Our Lady In Doctrine and Devotion
By: William G. Most
(c) Copyright by William G. Most, 1994
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CHAPTERS
- Preliminaries
- Eternal Plans
- Prophetic Plan
- Sinai Covenant
- Immaculate Conception
- Realisation of the Eternal Plan
- Perpetual virginity
- Divine Motherhood
- The Temple Presentation
- The Finding in the Temple
- Difficulties for Mary's faith
- Start of His Public Life
- Cooperation in Redemption
- Mediatrix of All Graces
- At the First Pentecost
- Mother of the Church
- Assumption
- Queenship
- Consortium
- Mary and Vatican II
- Revelation 12
- Some Marian Devotions
- To Imitate Her Virtues
- Marian Consecration
- Infused Contemplation
- Our Lady in Heaven
- Private Revelations
- Appendix:
Discernment of Spirits
- Supplement:
Appearances and revelation
- Study Questions
- Answers To Study Questions
Books/Resources
by Fr. Most
- EWTN Scripture Q & A
- Basic Scripture
- Bible Commentaries
- Our Lady in Doctrine And Devotion
- Outline of Christology
- An Introduction to Christian Philosophy
- The Living God
- The Holy Spirit and The Church
- Catholic Apologetics Notes
Apologetic Resources
- Ask Father
- Biblical Catholicism
- Theology/Philosophy
- Scripture Resources
- Scott Hahns Lectures
- Apologetics Links
Other Services
- Catholic Chaplaincy
- St. Anthony Communications
CHAPTER III.
Sinai Covenant:
Since the redemption, in which she will share, was, under one aspect, in
the form of a covenant, we need to go back to the great covenant of
Sinai. There God spoke to the people through Moses (Ex. 19. 5):
"If you
really hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you will be my special
possession, dearer to me than all other peoples."
We notice two major features here:
The OT reports sadly how often
they failed, going after idols. God warned them, and at last He would send
in a foreign power to oppress them to bring them to their senses. When they
would repent, He would rescue them. But finally came the great crash, when
Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon came down in two waves, 597 and 587 (some
prefer 596 and 586). He ruined the Temple and city, and took most of the
people into captivity to break their national spirit. It worked, for when
Cyrus of Persia, after conquering Babylonia, in 539 allowed the Jews to
return, only two tribes, Judah and Benjamin did return. The rest were
absorbed into Babylonia and never came back.
(Mormons claim the lost tribes came across the Bering Strait and became
American Indians. But the Smithsonian Institution reported:
"The American Indians are physically Mongoloids, and thus must have
originated in eastern Asia." Cf. J. B. Billard, editor, The World of the
American Indian, Washington, National Geographic Society, 1974, 1979, esp.
the chapter "Across an Arctic Bridge" by J. D. Jennings).
It was during this period that God spoke again through Jeremiah 31. 31ff:
"I will make a new covenant. It will not be like the covenant I made with
your fathers, for they broke my covenant, and I had to show myself their
master. But this is the covenant: I will write my law on their hearts; I
will be their God and they will be my people."
We notice there will be a difference, for the old was broken, the new will
not be broken. The old was on stone tablets; the new is written on hearts.
But the two essentials we saw at Sinai are still there: a People of God, to
get favor on condition of obedience. As we shall see later, the essential
obedience would be that of Jesus (cf. Rom 5. 19 and LG 3). Did Jeremiah see
that would be the case? We do not know. But the chief author of Scripture,
the Holy Spirit, can intend more than the human author sees. Still less
likely is it that Jeremiah saw that the obedience of our Lady would play a
role here: cf. LG 56 & 61.
Before moving ahead, we should notice that if we ask why God gave good
things under the covenant, the reply would come on two levels: 1)On the
most basic level, no creature could by its own power generate a claim on
God. Hence His giving is pure unmerited, unmeritable generosity. 2)On the
secondary level, i.e. , given that fact that He had freely entered into and
bound Himself by covenant, we could speak of Him as repaying the people. In
this sense St. Paul in Rom 2. 6 could say that God will repay each one
according to his works - in spite of his insistence that justification is
gratuitous. This same distinction, as we shall see later, will apply in the
new covenant.