Category — Prayer

Before you buy a Catholic relic, I hope you take a few minutes to consider this post.

After a Sunday Mass on May 31, a security guard at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto realized that a priceless first-class relic of Therese of Lisieux had been stolen. When staffers searched the cathedral to ensure that nothing else had been stolen, they also discovered that two screws were missing from the Plexiglas protecting their relic of St. Anthony. Fortunately, this relic remained.

This was not the first time a relics was stolen from St. Micheal’s. In 2000, a portion of the “true cross” was taken from the Cathedral’s pieta statue. The relic was never recovered.

Michael Busch, the cathedral’s rector, commented that without the certificate of authenticity, the priceless St. Theresa’s relic was worthless. However, he also noted that person could forge the necessary accompanying documents.

Mr. Busch claims that a first-class relic of the quality of that stolen can fetch anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 on the black market.

But who would purchase such a relic? Something is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it and no Catholic should be willing to pay anything for any relic, genuine or not.  To Catholics, a relic really ought to be priceless, not just figuratively, but literally.

Canon Law clearly forbids Catholics from selling relics:

§1190 §1 - “It is absolutely forbidden to sell sacred relics.”

§1190 §2 - “Relics of great significance and other relics honored with great reverence by the people cannot be alienated validly in any manner or transferred permanently without the permission of the Apostolic See.”

Therein lies the root cause of the disappearance. If Catholics followed this edict, in all likelihood St. Michael’s would still have its relic. Unfortunatey. a quick search of ebay makes it clear that the sale of relics is both prolific and lucrative. It’s also reasonable to speculate that most purchasers are probably genuine in their desire to obtain relics for personal devotion. Unfortunately, their piety and devotion do not excuse their ignorance.

SOURCES:

Jill Colvin, “Priceless relic swiped from Toronto cathedral” (Wednesday, Jun. 17, 2009)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/priceless-relic-swiped-from-toronto-cathedral/article1184823/

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. I entered the main doors, walked up a flight of stairs, down a hallway, and into the main part of the Church. I looked around for a second, desiring to kneel in the direction of the Eucharist reposed in the tabernacle. I turned to the left, then to the right. Dismayed as to where the tabernacle was located, I just kneeled reverently, knowing that it had to be somewhere within the Church.

At the time, I was perturbed. I was shocked to walk into a Catholic Cathedral and to discover that the tabernacle was so inconspicuously places that I couldn’t even find it. As it turns out, the designers of the Cathedral decided that they would keep the tabernacle in a separate chapel enclosed within one of the massive pillars on the side of the church. I wouldn’t have known it was there if I hadn’t asked. When I did walk inside the chapel, I discovered that it could only accommodate a handful of worshipers. The decor was drab and the room was Claustrophobic. “Does not Our Lord deserves better?”, I thought to myself.  ”Shouldn’t the Eucharist, which is the source and summit of our faith, be front and center in our Churches?” I felt cheated that I was unable to genuflect toward the Eucharist and pay proper reverence. As I left the Cathedral I was convinced that there was something wrong with the placement of the tabernacle.

Cardinal Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, commented on the role of genuflection and the proper placement of the tabernacle during a keynote talk at Westminster Cathedral in 2006:

“As for those who may ignore the significance of this gesture [ie. genuflection], it may be well to remember that we are not pure spirits like the angels. A Protestant once was visiting a Catholic church in the company of a Catholic friend. They passed across the tabernacle area. The Protestant asked the Catholic what that box was and why a little lamp was burning near it. The Catholic explained that Jesus the Lord is present there. The Protestant then put the vital question: “If you believe that your Lord and God is here present, then why don’t you genuflect, even prostrate and crawl?” The superficial Catholic got the message. He genuflected. Everyone can thus see why the tabernacle of the Most Blessed Sacrament is located in a central or at least prominent place in our churches. It is the centre of our attention and prayer. The October 2005 Synod of Bishops emphasised this point (cf Prop., 6, 28, 34). In some of our churches some misguided person has relegated the tabernacle to an obscure section of the church. Sometimes it is even so difficult for a visitor to locate where the tabernacle is, that the visitor can say with truth with St Mary Magdalene: “They have taken my Lord, and I do not know where they laid him” (Jn 20:13).”

