Feast of the Assumption should remain a holy day, not a holiday
Posted on Thursday, August 18, 2011 at 09:18 AM
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| MLA John Dallat |
By no means would I ridicule Dallat for his devotion or question his religious views. I went to Mass on the 15th myself.
It's just, well, I don't know, but when I read his comments this morning I was taken aback. I felt like I'd been transported back in time.
Only yesterday we had the news that the diocese of Dublin may be on the brink of a complete financial collapse thanks to the fact that attendance at Mass and the collections have declined significantly. The seemingly endless reports into the Church scandals haven't helped, but I'm not so sure the Irish people have much of a "special relationship" with Jesus' mother these days.
That such a special relationship did exist seems pretty obvious to me. All over the country, in urban and rural areas, you can see Marian shrines. These shrines were erected during the Marian Year of 1954 (I believe). Many are in the middle of public housing estates, presumably built on government owned land. There's no way that would happen today.
"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there," according to L.P. Barthartley. That certainly seems true in Ireland where the obvious signs of an extremely devout people stand in stark contrast to the agnosticism, cynicism even, of so many Irish people, particularly those under 50.
This is why I was startled by Dallat's proposal. It's as if he was talking about a "foreign country" where "they do things differently" because there's simply no chance that Ireland is going to adopt August 15 as a national holiday.
I expect Dallat will get virtually no support, other than from a few Catholic die-hards and those cynical enough to exploit the beliefs of the faithful in order to get themselves another day off in the summer. I do, however, admire his courage because he is bound to attract a lot of personal and very negative attention, almost all of it from people who were baptized Catholic.
I'm not inclined to support Dallat myself. I can't help wondering why we should make August 15 a holiday now, when it wasn't a holiday in the 30s, 40s and 50s when it would have been more appropriate. If it was good enough then for people to have to work on the feast day, it's good enough today.
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Kilsally | Aug 22, 2011, 07:19 AM EDT
My problem with all of that is that Mary was just a humble blessed woman. If you are not worshipping her then why are you praying to her? The bible tells us there is only one mediator between man and God( 1 Timothy v 5); For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
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jacersagain | Aug 21, 2011, 12:04 AM EDT
On the matter of the debate below between jamieLM and Kilsally, may I, as a Catholic, strongly say to Kilsally (that’s a worrying nom-de-plume! God help and save Sally) that no Christian venerates the Mother of Christ or holds her as another “God”. She is, for us (and you and loadsa Muslims), the ultimate Intercessor between mere human beings who pray and praise God Almighty, the Father of Her Son, the Messiah that Jews missed, Jesus Christ and God. I don’t know how Mary must have felt when she was told by an Angel of God that she was going to be impregnated by the Holy Spirit of God (probably scared to bits) but, by God Almighty, didn’t she carry Him well in her womb, didn’t she and her earthly husband Joseph and their relatives enjoy His childhood and... didn’t she, with utmost dignity suffer the moments of His pain-filled agony and death for yours and my sake and didn’t she blissfully recognise and enjoy His Resurrection to life? She’s the one who recognises your prayers before God, she’s the ultimate Intercessor.
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jacersagain | Aug 20, 2011, 11:17 PM EDT
(more...) When St. Thomas arrived at John’s House - the local Christians say it was the day after she died - he was so heart-broken to have just missed seeing Mary before she died that he had a row w/ the protective John, who didn't want anyone, even a fellow-Apostle, to know where he had placed her body, demanding to be taken to where John placed her. John relented and led Thomas to it, only for both of them to find the body was gone from the cleft in which John had placed Mary’s body (I saw many clefts in the rocky low-height cliffs at the back of the house, stood before them and wondered ‘Which one?’) No one but John knew of the whereabouts of the cleft he chose. You can imagine how stunned those two fellas were – but the story goes that they both instantly recognised the power and protection of God for the body of the Virgin Mother of His Son and decided between themselves that God had taken her body “into heaven”, just as they had, 15 yrs before, witnessed Christ’s Ascension to Heaven. They had no choice but to tell the local, newly-baptised Christians, and some of the other Apostles looking to pay respects to the dead Mary, of their extraordinary discovery. Thus was born the local traditional and now infallibly-declared Christian belief that Mary’s body and soul was assumed into Heaven by the Almighty God, on a date that is now known as August 15th - the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady. Let’s make a public holiday of it all over the world - maybe we should all celebrate it by going to the House in Selcuk and celebrate it with the local Christians. Ireland’s Co. Louth’s Blackrock celebrants and MLA John Dallat and friends might jump at the prospect...
