Are you on your knees right now, praying? WELL WHY NOT?
The Chaplet of The Divine Mercy
Jesus said to Blessed Faustina Kowalska: 'Even the most hardened sinner, if he recites this chaplet even once, will receive grace from My infinite Mercy.'
(This prayer is said using ordinary rosary beads.)
First, make the Sign of the Cross.
Then say one Our Father, one Hail Mary and the I believe in God (the Apostle's Creed).
Then, on the Rosary beads (on the Our Father beads), say one time:
Eternal Father,
I offer You the Body and Blood,
Soul and Divinity
of Your dearly beloved Son,
Our Lord Jesus Christ,
in atonement for our sins
and those of the whole world.
and then (on the Hail Mary beads) say ten times:
For the sake of His sorrowful Passion
have mercy on us
and on the whole world.
Repeat these prayers on the Rosary beads for one chaplet (a total of five sets). You will then have said the Eternal Father prayer a total of five times and the For the sake of His sorrowful Passion prayer a total of fifty times.
Conclude by saying three times:
Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world.
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve: to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus, O merciful, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! Amen.
The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
You have been deceived. Your "Queen of Heaven" is Semiramis. Turn away from your Babylon religion.
It would be licit, according to custom, to hold the Jews in perpetual servitude because of their crime.
~ St. Thomas Aquinas
GEE WHAT CRIME, DURKA?
Jews are slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, enemies and haters of God, adversaries of grace, enemies of their fathers’ faith, advocates of the devil, a brood of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, men of darkened minds, the leaven of Pharisees, a congregation of demons, sinners, wicked men, haters of goodness!
~ St. Gregory of Nyssa
Crucifiers of Christ ought to be held in continual subjection.
Peter is the ROCK of the church because Jesus said so.
And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
"I TELL YOU THAT YOU ARE ROCK AND ON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH AND THE GATES OF HELL WILL NOT OVERCOME IT"
Jesus renamed Simon.
"Peter" (Aramaic: Cephas or Greek: Petros) means literally means "rock" in Koine Greek, the language which the New Testament was written. It was not a regular name at the time, but Jesus made it so by changing Simon's name to Peter. The Greek words petrosand petra where masculine and feminine forms of the same word in Koine Greek. In Attic Greek they were two different words but that was not the language of the New Testament.
The latest missive I received from him accuses Catholics of idolatry for giving honor to Our Lady under her title “Queen of Heaven.”
Still choking, I hope, on all the camels he has swallowed from my past rebuttals, albeit still in denial, he now finds a new “gnat” to strain out in his obsession to indict the One True Church.
Yes, he finds the condemnation of our honoring Mary as Queen of Heaven in Jeremias.
Indeed, especially in chapter 44, the prophet does excoriate, over and over, the remnant of Jews exiled with him in Egypt, in particular the women, for worship of a queen of heaven. Not all of the exiles were guilty, but a lot of them were. Enough for God to rouse the indignation of Jeremias against them. These Jews had been routed from Jerusalem, along with our prophet, by the Persians in the 6th century B.C. The women, in particular, were “sacrificing” cakes and libations to an Egyptian goddess named Asherah, whom they were worshipping as “queen of heaven.” The same is Isis, their goddess of the moon. Appropriately, the woman carved the cakes into a crescent shape. (Now you know another origin for the word lunatic.) The Moslems, it seems, were not original in their adoption of the crescent moon and star. To be accurate, they did not adopt the symbol until the Turks used it for their Ottoman Empire emblem sometime in the early fifteenth century.
By the same token, shall we, Pastor Joe, refrain from calling God “the Father” because the pagan Romans worshiped the principal deity under that title. Jupiter, literally, means “Zeus Father”? I know, I know, Saint Paul in many places speaks of God the Father. Therefore, the comparison fails because it’s in the Bible. C’est la vie. I withdraw the point — to an extent, that is. What still stands is that the pagans called God “Father” Zeus. And, by Our Lord’s command, Christians call God “ Our Father.” And there is no problem here. So why is there a problem with giving the Mother of God the title “Queen of Heaven” when we have no intention of worshipping Ashera?