Cardinal Arinze’s statement that the tabernacle should be at “a central or at least prominent place in our churches” is not merely his personal opinion. His clearly based his statement on the Code of Canon Law, 1983:

“The tabernacle in which the blessed Eucharist is reserved should be sited in a distinguished place in a church or oratory, a place which is conspicuous, suitably adorned and conducive to prayer.” - Canon 938 §2

However, much to my surprise, it is worth noting that Canon 938 does not prohibit the use of Blessed Sacrament Chapels. Nor does it contradict Eucharisticum Mysterium, which states:

“The place in a church or oratory where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in the tabernacle should be truly prominent. It ought to be suitable for private prayer so that the faithful may easily and fruitfully, by private devotion also, continue to honor Our Lord in this sacrament. It is therefore recommended that, as far as possible, the tabernacle be placed in a chapel distinct from the middle or central part of the church, above all in those churches where marriages and funerals take place frequently and in places which are much visited for their artistic or historical treasures” - “Sacred Congregation for Rites, Eucharisticum Mysterium, (1967) no. 53:

As Monsignor Peter J. Elliott points out, the Church not only permits Blessed Sacrament chapels, but even prefers then in certain circumstance:

“[…] as indicated in Eucharisticum Mysterium, no. 53, and its adapted repetition in 1973, there are situations when a Blessed Sacrament chapel is appropriate, for example, in a cathedral or major church frequented by crowds of tourists or pilgrims, such as the Roman basilicas, or where a safe place is required for perpetual adoration. The chapel may also be appropriate in the rare case where the tabernacle would seem very distant and inaccessible if placed at the back of a deep sanctuary. Moreover, the Ceremonial of Bishops, no. 49, citing a very ancient tradition, recommends a chapel for cathedrals.”

However, it is important to remember that Canon law always establishes what is licit and legal, but does not necessarily resolve what is best in any particular situation. It is important to remember St. Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 1:8-9 (RSV):

“Now we know that the law is good, if any one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient […]”.

The aim of our Church leaders must not be mere compliance with the law, for the law is laid down to constrain the disobedient. Their aim of all faithful leaders must be “love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith.” (1 Timothy 1:5) The question is therefore not whether the placement of the tabernacle is licit, or even whether the tabernacle is in “a distinguished place … conspicuous, suitably adorned and conducive to prayer.” The question is whether it is conspicuous so as to draw the faithful into the presence of God, adorned to instill reverence and awe, and conducive to inspired adoration of the One True God who is the center time, space and existence.

I am convinced that by this standard the Eucharistic Chapel at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is horribly wanting. Our Lord does deserve better.

SOURCES:

Cardinal Arinze, “Keynote talk at Westminster Cathedral ‘Hearts and Minds’ event”, (London: Apr 3, 2006)

<http://www.cardinalrating.com/cardinal_7__article_3628.htm>.

Monsignor Peter J. Elliott, “Where Should We Put the Tabernacle? A conspicuously located tabernacle is mandated by the liturgical norms and Canon Law” Vol 3 Adoremus No. 9 (Online Edition: Dec 1997/Jan 1998)

<http://www.adoremus.org/98-01_elliott.htm>.

If you didn’t know any better, you might be tempted to think it was a Catholic rapture: parishioners vanishing from Mass en masse. Each year it begins around May and its effects are evident come June. As the temperature outside increases, the number of congregants on succeeding Sundays steadily dwindles.  However, what’s actually happening is more of an exodus. As fall approaches you begin to see faces you haven’t seen in months.  By October the diaspora is almost over.  The weather is cooler and most parishioners having ceased their weekend forays to their cottages and cabins.

I used to think this exodus was a local phenomenon.  The city in which I work and go to mass, St. John’s, Newfoundland, has a population of little over 100,000 people. The greater St. John’s area, including surrounding communities, brings the population closer to 200,000.  That’s not a huge population, but it’s definitely urban. When you consider that the entire province has a population of only around 500,000 people and a land area that would rank fourth in size behind Alaska, Texas and California if it were on of the American states, you should not be surprised to know that Newfoundland is a cabin-lovers haven.  Land is affordable and almost everybody has some kind of get-away. Whether it is a “gravel-pit camper” or a decked-out cottage, most people have a home away from home.

Almost everybody, but not me. Removed from cabin-culture, it can be excused that I had always assumed that the St. John’s exodus was accompanied by an equal and corresponding surge in attendance in rural parishes. However, my naivety disappeared a few months ago. One of my friends was planning to visit her parents’ cabin over the weekend and explained to me that she wanted to go to an early Saturday evening Mass, as she wouldn’t be able to get to mass while she was there. “Well, where’s your mother going to go to Mass?” I asked. “Oh,” she replied, “my mother doesn’t go to Mass when she’s at the cabin”

Then only a few weeks ago I came to realize that this summer absence from Mass reached beyond Newfoundland. In the airport in St. Paul-Minneapolis, I picked up a t-shirt for my roommate: “The Ten Commandments, Minnesota style”. On the back, “Keep the Sabbath holy” was converted to “Go to church – even when yer up nort.”

