www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Mary: Co-redeemer? Mediatrix?

Alice,
A warm thank you for that! Very beautiful and TRUE.
Theist Gal,
Caryll Houselander was an interesting person and writer .. Sophia Press published (a few years ago) a small booklet on the Rosary, with meditations written by Caryll Houselander for each one.
Communion of Saints
(thanks again, Alice!)

As a former Roman Catholic, one of the items that made me uncomfortable about the church is that I have experiences in the Church where the Theotokos is put on the same level as Christ the Savior. Prayer sessions and discussions all around Mary without reference to Jesus Christ. As I grew older this in some ways made me have reservations, because I felt is was wrong to put her on the same level as the Savior. I am not saying this is the policy of the Church, but that is what I experienced in numerous circumstances and in Cathechism classes as a young boy.

One of the great blessings that have had come from my marriage with my wife was learing about the Orthodox Church and eventually becoming an Orthodox Christian. My spirit feels right at home in the Orthodox Church and I have grown considerably in faith because of it. In the Orthodox Church, I have never experienced a situation or discussion where she is not the Theotokos and always being related to Christ the Savior.

I do see Theotokos as the great example and as as a result of cecoming an Orthodox Christian,my prayer life includes her without any of the reservations I had as a Roman Catholic.

Dear Justinian,

I too had similar experiences when growing up.

But I believe that Mariology itself is a weighty issue for any young person to comprehend fully and so I found myself assuming things about it that I later came to realize were simply not true at all.

The Orthodox Church has a much more profound veneration of the Mother of God liturgically than even the Roman Catholic Church.

But devotion to the Theotokos always does lead us to her Son since He is the Incarnate Word.

The fact that Christ has a Mother reinforces for us our faith in the Incarnation, the "inhominization" of the Word of God in history.

Christ is not an abstraction.

Abstractions don't have mothers.

Alex

Dear Justinian
As you may have noticed in icons, they are always tell a story. You will not see Mary without Jesus, or Mary with the Angel Gabriel (Annunciation). Icons of Mary, or any other saint, are always stories of her relationship to Jesus.
denise

Dear Denise,

Yes, and even the picture of Our Lady of Grace or the Miraculous Medal depicts Christ as the "Sun" with which Mary is clothed.

Alex

AMDG
Dear all in Christ,
I must say that I'm a little bit disappointed with the tendency among some on the forum to pepper their theological statements with caricatures and criticisms of the West. Don't feel like you have to justify or defend the Eastern approach to things by taking shots at Western traditions of which you have but an imperfect understanding anyway.
All the Latins that I know (except one :rolleyes: ) have a deep respect for the traditions and theology of the East, and the view most of the "differences" between East and West (e.g. "exception" vs. "exemplar" and "stain" vs. "death") as variations in emphasis or approach that are NOT irreconcilable, but complimentary. I would also like to add that my experience with the Melkite Church has deepened my spirituality and my understanding of the One Faith. I have found nothing there that is repugnant to my Latin Christianity; I have found things that improve my understanding of Christianity as a whole.
In particular:
Some on this thread have claimed that the Latin tradition bestows too much honor on the Virgin Mary, others have claimed that it bestows too little. Kudos to Alice for observing that veneration of the Theotokos UNITES East and West.
Dear reader Andrew, I have always found your posts to be particularly enlightening. Nevertheless, I could not disagree more strongly with your claim that differences in approach to Marian dogmata should really be an issue between East and West. How many Byzantine Catholics there are, who faithfully practice the Eastern Theotokian hyperdulia, and are yet in communion with Rome!!
Regarding things like "statues" , just remember that differences in spirituality don't render the Western position illegitimate. There are different traditions in the Church for a reason. When I encounter an Eastern tradition that I find somewhat alien, I try to 1)remember that the East has an ancient tradition too, 2)UNDERSTAND the particular tradition, and 3) APPRECIATE it as it is practiced in the East. This approach, if employed with respect to things like statues, scholasticism, the Rosary, the western understanding of Mary, etc. might be more productive than building up western straw men and knocking them down.
Just food for thought.
XPISTOS ANESTH,
LatinTrad

Brother Alex,

I just aquired a new to me paper icon "The Lady of All Peoples, Omnium Populorum Domina, L'Armee De Marie", from Quebec Canada. I am sure you can give me a little info on Her.

Thanx

james

Dear LatinTrad,

Perhaps some Easterners go out of their way to attack the West, but, by and large, I think that anything like that stems from a reaction we have to a certain Latin triumphalism that we experiece.

That triumphalism basically sees "Catholic" and "Latin" as synonymous terms, and anything "Eastern" as something "second-class."

It is wonderful that Roman Catholics have found inspiration in the Eastern traditions that have always been around for them to discover.

But I still see RC's get their noses all out of joint when they understand the distinctively Eastern traditions as being somehow "less Catholic" because they don't emphasize Augustine and Latin formulations and perspectives.

There are real differences between East and West here and we need to understand them and define them.

Sometimes when we discuss differences between East and West on this or that, we DO go beyond the courteous paradigm of "I'm O.K., You're O.K." .

Sometimes we do say that the Latin Church's development of doctrine on this or that seems, to us, to have moved away from the common tradition of the undivided Church of the first millennium.