It is not beyond our scope here to note that the Protestant heresiarchs, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, all defended the Immaculate Conception and Our Lady’s perpetual virginity. Hear Luther: “The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart.” In his last sermon in 1546 Luther said: “This is the woman who crushed the serpent’s head . . . For your Son denies you nothing.” They write nothing against her Queenship, or her bodily Assumption. Can we not assume that they so honored her “Queen of Heaven”?
Let’s take a quick survey of queenship in the Old Testament.
Here are some related passages:
“The daughters of kings have delighted thee in thy glory. The queen stood on thy right hand, in gilded clothing; surrounded with variety” (Psalm 44:10).
The Jews, of course, had their queens, good and bad ones. In the same inspired book that Pastor Joe employs, we read: “After that Jechonias the king, and the queen, and the eunuchs, and the princes of Juda, and of Jerusalem, and the craftsman, and the engravers were departed out of Jerusalem” (Jeremias 29:2).
And, what shall we say of Queen Esther? She was a figure of Our Lady because she saved her people from destruction. Her story is told in the Book of Esther of the Old Testament.
Although Abraham was not a king, he was considered royal by his friendly hosts, the Hethites — a “prince” in fact. And we are defending not only queenship but royalty as we have it throughout the Bible.
And Sara lived a hundred and twenty-seven years. And she died in the city of Arbee which is Hebron, in the land of Chanaan: and Abraham came to mourn and weep for her. And after he rose up from the funeral obsequies, he spoke to the children of Heth, saying: I am a stranger and sojourner among you: give me the right of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead. The children of Heth answered, saying: ‘My Lord, hear us, thou art a prince of God among us: bury thy dead in our principal sepulchres: and no man shall have power to hinder thee from burying thy dead in his sepulchre’” (Genesis 23, my bold).
Now, let’s return to the subject in question: to Our Lady, Queen of Heaven.
The first thing my pastor friend gets wrong is that he confuses the celestial luminaries above us with the home of the blessed in eternity. The moon is in its place orbiting the earth. And, of course, the stars are high above in the heavens. But the heaven of which Our Lady is Queen is not that of Asherah, but the “Kingdom of Heaven” where Jesus reigns with His saints. What the idolatrous Jewish women were adoring was not the abode of anyone, but a thing that gives us the reflected light of the sun at night. Maybe not as bad as worshiping an idol made by human hands, but still idolatry, giving worship to a piece of rock, a beautiful round rock, but a rock. The moon, however, is symbolic of Our Lady in that she filters the radiance of the Son of God, reflecting His brilliance, and making Him more conformable to our dull intellects. “Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?” (Canticles 6:9). Saint Louis Marie de Montfort (+1716) applies the verse to Mary: “She is not the sun, which by the brightness of its rays blinds us because of our weakness; but she is fair and gentle as the moon, which receives the light of the sun, and tempers it to make it more suitable to our capacity.”
― Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary:
And where is the moon in Marian iconography? Under her feet. So, she appears in the Book of Apocalypse and so she appeared and still appears on the tilma of Saint Juan Diego in Mexico. This sign, given to the pagan Aztecs, manifested that the holy woman of Guadalupe was greater than the moon or the sun which shines behind her in the Miraculous Image. Their gods were devils.
It would seem to any one without bias that Our Lady’s title of Queen is most fitting. She is the Mother of Christ the King. My pastor friend is quick to assure me that Jesus is certainly our King. And that His reign is forever. This, as he says, is clearly affirmed in the Gospels, even by Our Savior Himself. I asked him why then does he not honor Mary, either as “Blessed Virgin-Mother” or as “Queen” reigning as Queen-Mother with her Son? Our Lady’s Magnificat canticle, particularly the verse “Behold all generations shall call me blessed,” gives Pastor Joe a problem. And that prophecy is ex clara scriptura (clear in scripture). He had no answer for why he refuses to call the Mother of God “Blessed Mary,” but, as I noted, he assumes having a real “Queen of Heaven” is like the idolatry condemned by Jeremais.
I doubt that my Pentecostal friend would accept the authority of Saint Athanasius (or any other father of the Church) but the saint from Alexandria (296 to 373), in Egypt by the way, writes “If the Son is a King, the mother who begot Him is rightly and truly considered a queen and sovereign.” (de Deipera, on the Godbearer). Common sense, right? One would think having a Queen-Mother in Heaven would be a cause of great joy. One would think so.
