Honestly, Lion King, I wish you would pay closer attention to what I say. Stephen was "full of" or "filled with" grace and "power" or "fortitude" at the time he was disputing with the chief priests in the synagogue and managed to convert some of them. He was bestowed with grace that was "plentiful" enough to grant him the wisdom and strength to bear the adversity he would have to face during the time of his mission. A cabinet can be full of medicine or "abundant" with medicine making it "well-supplied" for the time of need. And although the cabinet is full of the required medicine for a particular ailment, it doesn't mean that in order to be full the cabinet must contain all the medicines that have ever been produced even for more serious ailments.
Care to show me where it says in the Scriptures that Stephen was "full of grace and power" only temporarily?
When the angel Gabriel addressed Mary with the title kecharitomene - having been completely, perfectly, and permanently endowed with grace (charis) - he wasn't simply describing her at a given instance in time as Stephen is in the Book of Acts. And by grace the angel did not mean the actual graces of wisdom and fortitude, which are helping or signal graces that lead to the state of sanctification. The grace the angel had in mind was that of sanctification itself which Eve had helped forfeit for her biological descendants by listening to the word of the fallen angel.
How do I know you are not simply making things up as you go? Scriptures please?
PS. I'm not in the habit of accepting what people say, simply because they claim to be from the LORD.
The Greek singular female vocative can be paraphrased or translated in the Latin to mean "full of grace", for Mary had been endowed with a fullness of sanctifying grace to the "extreme capacity", having been "completely and perfectly" endowed with grace in view of her maternal vocation, which required that she be preserved free from all the grave spiritual ailments caused by the stain of original sin: concupiscence of the eyes, concupiscence of the flesh, and the pride of life. To conceive and bear the holy Child of God as a mother worthy of him, the spiritual gifts of wisdom and fortitude, however plentiful and well-supplied in her soul, wouldn't be enough to meet her divine call.
As I have already shown you earlier, the Greek for
full of grace is "plaras karitos" and it occurs in only two places in the New Testament; neither one is in reference to Mary.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. John 1:14
_ _ _
Now Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people. Acts 6:8.
Mary had to be perpetually holy - from the moment she was conceived to the time of her dormition - in order to be the mother of the divine Son. Her mission was lifelong.
Correction; God alone is eternally holy!
Anyway, where is it said in the Scriptures that one had to be "everlasting holy" to bear the only-begotten Son of God?
She already was the mother of our Lord before the Annunciation and Incarnation by God's eternal decree once God created her in time. Until Mary was conceived and born, she always existed as an idea in the eternal mind of God.
No No No.
Mary was NOT the mother of Christ before the Annunciation and Incarnation, for God has NO mother! She only became the
mother of Christ in the flesh, after Christ came into the world as a HUMAN BEING. Just because the LORD knows each and everyone of us and set us apart before we are even born (Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 139), does not mean that we already were in existence long before being actually born.
Before Christ came into the world, before He became flesh, He had no mother! He is the LORD from everlasting, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End..
"I will surely bless you and make your descendants (seed) as numerous as the stars of the sky and as the sand on the seashore."
Genesis 22, 17
I will make your descendants (seed) as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands and through your offspring (seed) all nations on earth will be blessed.
Genesis 26, 4
Christ is Abraham's seed by bloodline and ethnic ancestry through Isaac, as all Jews are, though only a remnant will be saved, and even the Gentiles who would come to embrace the faith at the time of the New Covenant can be counted as Abraham's descendants in spirit. Jesus is Mary's seed by being her actual biological offspring and the "fruit of her womb", unlike any other Jew.
I'm not sure I follow what you are trying to say here? Are you by any chance trying to claim that Mary's role in God's plan was significantly greater than Abraham's, or are you simply downplaying Abraham? Or is it both?
Christ is the fruit of Mary's womb > Christ is the seed of Abraham
Is this what you are trying to imply?
