Welcome
Wayne!
By Susan
Fox
Hi, its me, your friend wayne.
Heres a quote fom your piece....Jesus said,
"Begone Satan: for it is written, "The Lord thy God shalt thou adore,
and him only shalt thou serve." And Satan left Him.
You were , along with sister tarah, the only 2
who made sense in that NCR site. Now, if you could, help me out with this one.
The adore part. Dont the catholics adore hundreds of "saints" and
poor old mary? i know the prevailing theory is that these departed ones in turn
pray to Jesus for you. The word adore...i dont see any problem with that. But
does that quote mean to adore god only? i dont see adore as meaning worship. i
adore. I adore Welches white grape peach juice. Glad to talk to you again
Yes, Wayne
I adore chocolate, but – you are correct -- that is different than adoring God.
It’s too bad we can’t use the Greek language because they have a whole bunch of
verbs that mean different kinds of love, and that’s what we are really talking
about.
I adore you,
too, Wayne, but in that context I am really talking about friendship. I adore
my husband, but in that context I am talking about romantic married love. My
love for chocolate is self indulgent, though not necessarily bad, whereas
friendship and married love involve a certain element of selfless giving. At
least that is the goal.
But the
love I have for God is totally different. If any of my other loves interfere
with the love of God, I have to put them aside and chose God alone. You know Jesus
said, any man who has left brothers, sisters, father, mother or children, or
lands for My sake and the Gospel, he shall receive a hundredfold now in this
life houses, brothers, sisters, mothers and children with persecutions and
eternal life in the world to come. (Mark
10: 29-30)
We do indeed
believe we can adore only God and Him alone. It comes from this commandment:
“Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole mind, your whole
strength, your whole being and your neighbor as yourself.”
So as they
say on Star Trek: THIS IS THE PRIME DIRECTIVE, the essence of the Christian
life as Christ has laid it out for us. Our loves are prioritized.
So where
does this leave poor Mary? Or poor old St. Anthony? I really love Mary. I
really love St. Francis, St. Anthony, St. Faustina, St. Teresa of Avila, St.
Isaac Jogues, St. Theresa of the Child Jesus, St. Joseph, St. Peter To Rot, St.
Juan Diego, St. Pio. I love so many
saints I can’t list them all. I was tempted to say I adore them, but I adore
them the same way I adore you, Wayne – they are my friends. So I do not adore
them the same way I adore God, and if I did, I would be committing the sin of
idolatry.
The
Catholic Church calls this form of friendship veneration. We venerate the
saints. For me, it means loving them as my friends in heaven. But the
definition of venerate is “to regard with reverential respect or with admiring
deference.”
So how do
we venerate a person in heaven without giving them the regard due to God? It’s simple. HERE IS THE ANSWER: All devotion
to the saints must have as its end Jesus Christ.
That is if
you find yourself loving St. Anthony to the exclusion of God (and I know some
people who don’t go to Mass but they always pray to St. Anthony), then our love
has become disordered. It is idolatry.
But in the
Catholic Church we are always running around talking about “True Devotion to
Mary.” TRUE Devotion as opposed to FALSE (idolatry) devotion. It’s means that
we do not worship her as a goddess, by no means, she is a creature created by
God. We go to her instead as a more perfect means to get to Jesus. Jesus is
always the goal in any devotion to the saints. Well, why not go directly to
Jesus? You can! And you can go to your friends in heaven as well, and end up at
the same place, God.
In fact,
one of the most frustrating things about the Blessed Virgin Mary is whenever I
go to her, I end up with Jesus or the Father or the Holy Spirit. She just
disappears. I can’t get a firm fix on her. I ask St. Anthony to get me a
parking space. I find a parking space and I thank God! I forget St. Anthony.
And you know what? That makes him very happy because he lived his life loving
God with his whole heart. He is one of those Christians, who gave up father,
brother, sister, mother, children, lands to serve God. I think he even slept in
a tree, which is much more than I do. I sleep in an apartment.
He was one
crazy dude (from the world’s point of view), but he loved God more than
anything in this world and it was evidenced by his life. He was a Catholic
priest, a Franciscan in the time that St. Francis lived. He really embraced
poverty just like St. Francis.
Most of the
time we Catholics pray to St. Anthony to ask him to find something that is
lost. But it almost seems to me sacrilegious because he was such an incredible
man. (It’s not sacrilegious however. The saints are very humble.) He was sent
to preach to the Waldensians (early
Protestants), and they hid in their houses and refused to listen. He happened
to be standing on a bluff next to the sea and all the creatures there came to
the top of the water. They seemed to be listening, so St. Anthony began to
preach to them and eventually 50 people came out to listen to him along with the sea
creatures.
