Re: christian schools and doctrinal issues (was: Death penalty)

On Nov 9, 2010, at 3:52 PM, Peter T. Chattaway wrote:

> So for us, at least, the idea is not that Mary needed to be sinless in order for Jesus to be sinless, but that Mary needed to be purified, at the very least, and in an extremely cleansing way, before she bore God himself within her womb.  The Bible has stories about people who died because they touched the Ark of the Covenant and similar holy objects, even though they were touching it in a *helpful* way; how much more deadly could such close intimate contact with the very embodiment of Holiness itself have been.
> 
> It is for reasons like this, BTW, that we believe Mary remained a virgin. Once she had been "one flesh" with God himself, in a mother-child sort of way, how could she become "one flesh" with anyone else, in a wife-husband sort of way?  What Jew of that era would have dared to go there?

Thus Mary is believed to be prefigured in the Old Testament as the Burning Bush which was not consumed, and her perpetual virginity is prefigured in Ezekiel 44:1-3 - "1 Then He brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary which faces toward the east, but it was shut. 2 And the Lord said to me, "This gate shall be shut; it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter by it, because the Lord God of Israel has entered by it; therefore it shall be shut. 3 As for the prince, because he is the prince, he may sit in it to eat bread before the Lord; he shall enter by way of the vestibule of the gateway, and go out the same way."

-Fr. Ron


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