Mary

I like these type of questions. It helps me to limber up my faith in Christ.And crack open the pages of my Bible and do some serious studying of the subject of salvation and who brings it.Not that I don't already enjoy reading scripture.It's just nice to know that there is no power in any other name through prayer except Jesus.

Saint Beloved said:

Satan could cheat me from Heaven by promoting the divine feminine and paganistic rituals disguised as christian practise though and I could fall for it like many do even the Jews did for some things especially aesthetically

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Agreed. It is possible that many or most of the Christians throughout history　(including myself) been deceived into that.

Saint Beloved said:

I've been watching some YouTube videos by Fr Matt Hartley on catholic 101 any other recommendations?

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I would check out the video on the Holy Eucharist. The Church's teaching on this is often the most difficult thing for people to accept, but it is a central aspect of what we believe. The series on prayer from a Catholic perspective might be also be good, since prayer is the heart of our relationship with Jesus. The video on the Mass should also be pretty central.

PeaceB said:

Agreed. It is possible that many or most of the Christians throughout history　(including myself) been deceived into that.

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Catholicism is so overwhelming compared to the simple protestantism I've been exposed to. I like the stripped downness of it just not the division with so many denominations. I like that catholics are united but at the same time it's hard to see what is God intended and what is human added. I'm used to it just being God, the Bible and community, to swap that simplicity for complicated is hard. With protestantism although not assured of salvation I felt like God looks on my spirit more than my flesh. With catholcism it feeks like He only sees my flesh and though I believe in Christ I will still have to be punished for a time if not forever so I'm confused about Him having paid once and in full if I have to keep killing Him in the Eucharist and even then still face punishment.

PeaceB said:

I would check out the video on the Holy Eucharist. The Church's teaching on this is often the most difficult thing for people to accept, but it is a central aspect of what we believe. The series on prayer from a Catholic perspective might be also be good, since prayer is the heart of our relationship with Jesus. The video on the Mass should also be pretty central.

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Thanks on it now!!!

PeaceB said:

Did you speak to her lately?

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Mary says: "Pray to Creator GOD, not to created beings".

W2L said:

The term "dead people" refers to people who have died. Their eternal fate is irrelevant to what i was saying.

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I am referring to their current and existing ontological condition...
It begins after death, while still walking upon the earth, as your quote below amply demonstrates:

Colossians 3:3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

"For you have died", you see, refers to living Christians, the ones to whom Paul is writing this epistle... Such as these, you see, have no earthly life, yet we walk upon the earth, and compassionate worldly people pity us, for they cannot see the Life that is ours which is hidden with Christ in God... It is such as these that will appear WITH Christ in Glory, IF they persevere to the end...

Plain English, W2L... And your next quote affirms the same:

John 11:25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.

"He who is believing in me, even if he should die, shall be living..." This is a little more literal to the Greek. Yout take on it points to the Resurrection, which it does, but in terms of your Colossians 3:3 quote, it points to our life in Christ on earth... This life, you see, this hidden Life, does not end at death...

Christ is Risen!

Arsenios

W2L said:

Perhaps.

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May God bless that outcome...

A.

ChristianFromKazakhstan said:

Mary says: "Pray to Creator GOD, not to created beings".

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Did she tell you that when you prayed to her?

throughfireytrial said:

Well this is silly reasoning...prove Mary sinned...shall I have to prove any other person in the Bible sinned as well?

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If you assert that any specific person has sinned, you must prove it yes. We certainly know that the vast majority of people sin, but the verses you cite do not mean that each and every human being who has existed on the Earth has committed an act of sin.

For example, the one year old son of someone I know died recently. What act of sin could he possibly have committed? You tell me.

No, that is understood from the Genesis and Romans passages. According to Romans...
Romans 5:12:
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned

...so unless you are claiming Mary is not part of the human mortal race she sinned.

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If your assertion is that every person who was part of the human mortal race has sinned, then you would have to conclude that Jesus sinned. Because Jesus is fully human, and he was certainly mortal unless you deny the cross.

