1.
God
is Love (1Jn:4-8); God showed his love by sending his only begotten son to be
incarnated as human, suffer and die as human, and be resurrected for the world
to know Jesus was God
2.
Jesus
is Love; He obeyed His Father and redeemed us all from our sin and those in Sheol,
the waiting room to heaven, who were resurrected with Jesus, and those who were
left behind slid into Hades / Hell
3.
The
Holy Spirit is the Breath, the Gaze, the Love that God the Father and God the
Son share with each other
4.
Mother
Mary is the Daughter of God the Father; Mother of God the Son, and Spouse of
the Holy Spirit – the Trinity – One God Three Persons
5.
Mother
Mary is not God; Catholics do not worship Mother Mary; Catholics venerate
Mother Mary and have a special devotion to her above all saints – who
themselves in their saintly journey needed the intercession of Mother Mary with
the Trinitarian God
6.
Mother
Mary is Primus Inter Pares – first among equals - among all saints
7.
In Genesis
3:15 called the Proto-Evangelium (or “First-Gospel”), God promises to defeat
Satan through the operation of “the woman” and “her seed.”
8.
Tradition
identifies the “the woman” as the Blessed Virgin Mary and “the seed” as our
Lord Jesus Christ.
9.
“I
will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she
shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Gen 3:15)
10.
Christ
crushes the head of Satan absolutely, and Mary crushes the head of Satan by
virtue of her role as the Mother of God and New Eve
11.
We
erroneously seek and desire for wealth, health, pleasure, honour and power and
allied
12.
We
need seek only one all-encompassing gift: the “Grace of God” and everything else
will follow that we may lack for nothing:
a. “Seek
ye first the kingdom of God all these things will be added on to you” (Mat 6:33)
b.
“My
grace is sufficient for you; in your weakness my strength is made perfect” (2
Cor 12:9)
13.
Mother
Mary is the only human we know of whom it is said, “Full of Grace” because she
was immaculate and born without sin
14.
She
was blessed with Honour and the Privilege (as should be our only desire when we
seek the Lord’s Grace above everything else):
·
“The
Lord is with you”
·
“Blessed
are you among women”
·
“Blessed
is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus”
It is to “Mother of God” we turn to:
·
“Pray
for us sinners”
·
“Now
and at the hour of our death”
15.
The
Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), is probably a prayer that Mother Mary recited in
some form from the time she began praying that she had become fluent with it
when she recited the Magnificat honouring God the Father, to Elizabeth her
cousin, bearing John the Baptist who leaps in Elizabeth’s womb when
experiencing Jesus in Mother Mary’s womb:
·
My
Soul doth Magnify the Lord
·
And,
My Spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour
·
For
He hath regarded the Lowliness of His Handmaiden
·
For
behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed
·
For
He that is mighty hath Magnified me
·
And,
Holy is His Name
·
And,
his mercy is on them that fear Him
·
Throughout
all generations He hath showed strength with his arm
·
He
hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts
·
He
hath put down the mighty from their seat
·
And
hath exalted the humble and meek
·
He
hath filled the hungry with good things
·
And,
the rich he hath sent empty away
·
He
remembering his mercy hath beholden his servant Israel
·
As
he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever
·
Glory
be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost
·
As
it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be world without end
·
Amen
16.
The
“Soul” is the ‘transmitter’ God has put in our body to magnify Him; Satan’s one
purpose is to corrupt the soul through lust of the flesh (eyes, nose, ears,
mouth, touch) to denigrate and defy God
17.
The
“Soul” communicates with the Trinitarian God through “Spirit of God” within us the
“Holy Spirit” “Third Person of the Trinity” when we are “full of Grace”
18.
Satan
forces himself upon us through guile, as he did with Eve in the Garden of Eden,
but the Holy Spirit’ presents himself only when ‘invited’; He does not impose
himself on us like Satan, hence we need to work with prayer, penance and
fasting to seek the Holy Spirit though not always; sometimes it is just God’s
grace that the Holy Spirit is given to us to fight off the evil spirit i.e. Satan
because our heart desires for the Holy Spirit
19.
“Full
of Grace” means being ‘humble’ and ‘lowly of heart’ like Jesus was (Matt 11:28);
“He must increase; I must decrease” as John the Baptist advocated (John 3:30)
20.
When
we are full of Grace, we are all ‘Soul’, like Mother Mary’s Soul, “My (Our) Soul doth Magnify the Lord,
And, my (Our) Spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour”
21.
When
we are just all ‘Soul’ and the body is the rest
22.
Our
soul descends to Sheol awaiting judgement, while our body which is corruptible,
decays and becomes one with the earth or fire or water
23.
When
our Soul cries out like Mother Mary did in the ‘Magnificat’, our body becomes the
‘Temple of the Holy Spirit’ (1 Cor 6:19); we are empowered not to submit to the
desire of the flesh, but to the divine call of our soul
24.
“For our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this
world, and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12)
25.
It
is not our fight, but the fight of the ‘Holy Spirit” when we allow the ‘Holy
Spirit’ to reign in every ‘nook and cranny’ of our body and in our heart and
mind
26.
To
win this fight we need to be full of ‘Grace’ and empty of ‘Sin’
27.
When
we sign ourselves, and say the ‘Creed’, the ‘Our Father’, the ‘Hail and Holy
Mary’, the Memorare to our Lady, the
Anima Christi and the Protection Prayer (Ps 91) our daily prayer will have a
certain completeness to seek the “Grace of God”, “His Almighty’s Protection
against all testing and evil”, and us being able to “Pray forward for ‘mercy at
the time of our death’"
28.
Mother
Mary, the blessed and mighty intercessor, along with all the angels and saints
makes our prayer ‘salient’ with the Trinitarian God
29.
People
argue why not just pray to God directly instead of involving an intercessor; it
is just not us praying as individuals (which we do) but there is merit in
having an army of the blessed praying with us; a Catholic tradition that Satan
deeply dislikes because it makes him impotent against an army of God arrayed against
him instead of just not an individual human being who he can easily manipulate
30.
We
too when we ascend to heaven with Jesus will be given the power to intercede
with the Trinity directly, for we too will be saints; today we seek the
intercession of Mother Mary, the Archangels, Angels and Saints when we are
interceding for our brethren
31.
We
are not alone in our fight with the ‘principalities and powers of darkness’; we
are with the “the woman” as the Blessed Virgin Mary and “the seed” as our Lord
Jesus Christ, God the Father and the Holy Spirit – the Archangels and an army
of saints who died that we may be blessed to know, adore and love Jesus died
for them and for us.