Saint Ephrem the Syrian (+373) writes in the person of Mary: “‘Let Heaven sustain me in its embrace, because I am honored above it.’ For heaven was not Thy mother, but Thou hast made it Thy throne. How much more honorable and venerable than the throne of a king is his mother.” And in another place he thus prays to her: “. . . Majestic and Heavenly Maid, Lady, Queen, protect and keep me under your wing lest Satan the sower of destruction glory over me, lest my wicked foe be victorious against me.”
Our Lady has always been honored as Queen since apostolic times, especially in the East. In the West, the great hymn Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen) was composed in the late eleventh century by Blessed Herman the Cripple. It soon became part of the liturgy and was sung in the divine office. Its main promoter in the West was Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (+1153). Over time, popular devotion added it at the end of the Rosary. Pope Leo XIII added it, the prayer to Saint Michael, and the O God Our Refuge to the Prayers after Low Mass
Much has been written in varying articles on our website honoring Mary as Queen of Heaven, but none so specifically and exhaustively as that of Charles Coulombe. You can read this excellent study of the devotion and its history here.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a court royale. We have Christ our King, Mary our Queen, and we also have a Prince of the heavenly host. Who might that be? Saint Michael, of course. It’s in the Book of Daniel, clara scriptura Pastor Joe.
“But I will tell thee what is set down in the scripture of truth: and none is my helper in all these things, but Michael your prince” (Daniel 10:21).
And, again: “But at that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people: and a time shall come such as never was from the time that nations began even until that time. And at that time shall thy people be saved, every one that shall be found written in the book” (Daniel 12:1).
The prophet calls Michael “one of the chief princes.” So, there are others.
Saint Paul, who knew a lot about angels, speaks of thrones, dominions, and principalities in the celestial realm. (Colossians 1:16).
Yes, indeed Heaven is a court royale. Our King would have nothing less in His kingdom. As Saint Paul tells Timothy, “[T]he saying is sure: If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:11-12a, my emphasis). And, as Saint John saw in vision concerning the martyrs “Then I saw thrones” (Apoc. 20:4).
“And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Apocalypse 12:1).
I expect that pastor Joe will argue that this verse refers to the Church not to Mary. Indeed it does refer to the Church I will respond. So, say the early fathers of the Church. But the fathers also say that the passage redounds as well to the glory of the Mother of the Church, Mary. Pope Pius XII affirms the same in his encyclical, Munifentissimus Deus, in which he defined the bodily Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven:
“Moreover, the scholastic Doctors have recognized the Assumption of the Virgin Mother of God as something signified, not only in various figures of the Old Testament, but also in that woman clothed with the sun whom John the Apostle contemplated on the Island of Patmos” (#27).
The fathers also point out that this verse from the Apocalypse is preceded by the Apostle’s vision of the temple of the heavenly Jerusalem and the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark, which was hidden by Jeremais over five hundred years before, was considered by the fathers to be a figure of Our Lady, the Ark of God, the Theotokos, in whose womb rested the divine Manna, the Bread of Life. “Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place: thou and the ark, which thou hast sanctified.” (Psalm 131:8).
Note, too, that this is why the passage from the Apocalypse is read at the Mass for the Solemnity of the Assumption on August 15.
Ephesians 6: 10-18
Anons are being told to put on the full armor of God.
More than once we have been told.
Why?
Because when the battle is spiritual, so are the weapons.
Man has never fashioned a weapon mightier than prayer.
God wins.
No, don't pray the rosary. Where is that in the Bible? Pray the way Jesus said:
"Our Heavenly Father,
Holy is Your name.
Your Kingdom come, and Your Will be done
On earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us today our daily bread,
And forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.
Lead us not to temptation,
But deliver us from all evil.
For Your is the Kingdom, the Glory, the Power, forever and ever.
Amen."
God is always in control even when we in the human world cannot see how it would ever work out. Problems this deep and this complex require God. Because no human can fix it. God said to turn to him in times of trouble .Thanks for the reminder to up my prayers !!