Other examples of people who have not committed an act of sin are infants who die before the age or reason, or people with severe mental incapacity.

The scripture you cited does not mean "each and every human being ever present on the Earth has committed an act of sin." That is merely your incorrect interpretation of the verse, and I disagree with it.

You can keep trying to prove that Mary sinned, but before you waste your time with it, please realize that plenty of people have attempted to do that for the past 500 years, without success.

Saint Beloved said:

Catholicism is so overwhelming compared to the simple protestantism I've been exposed to. I like the stripped downness of it just not the division with so many denominations. I like that catholics are united but at the same time it's hard to see what is God intended and what is human added. I'm used to it just being God, the Bible and community, to swap that simplicity for complicated is hard. With protestantism although not assured of salvation I felt like God looks on my spirit more than my flesh.

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I feel you. From the outside, it can seem as though the rules, the rituals, the art, the crucifixes, the clothing, and the cathedrals is the substance of what the Church has to offer. We bear most of the responsibility for that. We don't often communicate effectively about how these things relate to our personal relationships with Jesus, and about the substance of what is behind the external or visual aspects of the Church. It seems that Pope Francis has come a way in trying to get members of the Church to improve in these areas, and hopefully that is something that we can continue to improve on.

At least to me, I would say that the same "simple" (for lack of a better word) faith exists in Catholicism. Ultimately this whole thing is about furthering our relationship with Jesus, and trying to live out our lives in a way that furthers that relationship. We all have our different inclinations, and I think people tend to live it out in different ways. Some folks are drawn more deeply into the intellectual or theological aspects of the faith (generally speaking, I think these types of folks (like myself) are found much more frequently on the internet). Some folks know very little of that stuff but have a much deeper prayer life. Some other folks are drawn more deeply to performing charitable acts of mercy. People also live out their faith in a variety of different cultural contexts. I think you see this within most Christian communities of faith.

If you wanted to look at something with a bit more of a "spiritual" feel to it than "intellectual", I would suggest "Interior Freedom" and "Searching for and Maintaining Peace" by Jacques Philippe, and "Life and Holiness" by Thomas Merton. They are all pretty short and easy reads, but profound from a spiritual standpoint.

With catholcism it feeks like He only sees my flesh and though I believe in Christ I will still have to be punished for a time if not forever so I'm confused about Him having paid once and in full if I have to keep killing Him in the Eucharist and even then still face punishment.

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I don't know if you see us this way, but I have seen among some folks a perception that we are just kind of walking around all day shaking in our boots for fear of sin, or that we don't have confidence or peace about our salvation. I have not found those perceptions to be true in general, although some people go through a phase of what we call "scrupulosity" as they develop in their faith. I think that in general we are pretty at peace. Like everybody else we all know that we do not deserve Heaven, that we are not perfect, that Jesus died for us, and that God is a merciful and loving Father. We don't presume that we will go to Heaven, and we put our faith in Jesus and believe that He will save us if we follow Him.

On the other hand, we believe that the warnings in Scripture about falling into sin are real, and that they should be taken seriously.

As for killing Jesus again in the Mass, that is not what happens. The theology of the Mass is pretty deep and it would take a bit of dedicated study to grasp it, but I can give you a few basic pointers that can help to understand the theology behind it.

1) The high-priest at Mass is Jesus. We do not sacrifice Jesus at the Mass, rather it is Jesus, acting though priest presiding at Mass, who offers Himself to the Father, on our behalf.

2) The Sacrifice of the Mass is not a bloody sacrifice. Jesus does not die again at Mass. The Mass is an unbloody sacrifice (just as a sacrifice of praise is an unbloody sacrifice).

3) The Sacrifice of the Mass is a sacramental re-presentation of the sacrifice on the cross, by which the saving power of the the sacrifice on the cross is made present today, and applied to the sins that we commit daily.