When God spoke to the serpent about the woman Eve (Gen 3:15), he prophetically alluded to both Israel and Mary (cf. Rev 12). Figuratively, Israel is the mother of Christ as she is of all Jews who come from her. The psalmist tells us: "Zion shall be called mother, for all shall be her children." Israel (Jacob) is a corporate entity descended from Abraham through Isaac, who prefigures Christ. Through Israel the promises made to Abraham find their fulfillment. All nations shall be blessed only in Christ, a son of Israel. "Salvation comes from the Jews," Jesus told the Samaritan woman, though not through the law but by faith.
You are correct, all the nations on earth are blessed through Christ (Israel), the seed of Abraham.
However, Mary is more than the actual mother of Christ; she was also his personal tabernacle or dwelling place typical of the ark of the Old Covenant. And so as a personal individual entity, Mary was fashioned pure and spotless as a living, sacred temple to be fit enough to harbour the actual presence of God when being overshadowed (episkiasei) by the Holy Spirit just as the glory cloud (shekinah) had covered (epikiasei) the meeting tent in which the ark rested.
Others say that Christ (and not Mary) is the ark of the New Covenant), due to several reasons. Some being:
-Romans 3:25
-John 1:14 says "the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory." In the Greek the word dwelt is "skeinoo" from the Hebrew word "shekinah" which was the word for "God residing in the Tabernacle." Jesus clothed himself in human flesh (Phil 2:5-8) the ark was His body as it had carried the Creator of the universe. It was not Mary who was the ark, but Jesus Christ's body that was the Tabernacle.
...but I won't go into that discussion at the moment.
Thus Jesus was Abraham's seed by being born of a Jewish woman and descendant of Abraham through Isaac. But he became man by being born of a woman, notwithstanding whether she was Jewish, who according to God's specifications, had to be pure and righteous as he was in his humanity to be worthy of her divine maternity.
So, if Mary had be sinless to be "worthy" of bearing the only begotten Son of God who had no sin in Him, doesn't it mean that Mary's mother had to be sinless as well (to be able to bear Mary)?
The blessing of all nations finds its fulfillment in the divine Messiah, the offspring of Abraham by bloodline and ethnic ancestry through Mary his Jewish mother.
By the way, the ethnic ancestry of Christ is traced through Joseph and not Mary.
In the sixth month of Elizabeths pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgins name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacobs descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.
How will this be, Mary asked the angel, since I am a virgin?
The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God." Luke 1:26-35
God's words to the serpent could not have been realized by his decree without the virgin birth.
And the dragon was angry against the woman: and went to make war with the rest of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Revelation 12, 17
That woman mentioned in that above passage is NOT Mary, but Israel. The devil is at war with the REMNANT of Israel:
A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. Revelation 12:1-5
While it is true that Mary gave birth to Jesus, it is also true that Jesus, the son of David from the tribe of Judah, came from Israel. In a sense, Israel gave birthor brought forthChrist Jesus.
Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. Listen, he said, I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.
When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you? His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind. Genesis 37:9-11
Joseph was one of the twelve sons of Israel. From his dream we are shown that the sun, the moon, and the twelve stars represent Israel and his family. Israel formerly called Jacob had twelve sons from which emerge the twelve tribes of Israel. And it is through Israels seed that God promises to bring forth His Son the Messiah Jesus Christ.
True, but not everything contained in Tradition is "explicitly" found in Scripture. We must often read the Scriptures in a spiritual sense.
As long as it is found in the Scriptures, that is fine by me.
Not without the grace of God.
We cleanse our hearts and purify ourselves by accepting and cooperating with the graces we have received through the Holy Spirit.
That goes without saying.
We partake of the divine life when being in the state of sanctifying grace. This is lost when we commit a mortal sin (i.e., murder or adultery) until we sincerely repent and do penance, ideally through the sacrament of reconciliation. The more venial sins we commit, the less holy we are in God's sight while still in the state of sanctification, and the more time we have to spend in purgatory to make satisfaction and appease the Father's justice by being cleansed of and temporally punished for the remnants of sin. Again, Mary was permanently and completely graced, and so she could never have fallen from or regressed in grace in spite of her free will. Her soul constantly "magnified" the Lord.
..I lost you there?
