A Tale of Three Rosaries

I am going to post this in three parts over a few days so it's not too much to read at once...

While reflecting on our Blessed Mother, and looking back on my life since my return to Catholicism almost 4 years ago, I am holding in my hand a rosary given to me by my son, Matthew.

I remember receiving a rosary at my first Communion as a child. Never really taking my faith seriously for many years, I don't remember what ever became of it. I don't know if I lost it somewhere along the way, or if after leaving the church for Protestant churches, I threw it away as I would pagan amulet. I don't remember ever saying the rosary while growing up, so I may have just lost it through neglect.

Either way, how tragic! If only I had understood what blessing and power there is in those 59 beads. Since coming back to the Church, I now own three rosaries. All were gifts of love given to me by my nephew, Mike; my son, Mike; and my son, Matthew. I list them in the order in which I received them, not necessarily in order of preference.

Rosary #1

Shortly after I announced my reversion, my nephew, Mike S., gave me a rosary that he had made. I'm glad he did. It saved me from having to ask him. A few years ago he started making rosaries out of parachute cord. He would tie knots into it to form the beads and the cross. He started doing this while he was in the Army, deployed in Fallujah, Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein. He made quite a few while he was there. By the time of my conversion he was already back home but still making them and selling them on the Internet. You can order the from http://www.catholicsoldier.com/.

© 2010 The Cathoholic - All Rights Reserved.

My weekend at St. Lazare's Retreat House

As I sit here at St. Lazare's Retreat House I can't help but be struck by the artwork and statuary. There is a stained-glass portrait of St. Joseph, photographs of mother Theresa, a drawing of several head shots of Pope John II (soon to be “Saint”), a photograph of Pope Benedict XVI, a photo of each of the past directors at the retreat house, a huge painting of St. Vincent DePaul, a painting of Jesus in the garden, several crucifixes, stained-glass that looks like it came from the 1970s or 1980s, and more.

But today I'm really struck by the statues and the stained-glass portrait of the Blessed Virgin, our mother, Mary. I've seen the same depictions of her before many times. But I've never really been so moved by their beauty. The artists wonderfully portrayed her beauty, grace, and expressions of love and invitation.

Certainly the real Miriam, mother of Yeshua, spouse of Yusef, did not look like this. This is an idealized, very Germanic or Scandinavian Mary—beautiful, but not Jewish. As Christianity began its trek westward, Mary took on a decidedly Western look. When Mary appeared at Guadalupe to Juan Diego, she appeared as a young Mexican girl. In one of my favorite movies, Guadalupe a Spanish-language film, Sandra Espil, chosen to portray Mary is a lovely young woman with a sweet disposition. Her voice is loving and tender, wonderful to behold and delivered in lyrical Nahuatl.

People of African descent often will depict Mary as a dark-skinned woman, usually in the artistic style indicative of the culture of the artist. This beautiful Madonna was painted by Donna Rathert found at http://www.charlesrathert.com/reflectionministries/IconGallery.html

In China, there is Our Lady of Sheshan.

Then there is Our Lady of Akita, Japan who actually weeps.

There are so many others I could mention. Every artist portrays Mary to the best of his/her ability. If it is a stylized work, or an abstract, they attempt to make the entire work beautiful at least in the artists’ eyes.

The race or ethnicity of Mary as depicted in art is not important. The important thing is, who she is to the artist? And how does this work move me? If it does not move me, why doesn't it? Does Mary have to look European or Jewish or African otherwise she has no meaning for me? This may speak to our own prejudices more than anything else.

The most important thing is not, was Mary beautiful? The artwork is not intended to show us what she looked like, but to draw us into her bosom, to be presented to her son. So does the work do that? I am certainly drawn to the traditional Nordic Mary. I have also have a tender spot for the Mexican people, probably my favorite non-USA ethnic group.  Our Lady of Guadalupe is especially important to me.

Mary is the mother of the Church regardless if the person is Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, Presbyterian, or Methodist... so if she is the mother of a European, she's European. If the person happens to be Filipino, she is Filipino. As she is our mother, so we are her children, like it or not.

Whether she is presented as beautiful or homely, Germanic, Jewish, African, or Mexican, Chinese Japanese or Philipino— none of it compares to the inner beauty of this holy young woman. When given a choice between accepting God and his Word and facing likely ridicule and judgment by her husband, family, friends, synagogue, and community. She put it all aside and said, “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” All generations have called her blessed, and she remains blessed forever.

© 2010 The Cathoholic - All Rights Reserved.

Evangelicals who journey East

http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1995/9504fea1.asp

A good article for the most part. I don't agree with his assessment though that Gilchrist's conversion to Orthodoxy appears to have been easy and without much struggle.

