavenly King, Comforter, the Spirit of truth, who art everywhere present and fillest all things, Treasury of good things and Giver of life: Come, and abide in us and cleanse us from every stain and save our souls, O Good One.
+Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.
+Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.
+Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.
+Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

All-holy Trinity, have mercy on us. Lord, cleanse us from our sins. Master, pardon our iniquities. Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities for Thy name’s sake.

During Lent, we add the Prayer of St. Ephraim
O Lord and Master of my life, a spirit of idleness, curiosity, ambition, and idle talking; give me not.
But a spirit of chastity, patience, and love, bestow upon me, Thy servant.
Yea, O Lord King: grant me to see mine own failings, and not to condemn others; for blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages. Amen.

I do not get this idea from Orthodoxy at all, but simply from the prayer I cited. If this is an Orthodox prayer, as well as an RCC prayer, then my observation might also apply to Orthodoxy.

My Queen, My Mother, I offer
myself entirely to thee.
And to show my devotion to thee,
I offer thee this day, my eyes,
my ears, my mouth, my heart,
my whole being without reserve.

Wherefore, good Mother, as I am thine own,
keep me, guard me as thy property and possession.
Amen.
 
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Daniel Hoseini

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I'm talking about the "true Church,"........ i.e., the one started by Christ and founded upon the Apostles.

Jesus did say he was going to build his Church, didn’t he....... (Matt. 16:18)?

Isn’t “the church” spoken of often in Scripture ( Eph.3:10, 5:21–32; Col.1:24; 1 Tim 2: 15)?

Your thoughts?

Have a Blessed day

For me, the Eastern-orthodox church most of all falls under this definition, although it doesn't have the central government like the Roman church. It is more like a confederation of the self-governing churches, who are often in conflict with each other because of political disagreements.
But the positive thing is that it preserves the true basic Christian theology, the Nicaean creed without introducing new previously unknown dogma's. And this theology is largely shared by other denominations, and that's why they are more or less Christian (unlike Jehova's witnesses).

In addition to that, I would say that in my personal opinion the true Church is the fullness of all those people whose hearts are open to God and who therefore are destined to be saved. In Heaven there will be no segregation between them, they will be all equally children of God, one Church, heavenly citizens, no matter what denomination they belong to on earth.
 
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bbbbbbb

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For me, the Eastern-orthodox church most of all falls under this definition, although it doesn't have the central government like the Roman church. It is more like a confederation of the self-governing churches, who are often in conflict with each other because of political disagreements.
But the positive thing is that it preserves the true basic Christian theology, the Nicaean creed without introducing new previously unknown dogma's. And this theology is largely shared by other denominations, and that's why they are more or less Christian (unlike Jehova's witnesses).

In addition to that, I would say that in my personal opinion the true Church is the fullness of all those people whose hearts are open to God and who therefore are destined to be saved. In Heaven there will be no segregation between them, they will be all equally children of God, one Church, heavenly citizens, no matter what denomination they belong to on earth.

Thank you. I appreciate your truly ecumenical views.
 
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Placemat

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Again PM, how about you conveying to us, information of Marian practices and prayers asking Mary to preform miracles, entirely on her own, with zero help from God.

Have a Blessed Day!

Why? I have never stated anything about Mary performing miracles, entirely on her own, with zero help from God - that's of your own making - perhaps you can show me where I stated such a thing? What I have stated has been supported by the prayers I've posted.

#466 - The words of the Pope's prayers (she is asked directly to : comfort, fill with hope, stir consciences, deliver from temptations, illumine people's minds.....not asked to 'intercede in prayer' about these things but to actually DO something about them) and all the other prayers posted convey what I stated and actually claimed earlier - which is the fact that:

Yes and as you can see below, certain Catholics embraced this prayer and by their examples and practices ‘taught’ other Catholics to place their trust in Mary…not God.











 
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concretecamper

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My Queen, My Mother, I offer
myself entirely to thee.
And to show my devotion to thee,
I offer thee this day, my eyes,
my ears, my mouth, my heart,
my whole being without reserve.

Wherefore, good Mother, as I am thine own,
keep me, guard me as thy property and possession.
Amen.

I guess that leaves God with nothing. Oh well.

My Mother I love you. Love me too, and give me a sip of the Will of God for my soul. Give me your blessing also, so that I might do all my actions under your maternal gaze
 
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concretecamper

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Yes and as you can see below, certain Catholics embraced this prayer and by their examples and practices ‘taught’ other Catholics to place their trust in Mary…not God.
this displays a lack of knowledge about His Church and Mary. This statement is ridiculous.
 
