Index : U
Over the years in teaching Mariology, and we’ll of course have other things besides our Lady during our semester in concentrating on the Bible. But I thought to get as a large amount of matter into both a short space and a necessarily short period of time, I would do what a number of great writers over the centuries have: divided Mariology into sets of threes. First of all the three famous words.
First a word of explanation: when we use the word "type" we mean that the Old Testament gives us by anticipation what we call "types", "symbols". First of all, of Christ and then of His mother. Now there are both persons and there are events in the Old Testament that anticipate the New Testament. In other words, Christ our Lord has many "types" as we call them. Persons in the Old Testament who typified the Messiah to come. Correspondingly, even as there were types of "Christ" in the Old Testament, so we speak of types and figures anticipating Mary in the New Testament.
In order to appreciate the reason why we’re going into this course, we should read and reflect on the 13th Chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. Remember, it is the parable of the Sower who went out to sow his seed. The seed fell on different kinds of ground…Never in the history of the Church has there been such devastating consequence to people not understanding their faith.
Through the Bible we see that God wants us to adore Him, thank Him, beg for His mercy and ask Him for what we need. If there’s one thing that stands out from the first to the last book of the Bible it is the need we have to pray. So much so that based on our knowledge of Scripture we can say for certain who is going to heaven and who will go to hell, infallible certitude.
If there is one thing that I want to make sure we get from our study of Scripture it is that we will be equipped and motivated to meditate on the Scriptures. Whatever else the Bible is made, it is not made for speed reading. It is made for meditative, reflective, prayerful communication with God.
They all universally deny the Johannine authorship of the fourth Gospel, and this is one reason: it is so mercifully clear on those truths of the Catholic faith, like Christ’s divinity, like Mary’s divine maternity, like the Real Presence. You might also have told your friends or tell your friends, the Protestants who do not believe in the Real Presence, by the year 1600, (that’s 83 years after Martin Luther broke with the Catholic Church), St. Robert Bellermine found over two hundred interpretations of the meaning of Christ’s words at the Last Supper, "This is My Body, This is My Blood".
…Notice at the very beginning of Our Lord’s Prayer we synthesize Our Father who art in heaven, first petition, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Those three, the first petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, identify, synthesize the work of the angels now in heaven and our own, what I call it, service in heaven through all eternity: to do God’s will. But notice we are to do God’s will now on earth as the angels (and by now also the saints) are doing it in heaven. So the model of how we are to do God’s will is how the angels do God’s will, and even the saints are to learn from the angels on how to do God’s will.
Our next class today will be on conversion as found especially in the New Testament. We ask ourselves why should we go into the subject, why go into the subject of joy? Well as your charts tell you, I have five basic reasons. There are so many unhappy people, angry people, suicidal people, discouraged people, even despairing people. I told you my record at Western Michigan was three suicides in two weeks. In other words, given a nation in which there is so much tragic sorrow we believers in Christ, we’d better know, we’d better know what joy means and we’d better know how both to be happy ourselves and pass happiness or joy onto others.
If I want to be happy, I must be willing to endure some pain. I put the adjective some pain in there to make it easy on you.
And finally we must believe. And we believe, (speak of the English language which is not, as I keep repeating, an English word no matter what the English word is), as an English word, it is not Catholic. This for almost 500 years, the monopoly on the English language has been by Protestants. You’ve got to go behind, beneath, dig, what do the words that I’m using mean?
"The most important duty we have in life as believing Catholics is to understand what we believe. Not to understand what we are supposed to believe is to invite the evil spirit to rob us of the faith we once possessed." - Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
"In the two millennia of the Church's history, it has always been some aspect of the sacraments which has been challenged or denied by those who then separated themselves from Catholic unity." - Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
This article will focus on both aspects of the modern media of communication. Our first stress is on the use of these media to exploit the philosophy of secularism to the incalculable damage of whole nations that had once been faithfully Christian. Our second and main focus is to begin to explore the breathtaking potential of the modern media to teach the whole world what Christ told His Father, "This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom you have sent." (John 17:3). - Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
