Avoiding Babylon was started during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. During these difficult and dark days, when most of us were isolated from family, friends, our parishes, and even the Sacraments themselves, this channel was started as a statement of standing against the tyrannical mandates that many of us were living under. Since those early days, this channel has morphed into an amazing community of friends…no…more than friends…Christian brothers and sisters…who have grown in joy and charity.
As we see it, our job here at Avoiding Babylon is to remind ourselves and those who enjoy the channel that being Catholic is a joyful and exciting experience. We seek true Catholic fraternity and eutrapelia with other Catholics who, like us, are doing their best to live out their vocation with the help of God’s Grace. Above all, we try to bring humor and joy to the craziness of this fallen world, for as Hillaire Belloc has famously said:
Can an immaculate heart truly change the course of history? Join us as we unravel the mystical themes surrounding the virginity of Mary and her Immaculate Conception in an inspiring meditation that promises to deepen your understanding of faith and purity. As we journey through the eighth day of Advent meditations, we draw wisdom from the revered Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, exploring how Mary's unwavering commitment to chastity and divine obedience serves as a beacon of spiritual guidance. These serene reflections, available across multiple platforms, are designed to offer a tranquil auditory experience, inviting listeners to engage with the profound relationship between faith, love, and divine commandments.
Our discussion takes you through the intricate connection between Mary's vow of virginity and the mystery of the Virgin Birth, emphasizing its profound significance in Christian doctrine. By interpreting the Gospel of Luke, we reflect on the divine intervention that preserved Mary's purity while enabling the birth of Jesus, underscoring the vital role of the Immaculate Conception. We also tackle common misconceptions about these beliefs, aiming to illuminate the necessity of purity in understanding Christian truths. As we look forward to the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, this meditation invites you to ponder the spiritual depths of these chaste mysteries and prepare for tomorrow's exploration of the handmaiden of the Lord and the three virtues of the Annunciation.
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Sancte, sancte, amare morti necranas nos. In taste, fair love and love. Feasts of the Immaculate Conception. So big day. Today.
Speaker 1:
We are on day eight of our meditations, day eight of Advent, and today we'll be going through a meditation on the virginity of the Mother of God. So we will start with our prayer and then move into the meditation. If anyone hasn't seen the first seven of these, these are meditations for advent. That's the name of the book. Um, they are from bishop jacques benigni bossuet and you can find the book sofia institute press, amazon, all that good stuff. And, uh, we go through the prayer, then the meditation. While we do that, I throw up an image on screen. There's nothing to watch, you just listen, and these go out on YouTube, twitter, slash X audio podcast and Spiritus TV, so you can find them at all those different places. They also go out on our Locals channel as well. So if you're a Locals member, you can watch there, and if you're not a locals member, please consider joining, especially if you like these meditations.
Speaker 1:
These meditations certainly do not, I guess, pay for themselves as far as views in terms of revenue on. Well, I don't even monetize them, to be honest, on YouTube. But if you'd like to contribute. Join our locals. It's just avoidingbabylonlocalscom. You can join for $5 a month. Babylonlocalscom, you can join for $5 a month, and it's probably the best way to support us, because these meditations may only take 20 minutes to record, give and a half behind the scenes to actually get them uploaded and set up and ready to go and all that good stuff. So they really take about as long as one of our standard episodes, apart from the time difference and recording. So anyways, let's get to it. We will start with their prayer and to go from there so let me put up this image on screen and we'll get going. And to go from there. So let me put up this image on screen and we'll get going, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
Speaker 1:
Amen, jesus, my Savior, true God and true man and the true Christ promised to the patriarchs and the prophets from the beginning of the world and, in time, faithfully bestowed to the holy people you had chosen. You have said by your holy and divine mouth Believing in these words and with the help of thy grace, I wish to be attentive to the task of knowing God and knowing you. So do I draw as near to you as I can, with a lively faith, to know God in you and by you, and to know him in a manner worthy of God, that is, in a manner that leads me to love and obey him, in accord with the words of your beloved disciple. He who says I know him but disobeys his commandments is a liar, as well as your very own. He who has my commandments and keep them, he it is who loves me. To know you well, o my God and dear Savior, I wish always, with the help of thy grace, to contemplate you in all that befalls you and in all of your mysteries, and, at the same time, to know your Father, who gave you to us, and the Holy Ghost that you both have sent to us. So do I wish to love you with true faith, a faith working through love. Amen. Meditation number 12.
