reflect...are we like MAry who is a refelcted person?

Answer 1

I reflect that Mary's prayer to God in Luke 1:46-55 demonstrates your point:

"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my savior.
For he has looked upon his handmaid's lowliness;
behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.
The Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is from age to age to those who fear him.
He has shown might with his arm,
dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart.
He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones
but lifted up the lowly.
The hungry he has filled with good things;
the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped Israel his servant,
remembering his mercy,
according to his promise to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

http://www.catholicapologetics.net/...



Do Catholics adore the Virgin Mary, and consider her omnipresent, so that she can answer their prayers?

No, Catholics adore God alone, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They love and reverence the Blessed Virgin, because God honored her above all creatures by choosing her to be the Mother of His only Son. St. Epiphanius in the fourth century condemned the Collyridians, the only sect in history, who gave her divine honors, saying: "We do not adore the saints. . . . Let Mary then be honored, but the Father, Son and Holy Ghost alone be adored" (Adv. Collyrid., 29).

God alone is Omnipresent. The power of the Blessed Virgin to know our particular wants, and to answer our prayers no more implies omnipresence than my power to grant the request of a friend thousands of miles away implies my presence in that place. When Eliseus saw the ambush prepared for the King of Israel was he necessarily in Syria at the time (4 Kings vi. 9)? God can make known to His saints what we need, as we learn from His words in Job: "Go to My servant Job, and offer up a holocaust for yourselves; and My servant Job shall pray for you; for him I w:'U accept lest I deal with you according to your folly" (Job xlii. 8;. The saints see God "face to face as He is" (1 Cor. iii. 12; 1 John iii. 2), and Li seeing God, they see in Him as in a mirror all that happens upon earth.


Why do Catholics pay so much honor to Mary, when she was only an ordinary woman? Does not Catholic devotion to her detract from the worship due to Christ?

The Catholic Church has always paid special honor to the Blessed Virgin, because God honored her above all creatures by bestowing upon her the highest dignity He could confer the divine maternity. The Scriptures tell us that Jesus honored her by dwelling with her under the same roof at Nazareth for thirty years until He began His public ministry, and that He showed His love to her on the Cross, when He left her to the kindly care of His beloved disciple, St. John (John xix. 26). I could never understand how intelligent men hoped to extol the Son of God by making little of the Mother of God. We do not win the affections of our fellowmen by despising or making little of their mothers.

How can you call Mary an ordinary woman, and at the same time pretend that you have studied the Scriptures? Would God choose an ordinary woman to be the Mother of His only Son, when He had countless millions of women to choose from? The prophet Isaias spoke of her coming centuries before (vii. 14), and God sent from heaven a special ambassador to announce her supereminent dignity (Luke i. 26), and another to comfort St. Joseph in his doubting (Matt. i. 20). Both the angel and St. Elizabeth called her "blessed among women" (Luke i. 2&, 43), and her own prophecy that "henceforth all generations shall call me blessed" (Luke i. 48) is fulfilled to the letter every day by Catholics the world over.

Instead of detracting from the love of Christ, devotion to Mary increases our love for Him. The devout client of Mary is ever the strong defender of the divinity of Jesus Christ, her Son. The divine maternity, as the Council of Ephesus clearly recognized in 431, has ever been the standard of orthodox belief in the true doctrine of the Incarnation.

Love for Mary, the masterpiece of God's creation, by its very nature leads us to the love of Christ her Son. He cannot be jealous of the praise we give her, for every one of her privileges and prerogatives are His own free gift. Is the artist jealous of the praise you give his masterpiece? Is the author jealous of the praise you give his book?

Answer 3

Um.....what??