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Placemat

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This say it all ^_^.

Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, we beseech thee that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, whose soul was pierced by the Sword of Sorrow in the hour of Thy Passion, may be our advocate at the throne of Thy Mercy, now, and at the hour of our death. Through Thee, Jesus Christ, Redeemer of the World, Who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, world without end. Amen.

No....THIS says it all....if you've been born again and truly trust in the Lord Jesus Christ:

Matthew 11:
28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Hebrews 4:
14
Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.

15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.


16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.


Romans 8:
26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

27 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

Col 2:
6
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7 rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.8 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. 9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; 10 and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.

 
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concretecamper

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No....THIS says it all....if you've been born again and truly trust in the Lord Jesus Christ:

Matthew 11:
28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Hebrews 4:
14
Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.

15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.


16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.


Romans 8:
26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

27 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

Col 2:
6
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7 rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.8 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. 9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; 10 and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.
thank you for quoting from scripture! As a Catholic, I'll say you are welcome.
 
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Placemat

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Thank you for pointing that out to me...it is irritating when I read through posts and see those little errors....but I usually just skip over them, realising we all occasionally slip up....forgetting to hyphenate a word or capitalise the beginning of a sentence...like you did here:

thank you for quoting from scripture! As a Catholic, I'll say you are welcome.
and here:
to say otherwise would be to admit something many cannot bring themselves to do.
;)
 
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Valletta

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Pope Benedict gave a wonderful homily about Mary at Altötting, Germany Sept. 11, 2006:
“In the Gospel passage [recounting the wedding at Cana], Mary makes a request of her Son on behalf of some friends in need. At first sight, this could appear to be an entirely human conversation between a Mother and her Son and it is indeed a dialogue rich in humanity. Yet Mary does not speak to Jesus as if he were a mere man on whose ability and helpfulness she can count. She entrusts a human need to his power – to a power which is more than skill and human ability. In this dialogue with Jesus, we actually see her as a Mother who asks, one who intercedes. As we listen to this Gospel passage, it is worth going a little deeper, not only to understand Jesus and Mary better, but also to learn from Mary the right way to pray. Mary does not really ask something of Jesus: she simply says to him: “They have no wine” (Jn 2:3). Weddings in the Holy Land were celebrated for a whole week; the entire town took part, and consequently much wine was consumed. Now the bride and groom find themselves in trouble, and Mary simply says this to Jesus. She doesn’t ask for anything specific, much less that Jesus exercise his power, perform a miracle, produce wine. She simply hands the matter over to Jesus and leaves it to him to decide about what to do. In the simple words of the Mother of Jesus, then, we can see two things: on the one hand her affectionate concern for people, that maternal affection which makes her aware of the problems of others. We see her heartfelt goodness and her willingness to help. This is the Mother that generations of people have come here to Altötting to visit. To her we entrust our cares, our needs and our troubles. Her maternal readiness to help, in which we trust, appears here for the first time in the Holy Scriptures. But in addition to this first aspect, with which we are all familiar, there is another, which we could easily overlook: Mary leaves everything to the Lord’s judgment. At Nazareth she gave over her will, immersing it in the will of God: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). And this continues to be her fundamental attitude. This is how she teaches us to pray: not by seeking to assert before God our own will and our own desires, however important they may be, however reasonable they might appear to us, but rather to bring them before him and to let him decide what he intends to do. From Mary we learn graciousness and readiness to help, but we also learn humility and generosity in accepting God’s will, in the confident conviction that, whatever it may be, it will be our, and my own, true good.

We can understand, I think, very well the attitude and words of Mary, yet we still find it very hard to understand Jesus’ answer. In the first place, we don’t like the way he addresses her: “Woman”. Why doesn’t he say: “Mother”? But this title really expresses Mary’s place in salvation history. It points to the future, to the hour of the crucifixion, when Jesus will say to her: “Woman, behold your son – Son, behold your mother” (cf. Jn 19:26-27). It anticipates the hour when he will make the woman, his Mother, the Mother of all his disciples. On the other hand, the title “Woman” recalls the account of the creation of Eve: Adam, surrounded by creation in all its magnificence, experiences loneliness as a human being. Then Eve is created, and in her Adam finds the companion whom he longed for; and he gives her the name “woman”. In the Gospel of John, then, Mary represents the new, the definitive woman, the companion of the Redeemer, our Mother: the name, which seemed so lacking in affection, actually expresses the grandeur of Mary’s enduring mission.