I would contest "lots" and reduce it down to a handful. Most Popes have been holy and devout men. But yeah, Bergoglio is by far the worst Pope in history, and we've had 266 of them. Also, it is far from certain he is even the Pope given the amount of material heresy he spews. It may come out that Benedict XVI is the rightful Pope, much like Trump is the rightful President.
Chanting vain repetitions like the heathen do is something the bible tells Christians not to do. The Catholic church is the great whore described in Revelation, and the Pope (and every pope before him) is a deceiver and an antichrist.
As a young Protestant, this was one of my favorites to ask Catholics. “Why do Catholics pray ‘repetitious prayer’ like the Rosary when Jesus says not to pray ‘vain repetitions’ in Matthew 6:7?”
I think we should begin here by quoting the actual text of Matt. 6:7:
And in praying do not heap up empty phrases (“vain repetitions” in KJV) as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words.
Notice the context? Jesus said “do not heap up ‘empty phrases’ (Gr. – battalagesete, which means to stammer, babble, prate, or to repeat the same things over and over mindlessly) as the Gentiles do…” We have to remember that the main idea of prayer and sacrifice among the pagans was to appease the gods so that you could go on with your own life. You had to be careful to “take care of” all of the gods by mentioning them, and saying all the right words, lest you bring a curse upon yourself.
And remember as well, the gods themselves were immoral at times! They were selfish, cruel, vengeful etc. The pagans would say their incantations, offer their sacrifice, but there was no real connection between the moral life and the prayer. Jesus is saying that this will not cut it in the New Covenant Kingdom of God! One must pray from a heart of repentance and submission to God’s will. But does Jesus mean to exclude the possibility of devotions like the Rosary or the Divine Mercy Chaplet which repeat prayers? No, he does not. This becomes evident when, in the very next verses of Matthew 6, Jesus says:
Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our debts, As we also have forgiven our debtors; And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Jesus gave us a prayer to recite! But notice the emphasis on living the words of the prayer! This is a prayer to be recited, but they are neither “empty phrases” nor “vain repetitions.”
Examples of Biblical “Repetitious Prayer”
Consider the prayers of the angels in Revelation 4:8:
And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”
These “four living creatures” refer back to four angels, or “Seraphim,” that Isaiah saw as revealed in Is. 6:1-3 about 800 years earlier, and guess what they were praying?
In the year that King Uzzi’ah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
Someone needs to inform these angels about “vain repetition!” According to many of our Protestant friends, especially Fundamentalists, they need to knock it off and pray something different! They’d been praying like that for ca. 800 years!
I say that tongue and cheek, of course, because though we don’t understand fully “time” as it applies to angels, let’s just say they have been praying this way for a lot longer than just 800 years. How about longer than mankind has even existed! That’s a long time! There is obviously something more to Jesus’ words than just to say we should not pray the same words more than once or twice.
I challenge those skeptical of prayers like the Rosary to take a serious look at Psalm 136 and consider the fact that Jews and Christians have prayed these Psalms for thousands of years. Psalm 136 repeats the words “for his steadfast love endures for ever” 26 times in 26 verses!
The rosary - NO WAY!
Jesus said: When you pray, Use Not Vain Repetitions as the Heathen do! # Matthew 6:7
Praying to Mary is also wrong:
http://www.mtc.org/rc_bible.html
Are you on your knees right now, praying? WELL WHY NOT?
The Chaplet of The Divine Mercy
Jesus said to Blessed Faustina Kowalska: 'Even the most hardened sinner, if he recites this chaplet even once, will receive grace from My infinite Mercy.'
(This prayer is said using ordinary rosary beads.)
First, make the Sign of the Cross.
Then say one Our Father, one Hail Mary and the I believe in God (the Apostle's Creed).
Then, on the Rosary beads (on the Our Father beads), say one time:
Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.
and then (on the Hail Mary beads) say ten times:
For the sake of His sorrowful Passion have mercy on us and on the whole world.
Repeat these prayers on the Rosary beads for one chaplet (a total of five sets). You will then have said the Eternal Father prayer a total of five times and the For the sake of His sorrowful Passion prayer a total of fifty times.
Conclude by saying three times:
Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world.
As a pilot I’m concerned I’d freak out the passengers
Are you here to lead the planefags? Lol welcome and God bless you.
I guess i could pray. I was trying to find something more useless to do instead, but so far no luck.
