Many have heard mention of the Rosary (both here and elsewhere), and may wonder what it is... it is many hundreds of years old, and is not just for catholics.
It consists of the following scriptural prayers:
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The Apostoles Creed https://billygraham.org/answer/what-is-the-apostles-creed/
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The Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) https://www.praywithme.com/the-lords-prayer.html
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Hail Mary (Luke 1:28, Luke 1:42, +petitioning Mary to pray for us, both now and while we are dying)
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Glory Be (Doxology/Praising of the Triune God) Glory to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, in now and will be forever, amen.
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Fatima Prayer (optional) Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins and save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls into heaven, especially those in most need of your mercy.
The above is the "Body" of the Rosary.
The "Soul" of the Rosary is, during prayer, meditating upon a set of 5 scriptural stories. These are grouped into 4 sets, with focus on Jesus' infancy and childhood, his public ministry, his passion, and his glory. Scriptural Meditation is not easy, but consists of bringing yourself into the scene being meditated on. What is little realized, is Jesus, being God, is aware of every one visiting him in this way -- even at the time of the original event (!)
The rosary is a most powerful prayer against the devil and all enemies of God. Two historical examples (there are others) where the tide was turned by praying the rosary:
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The 1571 Battle of Lepanto - where Christian forces, greatly outnumbered by Muslim naval forces, turned to the spiritual weapon of the rosary, and a powerful wind and storm caused the Muslim ships to be defeated. This staved off Muslim expansion into Europe, keeping Europe Christian, and lasting (arguably), until recent times and the current loss of Christian faith there. https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/history/how-the-1571-battle-of-lepanto-saved-europe.html
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Austria Saved from Communist Rule - in the early 1950's, Austria was occupied, by communist forces, and every indication was they would suffer the same fate as other iron curtain countries. A priest, recalling the Lepanto victory, roused up Austrians -- at least 10% of them, to pray the rosary for deliverance, and on May 13th, 1955, the Russians packed up and left Austria, without a shot being fired. https://choosing-him.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-rosary-frees-austria-from-communist.html
Those who have died and are with God are more alive than we are (and that is an understatement). Whether they can hear us when we ask their prayers is a good question. We know from scripture that we are all surrounded by a crowd of witnesses (those who have died, who care about us, as well as angels), and that the holy ones carry our prayers to God, so they surely know about them.
So Mary is Mary, and Astarte (if she even exists) is Astarte. There are many examples of Christian peoples and practices supplanting pagan ones. God is known even to take sinful creatures like us, and change us, for the better.
But using scripture alone, one must conclude Mary really existed, and was the mother of Jesus, she was filled with grace and the holy spirit, and prophesized that all generations would call her blessed. Scriptural exegetes point out that she is referenced by both the first and last books of the bible - the woman in genesis who will crush the serpent, and the woman crowned with 12 stars who gives birth to Jesus in Revelations aka the book of the Apocalypse. She is a woman, certainly not a goddess, but having been given a special role, by God, as mother of Jesus, and in his entrusting of her to us, as mother of all the living (as the new Eve).
I certainly agree the current situation with the pope and the vatican are both troubling and confusing -- not that this is anything new. The Church founded by Jesus contained both saints and sinners at its founding, and will continue to, until the end of time.
Okay, this is long - but sharing for anyone possibly interested in a deeper exploration ... as, to paraphrase Shakespeare, there undoubtedly may be 'way more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in our poor philosophies/understandings...'
So to add some Scriptural facets to your beautifully expressed reflections:
In the 'Marian' rosary prayers, the use of the ‘Our Father’ is self-explanatory; but following are some of the Scriptural /salvation history bases for using the ‘Hail Mary’ component. Basically it is a prayer intent and celebration of Victory:
[But first, also bear in mind that the Word of God can be more richly ‘multidimensional’ and ‘poetic’ than linear (as are the Aramaic and Hebrew languages themselves), i.e. it can embody many intrinsic meanings at once.
Like Truth hitting our limited cognitive processes, it can often be more ‘both/and’ than ‘either/or’. In Judeo-Christianity, e.g., God can be named various versions of ‘Yahweh’ (singular) but also ‘Elohim’ (plural). Or the ONE as TRINITY.