Yet we like even less what Jesus at Cana then says to Mary: “Woman, what have I to do with you? My hour has not yet come” (Jn 2:4). We want to object: you have a lot to do with her! It was Mary who gave you flesh and blood, who gave you your body, and not only your body: with the “yes” which rose from the depths of her heart she bore you in her womb and with a mother’s love she gave you life and introduced you to the community of the people of Israel. But if this is how we speak to Jesus, then we are already well along the way towards understanding his answer. Because all this should remind us that at the incarnation of Jesus two dialogues took place; the two go together and blend into one. First, there is Mary’s dialogue with the Archangel Gabriel, where she says: “Let it be with me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). But there is a text parallel to this, so to speak, within God himself, which we read about in the Letter to the Hebrews, when it says that the words of Psalm 40 became a kind of dialogue between the Father and the Son – a dialogue which set in motion the Incarnation. The Eternal Son says to the Father: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me … See, I have come to do your will” (Heb 10:5-7; cf. Ps 40:6-8). The “yes” of the Son: “I have come to do your will”, and the “yes” of Mary: “Let it be with me according to your word” – this double “yes” – becomes a single “yes”, and thus the Word becomes flesh in Mary. In this double “yes” the obedience of the Son is embodied, and by her own “yes” Mary gives him that body. “Woman, what have I to do with you?” Ultimately, what each has to do with the other is found in this double “yes” which resulted in the Incarnation. The Lord’s answer points to this point of profound unity. It is precisely to this that he points his Mother. Here, in their common “yes” to the will of the Father, an answer is found. We too need to learn always anew how to progress towards this point; there we will find the answer to our questions.

If we take this as our starting-point, we can now also understand the second part of Jesus’ answer: “My hour has not yet come”. Jesus never acts completely alone, and never for the sake of pleasing others. The Father is always the starting-point of his actions, and this is what unites him to Mary, because she wished to make her request in this same unity of will with the Father. And so, surprisingly, after hearing Jesus’ answer, which apparently refuses her request, she can simply say to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5). Jesus is not a wonder-worker, he does not play games with his power in what is, after all, a private affair. No, he gives a sign, in which he proclaims his hour, the hour of the wedding-feast, the hour of union between God and man. He does not merely “make” wine, but transforms the human wedding-feast into an image of the divine wedding-feast, to which the Father invites us through the Son and in which he gives us every good thing, represented by the abundance of wine. The wedding-feast becomes an image of that moment when Jesus pushed love to the utmost, let his body be rent and thus gave himself to us for ever, having become completely one with us – a marriage between God and man. The hour of the Cross, the hour which is the source of the Sacrament, in which he gives himself really to us in flesh and blood, puts his Body into our hands and our hearts, this is the hour of the wedding feast. Thus a momentary need is resolved in a truly divine manner and the initial request is superabundantly granted. Jesus’ hour has not yet arrived, but in the sign of the water changed into wine, in the sign of the festive gift, he even now anticipates that hour.

Jesus’ “hour” is the Cross; his definitive hour will be his return at the end of time. He continually anticipates also this definitive hour in the Eucharist, in which, even now, he always comes to us. And he does this ever anew through the intercession of his Mother, through the intercession of the Church, which cries out to him in the Eucharistic prayers: “Come, Lord Jesus!”. In the Canon of the Mass, the Church constantly prays for this “hour” to be anticipated, asking that he may come even now and be given to us. And so we want to let ourselves be guided by Mary, by the Mother of Graces of Altötting, by the Mother of all the faithful, towards the “hour” of Jesus. Let us ask him for the gift of a deeper knowledge and understanding of him. And may our reception of him not be reduced to the moment of communion alone. Jesus remains present in the sacred Host and he awaits us constantly. Here in Altötting, the adoration of the Lord in the Eucharist has found a new location in the old treasury. Mary and Jesus go together. Through Mary we want to continue our converse with the Lord and to learn how to receive him better. Holy Mother of God, pray for us, just as at Cana you prayed for the bride and the bridegroom! Guide us towards Jesus – ever anew! Amen!”









 
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Valletta

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Please point out what was false about what I posted?
Placemat, yours is flawed logic. By your logic when you say the "Our Father" you place your trust only in God the Father and not in Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Study the Bible to learn about intercessors like Mary. In the Davidic kingdom, the mother of the king is the queen, and she makes requests of the king.
 
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