?
I very much doubt Jesus would contradict himself - read Matthew 6:7!
I’m not Catholic but you are right Jesus has this. Sending Christ our love and praying for his victory and accepting his love in return is crucial.
All Glory to God open your hearts to him and he will show you the way.
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve: to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus, O merciful, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! Amen.
The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
You have been deceived. Your "Queen of Heaven" is Semiramis. Turn away from your Babylon religion.
How about you turn away from slandering the Holy Catholic Church, you know, the one Jesus established on Earth?
Did you mean to say Roman Catholic Church? You left out the Roman part, that's important.
What world power killed the Christ? I can't remember right now. It'll come to me.
It would be licit, according to custom, to hold the Jews in perpetual servitude because of their crime.
~ St. Thomas Aquinas
GEE WHAT CRIME, DURKA?
Jews are slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, enemies and haters of God, adversaries of grace, enemies of their fathers’ faith, advocates of the devil, a brood of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, men of darkened minds, the leaven of Pharisees, a congregation of demons, sinners, wicked men, haters of goodness!
~ St. Gregory of Nyssa
Crucifiers of Christ ought to be held in continual subjection.
~ Pope Innocent III
The Jews and the non-Catholic Romans.
It's Roman because Peter was in...ROME.
Peter means ROCK.
Peter wasn't his real first name. Jesus renamed him to ROCK.
HMMMMMMMMM.
So Jesus is not the rock? Peter is?
It was Peter that was the stumbling block to the Jews!
Peter is that rock that destroyed the Nebuchadnezzar statue and became a mountain.
Peter was what Moses struck in the desert so that the Jews could have water.
Makes so much sense now, thanks!
Jesus is the ROCK of salvation.
Peter is the ROCK of the church because Jesus said so.
"I TELL YOU THAT YOU ARE ROCK AND ON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH AND THE GATES OF HELL WILL NOT OVERCOME IT"
Jesus renamed Simon.
"Peter" (Aramaic: Cephas or Greek: Petros) means literally means "rock" in Koine Greek, the language which the New Testament was written. It was not a regular name at the time, but Jesus made it so by changing Simon's name to Peter. The Greek words petrosand petra where masculine and feminine forms of the same word in Koine Greek. In Attic Greek they were two different words but that was not the language of the New Testament.
Jesus did not establish the pagan Whore of Babylon. Wake up!
The latest missive I received from him accuses Catholics of idolatry for giving honor to Our Lady under her title “Queen of Heaven.”
Still choking, I hope, on all the camels he has swallowed from my past rebuttals, albeit still in denial, he now finds a new “gnat” to strain out in his obsession to indict the One True Church.
Yes, he finds the condemnation of our honoring Mary as Queen of Heaven in Jeremias.
Indeed, especially in chapter 44, the prophet does excoriate, over and over, the remnant of Jews exiled with him in Egypt, in particular the women, for worship of a queen of heaven. Not all of the exiles were guilty, but a lot of them were. Enough for God to rouse the indignation of Jeremias against them. These Jews had been routed from Jerusalem, along with our prophet, by the Persians in the 6th century B.C. The women, in particular, were “sacrificing” cakes and libations to an Egyptian goddess named Asherah, whom they were worshipping as “queen of heaven.” The same is Isis, their goddess of the moon. Appropriately, the woman carved the cakes into a crescent shape. (Now you know another origin for the word lunatic.) The Moslems, it seems, were not original in their adoption of the crescent moon and star. To be accurate, they did not adopt the symbol until the Turks used it for their Ottoman Empire emblem sometime in the early fifteenth century.
By the same token, shall we, Pastor Joe, refrain from calling God “the Father” because the pagan Romans worshiped the principal deity under that title. Jupiter, literally, means “Zeus Father”? I know, I know, Saint Paul in many places speaks of God the Father. Therefore, the comparison fails because it’s in the Bible. C’est la vie. I withdraw the point — to an extent, that is. What still stands is that the pagans called God “Father” Zeus. And, by Our Lord’s command, Christians call God “ Our Father.” And there is no problem here. So why is there a problem with giving the Mother of God the title “Queen of Heaven” when we have no intention of worshipping Ashera?
