Jer 7:18 says, "The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger."
Jer 44:25 says, "Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: You and your wives have declared with your mouths, and have fulfilled it with your hands, saying, 'We will surely perform our vows that we have made, to make offerings to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings to her.' Then confirm your vows and perform your vows!"
I was at a Catholic Church today and snapped this:
I thought I'd look it up and found this:
"... we seek to renew and express publicly our Consecration to Mary in the condensed and beautiful formula; 'I am all yours my Queen and my Mother and all that I have is yours.' What an extraordinary depth of doctrine and devotion are packed into so few words ..."
"in the words of St. Louis Marie de Montfort: 'the essence of the devotion consists in giving ourselves up entirely to the Most Holy Virgin in the quality of slave in order to belong wholly to Jesus Christ; and in the next place to do all our actions with Mary, in Mary, by Mary, for Mary in order to do them more perfectly with Jesus, in Jesus, by Jesus, and for the Jesus our last end.' The shorthand of all the work of De Montfort and our Founder is to Jesus through Mary."
They say very comforting things, the Catholics. The priest hadn't ever met the family. I'm not sure if he'd even met the deceased. But he assured them she was in heaven because she'd received eternal life in baptism.
Unfortunately I've never been able to find the graveside text, because what they say at there seems to contradict some of the stuff they say at Church. Unless it's symbolic. I think they talk of here resting in the grave till the time of judgement, but maybe they mean the body, because the priest was telling the family she was in heaven with her husband as a 20 year old.
It would be bad enough for one who did not know God, but I just can't grasp how someone who has been told all their life that they'd get to heaven, to find they'd been deceived, would feel.
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