Some people just write in an abbreviated fashion. I'm sure the story of my conversion to Catholicism seems short and easy to some too. I'm just not a good writer. From the time I started reading and studying up, it was only about four months until I converted, but I was on the fence of leaving my Baptist church for well over a year.

The fact that I was brought up Catholic made my journey back easier than for someone like Scott Hahn, because I was already familiar with many of the doctrines and dogmas. I just needed someone to explain them more fully, and be at a time in my life where I was receptive.

For a similar page on the same subject that is better written and parallels the reasons I did not become Orthodox, see Jimmy Akin's article, Why I am Not Eastern Orthodox at http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0504bt.asp

© 2010 The Cathoholic - All Rights Reserved.

A prayer for Haiti

Today marks one year since the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Please continue to pray for them:

Lord, at times such as this,

                when we realize that the ground beneath our feet is not as solid as we had imagined,

                we plead for your mercy.

Comport the people of Haiti, Lord.

                Be their rock when the earth refuses to stand still,

and shelter them under your wings.

Pierce too, our hearts with compassion, we who watch from afar,

                as the poorest on this side of the earth find only misery upon misery.

                Move us to act swiftly this day, to give generously every day,

                to work for justice always, and to pray unceasingly for those without hope.

And once the shaking has ceased,

                the images of destruction have stopped filling the news,

                and our thoughts have returned to life’s daily rumblings,

                let us not forget that we are all your children and they, our brothers and sisters.

                We are the work of your hands.

For though the mountains leave their place and the hills be tossed to the ground,

                your love shall never leave us, and your promise of peace will never be shaken.

Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

                Blessed be the name of the Lord, now and forever.

Our Blessed Mother foretold

Micah 5 2-3: "But you, Bethlehem-Ephrathah too small to be among the clans of Judah, From you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel; Whose origin is from of old, from ancient times. (Therefore the Lord will give them up, until the time when she who is to give birth has borne, And the rest of his brethren shall return to the children of Israel.) He shall stand firm and shepherd his flock by the strength of the LORD, in the majestic name of the LORD, his God; And they shall remain, for now his greatness shall reach to the ends of the earth;"

How many times have I read this and not seen our Blessed Mother and the inauguration of the Church?

The Angelus and the honor due to Our Blessed Mother

I am writing this in response to a Facebook email from a friend from my former Baptist Church (actually the church is still Baptist. It is I who am former). I also have several friends that I just added to Facebook. I met these friends in Texas when I was stationed at Fort Hood in the early ‘80s. We attended a Baptist church together, where I was a charter member and deacon. They now live in various parts of the country and we have only recently made contact again after several years. They did not know until we connected on Facebook that I came back to the Catholic Church about three years ago.


I had posted The Angelus on my Facebook page and my friend took exception to it indicating that I was giving Mary undue honor that should belong to Christ alone. I decided to post it here on my blog site rather than a personal response as I am sure there are a lot of others of my friends from both churches who may have the same questions of me.


Personally I’m having trouble figuring out what part of The Angelus a Protestant might have a problem with. I posted a Christmas prayer that I thought would not be offensive to my non-Catholic friends. The Angelus is a string of Bible quotes about the announcement of the birth of Christ. Like it or not, Mary was a part of all of that.


Here is The Angelus in it’s entirety. Facebook wouldn’t allow me to post the whole prayer as it is too long:


V. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary,
R. And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.


Hail Mary, etc...


V. Behold the handmaid of the Lord.
R. Be it done unto me according to Your Word.


Hail Mary, etc...


V. And the Word was made flesh,
R. And dwelt among us.


Hail Mary, etc...


V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.


Let us pray:


Pour forth, we beseech You, O Lord,
Your Grace into our hearts;
that as we have known the incarnation of Christ,
your Son by the message of an angel,
so by His passion and cross
we may be brought to the glory of His Resurrection.
Through the same Christ, our Lord.


Amen.  


If it’s because of the Hail Mary, the first part of that are quotes from the Bible also. The title “Mother of God” was developed by the early church to confirm the dogma of the full diety and humanity of Christ.


The part where it’s a prayer to her is completely consistent with the dogma of the Communion of Saints. Hebrews 11 gives a list of many of the great heroes of the faith (including some only mentioned in the Deutro-Canonicals that most Protestants reject as part of the Bible), and then says that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. This is not symbolic or a figure of speech. We really are surrounded by them. Revelation 5:8 and 8:3 show angels and heavenly saints offering to God the prayers of the saints on earth in the form of incense.


Maybe it’s because of the erroneous belief that many Baptists, Evangelicals, and Fundamentalists often have, that Catholics pay too much attention to Mary. Even when I was a Baptist, I thought we didn’t pay enough attention to her. She is virtually ignored except for womens' Bible studies, and a little bit at Christmas. As the Mother of our Lord, she is the most unique person in history, save the Lord Himself. Revelation 12 clearly shows her as the Queen of Heaven, as she is the woman who “gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod.” It further goes to say, “Then the dragon became angry with the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring, those who keep God's commandments and bear witness to Jesus.” Showing that she is the Mother of the entire Church.