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jacersagain | Aug 20, 2011, 10:45 PM EDT
(more...) Mary had been ill for quite some time before she died in John’s lone presence and word was out that she was dying. Many local people baptised by her or John came to see her while she was sick. The Selcuk story I heard has it that Apostle Thomas (the Doubter), who was somewhere in the area yet a bit afar at the time, was one of those who got word that she was dying and, in the story of the locals, was distraught by the news and hurried to see her (there were no Ferraris around in those days). However, Mary died before Thomas got to Selcuk. On Mary's death in his arms, John was acutely aware of what might happen if people knew where she was buried – grave-pillaging and souvenir hunters etc – so he quickly and secretly placed her shroud-enwrapped body in a cleft in a rocky cliff (or berm) near the House, and covered it up. (more...)
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jacersagain | Aug 20, 2011, 10:23 PM EDT
(...more) So the two of them set off and ended up, after an arduous journey on the backs of donkeys and with a small cart or two, in Selcuk in present-day Turkey where John built a house for the two of them there (it is on the side of a mountain; before the forests there now grew and took over, it must have had exquisite panoramic views from it). They lived there, not far from the town of Ephesus, quietly preaching Christ’s message and baptising people (there is a channel to be seen at the front door of the House of Mary & John through which a mountain stream flowed and they used that to baptise local people, as well as boil it for a cuppa tea etc). Today, the stream has been slightly diverted by the local Turkish authorities and the water is now piped to taps for all to bottle and take away with them (strangely for me, I didn’t bottle any of it to take away on my visit but I did wash my face, head and hands with it). It is said that Mary lived there for another 15 yrs, so she would have been about 64yrs old when she died. Now for the itsy-bitsy bit of the Selcuk Christians’ traditional story... (more)
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jacersagain | Aug 20, 2011, 10:08 PM EDT
(...more) The Christians living in Selcuk have a longstanding traditional story within their community about the death of Virgin Mary; one that seems to beat, hands down for veracity, the story of those who claim Mary died in Jerusalem. Their legend has it that Mary was about 16 yrs old when she, a virgin young woman, conceived Jesus through the Power of God. It is said that Jesus died on His Cross at 33yrs old, so Mary would have been about 49 yrs old at that time. After the Pentecost, and given the huge commotion and clamour for her attention that many Disciples of Christ in Jerusalem put about His Mother Mary, the Apostles decided between themselves - on foot of Christ’s words “'Dear woman, here is your son,' and to the disciple (John), 'Here is your mother.' From that time on, this disciple took her into his home." (John 19:25-27). Note the words “From that time on”: they mean “forever afterwards”, including up to when Mary died - that John should take her far away from Jerusalem to escape the clamour. (more...)
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jacersagain | Aug 20, 2011, 10:03 PM EDT
(...more) I’ve been to the House of Mary & John in Selcuk and attended Mass there at 7.15am (the Mass is held every day at this time, finishing just before the buses arrive carrying tourists from off the East Mediterranean Cruise Ships that call into the nearby port of Kusadasi, descending on the place about 8am. On the day I was there for Mass, there were 8 people in attendance). The house is tiny, comprising just two rooms - the living room and one bedroom. The living room is now used as a chapel for Mass and Marian commemoration ceremonies; the bedroom is where Mary slept, while John slept in the living room. There are two entrances to the house today – one into the chapel, the other into the bedroom. Christians enter into the chapel and pass out through the bedroom door, and Muslims enter by a door into the bedroom (the house is also a place of pilgrimage for millions of Muslims who regard Mary as a pure Virgin Mother – a fact not widely known. Just as people place prayerful requests on slips of paper and deposit them in Jerusalem’s Holy Wall, both Christians and Muslims do the same in a wall just outside the little house). You can google or bing for Wikipedia’s version of the story of the House of Virgin Mary, or search for ‘Travel in Anatolia’ a Turkish tourist guide website which includes its own version. Now you must be wondering why this jacers has gone to some lengths here so far on this topic of The Yank’s... Well there’s (more...)