Another example is the Hebrew word ‘echod’ (the Lord your God is ONE, i.e. monotheistic), which is also used for ‘composite unity’, such as ‘an echod of grapes’ (ONE cluster, bunch), or ‘all Israel rising as ONE before God (at the beginning of Nehemiah.)
It’s a bit like Q posts, which can so often have many fluid, convergent meanings :) Rather like ‘The Blind Man and the Elephant’. And Jesus habitually spoke on many levels, including seemingly in contradictions: ‘Take up your swords; lay down your swords’, ‘I’m the shepherd’ and ‘sheepgate’, etc. etc. etc.)
Since ‘they’ have ‘wanted us divided’ down throughout history - they have also skewed this richness of scripture to pit one facet of the whole truth ‘against’ another. Gabriel’s resoundingly victorious Scriptural acclamation to Mary (with its very deep roots) has been used to divide believers over Mary, and/or make the false accusation that praying to/with her means regarding her as ‘divine’.
No denomination or sect agrees 100% with any other, and there are thousands and thousands (and in just Christianity alone). And added to that, no 2 people even pray the same way, within themselves.
Should we try and put a damper on any sincere prayers, from any humans of genuine good will? Seeing as the Spirit is hopefully at work leading us all onward and upward.
And 'they' also use their knowledge of multi-level symbolism and archetypes [‘advertising’, psyops] to divide and divert us. They think people are merely emotion-driven, simplistic, literalistic simpletons.
So it’s up to us to start reclaiming all of our fuller, vastly richer heritage of 'the Truth, whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth’. Interpretation of the Tongues of God. Wherever that leads.]
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For anyone to explore this a bit more - these are more facets to the spiritual meanings, intention and ‘why’ underlying the power of, e.g., the Rosary prayers - and it's nowhere near an exhaustive Scriptural list:
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Luke 1:26-28
‘The angel Gabriel was sent by God … to a virgin [whose] name was Mary. He went in to her, saying: Hail, highly favored one [or ’highly graced’ one, ’full of grace’]**; The Lord is with you! Blessed are you among women…’
(Soon after, her cousin Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, not only repeated Gabriel’s exact salutation, but added to it…)
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Luke 1:41-2
‘Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit; she spoke out with a loud voice and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb!
[Bible Hub comments, [the words] point to an unrestrained utterance under the influence of irrepressible feeling, thoroughly true to feminine nature:
“Blessed thou among women (a Hebrew superlative), and blessed the fruit of thy womb,” poetic parallelism again, answering to the exalted state of feeling. The reference to the Holy Spirit (in Luke 1:41) implies that Elizabeth spoke by prophetic inspiration.]
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But ‘BLESSED ARE YOU AMONG WOMEN’ has far deeper Scriptural roots - it’s an ancient prefigurement and ‘battle cry’ of ultimate victory over evil! The imagery arising from these ‘women-as-victorious-salvation-warriors’ stories is symbolically POWERFUL and unmistakably VICTORIOUS (though the heroic actions would seem barbaric to modern people).
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http://womeninscripture.com/2014/10/08/jael-most-blessed-of-women JAEL – Most Blessed of Women | Women in the Bible
(“Blessed is she among women.” A distinctive honor not just given to the Virgin Mary, but also to a little-known nomadic warrior who descended from a priestly clan in 1125 B.C.
‘A woman who, akin to the Virgin Mary, courageously helped save the Israelite nation despite the oppressive cultural norms for women, and chose God’s people over her own reputation’:
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‘’“Then Jael took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly in [to the enemy General Sisera]. She drove the peg into his temple and it went down into the ground … And when they went into the tent, there lay Sisera, dead with the peg in his temple.” (Judges 4:21-22) …
(‘Note that the death of Sisera was unusual because the general of the Canaanite army lost his life by the hands of a woman, which in the culture of the Ancient Near East, was considered to be the greatest humiliation a soldier could ever experience.’)
The ‘Song of Deborah’ celebrates Jael ‘crushing the head’ of the enemy, and echoes Gabriel’s and Elizabeth’s prophetic words to Mary:
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“Most blessed among women is Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite,
Blessed is she among women in tents …
She stretched her hand to the tent peg; Her right hand to the workmen’s hammer;
She pounded Sisera, she pierced his head. She split and struck through his temple.
