“Si mangia con gli occhi e con la bocca ”
“You eat with your eyes and your mouth”
First, since the 1970’s iconoclasm about “looking” at the Eucharist instead of “eating” the Eucharist, meaning looking is bad, eating is good and looking at needs to be eradicated or limited, we have, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and especially our Eucharistic Lord, come a long way baby!
I was in major seminary in Baltimore from 1976 to 1980. Baltimore, today, is closing so many parishes in the city and county of Baltimore. While there have been population shifts to be sure, I would also say that Baltimore’s problems today stem more from silly liberal/progressive ideologies of the 1970’s that infected the Archdiocese of Baltimore who at that time also had a very liberal archbishop. Liberalism is the problem more so than population shifts today.
Liberal Catholicism undermines the very reason most Catholics practice their faith. It washes the very foundations of Catholicism out from under the feet of those who practiced the most fervently and in many cases destroyed their Catholic Faith where they no longer practiced or became so liberal, being Catholics was just one choice in the cafeteria of religions or no religion that one could choose in good conscience.
One aspect of the liberalism that I experienced in many parishes in Baltimore way back then was the wreckovation of churches, the moving of the tabernacle to another room often inaccessible to the laity. Priests no longer elevated the Host at Mass nor did they genuflect at the prescribed times during the consecrations.
The use of “real” bread, meaning breads with leaven or other additives resulted in major crumbs falling from the Eucharistic Ministers hands as he or she distributed these bulky chunks of bread often littering the floor with these major Crumbs! I witnessed that in Baltimore County in a suburban parish. By that time some clergy and laity were scandalized but most were not! No big deal, the liberals were not into “Crumb” theology! Yes, you heard that then and from a few today.
Today, though, very few places in the USA to include Baltimore, use anything but the traditional type of bread which is then consecrated. Tabernacles are restored to the main body of the Church and usually dead center in the sanctuary. Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament is held in many parishes and most cities have perpetual adoration chapels in various parish churches.
Younger priests follow the rubrics of the Mass and are open to the Traditional Latin Mass and show great reverence before the Lord in the tabernacle or in solemn Exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament.
On the Feast of Corpus Christi, there are more and more Eucharistic Processions and Benedictions.
The Church is recovering the both/and of the Most Holy Eucharist not the stale either/or of the recent past!
12 comments:
Those of us who signed on to the Church for its vaunted stability, fidelity to earliest teachings, unchangeable nature, constancy of worship and form, and papal "the buck stops here", surely have been let down since 1970...
instead, it has trotted right along behind the rest of the world, sorta like Pentecostals wearing always 40yr out of date fashions....
it used to be any other variety of Christianity was a denomination, while the Church was the original, and a denomination of nuthin'...
but it has sunk further and further into being just a denomination of its own self, and by doing so has become as irrelevant as the rest....so achingly sad.
In the Byzantine Ruthenian East, we don't have exposition as in the Roman Church as our communion has been in the form of both species together since the time of the Church Fathers.
We do, at every divine liturgy, have a Benediction after communion.
Example: 53:08
https://www.facebook.com/glenn.sedar/videos/1936453980203178?idorvanity=425573364997616
Bob,
Here is whom your buddy Biden goes after. Not Antifa, BLM and the other hosts of violent lefties:
"Paulette Harlow, an elderly woman with a debilitating medical condition, was sentenced to 24 months in jail Friday, after being convicted last November of participating in a pro-life blockade of a Washington, D.C., abortion center in 2020."
This would not have happened if Donald Trump were president.
TJM, you are now officially a harrassing fruitloop of exceptionally deficit psychic ability, or even apparent literacy, since you obviously do not even read replies refuting your utterly and absolutely baseless accusations. When did you take yourself off your meds? I would argue more, but arguing with the mentally ill is always fruitless, and I was raised to not take advantage of the handicapped in having a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
ByzRus, I wish Rome were more eastern in that respect, our intinction is kinda sorta our equivalent, minus a spoon (I assume your rite uses the spoon?), where then I prefer the intinction purely on modern sanitary standards. You do reserve the bread, correct (phosphoron or maybe the artos)? But not in a tabernacle, and not consecrated? Suspended from ceiling? And, if so, is it (no idea of name for the "container") a specific shape, perhaps that of a dove? As you can tell, I are an ignerint kuntry bumpkin when it comes to your rites. For all I know, I am mixing something read about Hindu worship or maybe a rock concert.