It is not beyond our scope here to note that the Protestant heresiarchs, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, all defended the Immaculate Conception and Our Lady’s perpetual virginity. Hear Luther: “The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart.” In his last sermon in 1546 Luther said: “This is the woman who crushed the serpent’s head . . . For your Son denies you nothing.” They write nothing against her Queenship, or her bodily Assumption. Can we not assume that they so honored her “Queen of Heaven”?
Let’s take a quick survey of queenship in the Old Testament.
Here are some related passages: “The daughters of kings have delighted thee in thy glory. The queen stood on thy right hand, in gilded clothing; surrounded with variety” (Psalm 44:10).
The Jews, of course, had their queens, good and bad ones. In the same inspired book that Pastor Joe employs, we read: “After that Jechonias the king, and the queen, and the eunuchs, and the princes of Juda, and of Jerusalem, and the craftsman, and the engravers were departed out of Jerusalem” (Jeremias 29:2).
And, what shall we say of Queen Esther? She was a figure of Our Lady because she saved her people from destruction. Her story is told in the Book of Esther of the Old Testament.
Although Abraham was not a king, he was considered royal by his friendly hosts, the Hethites — a “prince” in fact. And we are defending not only queenship but royalty as we have it throughout the Bible.
And Sara lived a hundred and twenty-seven years. And she died in the city of Arbee which is Hebron, in the land of Chanaan: and Abraham came to mourn and weep for her. And after he rose up from the funeral obsequies, he spoke to the children of Heth, saying: I am a stranger and sojourner among you: give me the right of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead. The children of Heth answered, saying: ‘My Lord, hear us, thou art a prince of God among us: bury thy dead in our principal sepulchres: and no man shall have power to hinder thee from burying thy dead in his sepulchre’” (Genesis 23, my bold).
Now, let’s return to the subject in question: to Our Lady, Queen of Heaven.
The first thing my pastor friend gets wrong is that he confuses the celestial luminaries above us with the home of the blessed in eternity. The moon is in its place orbiting the earth. And, of course, the stars are high above in the heavens. But the heaven of which Our Lady is Queen is not that of Asherah, but the “Kingdom of Heaven” where Jesus reigns with His saints. What the idolatrous Jewish women were adoring was not the abode of anyone, but a thing that gives us the reflected light of the sun at night. Maybe not as bad as worshiping an idol made by human hands, but still idolatry, giving worship to a piece of rock, a beautiful round rock, but a rock. The moon, however, is symbolic of Our Lady in that she filters the radiance of the Son of God, reflecting His brilliance, and making Him more conformable to our dull intellects. “Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?” (Canticles 6:9). Saint Louis Marie de Montfort (+1716) applies the verse to Mary: “She is not the sun, which by the brightness of its rays blinds us because of our weakness; but she is fair and gentle as the moon, which receives the light of the sun, and tempers it to make it more suitable to our capacity.” ― Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary:
And where is the moon in Marian iconography? Under her feet. So, she appears in the Book of Apocalypse and so she appeared and still appears on the tilma of Saint Juan Diego in Mexico. This sign, given to the pagan Aztecs, manifested that the holy woman of Guadalupe was greater than the moon or the sun which shines behind her in the Miraculous Image. Their gods were devils.
It would seem to any one without bias that Our Lady’s title of Queen is most fitting. She is the Mother of Christ the King. My pastor friend is quick to assure me that Jesus is certainly our King. And that His reign is forever. This, as he says, is clearly affirmed in the Gospels, even by Our Savior Himself. I asked him why then does he not honor Mary, either as “Blessed Virgin-Mother” or as “Queen” reigning as Queen-Mother with her Son? Our Lady’s Magnificat canticle, particularly the verse “Behold all generations shall call me blessed,” gives Pastor Joe a problem. And that prophecy is ex clara scriptura (clear in scripture). He had no answer for why he refuses to call the Mother of God “Blessed Mary,” but, as I noted, he assumes having a real “Queen of Heaven” is like the idolatry condemned by Jeremais.
I doubt that my Pentecostal friend would accept the authority of Saint Athanasius (or any other father of the Church) but the saint from Alexandria (296 to 373), in Egypt by the way, writes “If the Son is a King, the mother who begot Him is rightly and truly considered a queen and sovereign.” (de Deipera, on the Godbearer). Common sense, right? One would think having a Queen-Mother in Heaven would be a cause of great joy. One would think so.