Perhaps an analogy (although imperfect) might go something along the lines of this:
Let's say that Jane and John are married. Today John insults Jane, causing Jane to get extremely mad at John. As a means of trying to get Jane to get less angry at him and to forgive him, John might say something along the lines of "Remember that time when we were dating, and I quit my job and moved half way across the country just to be with you?" Here, John does not quit his job again or move again, but he presents the memory of it to Jane in order that she might be reminded of it and forgive him today.

The Sacrifice of the Mass is somewhat equivalent to John saying "Remember that time when we were dating, and I quit my job and moved half way across the country just to be with you?" That is, for the ongoing sins that we continue to commit today, Jesus continually reminds the Father of the one-time Sacrifice that he made on the cross, to appease the anger that the Father might otherwise have against our ongoing sins that we commit daily. Although we believe that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist, the Mass is also symbolic in the sense that the the "wine" symbolizes his blood, the "bread" symbolizes his body, and the separation of the wine and the bread on the altar symbolizes his death on the cross. His death is re-presented during Mass in this sacramental sense, and is properly considered a "memorial sacrifice", rather than Jesus actually being killed again during Mass.

Saint Beloved said:

My biggest confusion is all the semantics and interpretations.

Same Scriptures different twists for different agendas.

I am a child coming to Christ understanding things in a black and white way I need simple things to draw me closer not intellectual debating rings.

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Just keep praying and attempting to follow the Lord the best that you can. I'll do the same. Nobody goes to heaven for having the right religion (be it Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, or whatever), and Jesus will not reject you if you do not reject Him.

Victory-N-Christ said:

Can I inquire why without coming across as sarcastic?

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Christians have always prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary and held her up as the Christian par excellence, the best example of a follower of Christ

Christians who were persecuted by the pagan Romans and the pagan Barbarians
but over time, the civilized pagans of Greece, Rome, and Egypt become converted to the true faith of Christianity
and one by one the Barbarian tribes of the Franks, Saxons, Celts, Danes fell to the love, piety, rationality, and truth of the Christian religion

Christianity, armed with the faith in Jesus, the wisdom of the Bible, the leadership of valid Bishops, the sustaining grace Sacraments, and devotion to the Saints in heaven who pray for us here on earth, was first persecuted by the pagans, and then overcame them with Love and Truth

then after the pagans were converted, in both a culture, place, and time very far removed from the the what the first Christians would have known, we get people telling us that it is not good to pray to the Saints, seeking to say that Mary was not a Holy Virgin her entire life

were there missteps along the way?
sadly yes, the Church in East neglected to convert the arab tribesmen
as punishment for this God allowed Islam to rise up among them and they became a great scourge to the Church punishing us for our failure to spread the Gospel to them
at times the Church in the West neglected the common folk, focusing more on clerics and princeses
as punishment God allowed Cathers and Hussites to rise up and become a scourge to the Church punishing our neglect

so yes, mistakes were made, but to be told by members of a religion that was made up 500 years ago in Northern Europe that it is not "Christian" to pray to Mary and the Saints is beyond the pale
asking us to abandon our Faith, the Faith that withstood the swords of Roman and Barbarian
not only withstood but also in time converted those people
only to be told 1500 years after the time of the Apostles that these ways are are not true, after they have withstood the test of time

till this very day the majority of Christians hold these teachings to be true, in Russia, in Greece, the remaining Christians throughout the Levant and Arabia and North Africa, and a majority of Christians in Europe
the Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and some of the more traditional Anglicans all hold true to this ancient Christian belief in the intercession of the Saints and the special role of the Virgin Mary, it is only a minority of Christians who follow these theological innovations that are foreign to the Early Church

PeaceB said:

Did she tell you that when you prayed to her?

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Mary says: "It's sin to pray to me. Pray to GOD instead".

Aldebaran said:

Romans 3:10

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You see how that works?

ChristianFromKazakhstan said:

Mary says: "It's sin to pray to me. Pray to GOD instead".

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Nonsense. Mary did not say that. You can post it a thousand times if you want.