Typo above...prosphoron...and all of the above questions based purely on some alternate and very old Latin church methods in reserving of consecrated hosts based upon Eastern church methods, such as the suspended dove shape as well as others...
Bob,
I'm at work, will be brief.
The Byzantine Ruthenian Church communes the faithful via the gold spoon.
Offering: Prosphora
Prosphoron and phroshora are synonyms.
Proskomedia: Table of preparation.
Lamb: The central portion of the phosphora that is consecrated.
Antidoron: The portion of the phosphorus that is not consecrated. It is blessed for distribution to the faithful.
Artophorion: Tabernacle, pyx taken to the sick. Can also be an ornamented box holding the presanctified gifts that rests upon the Holy Table (altar). Can ALSO take the form of a hanging dove, the earliest usage. There are about 5 hanging doves (pyx) in the U.S. The closest one to me is at a Byzantine monastery outside of Hazleton, Pennsylvania.
At the "Holy things for Holy people", equivalent to "the Fraction", the lamb is broken/divided, reserved particles are placed either in a pyx, or diskos, they are then intincted and allowed to dry proir to reservation.
The remainder, along with the particles for the commemoration that were prepared during proskomedia are placed into the chalice after those ordained to major orders have communed. Then, neon (boiling/hot water) is added to the chalice to symbolize Christ's humanity as a living being.
I hope I addressed all!
Bob,
It's zeon, not neon.
Spell check error.
Thanks for taking the time, ByzRus...after your above comment of, "In the Byzantine Ruthenian East, we don't have exposition as in the Roman Church as our communion has been in the form of both species together since the time of the Church Fathers", it sounded almost as if nothing "reserved" and ALL consumed at worship, whereupon I was wondering that if nothing was "reserved", then how did some Latin churches copy the dove from the East for that purpose, if the East did not do so...I knew that could not be right, and that there was more to it...thanks again for the reply...
I always get a kick out of reading all the Greek wording thrown out by Eastern Rite and Orthodox non-Greek speakers and how complex and silly it seems, while knowing all the non-Latin speakers throwing out Latin phrases must sound equally as strange, as if English-only speakers taking to using only French for all household furnishings...my poor Greek said prosphoron was the plural of prosphora, and I knew more than one loaf generally used, and so why the attempt at assumed plural...beware English speakers bearing Greek.
Bob,
At least in the Byzantine Churches, there are 14 in the Catholic Communion, as well as the Orthodox Churches of the same tradition, we do not use our tabernacles like the Roman Church. I suppose, as a practical matter, the Roman Church makes withdrawals and deposits to address need while reserving some consecrated hosts for the sick and homebound. Conversely, we DO consume all that was consecrated at Divine Liturgy unless the priest intends to reserve for the sick/homebound or for Presanctified Liturgy during Lent. That is why the Russian style tabernacles are tall, yet very small. Only a few particles are reserved at any one time. During the Great Fast/Lent, the artophorion box is used which simply rests on the Holy Table.
ByzRus, no argument from me that the Eastern practices are most ancient, and in some ways perhaps more "original" than the Roman practices which developed further away from the original center of action for the early Churches and which went its own way, some of its own way quite a good thing in resisting Imperial influence pushing for assorted heresy adoption....and the dating of Easter immediately comes to mind where even Peter and John diverged on when to celebrate, as did their Churches...both are valid by authority...
If your "tabernacle" along with the table of offering remain behind "the temple veil" as the Roman rite later discarded, there would not be much prayer focus on the physical "tabernacle" and then later not much desire for exposition of what was in the tabernacle as later developed in the Roman rite, at least, so it might seem.
Bob,
Busy day. Just getting to this.
Eastern Liturgy, not Byzantine, is the oldest expression in Christendom. Syriac and Maronite (before they modernized) may be the oldest. That doesn't make them better, it's simply where the tradition started and spread.
Exposition of the blessed sacrament was introduced by the Roman Church in the 1200s. I believe it commemorated the successful end of a war.
There isn't a concept of exposition in the Christian East. By no means does that invalidate the tradition of the West, it just simply isn't our tradition.
Regardless of whether there is one consecrated particle, two, or an artophorion box filled anticipating Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, the Lord is present upon our altars, as indicated by vichnaya lamp/kandili/eternal light.
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