I have seen the initials JMJ before on this board, and was wondering, and not to either ofend or to ask a stupid queatsion, what means it?

I am venturing to guess that ist is an abriviation, but woudl liek to know what it stands for, if you may be ind enough to explain it.Thanks.

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), March 21, 2004

Answers

Bump

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), March 21, 2004.

Zarove, this acronym, used by our long-time poster John Gecik, stands for Jesus, Mary & Joseph. John hasn't been posting lately but awhile ago he told us of forming the habit of using this acronym as a child when writing. Perhaps he could repeat for you here, what he told us then. If not, maybe David (our resident memory expert) might remember where we can find that particular post and bump it up for us.

-- Ed (catholic4444@yahoo.ca), March 21, 2004.

My kids are homeschooled through the Seton program (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton). They instruct them to write JMJ on all of their homework and tests. I also vaguely remember doing it in my own catechism classes way back when.

-- Brian Crane (brian.crane@cranemills.com), March 22, 2004.

hey Zarove,

I've wondered the same thing but I forgot to ask. Since his name is John and his last name starts with G, which could sound like J, when I saw it for the first few times, I quickly skimmed over it and assumed it was his initials. But then I noticed that his initials in his email were JFG, so that didn't make sense. Then I forgot to ask, so thanks for bringing it up :)

-- Emily (jesusfollower7@yahoo.com), March 22, 2004.

Ed,

I think the post you want me to "top" has ben deleted.

There was mention of this in another thread "Protestants receiving the holy Eucharist" a few months ago, but it says nothing more about this that what I read here.

God bless you

-- - (David@excite.com), March 22, 2004.

Thanks David, for checking it out for us.

-- Ed (catholic4444@yahoo.ca), March 23, 2004.

I don't know if anybody else does this but I was taught that if you ever hear sombody curse The Lord's Name I would immediatly say Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Blessed Be Thier Holy Names. Kind of giving honour and respect where it was originally lacking. I know it doesn't have anything to do with the original question but I figured I'd mention this since Their Names were mentioned.

-- D Joseph (nufiedufie@msn.com), March 23, 2004.

Hi,

John is the one who is the best to answer this, of course, but since he may not read and respond, I'll offer my recollection. It may be faulty, so please correct me, John, if I miss the mark.

A few years back, John was catching some flak from a few posters for his posts. I don't recall the nature of the disagreement, but they were complaining that they didn't want to read anything posted by him, but, because his posts tended to be lengthy, as they read the thread and each post within it, naturally they would have read most of his post before scrolling down far enough to read that it was from him. They counted that as wasted time and whined about it. To his credit, John volunteered to display those initials at the start of each of his posts so that any reader wanting to skip his posts could easily do so without having to scroll to the end to see the name. Those complainers didn't remain around very long, but John maintained the practice nevertheless.

Hope that helps.

Dave

-- non-Catholic Christian (private@address.com), March 25, 2004.

A second thought, if we combine the superficial answer that I gave, that John was doing this in response to those who disagreed with him with the insight into the practice of using the phrase "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" to turn away a curse, and perhaps we can gain an understanding into why John chose that method to respond to his critics, or were they cursors?

Just a thought.

Dave

-- non-Catholic Christian (private@address.com), March 25, 2004.