One man
didn’t believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, so St. Anthony
made a deal with him. The man had a mule. So St. Anthony said, “Starve the mule
for one day and at the end of that time, we’ll offer him food or the
opportunity to worship Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.” The man agreed. St Anthony prayed all night and
said Mass on the next morning. The man did not feed his donkey for one day. St.
Anthony put Jesus in a gold vessel called a Monstrance. The donkey was put in a
pen. Hay was placed on one side of the pen and St. Anthony came with Jesus on
the other side of the pen. The donkey did not go to his food. He went to Our Lord Jesus
Christ present in the Holy Eucharist and held by St. Anthony. Then the donkey
knelt.
I know
that’s impossible! It was a miracle. But the man who owned the donkey returned
to the Catholic faith, so I guess God felt the miracle was necessary. (See poem
about this below)
One time on
my birthday I lost my favorite Brown Scapular (it’s like a Catholic altar call.
It’s a rope with a brown cloth and an image of Our Lady on it, worn around the
neck, and it means I belong to Jesus, not to the world.)
So I said
to St. Anthony, “I hate to ask you to help find my scapular because you were
such an incredible miracle worker, but could ya? Would ya?”
Now I don’t
hear voices or see visions but somehow I understood that I would find my
scapular before the end of the day. Suddenly I noticed it was 11:30 p.m. on my
birthday and I didn’t have my scapular. So I said, “St. Anthony. It’s 11:30
p.m.!” Wayne, I kid you not, I was walking out of my dark bedroom where my
husband was sleeping when I said that, and I reached out for the doorknob
behind the bedroom door and my scapular was hanging on it! Now, of course, I
thanked God! (not poor St. Anthony).
If you wish
to know more about St. Anthony there is an article on him on our blog
Or check
the labels on the right side for an article called, “St. Anthony of Padua.”
I did
mention earlier that Mary is a more perfect means to Jesus, and why is that?
Mary is His Mother. Christianity is really about relationships. Our God is
Three Persons in a Triune Relationship. Our God is One, but He is also a
Community of Persons. If I want to get to Jesus only the Holy Spirit can bring
me. I can’t even say His name unless the Holy Spirit allows me to. If I want to
reach the Father, only Jesus can bring me. Jesus and The Father send the
Spirit. The path of holiness for myself is to understand who am I in relation
to God? Who am I in relation to each Person of the Blessed Trinity? Mary was Jesus’
mother. Jesus is the God who said, “Honor Your Father and Mother.” He doesn’t
disobey his own commandments. He also gave away his most precious and last possession
from the cross – His mother. (He'd given up everything else, including his clothes at that point.) He said to John, “Behold Your Mother.” And to
Mary, he said, “Behold your son.” It was his last moments on earth and He was
dying. But He gave away His mother. So Jesus felt His mother could help us. He
was giving us a short cut to salvation.
Do you know
about short cuts? They have them in computer games. They are called cheat
codes. You learn the cheat code and you can win the game faster and easier. In
some of the games my son played he never ever would have unlocked the puzzle to get to the next level unless he first searched online for the “cheat codes.” In giving us His mother, Jesus gave us the
“cheat code” to salvation. (Disclaimer: this is my explanation of the Catholic
teaching on Mary, not that of the Catholic Church.)
In the Old
Testament, when people wanted something from the King, they approached the
King’s mother first to sort of soften him up. St. Louis Marie de Montfort, who
wrote “True Devotion to Mary,” said that when a soul gives himself to Jesus
through Mary, it’s like handing a wormy apple to the King’s mother. Mary slices the apple, cuts out the worms
(our gifts are not perfect) and places the apple slices on a gold plate and
hands it to Jesus. And Jesus is very pleased with you.
St. Louis
Marie de Montfort called devotion to Mary the short, sure and easy way to enter
the Kingdom of God. And the veneration we Catholics give to Mary is greater
than the veneration we give to all the other saints. But still we realize she
is a creature of God, and He made her. But what a creature! I am so grateful to
her. When I think about the fact that if she hadn’t told God, “Yes, I’ll be the
Mother of Your Son,” then I, Susan Fox, would never, ever have met Jesus. How
sad my life would have been without Him.
Now below I
share a poem I wrote some years ago about St. Anthony’s miracle:
St. Anthony's Bread
(St. Anthony of Padua converted an
unbeliever by working a miracle. He gave a mule a choice between his feed or
the Eucharist. The mule had been starved, but chose to kneel in front of the
Eucharist instead of eating.)
I am a poor dumb mule,
starved for a day and given a choice:
my feed or the Food of the Universe.
I knew Him:
He was the Baker who kneaded my life.
He was the King who once lay in the
cold before my kind
in the form of a baby.
My knees were not made for this.
I am constructed awkwardly.
But my choice was simple:
I knelt before the Bread of my
life.
I knelt before my Maker.
(Susan Fox)