At her feet he sank, he fell, he lay still … there he fell dead.”
“May all of your enemies perish like this, LORD!
But may those who love him be like the ascending sun in its strength!”
Then the land enjoyed quiet for 40 years.
(Judges 5:24-27, 31)
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AND, this victory over the enemy is repeated in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith: Judith 13:4-10
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/intro/?search=Judith&version=NABRE
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jdt%2010:11-Jdt%2013:20&version=NABRE Jdt 10:11-Jdt 13:20 NABRE - IV. Judith Goes out to War - Bible Gateway
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When all had departed [the] bedchamber, Judith stood by Holofernes’ bed and prayed silently, “O Lord, God of all might, in this hour look graciously on the work of my hands for the exaltation of Jerusalem.
Now is the time for aiding your heritage and for carrying out my design to shatter the enemies who have risen against us.”
She went to the bedpost near the head of Holofernes, and taking his sword from it, she drew close to the bed, grasped the hair of his head, and said, “Strengthen me this day, Lord, God of Israel!”
Then with all her might she struck his neck twice and cut off his head. She rolled his body off the bed and took the canopy from its posts.
Soon afterward, she came out and handed over the head of Holofernes to her maid, 10 who put it into her food bag. Then the two went out together for prayer as they were accustomed to do.
Judith 13:17-20 >
‘All the people were greatly astonished. They bowed down and worshiped God, saying with one accord, “Blessed are you, our God, who today have humiliated the enemies of your people.”
Then Uzziah said to her, “Blessed are you, daughter, by the Most High God, above all the women on earth; and blessed be the Lord God, the creator of heaven and earth, who guided your blow at the head of the leader of our enemies.
Your deed of hope will never be forgotten by those who recall the might of God.
May God make this redound to your everlasting honor, rewarding you with blessings, because you risked your life when our people were being oppressed, and you averted our disaster, walking in the straight path before our God.” And all the people answered, “Amen! Amen!”
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NOT TO MENTION other potential (multi-level) facets and pre-figurements, like the promise of Good over evil in Genesis 3:14-15:
‘Then the Lord God said to the serpent [evil, devil],
‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They [and/or ‘he’, ‘she’ & even ‘it’ in Hebrew] will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel.”
[And what if maybe all these historical questions and variations could be providential ‘facets’ and layers of God’s intended meaning/s? Maybe it’s worth considering, considering our more linear western cognition is often more ‘either/or’ - i.e., lacking the ‘excluded middle’…]
http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/55520/does-the-latin-vulgate-propagate-a-translation-error-in-genesis-315
greek - Does the Latin Vulgate propagate a translation error in Genesis 3 15? - Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange [well even if so, can't God 'write straight with crooked lines'?]
[Though the variant that uses “she” and “her” probably came from a copyist’s error, the idea it expresses is true. There is a sense in which Mary crushed the serpent’s head and in which she was struck at by the serpent.
She didn’t do these things directly, but indirectly, through her Son. It was Jesus who directly crushed the serpent’s head from the cross and Jesus whom the serpent directly struck on the cross. Yet Mary cooperated in these events.]
And then there’s so much more, like the 'Woman Clothed With the Sun’ giving birth in Revelations. Yes it’s the Church - but also, a profoundly multi-level symbolic utterance from a (beyond multidimensional) God who is ‘All-In-All.’
Like so much, a divine 'mystery'. To learn and grow in. So then......?
So then......?
Why?
There is no doubt Mary was blessed, no disagreement here.
John 3:16 KJV For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. You base your salvation on one or two verses?
Acts 4:12 KJV Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
Why would you even risk it? He will spue you out of His mouth, He never knew ye. You were too busy praying to the dead. This won't be me. I know Him and only Him.
Mary is Mary not Ishtar. The knights Templars (modern day OTO / FreeMasons) worshipped the black Madonna.
Has it dawned on you that the Devil can only imitate, never recreate? Has it ever dawned on you that the Devil knew Gods plans for Man’s redemption & set out to create an unholy trinity of Isis, Osiris & to imitate the real holy trinity?