KANJENG RATU SESOTYANING KENYA
꧁ ꧂
Kanjeng = Kangjeng = Hingkang Jumeneng = Yang BertahtaSotya = intan, permata
Sesotya = bermacam-macam permata
Kenya = gadis
Kanjeng Ratu Sesotyaning Kenya = Yang Mulia Ratu Permatanya Gadis
Mary's Virginity: Before, During and After ChildbirthWhat do we really understand when we believe in the virginal Motherhood of Mary? We confess Mary to be “ever Virgin.” From the earliest centuries the Church has carefully defined the meaning of Mary’s perpetual virginity, particularly because a denial of this privilege immediately entails a denial either of the person or of the work, or of the outcome of the work of Her Son and Savior. This last means a denial of the Church: one, holy, catholic and apostolic. This is as true today as on the day of Pentecost. Take the Virgin Mary out of the faithful gathered as Church on that glorious day, and the day would not have been glorious, nor would the Church have been uniquely different from every other religious society. Unfortunately, there still remain many, far too many, who refuse to acknowledge Mary as God’s Virgin Mother and ours. They insist that such acknowledgment and the practice of hyperdulia—that unique veneration due the Immaculate Mother of God—requires belief in the reality of the supernatural and miraculous, and that this, in the final analysis, is impossible because virginal maternity (they say) is impossible. From the point of view of the rationalist and naturalist, for instance, this privilege involves two contradictions or impossibilities: a human conception without intercourse with a man; and the presence of two bodies in the same place during a childbirth which takes place without the opening of the mother’s womb. Such a position denies not only the fact but also the very possibility of a supernatural and divine order which transcends the merely physical and natural. In the order of knowing and loving, that denial places divine knowledge and love on the same level with that of man. We might say very simply that rejection of the perpetual virginity of Mary collapses the distinction between nature and grace (the heresy of pelagianism, in which grace is identified with nature), between faith and reason (the heresy of rationalism, in which what can’t be known naturally is not knowable), and that between Creator and creature (the heresy of evolutionary pantheism, in which creation is identified with God, or God is the end product of natural, created forces). The Church in the Apostles’ Creed rightly insists that 1) Christ was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit which implies Mary’s virginal motherhood before childbirth, and that 2) Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, which implies Mary’s virginal motherhood during childbirth, whereby She became what She was not—a mother— without ceasing to be what She was—perpetually virgin. This doctrine was later given a more technical formulation: Virgin before and during childbirth, therefore remaining after childbirth what She was before: ever- Virgin. This virginal motherhood was the great miracle whereby the Son of God from eternity, without ceasing to be what He was – divine – in fact became what He was not – man. Whoever accepts the possibility of miracles in general (viz., the possibility of something beyond the natural or physical), will ultimately come to accept the possibility of the miracle of miracles: the Incarnation and divinevirginal maternity. And whoever accepts the great sign of the Incarnation and Redemption (viz., the divine-virginal maternity), will accept the Incarnation as well, and all the supernatural as well as natural blessings which come with this greatest of divine deeds. The miracle of Mary’s virginal maternity is, therefore, a sign, indeed the great sign on which hinge all revelation or manifestation of Our Savior and our salvation. In the light of this sign we can easily see how grace and nature are quite distinct, and yet grace perfects nature; how faith makes plain what lies beyond reason, yet in so doing perfects reason; how God, without ceasing to be unchanging, impassible and transcendent and without becoming confused with the created, truly becomes man, subject even to suffering and death: all this without contradiction. These are some of the profound mysteries of revealed Truth bound up with the Church’s confession of Mary’s virginal motherhood. Understanding how these truths are interconnected makes clear the gravity of the rationalist error: denial of the miraculous and supernatural character of Mary’s motherhood amounts to a denial of Christ’s divinity and of our salvation. http://marymediatrix.com/magisterium |
Keperawanan Abadi Maria, sebuah dogma Gereja Katolik Roma dan juga Gereja Ortodoks Timur dan Ortodoks Oriental, dimana di dalam liturgi mereka berulang kali merujuk Maria sebagai "Sang Perawan Abadi", menetapkan bahwa keperawanan Maria yang nyata dan kekal bahkan di dalam peristiwa melahirkan Sang Putra Allah menjadi seorang manusia." Oleh karena itu, menurut dogma gereja ini, Maria selalu perawan (Bahasa Yunani ἀειπάρθενος, aeiparthenos) selama masa hidup duniawinya, menjadikan Yesus sebagai satu-satunya putra biologis-Nya, dimana pembuahan dan kelahiran-Nya dipercaya sebagai hal yang ajaib. Dogma Keperawanan Abadi Maria menyatakan bahwa Maria adalah seorang perawan sebelum, selama dan sesudah melahirkan, dan oleh karenanya mencakup hal yang lebih luas daripada doktrin pembuahan perawan Yesus, yang seringkali disebut sebagai kelahiran perawan Yesus. (De fide). Tradisi umum ini mengenai keperawanan abadi Maria adalah salah satu unsur dari teologi kuat tentang Theotokos baik di tradisi Timur maupun Barat, dan menjadi sebuah bidang penelitian yang dikenal dengan nama Mariologi.
