Quote:
Originally Posted by
inhisservice
So who is this James? Paul reveals his identity.
Gal 1:19 But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother.
Jesus had brothers? Mary had other children? A catholic would find this too foolish to believe because they have been taught that Mary did not have any other children besides Jesus Christ.
Mat 13:55 Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
Mar 6:3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.
I hope everyone reading this goes through their to see what I have quoted is true.
Jesus is a descendent of David and the Messiah then we must conclude that Mary is the Mother of God; as her title would indicate as well as exceedingly blessed. I'll go so far as to say, that if Mary isn't Virgin, isn't Ever Virgin then there is no Messiah; as the prodigy of woman Christ would never have been accepted by any Jew, but more importantly prophesy would have lied.
The siblings of Christ are shown in the Gospel of Matthew 13:55 are obviously clansmen of Christ, called brothers and sisters as was the custom. Clansmen who were children of Mary of Cleophas, sister of the Ever Virgin Mary: refer to Matt 27:56, and John 19:25. With proper Hermeneutics we see in the Old Testament the word “brother” to express a broad kinship or clanship as well as the word indicating siblings. Following St. Jerome argues passionately that to hold that Christ had siblings was an error:
I say spiritual because all of us Christians are called brethren, as in the verse, Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. … Shall we say they are brethren by race? … Again, if all men, as such, were His brethren, it would have been foolish to deliver a special message, Behold, your brethren seek you, for all men alike were entitled to the name … Just as Lot was called Abraham's brother, and Jacob Laban's, just as the daughters of Zelophehad received a lot among their brethren, just as Abraham himself had to wife Sarah his sister, for he says, Genesis 20:11 She is indeed my sister, on the father's side, not on the mother's, that is to say, she was the daughter of his brother, not of his sister. St. Jerome, Against Helvidius.
If we were to argue for the literal interpretation of brother to insist that Jesus had siblings, then wouldn't that redefine John 19:26-27? Jesus says to John, “Behold thy Mother.” Being redefined in our errant insistence on a literal interpretation would add John to James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Jude as siblings of Christ; which of course is nonsense. [I assumed you knew the custom of the Jews with regard to widows. At or near death, the eldest remaining sibling would handover care of his mother and sisters to an immediate male family member for care – usually the eldest of the remaining sons. It would have been a BIG insult for Jesus, as the eldest son of a widow, to hand over his Mother's care to somebody outside the family. You're not claiming John was a sibling of Christ too, are you?]
The Blessed Mother Mary has a singular way of getting to the subjective heart of the 'bible-only' Christian faith. She presents a threat to Protestantism and Evangelism, simply because Christ can't be re-defined outside of the context of her virginity. Thus, to acknowledge Mary's title, 'Theotokos,' is to reject the Kingdom of God. Deny Mary and you've rejected the Messiah, reject Mary and you reject the Three Persons of the Trinity, and refuse Mary and you've refused hope of eternal life in heaven. I explain it this way:
God preserves Mary from original sin so that His Justice will prevail. “I will put enmities between you and the woman, and your seed and her seed: she shall crush your head, and you shall lie in wait for her heel.” (Gen 3:15). In His infinite mercy God overthrows the infernal serpent through the Blessed Virgin. Those who eviscerate the Blessed Virgin Mary would stain and subjugate Mary to Satan would do well to look to the Catholic faith hold Blessed Virgin singularly preserved exempt from ALL stain of sin original sin or private sin through God's grace. Furthermore, had there been no means made available, Divine Justice would not have permitted a single human soul in heaven. A single sin shall not enter heaven
“For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners” (Rom 5:19), consequently any man born has this original sin. Christ being man and God was the perfect sacrifice. "Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29), the Paschal Lamb, the perfect sacrifice. These are two seeming diametrically opposed absolutes; one that all men are born with original sin, the stain of sin, the other that Christ was perfect without sin. But Christ is both man and God perfect on both accounts. As a result, there can only be one solution to this apparent dichotomy, Christ was born of a women whose original sin had been removed. Furthermore, He would be born of a woman that hadn't known sin because of His residence within her.
Given the verse, Jeremiah 31:22 “How long wilt thou be dissolute in deliciousness, O wandering daughter? For the Lord hath created a new thing upon the earth: A WOMAN SHALL COMPASS A MAN” we see God's mystical solution, rightly we conclude that Mary was Immaculate, protected from knowing the sins of Adam, protected from knowing the sins of men. But, how does one COMPASS Christ the man without ENCOMPASSING the God that is Christ? At the moment Christ was conceived God was also infused into the soul of Jesus. At that moment Mary's Womb had to have been spiritually clean; as clean as the ritual cleansing of the Tabernacle of Moses. Thus the Blessed Virgin Mary's womb became the dwelling place of God, a Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant. This Ark remains pure as did the Virgin Mary in her life of celibacy. Being literally full of grace, full of God, would we, could we, expect less? Would the Jewish Nation accept a Paschal Lamb any less than spotless, flawless?