This problem is apparently so wide-spread that even Pope Benedict had something to say about it during his most recent general audience at St. Peter’s Square. The pope remarked:

“While at work, with its frenetic rhythms, and during vacation, we have to reserve moments for God. [We have to] open our lives up to him, directing a thought to him, a reflection, a brief prayer.

“And above all, we mustn’t forget that Sunday is the day of Our Lord, the day of the liturgy, [the day] to perceive in the beauty of our churches, in the sacred music and in the Word of God, the same beauty of our God, allowing him to enter into our being.”

“Only in this way,” the Pontiff concluded, “is our life made great; it is truly made a life.”

The faithful must remember that Sunday is a holy day of obligation. Mass attendance is not optional:

Canon 1247

On Sundays and other holy days of obligation the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass; they are also to abstain from those labors and business concerns which impede the worship to be rendered to God, the joy which is proper to the Lord’s Day, or the proper relaxation of mind and body.

As you and your family prepare for your summer vacations, please don’t forget to heed the pope’s words. Rest in the Eucharist and your vacation time will be both more replenishing and rejuvenating.

Source:

Pope Bendict, “General Audience” (St. Peter’s Square: June 3, 2009) <available online: http://www.zenit.org/article-26080?l=english>.

In the build up to Pentecost, one of my friends and I were engaged in an ongoing dialogue about the Holy Spirit and prayer. She went to Steubenville and often attends praise and worship services. She prays in tongues and apparently knocks people over when she lays hands on them – a good thing she assures me. More of a traditionalist, I have never ‘spoken in tongues’. Further, I perceive a disjoint between the account of speaking in tongues related in Acts 2:1-13 and what occurs when modern Christians are ‘slain in the spirit’. However, despite the intellectual hurdle that this passage continues to pose for me, I do not doubt that prayer has led her to the fruits of the Spirit. Our prayer lives are very different, but we remain brother and sister in the mystical Body of Christ.

Unfortunately, the Church often divides over preferences in worship. Rather than being viewed as descriptions, terms such as charismatic and traditional are sometimes falsely polemicized as paths to either spiritual edification or depravity. The real concern ought not to be a person’s preference in prayer, but their commitment to orthodoxy. A Catholic must always be both faithful to the magisterium and to themselves. Within the Roman Catholic Church there are many roads which lead to the new Jerusalem and, as one of my spiritual directors once told me, the greatest saints are those that are most uniquely themselves.

The desert fathers were particularly aware that each person’s path to sanctity is unique. Each sought to commit himself completely to the particular devotions and practices which God placed within his heart while non-judgmentally respecting the devotions and practices of others. Abba John was ascribed as saying “that the saints are like a group of trees, each bearing different fruit, but watered from the same source. The practices of one saint differ from those of another, but it is the same Spirit that works in them all.”

An exceptional example of different paths leading to holiness is evident in the lives of Abbas Moses and Arsenius:

“A youth who wished to devote himself to the ascetic life, begged an anchorite of the desert of [Scetis] to conduct him to one of the most holy fathers that he might receive advice and instruction from him. The anchorite took him to Arsenius. He was sitting in his cell weaving a mat, and was so immersed in contemplation that he did not observe their entrance, and did not greet them or say a single syllable to them. After some time they went away as silently as they had sat there, and the anchorite took the youth to Moses. He received them so lovingly, spoke of the youth’s intention with such fatherly benevolence, and showed him such hearty sympathy, that he said to his companion after they had taken leave, “Oh, how much holier and better the former robber is than the former courtier.” This saying reached the ancient fathers, and one of them, who was extremely holy, and who had a high opinion of Arsenius, begged God to enlighten him upon the interior state of these two men.” The one, Lord, avoids for Thy Name’s sake all intercourse with men, whilst the other, for the same reason, is kind to them. Which of the two is in the right?” And he fell into ecstasy, and saw two boats floating on one stream. Arsenius sat in one, peaceful and still, and the Holy Ghost hovered above his head. Moses was in the other, and angels travelled with him and were dropping honey upon his lips. Then the father understood that both these holy men, although outwardly different, lived in perfect love, which guided all their actions and made them pleasing to God.”