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Mary: Ever VirginMost Protestants claim that Mary bore children other than Jesus. To support their claim, these Protestants refer to the biblical passages which mention the "brethren of the Lord." As explained in the Catholic Answers tract Brethren of the Lord, neither the Gospel accounts nor the early Christians attest to the notion that Mary bore other children besides Jesus. The faithful knew, through the witness of Scripture and Tradition, that Jesus was Mary’s only child and that she remained a lifelong virgin. An important historical document which supports the teaching of Mary’s perpetual virginity is the Protoevangelium of James, which was written probably less than sixty years after the conclusion of Mary’s earthly life (around A.D. 120), when memories of her life were still vivid in the minds of many. According to the world-renowned patristics scholar, Johannes Quasten: "The principal aim of the whole writing [Protoevangelium of James] is to prove the perpetual and inviolate virginity of Mary before, in, and after the birth of Christ" (Patrology, 1:120–1). To begin with, the Protoevangelium records that when Mary’s birth was prophesied, her mother, St. Anne, vowed that she would devote the child to the service of the Lord, as Samuel had been by his mother (1 Sam. 1:11). Mary would thus serve the Lord at the Temple, as women had for centuries (1 Sam. 2:22), and as Anna the prophetess did at the time of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:36–37). A life of continual, devoted service to the Lord at the Temple meant that Mary would not be able to live the ordinary life of a child-rearing mother. Rather, she was vowed to a life of perpetual virginity. However, due to considerations of ceremonial cleanliness, it was eventually necessary for Mary, a consecrated "virgin of the Lord," to have a guardian or protector who would respect her vow of virginity. Thus, according to the Protoevangelium, Joseph, an elderly widower who already had children, was chosen to be her spouse. (This would also explain why Joseph was apparently dead by the time of Jesus’ adult ministry, since he does not appear during it in the gospels, and since Mary is entrusted to John, rather than to her husband Joseph, at the crucifixion). According to the Protoevangelium, Joseph was required to regard Mary’s vow of virginity with the utmost respect. The gravity of his responsibility as the guardian of a virgin was indicated by the fact that, when she was discovered to be with child, he had to answer to the Temple authorities, who thought him guilty of defiling a virgin of the Lord. Mary was also accused of having forsaken the Lord by breaking her vow. Keeping this in mind, it is an incredible insult to the Blessed Virgin to say that she broke her vow by bearing children other than her Lord and God, who was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit. The perpetual virginity of Mary has always been reconciled with the biblical references to Christ’s brethren through a proper understanding of the meaning of the term "brethren." The understanding that the brethren of the Lord were Jesus’ stepbrothers (children of Joseph) rather than half-brothers (children of Mary) was the most common one until the time of Jerome (fourth century). It was Jerome who introduced the possibility that Christ’s brethren were actually his cousins, since in Jewish idiom cousins were also referred to as "brethren." The Catholic Church allows the faithful to hold either view, since both are compatible with the reality of Mary’s perpetual virginity. Today most Protestants are unaware of these early beliefs regarding Mary’s virginity and the proper interpretation of "the brethren of the Lord." And yet, the Protestant Reformers themselves—Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli—honored the perpetual virginity of Mary and recognized it as the teaching of the Bible, as have other, more modern Protestants. The Protoevangelium of James "And behold, an angel of the Lord stood by [St. Anne], saying, ‘Anne! Anne! The Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive and shall bring forth, and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world.’ And Anne said, ‘As the Lord my God lives, if I beget either male or female, I will bring it as a gift to the Lord my God, and it shall minister to him in the holy things all the days of its life.’ . . . And [from the time she was three] Mary was in the temple of the Lord as if she were a dove that dwelt there" (Protoevangelium of James 4, 7 [A.D. 120]). "And when she was twelve years old there was held a council of priests, saying, ‘Behold, Mary has reached the age of twelve years in the temple of the Lord. What then shall we do with her, lest perchance she defile the sanctuary of the Lord?’ And they said to the high priest, ‘You stand by the altar of the Lord; go in and pray concerning her, and whatever the Lord shall manifest to you, that also will we do.’ . . . [A]nd he prayed concerning her, and behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him saying, ‘Zechariah! Zechariah! Go out and assemble the widowers of the people and let them bring each his rod, and to whomsoever the Lord shall show a sign, his wife shall she be. . . . And Joseph [was chosen]. . . . And the priest said to Joseph, ‘You have been chosen by lot to take into your keeping the Virgin of the Lord.’ But Joseph refused, saying, ‘I have children, and I am an old man, and she is a young girl’" (ibid., 8–9). "And Annas the scribe came to him [Joseph] . . . and saw that Mary was with child. And he ran away to the priest and said to him, ‘Joseph, whom you did vouch for, has committed a grievous crime.’ And the priest said, ‘How so?’ And he said, ‘He has defiled the virgin whom he received out of the temple of the Lord and has married her by stealth’" (ibid., 15). "And the priest said, ‘Mary, why have you done this? And why have you brought your soul low and forgotten the Lord your God?’ . . . And she wept bitterly saying, ‘As the Lord my God lives, I am pure before him, and know not man’" (ibid.). Origen "The Book [the Protoevangelium] of James [records] that the brethren of Jesus were sons of Joseph by a former wife, whom he married before Mary. Now those who say so wish to preserve the honor of Mary in virginity to the end, so that body of hers which was appointed to minister to the Word . . . might not know intercourse with a man after the Holy Spirit came into her and the power from on high overshadowed her. And I think it in harmony with reason that Jesus was the firstfruit among men of the purity which consists in [perpetual] chastity, and Mary was among women. For it were not pious to ascribe to any other than to her the firstfruit of virginity" (Commentary on Matthew 2:17 [A.D. 248]). Hilary of Poitiers "If they [the brethren of the Lord] had been Mary’s sons and not those taken from Joseph’s former marriage, she would never have been given over in the moment of the passion [crucifixion] to the apostle John as his mother, the Lord saying to each, ‘Woman, behold your son,’ and to John, ‘Behold your mother’ [John 19:26–27), as he bequeathed filial love to a disciple as a consolation to the one desolate" (Commentary on Matthew 1:4 [A.D. 354]). Athanasius "Let those, therefore, who deny that the Son is by nature from the Father and proper to his essence deny also that he took true human flesh from the ever-virgin Mary" (Discourses Against the Arians 2:70 [A.D. 360]). Epiphanius of Salamis "We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things, both visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God . . . who for us men and for our salvation came down and took flesh, that is, was born perfectly of the holy ever-virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit" (The Man Well-Anchored 120 [A.D. 374]). "And to holy Mary, [the title] ‘Virgin’ is invariably added, for that holy woman remains undefiled" (Medicine Chest Against All Heresies 78:6 [A.D. 375]). Jerome "[Helvidius] produces Tertullian as a witness [to his view] and quotes Victorinus, bishop of Petavium. Of Tertullian, I say no more than that he did not belong to the Church. But as regards Victorinus, I assert what has already been proven from the gospel—that he [Victorinus] spoke of the brethren of the Lord not as being sons of Mary but brethren in the sense I have explained, that is to say, brethren in point of kinship, not by nature. [By discussing such things we] are . . . following the tiny streams of opinion. Might I not array against you the whole series of ancient writers? Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men, who against [the heretics] Ebion, Theodotus of Byzantium, and Valentinus, held these same views and wrote volumes replete with wisdom. If you had ever read what they wrote, you would be a wiser man" (Against Helvidius: The Perpetual Virginity of Mary 19 [A.D. 383]). "We believe that God was born of a virgin, because we read it. We do not believe that Mary was married after she brought forth her Son, because we do not read it. . . . You [Helvidius] say that Mary did not remain a virgin. As for myself, I claim that Joseph himself was a virgin, through Mary, so that a virgin Son might be born of a virginal wedlock" (ibid., 21). Didymus the Blind "It helps us to understand the terms ‘first-born’ and ‘only-begotten’ when the Evangelist tells that Mary remained a virgin ‘until she brought forth her first-born son’ [Matt. 1:25]; for neither did Mary, who is to be honored and praised above all others, marry anyone else, nor did she ever become the Mother of anyone else, but even after childbirth she remained always and forever an immaculate virgin" (The Trinity 3:4 [A.D. 386]). Ambrose of Milan "Imitate her [Mary], holy mothers, who in her only dearly beloved Son set forth so great an example of material virtue; for neither have you sweeter children [than Jesus], nor did the Virgin seek the consolation of being able to bear another son" (Letters 63:111 [A.D. 388]). Pope Siricius I "You had good reason to be horrified at the thought that another birth might issue from the same virginal womb from which Christ was born according to the flesh. For the Lord Jesus would never have chosen to be born of a virgin if he had ever judged that she would be so incontinent as to contaminate with the seed of human intercourse the birthplace of the Lord’s body, that court of the eternal king" (Letter to Bishop Anysius [A.D. 392]). Augustine "In being born of a Virgin who chose to remain a Virgin even before she knew who was to be born of her, Christ wanted to approve virginity rather than to impose it. And he wanted virginity to be of free choice even in that woman in whom he took upon himself the form of a slave" (Holy Virginity 4:4 [A.D. 401]). "It was not the visible sun, but its invisible Creator who consecrated this day for us, when the Virgin Mother, fertile of womb and integral in her virginity, brought him forth, made visible for us, by whom, when he was invisible, she too was created. A Virgin conceiving, a Virgin bearing, a Virgin pregnant, a Virgin bringing forth, a Virgin perpetual. Why do you wonder at this, O man?" (Sermons 186:1 [A.D. 411]). "Heretics called Antidicomarites are those who contradict the perpetual virginity of Mary and affirm that after Christ was born she was joined as one with her husband" (Heresies 56 [A.D. 428]). Leporius "We confess, therefore, that our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, born of the Father before the ages, and in times most recent, made man of the Holy Spirit and the ever-virgin Mary" (Document of Amendment 3 [A.D. 426]). Cyril of Alexandria "[T]he Word himself, coming into the Blessed Virgin herself, assumed for himself his own temple from the substance of the Virgin and came forth from her a man in all that could be externally discerned, while interiorly he was true God. Therefore he kept his Mother a virgin even after her childbearing" (Against Those Who Do Not Wish to Confess That the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God 4 [A.D. 430]). Pope Leo I "His [Christ’s] origin is different, but his [human] nature is the same. Human usage and custom were lacking, but by divine power a Virgin conceived, a Virgin bore, and Virgin she remained" (Sermons 22:2 [A.D. 450]). NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors. Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004 IMPRIMATUR: In accord with 1983 CIC 827 permission to publish this work is hereby granted. +Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004 Interested in reading more about Mary and the Saints? Check out these wonderful titles from the Mary and the Saints section of our online Catalogue (links open in a new window): Mary
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