Speaker 1:
The Virginity of the Mother of God, god who had predestined the Holy Virgin Mary to be associated with the most pure work of our regeneration, inspired in her so great a love of virginity that she not only vowed it but, even after the angel had declared to her what son she was to conceive, stood ready to refuse the honor of being his mother at the price of her virginity. She thus responded to the angel how can this be? Because I know not man. That is to say, I have resolved for all time not to know one. This resolution is a mark of Mary's exquisite taste for chastity, which made her proof against not only all the promises of man, but also those of God. What could he promise greater than his son? Yet she is ready to refuse him if it will be necessary to lose her virginity in order to receive him. But God, whose heart is won by this love, has the angel say to her the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
Speaker 1:
Luke 1.35. God himself will take the place of a spouse. He will unite himself to your body. For this you must be purer than the rays of the sun. The most pure can be united only to purity. He conceives his son alone in his paternal bosom, not sharing his conception with another, and he does not desire, when the son is to be born in time, to share it except with the virgin, nor to suffer that he should have two fathers. Virginity what is your price? You alone can make a mother of God. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. Luke 1.35-56.
Speaker 1:
Who shall declare his generation? It is inexplicable and defies telling. Let us listen, nevertheless, to what the angel says. By the order of God, the power of the Most high shall overshadow you. The most high, the heavenly father, will extend to you his eternal generation. He will produce his son in your womb and there will make of your blood a body as pure as the holy spirit alone can do. At the same time, this divine spirit will breathe into a soul which, having only himself for author, which, without the cooperation of any other cause, can be nothing other than holy. This soul and this body, by extension of the generative power of God, will be united to the person of the Son of God. And henceforth, what will be called the Son of God Will be this whole composed of the Son of God. And henceforth, what will be called the Son of God will be this whole composed of the Son of God and man. Therefore, the child to be born will be properly and truly called the Son of God. It will also be a holy thing, by its nature, holy, not with a derived and accidental holiness, but substantively the holy, something fitting only to God, who is holy according to his nature. The Word and the Son of God will be personally united to the body formed of your blood, into its soul, according to the eternal laws opposed upon all of nature by its creator. This being, this divine composite, will be altogether the Son of God and your own.
Speaker 1:
Here, then, is a new created dignity upon the earth, the dignity of the Mother of God, which includes graces so great that thought must not attempt or even hope to understand them. The perfect virginity of body and soul is a part of this high dignity, for if concupiscence, which since the fall ordinarily attaches to the conception of man, had been found in this one, then Jesus Christ would have contracted the primitive stain, he the one who came to efface it. It was therefore necessary that Jesus Christ be the son of a virgin and that he be conceived by the Holy Ghost. Christ be the son of a virgin and that he be conceived by the Holy Ghost. Thus, also, mary remained a virgin and became a mother. Chaste mysteries of Christianity. How pure must we be to understand them. Yet how much more pure must we be to express them in our lives by the sincere practice of christian truth. We no longer belong to the earth, we whose faith is so exalted. Our commonwealth is in heaven Philippians 3.20.
Speaker 1:
And there is our meditation for today, and the fact that that meditation was done on also the Feast of the Immaculate Conception was perfect and I did not plan that, so that was that. That worked out really well, um, because bishop of sway, in this, this meditation here, he, he shows how her virginity is is directly tied to her immaculate conception, um that that the most pure god can only be united to purity, and that means both, of course, in virginity, but also in in original sin or the lack of original sin. So that if you believe Mary was a virgin and that Christ was a virgin birth, that then really by necessity you must also believe in the Immaculate Conception. And that's something that Protestants just really do not understand. They don't even see why it's necessary that it was a virgin birth. They changed the scriptures, they changed the Old Testament to change the prophecy to where a virgin birth is a necessary.
Speaker 1:
I'm not saying they don't believe that mary wasn't a virgin at the time, you know, of christ's conception, but they, um, they do their best to ignore it whenever they can, and then, of course, they will say afterwards that mary wasn't a virgin the rest of her life, so on and so forth. But they really just don't have an understanding of why the necessity of the virgin birth and thus why the necessity of the Immaculate Conception, because the two are obviously closely linked, as we see in this meditation. So this was a great meditation for today, and I hope you all have a great Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which, whether you, whether you celebrate it liturgically today or tomorrow, for whatever reason, the modern church came up with. I hope you have a great feast of the immaculate conception. And tomorrow we will continue with meditations. We have two meditations tomorrow. On monday, we have the handmaiden of the Lord and the three virtues of the Annunciation. So thank you all for joining me, have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow. Thank you.
