Assumption Of The Blessed Virgin Mary: Fill & Download for Free

The Bible is not a rule book or a constitution. You’re ‘using’ it wrong.Where does it say to get together every Sunday morning to sing songs and hear a sermon and read from a book that hadn’t been written yet?In fact, if God were going to send a Book from heaven that contained everything we needed to know, don’t you think he would have mentioned it at some point…even in passing??! But he never does. Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus say, “Oh, and by the way, the Holy Spirit is going to inspire a few of you to write 27 kick-butt books that you’re going to compile and add to scripture and they will tell you everything you need to know about being my follower.”Don’t you think that if God wanted us to be “Bible Christians”, basing our faith on “sola scriptura” (scripture alone), then don’t you think he would have TOLD us so. But he didn’t. Or…at very least…don’t you think the Apostles would have said so. But they never hinted at it. Or maybe the Fathers of the Church, the heirs to the Apostles and the first Christian leaders to have the full New Testament in their hands (in fact, they are the ones who decided which books were definitively in the NT around the year 400), surely at some point in compiling and determining the NT, surely they would have clearly elucidated the foundational truth of sola scriptura. Nope, not a whiff. Gosh, how weird that the Protestant obsession with scripture never appeared anywhere in the first 1,500 years of Christianity, not with the Apostles, not with the Church Fathers, and never in Scripture itself. It’s almost as if…gasp…Protestants made it up out of thin air for purely political reasons…to justify their rejection of the authority of the Church.Nope, He never said anything remotely like that. Never even mentioned it. He did promise to send the Holy Spirit to his disciples. That’s recorded in scripture. He gave Peter the keys and made him the Rock upon which he built his Church. That’s recorded. But Protestants reject the Petrine Ministry with the silliest of sophistries (“The ‘rock’ was Peter’s faith, not Peter himself!”). Peter and the Eleven went on to ordain others by the laying on of hands, but Protestants reject the apostolic priesthood. They instituted the sacraments, but Protestants reject those (except for baptism and marriage…and kinda sorta Eucharist but not really). They wrote their testimonies down into a book…and nowhere said it was authoritative or exhaustive. But Protestants 1,500 years later decided it was. And you all claim that Catholics are idolaters!As for Mary, she is praised by Gabriel (“highly favored daughter”). She is the Tower of David, Queen of the Angels. She conceived God in her virgin womb. She is the Blessed Virgin Mary, ever virgin, virgin of virgins, most chaste, most pure, inviolate, undefiled. She is the person through whom God became flesh for our salvation, Cause of our Salvation. She is the Mother of God, the Theotokos. Her fiat is the first confession of faith in Christ. She is the first Disciple and first Christian. She identified her own calling, that all generations would call her blessed. She is Hail Mary, full of grace. Simeon declared that she would share in her Son’s Passion, a sword piercing her heart. She is Our Lady of Sorrows. She carried God in her womb and fed him at her breasts. She is the Ark of the New Covenant. She commanded Jesus to perform his first miracle and begin his public ministry. And he obeyed her out of filial love and respect. She is no ‘mere woman.’ She was present throughout his ministry, She shared his Last Supper. She is the Mother of the Eucharist. She witnessed his Passion, sharing his pain and suffering and loss in a way no other person can. She was among the tiny few who remained faithful at the foot of the cross. He entrusted her to his beloved disciple, and by extension to the whole Church. She is Mother of the Church. His blood fell upon her. When Joseph of Arimathea took his body down, she cradled God in her motherly hands and grieved his loss, that of a mother’s only son. She went to the tomb. She believed. She was present at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and founded the Church. She is the Queen of the Apostles. She is nothing of herself. She is a lowly handmaid. But God has exalted her over all humanity for her faithfulness and love, showering her with unique graces, a Son’s love and devotion for his mother, preserving her alone of all humanity from the corruption of sin and death. She is the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. She is a treasury of blessings, every single one of them received through the gratuitous love of the Trinity. As Wordsworth praised, she is “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” She is the fullness of redeemed humanity. She is what we pray to be in heaven - holy, humble, blessed, pure, full of grace, filled with the love of God. She is the Mother of Our Lord, the Queen Mother, and she intercedes for all her children.Do you resent the veneration given to her?Are you jealous of her holiness and the devotion given to her?Do you wish to take her down a peg or disparage her?Then you dare to affront the Mother of God, upon whom He showered singular graces. Woe to any who would desecrate what God has made holy by the outpouring of his love.Do you want to provoke God’s wrath? Then insult his Mother.The Virginby William WordsworthMother! whose virgin bosom was uncrostWith the least shade of thought to sin allied.Woman! above all women glorified,Our tainted nature's solitary boast;Purer than foam on central ocean tost;Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewnWith fancied roses, than the unblemished moonBefore her wane begins on heaven's blue coast;Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,As to a visible Power, in which did blendAll that was mixed and