Saint Ephrem the Syrian (+373) writes in the person of Mary: “‘Let Heaven sustain me in its embrace, because I am honored above it.’ For heaven was not Thy mother, but Thou hast made it Thy throne. How much more honorable and venerable than the throne of a king is his mother.” And in another place he thus prays to her: “. . . Majestic and Heavenly Maid, Lady, Queen, protect and keep me under your wing lest Satan the sower of destruction glory over me, lest my wicked foe be victorious against me.”
Our Lady has always been honored as Queen since apostolic times, especially in the East. In the West, the great hymn Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen) was composed in the late eleventh century by Blessed Herman the Cripple. It soon became part of the liturgy and was sung in the divine office. Its main promoter in the West was Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (+1153). Over time, popular devotion added it at the end of the Rosary. Pope Leo XIII added it, the prayer to Saint Michael, and the O God Our Refuge to the Prayers after Low Mass
Much has been written in varying articles on our website honoring Mary as Queen of Heaven, but none so specifically and exhaustively as that of Charles Coulombe. You can read this excellent study of the devotion and its history here.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a court royale. We have Christ our King, Mary our Queen, and we also have a Prince of the heavenly host. Who might that be? Saint Michael, of course. It’s in the Book of Daniel, clara scriptura Pastor Joe.
“But I will tell thee what is set down in the scripture of truth: and none is my helper in all these things, but Michael your prince” (Daniel 10:21).
And, again: “But at that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people: and a time shall come such as never was from the time that nations began even until that time. And at that time shall thy people be saved, every one that shall be found written in the book” (Daniel 12:1).
The prophet calls Michael “one of the chief princes.” So, there are others.
Saint Paul, who knew a lot about angels, speaks of thrones, dominions, and principalities in the celestial realm. (Colossians 1:16).
Yes, indeed Heaven is a court royale. Our King would have nothing less in His kingdom. As Saint Paul tells Timothy, “[T]he saying is sure: If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:11-12a, my emphasis). And, as Saint John saw in vision concerning the martyrs “Then I saw thrones” (Apoc. 20:4).
“And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Apocalypse 12:1).
I expect that pastor Joe will argue that this verse refers to the Church not to Mary. Indeed it does refer to the Church I will respond. So, say the early fathers of the Church. But the fathers also say that the passage redounds as well to the glory of the Mother of the Church, Mary. Pope Pius XII affirms the same in his encyclical, Munifentissimus Deus, in which he defined the bodily Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven:
“Moreover, the scholastic Doctors have recognized the Assumption of the Virgin Mother of God as something signified, not only in various figures of the Old Testament, but also in that woman clothed with the sun whom John the Apostle contemplated on the Island of Patmos” (#27).
The fathers also point out that this verse from the Apocalypse is preceded by the Apostle’s vision of the temple of the heavenly Jerusalem and the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark, which was hidden by Jeremais over five hundred years before, was considered by the fathers to be a figure of Our Lady, the Ark of God, the Theotokos, in whose womb rested the divine Manna, the Bread of Life. “Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place: thou and the ark, which thou hast sanctified.” (Psalm 131:8).
Note, too, that this is why the passage from the Apocalypse is read at the Mass for the Solemnity of the Assumption on August 15.
You're right, and I would have been just like him a few years ago.
I rode the internet-scholar Protestant train for a minute. It was intellectually dishonest. We're receiving catechism lessons now. Praise be to Jesus.
Thank you for your comment.
Duplicate post but needs to be seen
Ephesians 6: 10-18 Anons are being told to put on the full armor of God. More than once we have been told. Why? Because when the battle is spiritual, so are the weapons. Man has never fashioned a weapon mightier than prayer. God wins.
Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.
But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?
And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò - A Prayer for the United States of America
Thank you!
No, don't pray the rosary. Where is that in the Bible? Pray the way Jesus said: "Our Heavenly Father, Holy is Your name. Your Kingdom come, and Your Will be done On earth as it is in Heaven. Give us today our daily bread, And forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. Lead us not to temptation, But deliver us from all evil. For Your is the Kingdom, the Glory, the Power, forever and ever. Amen."