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jacersagain | Aug 20, 2011, 09:55 PM EDT
The Catholic Church, and the Eastern Christian Churches which also celebrate the Feast Day on Aug 15th, declare that they do not know with certainty on what date the Assumption of Our Lady’s body and soul into Heaven took place. What they both do acknowledge is what has been traditionally known - by handed-down word of mouth - that it occurred on a date equivalent to the present Gregorian calendar date of August 15th. The whereabouts of Mary’s last resting place has long been discussed and disputed. Some say it was in Jerusalem, Israel, others that it was in Selcuk (pron Sell-chuck), near Ephesus and Kusadasi, in Turkey. However, the idea that it was in Jerusalem only circulated in the 6th century AD whereas the 1st century AD Christians of Ephesus always maintained that she died there and was laid to rest by St. John in a cleft of a cliff near the house that she and John lived in. (More...)
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jacersagain | Aug 20, 2011, 09:50 PM EDT
The Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady is a public holiday in many countries throughout Europe, Sth America and the Middle East - so why not in Ireland? Although I have never attended any local ceremonies in Ireland marking the event, I do know that many traditionally take the day off work to attend such ceremonies and that there is much cameradie between the people afterwards. There is a big one held near Blackrock, outside Dundalk town south of the Border with Nth Ireland which is attended by many from ‘over the border’, possibly including John Darrat and his friends and at many other Marian Shrines around Ireland.
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jacersagain | Aug 20, 2011, 09:49 PM EDT
The Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady is a public holiday in many countries throughout Europe, Sth America and the Middle East - so why not in Ireland? Although I have never attended any local ceremonies in Ireland marking the event, I do know that many traditionally take the day off work to attend such ceremonies and that there is much cameradie between the people afterwards. There is a big one held near Blackrock, outside Dundalk town south of the Border with Nth Ireland which is attended by many from ‘over the border’, possibly including MLA John Darrat and at many other Marian Shrines around Ireland.
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jamieLM | Aug 19, 2011, 01:25 PM EDT
@kilsally, I understand your point. Many non-Catholic Christians are uncomfortable with what they see as the worship of Mary because they see it as taking precedence over God and Jesus and violating the 4th and 5th Commandments. This is a theological debate left to others. As a Christian, you have to believe that God chose Mary, this humble young girl, to be the mother of Jesus and she accepted this monumental responsibility with grace. Many people identify with Mary in all her joys and sorrows as a loving mother. Mary suffered with the crucifixion of her beloved son and knew the joy of his Resurrection. Throughout her life, Mary always remained the faithful servant of God. Depictions of her are not only a source of comfort, but an inspiration for all Christians to lead a faithful life. Mary is also the ideal role model of motherhood. Whether you pray to her or not, none of my business, she deserves to be honored for her attributes of faith, courage, and love and for the woman chosen by God to be Jesus's mother. I leave it up to each Christian as to how they choose to honor Mary - and she does deserve honor and admiration, Catholic or not. btw: I think God was horrified to see Catholics and Protestants brutally killing each other in their beliefs that each was on the "right side" of God. The slaughter in the name of Christianity by both sides was the total antithesis of Jesus's commandment to "love one another" and made a total mockery of his message and everything he represented. Shameful and disgusting. Nothing much has changed with today's warfare between Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Agree or not, I TRY to respect other people's viewpoints. kilsally, how you practice your Christian faith is between you and God, in my opinion.
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Kilsally | Aug 19, 2011, 11:29 AM EDT
that would be the Ten Commandments I quoted George , no more, no less so not quite sure where you are getting `bible bum` from. ;you shall have no other gods before me. 4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God,
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Kilsally | Aug 19, 2011, 10:56 AM EDT
oh dear George - you forget the Irish Catholics went to the English King`s defence and fought against Cromwell first (on condition Protestant Churches were banned in Ireland of course). The Loyalist paramilataries are hardly Christian fundamentalists now George, their atrocities were terrible accounting for 1200 deaths. The IRA were responsible for over 2000 similar deaths George many just as atrocious. Darkley gospel hall, Teebane massacre, La Mon Hotel, the disappeared like Jean McConville - so not quite sure what your point is since the peace process let out all those terrorists on both sides who had committed mass murder.
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GeorgeDillon | Aug 19, 2011, 04:15 AM EDT
Yank: There's a strong old-time Catholic tradition still alive in West Ulster. You'll see the AOH parades and bands all over Derry, Donegal, Fermanagh and Tyrone. This is the tradition that Dallat is working out of.
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