reconciled in theeOf mother's love with maiden purity,Of high with low, celestial with terrene!This litany to the Blessed Virgin Mary was composed during the Middle Ages. The place of honor it now holds in the life of the Church is due to its faithful use at the shrine of the Holy House at Loreto. It was definitely approved by Sixtus V in 1587, and all other Marian litanies were suppressed, at least for public use. Its titles and invocations set before us Mary's exalted privileges, her holiness of life, her amiability and power, her motherly spirit and queenly majesty.The principle that has been followed in their interpretation is the one enunciated by the same Pius IX: "God enriched her so wonderfully from the treasury of His divinity, far beyond all angels and saints with the abundance of all heavenly gifts, that she . . .should show forth such fullness of innocence and holiness, than which a greater under God is unthinkable and which, beside God, no one can even conceive in thought."Hence, whatever virtue and holiness is found in angels and saints must be present in Mary in an immeasurably higher degree.Lord, have mercy on us.Christ, have mercy on us.Lord, have mercy on us.Christ, hear us…Christ graciously hear us.God the Father of Heaven, Have mercy on us.God the Son, Redeemer of the world, Have mercy on us.God the Holy Spirit, Have mercy on us.Holy Trinity, One God, Have mercy on us.Holy Mary, ……………………pray for us.Holy Mother of God,Holy Virgin of virgins, .Mother of Christ, .Mother of divine grace,Mother most pure,Mother most chaste,Mother inviolate,Mother undefiled,Mother most amiable,Mother most admirable,Mother of good counsel,Mother of our Creator,Mother of our Savior,Mother of the Church,Virgin most prudent,Virgin most venerable,Virgin most renowned,Virgin most powerful,Virgin most merciful,Virgin most faithful,Mirror of justice,Seat of wisdom,Cause of our joy,Spiritual vessel,Vessel of honor,Singular vessel of devotion,Mystical rose,Tower of David,Tower of ivory,House of gold,Ark of the covenant,Gate of Heaven,Morning star,Health of the sick,Refuge of sinners,Comforter of the afflicted,Help of Christians,Queen of angels,Queen of patriarchs,Queen of prophets,Queen of apostles,Queen of martyrs,Queen of confessors,Queen of virgins,Queen of all saints,Queen conceived without Original Sin,Queen assumed into Heaven,Queen of the holy Rosary,Queen of families,Queen of peace,Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, That we may be made worthyof the promises of Christ.Spare us, O Lord. Graciously spare us, O Lord.General:Let us pray- Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord God, that we Thy servants may enjoy perpetual health of mind and body, and by the glorious intercession of the Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, be delivered from present sorrow and enjoy everlasting happiness. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen

+JMJ+That is not what the Bible was written for! We get the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin FROM the same place we got the Bible - the Catholic Church. Christ founded His Church, and guaranteed it until the end of the world. THAT is how the Church could issue a Bible four centuries later.And it never wrote the Bible as an encyclopedia of Christianity, to believe that is to to be a Protestant, denying Christianity.

The challenges between the Catholic Church and our Protestant Christian brethren may take more than a shorter answer. So I’ll do my best to concise a longer one.(The source of our faith, illustrated by Christ at the Last Supper and represented at every Mass: the Eucharist. Wikipedia photo)To those of you non-Catholic Christians who read this answer, please do not take any of my answer in bad will. Protestant Christians love Jesus as much as Catholic Christians do (and, in some practices, appear to love him more). This is answer is meant for knowledge and understanding, not ridicule.Many issues about Catholicism involve bad traditions of Protestant teaching about the Catholic Church. The first televangelist, the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, said, “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”Many Protestant traditions learn inaccurate things about the Catholic Church (false assumptions that we worship the Blessed Virgin Mary or saints, for example) and pass them down to generations. Such problems are easily handled with one freely-available text: The Catechism of the Catholic Church. This text from the Vatican, the home of the Church, tells exactly what and why Catholics believe. One doesn’t have to agree with why Catholics do as they do, but at least this text can make it clear. Many Protestants may be pleasantly surprised by what they’d find there.Some former Catholics who were not taught as well or had poor experiences in going to their parishes (local churches) who move on to a Protestant community often take their misunderstandings with them, making a tough situation tougher.Catholics see their Protestant brethren as Christians, but often times the reverse is not true for some of these denominations. Unfortunately, this leads into thoughts that Catholics (incorrectly) believe or declare that non-Catholics “are going to hell,” which may precipitate non-Catholics to respond negatively in turn.This is, again, a matter of education. Sometimes people get weirded out on the name alone. The word catholic is based on the Greek word for “universal.” For over one thousand years, this was the case. Our Orthodox brethren split in 1054 but still share much in the fullness of faith (more on that in a second).One very, very critical thing that some Protestants forget is that their genuine love of our Lord does NOT supplant the history of His time on earth, the actual men he chose and trained, and the history of the Church and her people after His Ascension. We Christians are VERY fortunate in that we have historical