Our path to sanctity is a journey of relationship. God speaks to us personally, directing each of His words to our individual lives and experiences. The messages we receive are unique, and we must respond to Jesus in a way which is distinctly our own. In our prayers, our devotions, our vocations, we must be uniquely ourselves while never straying from the narrow path which God has set before us through His Church and His promptings.

“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sources:

Benedicta Ward, “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection” (Oxford: Cistercian Publications, 1984) at p. 95.

Emily F. Bowden, “The Fathers of the Desert: Translated from the German of the Countess Hahn-Hahn” Vol. 2 (London: Burns and gates) at pp. 241-242. Available for free on line – This website is amazing: http://www.archive.org/details/a586049002hahnuoft

In the build up to Pentecost, one of my friends and I were engaged in an ongoing dialogue about the Holy Spirit and prayer. She went to Steubenville and often attends praise and worship services.  She prays in tongues and apparently knocks people over when she lays hands on them – a good thing she assures me.  More of a traditionalist, I have never ‘spoken in tongues’.  Further, I perceive a disjoint between the account of speaking in tongues related in Acts 2:1-13 and what occurs when modern Christians are ‘slain in the spirit’.  However, despite the intellectual hurdle that this passage continues to pose for me, I do not doubt that prayer has led her to the fruits of the Spirit. Our prayer lives are very different, but we remain brother and sister in the mystical Body of Christ.

Unfortunately, the Church often divides over preferences in worship. Rather than being viewed as descriptions, terms such as charismatic and traditional are sometimes falsely polemicized as paths to either spiritual edification or depravity.  The real concern ought not to be a person’s preference in prayer, but their commitment to orthodoxy.  A Catholic must always be both faithful to the magisterium and to themselves. Within the Roman Catholic Church there are many roads which lead to the new Jerusalem and, as one of my spiritual directors once told me, the greatest saints are those that are most uniquely themselves.

The desert fathers were particularly aware that each person’s path to sanctity is unique.  Each sought to commit himself completely to the particular devotions and practices which God placed within his heart while non-judgmentally respecting the devotions and practices of others.  Abba John was ascribed as saying “that the saints are like a group of trees, each bearing different fruit, but watered from the same source.  The practices of one saint differ from those of another, but it is the same Spirit that works in them all.” 

An exceptional example of different paths leading to holiness is evident in the lives of Abbas Moses and Arsenius:

“A youth who wished to devote himself to the ascetic life, begged an anchorite of the desert of [Scetis] to conduct him to one of the most holy fathers that he might receive advice and instruction from him. The anchorite took him to Arsenius. He was sitting in his cell weaving a mat, and was so immersed in contemplation that he did not observe their entrance, and did not greet them or say a single syllable to them. After some time they went away as silently as they had sat there, and the anchorite took the youth to Moses. He received them so lovingly, spoke of the youth’s intention with such fatherly benevolence, and showed him such hearty sympathy, that he said to his companion after they had taken leave, “Oh, how much holier and better the former robber is than the former courtier.” This saying reached the ancient fathers, and one of them, who was extremely holy, and who had a high opinion of Arsenius, begged God to enlighten him upon the interior state of these two men.” The one, Lord, avoids for Thy Name’s sake all intercourse with men, whilst the other, for the same reason, is kind to them. Which of the two is in the right?” And he fell into ecstasy, and saw two boats floating on one stream. Arsenius sat in one, peaceful and still, and the Holy Ghost hovered above his head. Moses was in the other, and angels travelled with him and were dropping honey upon his lips. Then the father understood that both these holy men, although outwardly different, lived in perfect love, which guided all their actions and made them pleasing to God.”

Our path to sanctity is a journey of relationship.  God speaks to us personally, directing each of His words to our individual lives and experiences.  The messages we receive are unique, and we must respond to Jesus in a way which is distinctly our own.  In our prayers, our devotions, our vocations, we must be uniquely ourselves while never straying from the narrow path which God has set before us through His Church and His promptings.  

“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sources:

Benedicta Ward, “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection” (Oxford: Cistercian Publications, 1984) at p. 95.

Emily F. Bowden, “The Fathers of the Desert: Translated from the German of the Countess Hahn-Hahn” Vol. 2 (London: Burns and gates) at pp. 241-242. Available for free on line – This website is amazing: http://www.archive.org/details/a586049002hahnuoft