This is the belief of the earliest Church Fathers, and quite frankly, I would take their word—people who knew her and the apostles—before I would take the word of someone 1,500 years or more later that is acting out of rebellion. If we rebel against the Church, we rebel against her, and against God. To not give her the honor she is due is to disrespect our Mother in the faith, directly against the 5th Commandment to honor your father and mother. 


I do not mean that my non-Catholic friends are rebellious. They may just be ignorant. It is John Nelson Darby, Cyrus Scofield, D. L. Moody, Harry Ironside, John R. Rice, and people like that who are in rebellion. I have found that virtually all non-Catholics and ex-Catholics, even those who have had a Catholic education, simply do not understand Catholic teaching. I was in this boat myself for almost 30 years. Rather than looking at actual Catholic teaching, they have been reading anti-Catholic material, mostly based on Loraine Boettner’s “Roman Catholicism,” and the books of Dave Hunt who are poor excuses as biblical scholars. All of these works are full of errors, untrue suppositions, straw-men, and red herrings.


Scripture is very clear about how to deal with disputes in the Church. Matthew 18 says that if your brother offends you, take it to the Church. It does not say to break off in rebellion and start your own denomination based on your own personal interpretation of the Bible. "No Scripture is of private interpretation..."


Perhaps the issue is with praying to saints in general. I have already touched on most of the reasons that the Bible teaches the exact opposite. The main argument would probably the Biblical prohibition against contact with the dead. But as is often the case with Protestants this is a gut-reaction rather than exhaustive Biblical research. A superficial reading of Deuteronomy 18:10-11 may lead you to believe this. But this is another instance where Fundamentalists take things out of context in order to fit a pre-conceived idea.


Rather than me writing this I am going to quote from the Catholic Answers website. Here is a link to the article. While you are there, go ahead and register on the forums. There is an incredible about of information there. You do not need to register to read anything there, but you do need to in order to post.


"'No Contact with the dead'


Sometimes Fundamentalists object to asking our fellow Christians in heaven to pray for us by declaring that God has forbidden contact with the dead in passages such as Deuteronomy 18:10–11. In fact, he has not, because he at times has given it—for example, when he had Moses and Elijah appear with Christ to the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:3). What God has forbidden is necromantic practice of conjuring up spirits. "There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, any one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. . . . For these nations, which you are about to dispossess, give heed to soothsayers and to diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you so to do. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren—him you shall heed" (Deut. 18:10–15). 


"God thus indicates that one is not to conjure the dead for purposes of gaining information; one is to look to God’s prophets instead. Thus one is not to hold a seance. But anyone with an ounce of common sense can discern the vast qualitative difference between holding a seance to have the dead speak through you and a son humbly saying at his mother’s grave, 'Mom, please pray to Jesus for me; I’m having a real problem right now.' The difference between the two is the difference between night and day. One is an occult practice bent on getting secret information; the other is a humble request for a loved one to pray to God on one’s behalf."


© 2010 The Cathoholic - All Rights Reserved.

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Often Protestants, in an effort to completely separate themselves from everything that even appears Catholic, overlook historical events that are the Providence of God made manifest. This is one of the reasons that Protestants are missing the fullness of God’s revelation.

One of these is Mary, in the form of the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe. The story of Our Lady is a story of the largest conversion from paganism to Christianity that the world has ever experienced.

If you saw Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto you can see what the Aztec religion was like. It was polytheistic, and to maintain control over the other tribes, they would conquer them then sacrifice alive as much as 20,000 men every day. The sacrifices were brutal, including ripping a man’s heart out of his chest and eating it in front of him before he had a chance to die.

Within ten years of Cortes’ conquest, very few had converted to Christianity. The people still had a fear of what would happen to them if they abandoned their former gods. They also saw a big inconsistency with the lifestyles of the conquistadores and the lifestyle that was preached.

Mary appeared to Juan Diego, and performed the miracle of the roses and her image appeared on his tilma (Like a poncho). After the people saw incontrovertible proof of the Providence of God, they began paying attention to the Gospel. News of Christianity spread like wild fire, and within a span of a couple of years, over 9,000,000 (that’s not a typo!) people abandoned the pagan religion, and embraced Catholic Christianity.

This one incident completely obliterated the disgusting practices of the Aztec people.

For more details of this well-documented historical event go to http://www.sancta.org/intro.html

© 2010 The Cathoholic - All Rights Reserved.

Original source:

© 2008 Discovering Majesty - All Rights Reserved.