evidence, from writings, eyewitnesses and many other events that show Jesus was a genuine being and that the Apostles and their successors, the bishops, were real, the teachings were passed down reliably and that, by the 4th Century, these teachings were codified by the bishops into what we know as the Bible. The Bible did not drop from the sky or was penned by Christ (He came to teach, not write). And it took decades for the many books of what would be the New Testament to be written down. It’s critical that all Christians demonstrate history as a reference in the support and teaching of Christianity. Else, our faith is reduced to storytelling and myths as those of religions of old that were clearly made up (Egyptian mythology, Greek Olympian pantheon, and so on).While the Catholic Church believes, in the authority of Christ given to them, they are the central conduit to salvation, other Protestant communities share in this conduit, to the extent that their teachings aid in coming to Christ. God, however, is NOT bound to the rules he set to the Christians, however, so salvation is possible for everyone as He sees fit on a personal case-by-case basis: Atheists, non-Christian faiths—everyone has a chance with God, with a right mind and contrite heart.To Catholics, we believe our Protestant brethren are only lacking in the fullness of the Christian faith as it originated and continues to this day.To say “fullness of the faith” means that, while God is not going to fault any Protestant Christians for their lack of knowledge of Catholic teaching, it is the fullness of Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and a consistent teaching authority that may enrich their Christian lives that much more.Sacred Scripture is, of course, the Bible. What some Protestants might not understand is that many of their translations are incomplete, usually missing seven books that existed as the biblical canon for 11 centuries. Or, those seven books, often called the “Apocrypha” by Protestants and deuterocanonical by Catholics, are placed in an appendix at the back of the book. The Bible is a great book. Wouldn’t you want MORE of it?Sacred Tradition is how the Bible came to be. As said, Christ didn’t write down anything: His Apostles and disciples remembered it. (Remember, books didn’t quite exist in ancient times, and far fewer people knew how to read. A good memory was standard issue for people back then.) In time, scribes wrote down the stories for greater recollection and accuracy. But Sacred Tradition also holds to the actions of the church service we know as the Mass. This action, done as Christ commanded since the Last Supper, isn’t spelled out in Sacred Scripture. But how a Mass was done is found in ancient texts such as the Didache (1st Century) and described by St. Justin Martyr to Roman officials (153–155 AD). Where in the Bible does it say that everything about the Christian faith is found in only the Bible? The Christian Church existed for centuries before a Bible existed.Many issues of faith and practice that some Protestant Christians debate and disagree over (which is why there are thousands of divergent Christian communities) is one thing that the Catholic Church does not do. The Apostles illustrated the first teaching authority in the Book of Acts as they confronted the issue of whether new gentile (non-Jew) Christians must submit to the Mosaic Law. The Council of Jerusalem, written in Acts, resolves this. This same teaching authority, passed down from the Apostles to their successors, the bishops, is maintained as the Magisterium. It’s just a big word for teaching authority. The Magisterium avoids debate among Catholics of common questions found in some Protestant circles, such as what Christ is and how salvation is sought, leaving us Catholics with a baseline of teachings where we try to apply what is taught in our lives (not an easy thing for any Christian).The largest item that is missing in most Protestant Christian communities (the younger the tradition, the more likely) is a reflection of Christ’s Sacrifice (most communities emphasize the Resurrection more than the Crucifixion) described by Christ in John Chapter 6 and taught to the Apostles to present later during the Last Supper. In John 6, when Christ tells a large gathering of followers how to gain eternal life, He tells them that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood, literally (John 6:22–71). This completely weirds out everyone listening and many leave, except the Apostles, who were used to Christ teaching stuff they couldn’t yet understand. Before His Passion of the Crucifixion, Christ shows them what He means. He presents bread and wine which He blesses and says, “Take and eat: This is my body.” “Take and drink; this is my Blood.” Christ offers himself as a replacement for the animal sacrifices of the Jewish practice (Christ said he was not replacing the old Covenant, but perfecting it, in Matthew 5:17) with Himself, the Lamb of God, a perfect sacrifice offered supernaturally in all times and places during the Eucharist, complete with a new priesthood. It should be noted that, as part of an animal sacrifice in the Jewish temple, a portion of the sacrifice is eaten.We don’t “put Christ on the Cross” at each Mass when the Eucharist, the Offering is done. We Catholics participate in the non-violent offering the Lord gives of Himself to us as if we were there at Calvary and the Last Supper. Christ’s Passion is everywhere—in the Eucharist and the Cross, offered for us at all times in the Mass.So, at the least. Catholics welcome our Protestant brethren to absorb and study the history of our shared Christian faith—not just with Scripture, but the histories and writings of many Christians that taught, learned, lived and died.It’s not easy to overcome some prejudices on both sides. I hope this answer at least explains a side and invites some personal reflection. God bless.