"Bible alone" thinking.
Lol it's funny you say that cause the Rosary is literally right there in the Bible.
Amen
God is always in control even when we in the human world cannot see how it would ever work out. Problems this deep and this complex require God. Because no human can fix it. God said to turn to him in times of trouble .Thanks for the reminder to up my prayers !!
I will pray, but the pope is evil.
There have been lots of Masonic/evil Popes.
What does that have to do with the Catholic church?
Have you had evil presidents? Does that negate all validity of the Constitution?
I would contest "lots" and reduce it down to a handful. Most Popes have been holy and devout men. But yeah, Bergoglio is by far the worst Pope in history, and we've had 266 of them. Also, it is far from certain he is even the Pope given the amount of material heresy he spews. It may come out that Benedict XVI is the rightful Pope, much like Trump is the rightful President.
Think mirror? LOL
My priest told me two days ago, "the road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops and popes".
You're right, I generalized too much.
Chanting vain repetitions like the heathen do is something the bible tells Christians not to do. The Catholic church is the great whore described in Revelation, and the Pope (and every pope before him) is a deceiver and an antichrist.
Said the Protestant.
Luther was duped by Jews.
Peter was not a deceiver. Are you suggesting Jesus built his church with an evil Pope?
Please.
Also:
As a young Protestant, this was one of my favorites to ask Catholics. “Why do Catholics pray ‘repetitious prayer’ like the Rosary when Jesus says not to pray ‘vain repetitions’ in Matthew 6:7?”
I think we should begin here by quoting the actual text of Matt. 6:7:
And in praying do not heap up empty phrases (“vain repetitions” in KJV) as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words.
Notice the context? Jesus said “do not heap up ‘empty phrases’ (Gr. – battalagesete, which means to stammer, babble, prate, or to repeat the same things over and over mindlessly) as the Gentiles do…” We have to remember that the main idea of prayer and sacrifice among the pagans was to appease the gods so that you could go on with your own life. You had to be careful to “take care of” all of the gods by mentioning them, and saying all the right words, lest you bring a curse upon yourself.
And remember as well, the gods themselves were immoral at times! They were selfish, cruel, vengeful etc. The pagans would say their incantations, offer their sacrifice, but there was no real connection between the moral life and the prayer. Jesus is saying that this will not cut it in the New Covenant Kingdom of God! One must pray from a heart of repentance and submission to God’s will. But does Jesus mean to exclude the possibility of devotions like the Rosary or the Divine Mercy Chaplet which repeat prayers? No, he does not. This becomes evident when, in the very next verses of Matthew 6, Jesus says:
Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our debts, As we also have forgiven our debtors; And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Jesus gave us a prayer to recite! But notice the emphasis on living the words of the prayer! This is a prayer to be recited, but they are neither “empty phrases” nor “vain repetitions.”
Examples of Biblical “Repetitious Prayer” Consider the prayers of the angels in Revelation 4:8:
And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”
These “four living creatures” refer back to four angels, or “Seraphim,” that Isaiah saw as revealed in Is. 6:1-3 about 800 years earlier, and guess what they were praying?
In the year that King Uzzi’ah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
Someone needs to inform these angels about “vain repetition!” According to many of our Protestant friends, especially Fundamentalists, they need to knock it off and pray something different! They’d been praying like that for ca. 800 years!
I say that tongue and cheek, of course, because though we don’t understand fully “time” as it applies to angels, let’s just say they have been praying this way for a lot longer than just 800 years. How about longer than mankind has even existed! That’s a long time! There is obviously something more to Jesus’ words than just to say we should not pray the same words more than once or twice.
I challenge those skeptical of prayers like the Rosary to take a serious look at Psalm 136 and consider the fact that Jews and Christians have prayed these Psalms for thousands of years. Psalm 136 repeats the words “for his steadfast love endures for ever” 26 times in 26 verses!
More here: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/do-catholics-pray-vain-repetitions
Might have to rob those still
The rosary - NO WAY! Jesus said: When you pray, Use Not Vain Repetitions as the Heathen do! # Matthew 6:7 Praying to Mary is also wrong: http://www.mtc.org/rc_bible.html