PilgrimToChrist said:
You keep repeating the same question, asking when Stephen and James were first venerated, but the question is unimportant. Why St. Stephen the Protomartyr? Why St. James the Brother of the Lord? Of course we venerate them and of course they pray for us but what does it matter when their cults began, whether it was immediately after their entrance into Heaven or a hundred years later, it doesn't really matter.
Your attack on the veneration and intercession of saints and, presumably, on icons, is an attack on the Incarnation itself. So tread lightly!
You sound like Victor. You know Polycrates' response?
Really?
Is this related to Quartodecimanism? Your point is lost without a quote and an explanation.
Apparently, you do not know what I mean when I say that attacking the veneration of the saints of God and the use of icons is an attack on the Incarnation. I am not speaking randomly. The Incarnation is everything -- the entire Deposit of Faith flows from that one singular fact. Orthodoxy is understanding the meaning of the Incarnation and how we should act because of that fact. Heresy is the corruption and distortion of that, contrary to logic and Holy Tradition.
You have it backward in any event. Maintaining the cult of supposed Mary, eyes are closed, ears are shut, hearts are grown over.
Again, "supposed Mary", what is that supposed to mean? You did not answer me last ntime and so I repeat the question.
You also say, "eyes are closed, ears are shut, hearts are grown over". Yet, where do we see that? We see none of that in those who are truly devoted to the Blessed Mother, we see eyes and ears opened, hearts softened, souls saved, and the world redeemed. That is what we see when people understand and practice a true devotion to the Mother of God.
The point of Stephen and James is that the apostles and early Christians had the two perfect examples with which to teach the veneration and intercession of saints. They didn't.
Again, I repeat the same question to you:
And?
The fact of a Mary cult is explained at Jer. 44.
Again, I also ask: How is Mary related to the pagan goddesses Asherah, Ishtar, Hera, or Kali? You just keep repeating "Jer 44!" "Jer 44!" as though by mere inane repetition, you make a point, yet you don't -- you have made no point except association by repetition, which is the most boorish and ignorant of all arguments. If you think it works, perhaps you should write political attack ads...
See? Hear? Understand? If the apostles wanted us to practice invoking the deceased, they would have done so with the two first perfect examples.
If the apostles had not wanted us to ask those in Heaven to pray for us, they would not have taught their disciples to do so. They also would have condemned it, since it is no great leap to go from saying that those in Heaven pray for us and that we should ask each other to pray for us to saying that we should ask those in Heaven to pray for us. You recoil and lash out at the perfectly orthodox practice that encompasses the entire Christian world and has for the past 2,000 years. But why? You have yet to say anything intelligent, just "Jer 44!" "Jer 44!" as though people offering sacrifices to a pagan goddess has anything to do with asking those in Heaven to pray for us!
Jesus stood up when Stephen was stoned. We all know and agree upon that fact.
Acts 7:55 said:
But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looking up steadfastly to heaven, saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. And he said: Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.
James was on the inner circle, being with Christ at the transformation. He is martyred. Now, the apostles have two perfect first examples by which to teach Christians the truth about the state of the deceased and prayers to them. They do not instruct us.
What do you mean "they do not instruct us"? They instructed their disciples, did they not? Their disciples did so, did they not? Are we to believe that Christ's mission failed and His Church apostatized and the disciples of the Apostles completely changed the Faith which they were entrusted with and we the world lay in darkness for 1500-1800 years until God sent a new prophets to give the whole "Church" thing a second shot but this time creating an entirely chaotic system where everyone just relies on their own "personal inspirations" to make up their own religion and then calls the first Church heretics for doing what they have always done as was handed down to them from the Apostles? Your hypothesis is not laughable but pitiable, you have no idea what the Incarnation means, you have no idea what Jesus means, you stumble in the darkness, praying to an unknown God.
Now, if someone replies, but Mary, we know of Mary. No we don't. It isn't the Virgin Mary. How do we know? Because the practice does not originate from apostles. We know it is mentioned as a cult at Jer. 44. The fact that it is "polished" hasn't anything to do with the issue.
Mary was venerated in Jeremiah 44? I don't see that anywhere, you invent things. You might as well say the Athenians were venerating Mary when they made sacrifices to Athena.
You make no sense whatsoever.
You did not actually reply to my post. You probably did not actually read it. You simply repeated the same inane two two things: Stephen/James and Jeremiah 44.
Whether St. Stephen and St. James were celebrated and their intercessions sought the day after they were martyred or a hundred years later is irrelevant. And repeating your ridiculous connection between the Blessed Mother of God and some pagan goddess over and over
ad nauseum does not make it true, it is not really even an argument, it is the opposite of intelligence and argument, you just babble like an idiot, knowing nothing of what you are saying or why you are saying it. You just want to feel like you are right. You have no way of knowing that you are right, you have no bishop to follow, you establish yourself as your own leader and although you claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ, you reject Him and His Church and follow no one but yourself... and thus the blind man falls into the pit.
Acts 20:28-30 (c. AD said:
Take heed to yourselves, and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, to rule the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. I know that, after my departure, ravening wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock. And of your own selves shall arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.
Only following bishops who are holy and committed to Faith once delivered to the apostles (the Deposit of Faith) can we follow Christ. Christ is not served by everyone who says "Lord, Lord!", He is served in His Holy Church, which He established with the form of worship which He has established.
St. Irenaeus, who was a disciple of St. John, writes only about a generation after St. Luke's
Acts of the Apostles:
St. Irenaeus said:
But consider those who are of a different opinion with respect to the grace of Christ which has come unto us, how opposed they are to the will of God. They have no regard for love; no care for the widow, or the orphan, or the oppressed; of the bond, or of the free; of the hungry, or of the thirsty.
They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. It is fitting, therefore, that you should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of them either in private or in public, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion [of Christ] has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved. But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils.
See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.
...
It is well to reverence both God and the bishop. He who honours the bishop has been honoured by God; he who does anything without the knowledge of the bishop, does [in reality] serve the devil.
It is nothing to follow your own folly and claim to be following God. It is everything to follow the bishop and thus follow God.