St. Jerome ventures still further;
…that Joseph himself on account of Mary was a virgin, so that from a virgin wedlock a virgin son was born. For if as a holy man he does not come under the imputation of fornication, and it is nowhere written that he had another wife, but was the guardian of Mary whom he was supposed to have to wife rather than her husband, the conclusion is that he who was thought worthy to be called father of the Lord, remained a virgin. St. Jerome, The Perpetual Virginity of Mary
Moses was ordered by God to build a Tabernacle. It contained an outer court and inner court. See Ex 25-31 and Ex 39-40. Moses “commissioned” Beseleel, to be the architect of the tabernacle and its furnishings; he was the son of Uri and the grandson of Hur. Beseleel along with Ooliab built the tabernacle. In viewing the Tabernacle we move from outside inward we to a structure surrounded by a wall. Only one gate faces the east, a narrow gate; prefiguring Christ's warning, “narrow is the gate of righteousness.” The gate opens into the outer court in which we find the sacrificial altar and the bronze laver. On this altar is where the perfect Lamb is sacrificed.
The inner court has a antechamber containing the Menorah, the Altar of Incense, the Table of Shewbread (otherwise known as The Proposition Loaves), behind the veil was the Holy of Holies. In this most Holy place was the Ark of the Covenant
God was resident in a place made holy by his commands to Moses to keep the Tabernacle clean. The Ark of the Testimony (Exodus 25:16, 22; 26:33, etc.), the Ark of the Testament (Exodus 30:26), the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord (Numbers 10:33; Deuteronomy 10:8, etc.), the Ark of the Covenant (Joshua 3:6, etc.), the Ark of God (1 Samuel 3:3, etc.), the Ark of the Lord (1 Samuel 4:6, etc.) was the Incarnate Word of God; would you suggest that it reside in an unholy place? Why then would Jesus, who is both man and God, the Word Incarnate, reside in any less a holy place?
The Tabernacle was the birth place of the Jewish religion as well as our Catholic faith. Christ said “Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” He came to live, with perfection, the consummate the Old Covenant and to establish the New Covenant. But Matthew doesn't stop quoting Christ with simply “filling”, “For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled.” And too, we shouldn't forget that with Christ's birth, another wondrous birth occurs; the birth of God's Kingdom on earth.
Where did the Holy Spirit put the New Covenant word? Christ, the New Covenant, was placed in the Ark of the New Covenant, the womb of Mary. (Cf. Luke 1, Rev 11:19, Rev 12:1) God was infused into Christ at the moment of conception, within the womb of Mary, Christ, who was man with God infused. Thus after the proper time, Christ was born of Mary as according as foretold by the angel; “Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and shalt bring forth a son: and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father: and he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end.” (Luke 1: 31-33) Eventually, He passes through the veil; it's not rent, but passes like light passes through a window. Christ now becomes the Menorah (light) of the world, whose Word fell on the Altar of Incense to rise pleasingly to God, whose light fell on the loaves of proposition (The Twelve). These loaves were consumed by the high Priests who were said to receive Divine knowledge. As you probably know, a Divine Hope is born out of knowledge that gives hope of obtaining the Vision of the Divine.
And just as the Jewish Kingdom of faith was born in the Ark of the Covenant, so was the Church of Jesus Christ infused in a human Ark, an ark like Noah's carrying the future of man across the waters of death, i.e. sin, within the womb of Mary. The Blessed Virgin Mary carries the spotless sacrificial lamb across the waters of death in sin to landfall - our salvation. And when He hung on the Cross, he gave up the ghost with a loud cry; and it was then “the veil of the temple was rent in two, from the top to the bottom.” His death was the beginning; it was then that the veil was rent with the birth of the newly commissioned Church, built on Peter commissioned to minister to salvation. Christ is truly present in any sense you want to consider; being a continuation of sacrifice of both the Old Testament and the New, body, soul and Divinity contained within Holy Eucharist. The Holy Spirit conceived the Church of Jesus Christ. In Matthew 16 we see sacrificial exposure of the bread (Apostles) to the Face of God.
Therefore we can only conclude that Mary is Ever Virgin and immaculate. Any less immaculate and Christ could not be considered a spotless, sinless, the Paschal Lamb. As in the time of Moses, when the Tabernacle was moved, the site became Holy remaining clean. As when Christ was born, so too was Mary. Mary being literally full of Grace, we hold that this Tabernacle could never be desecrated.
More important still, failing to recognize the Blessed Virgin Mary as immaculate, as Ever Virgin, as the Mother of God wounds the Creed in which we profess One God, with three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To say that Mary was born with sin means that the 'Perfect Sacrificial Lamb' resided in filth and thus having contact with sin couldn't be 'perfect' preventing every Jew of the day to this day from seeing Christ as God. To say dismiss Mary's virginity is to say that God came from the seed of man – and in order to be God would require 'creation'. How can the uncreated be created? To dismiss that Mary was Ever Virgin is to say that one can be in physical contact with Grace itself and can turn away – once again making God back into man.
JoeT