I think that kind of dialogue is also important for a number of reasons that I think are obvious.

Your charge that we have an imperfect understanding of RC positions is really way out of line.

Most of us, including myself, grew up in RC educational institutions and, although EC, we were taught the RC way and only later in life came to a better appreciation of our own Eastern heritage.

Alex

Dear Jakub,

Niech bedzie pochwalony Jezus Christus!

And happy Our Lady of Mount Carmel's Day!

I've heard of that devotion and we have something similar at the Martyrs' Shrine Church in Midland up here.

It is a devotion that is intended on Mary being a sign of unity of all peoples and it meshes well with our "multicultural" mentality in Canada.

Although we have the great national miraculous image of Our Lady of the Cape in Quebec, we have numerous, lesser known miraculous Madonna Shrines, including Our Lady of Huronia dating from the time of the Jesuit Missionaries.

I'm working on an akathist to the Jesuit Martyrs and will post it here just as soon as I've completed it.

Alex

Dear Alice,
You said it best.
I don't think everyone appreciates all that you said.
Maybe we should pray more.
C of S

AMDG
Dear Alex,
I apologize deeply, to everyone, for the tone of my last post.
I also have encountered stupid Latins who can't get over Eastern practices. For instance, an elderly lady I know was shocked and scandalized when she went to the Melkite Church and saw seminarians with kids ! No amount of explanation would suffice: the East was heretical and must convert or else. This attitude caused me no little sorrow.
I do, however, stand by the statement that I have noticed people dismissing Western practices without understanding the reasons for them. For example, my Byzantine friends poor scorn on the "Low Mass," without having any notion that the Low Mass first became widespread in Ireland during the Penal Days, when priests, under sentence of death, had to say Mass quickly, on rocks in remote locations. This became part of the fabric of Irish Catholicism, and thus it entered the United States along with the immigrants.
With regard to the topic of this thread, I would like to introduce those who are not familiar with it, to the Ave Maris Stella (Alex, I know you probably know this one):

Ave Maris Stella
Dei Mater alma
Atque semper Virgo
Felix caeli porta.

Hail, Ocean's star
Dear Theotokos
And also ever-Virgin
Joyful gate of Heaven.

There are seven verses to this Medieval hymn. The two middle lines in this verse emphasize the two aspects of devotion to the Theotokos that Reader Andrew (I think) so aptly expressed.

God Bless all.

EN MAPIA,
L.T. (not Lawrence Taylor)

Dear Communion of Saints,

I appreciate Alice very much!

The fact that she is so ecumenical as an Orthodox Christian is wonderful!

I myself love many Latin Marian devotions, I have statues and love praying St Bonaventure's Psalter of Our Lady, the litanies, the Little Office et al.

But Eastern Christians have a responsibility to themselves and to the universal Church to study and know their own theology, including that of the Mother of God.

And that theology is distinctly different from that of the Western Catholic Church.

It amounts to the same thing? - yes it does.

But the Eastern emphasis on Theosis and our Lady's participation in the Divine Life of the Trinity is something I just don't find all that celebrated in the devotional life of the West that emphasizes the naturalistic, humanistic aspects that are just foreign to the East.

That doesn't mean that East and West can't be one.

Only that they are, as someone said, the "same differently."

Alex

Word.
Alex, you're right.

Dear Latin Trad,

You haven't done anything to apologise for - we're having a discussion and you raised important points!

I'm the first here to call my EC friends on the carpet for being nasty to RC's and some of them are way too Easternized even for me who has come to like some of his Latin practices .

I'm a life-long student of Mariology, especially miraculous shrines in any continent or religious tradition.

There is an Eastern icon of the Mother of God "The Star" and each icon of hers is supposed to have the three Stars on her shoulders and head for her Perpetual Virginity, "Before, during and after" the birth of Christ (Fr. Elias here has suggested that the three stars on the Carmelite coat of arms originally refer to this).

And the fisherman in many European countries place a star in their boats in honour of Our Lady Star of the Sea.

Our new house is on "Mildenhall Road" and Mildenhall in England once boasted a miraculous shrine of our Lady.

I'm setting up a shrine in the corner of our garden to "Our Lady of Mildenhall."

Restorative work, if you will!

Alex

Dear Latin Trad,

Well, I could be wrong, and I have been!

We're discussing things and I know we can learn from one another!

I loved the Pope's statement today about how he always wears the Carmelite scapular.

Easterners may look on that as a Latin practice.

In fact, His Holiness described the devotion as being "under the mantle of Our Lady's protection."

A more Eastern way of putting it cannot be found!

(I hope you wear your Scapular! )

Communion of Saints may be a bit perturbed at me because she sent me something for me to read and comment on and I haven't yet.

It does weigh on my conscience though, but I don't have the nerve to tell her that I lost her document the last time our computer folk upgraded my system and ask her to send it to me again . . .

I'm also a devotee of Montfort's Holy Slavery, like Angela and Fr. Silouan are!

St Louis de Montfort's writing are just packed full of insights that are as Eastern as all get out!

(BTW, I've written some commentary on it at: http://www.montfortmissionaries.com

Pax Vobiscum!

Alex