Sacraments
“The Sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us”(Catechism of the Catholic Church No 1131)
It is the teaching of the Catholic Church that the Seven Sacraments are like a door opening onto the very life of God. Each of the Sacraments has the power to speak meaningfully to us. They touch all the stages and all the important moments of our lives. The Sacraments bring us power as the People of God. They both demand and nourish faith.
“When the Church celebrates the Sacraments she confesses the faith received from the Apostles – lex orandi, lex credenti….. The law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays”. (Catechism of the Catholic Church No. 1124)
The Sacraments can be divided into three groups
(Click on the links below for more information)
Sacraments of Initiation
Sacraments of Healing
Sacraments of Vocation
OTHER LITURGICAL CELEBRATIONS:
Many occasions are rendered holy through the effects of various rituals and liturgical actions. Some of these are known as “Sacramentals”. These are “sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the Sacraments. While they do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the Sacraments do they prepare us to receive grace through the prayer of the Church and dispose us to co-operate with it”. They signify effects, particularly of a spiritual nature, which are obtained through the intercession of the Church. (Catechism of the Catholic Church No 1667 and No 1670).
Sacramentals derive from the baptismal priesthood: every baptised person is called to be a blessing and to bless.
(c.f. Gen 12:2; Lk 6:28; Rom 12:14; I Pt 3:9).
Sacramentals include Blessings of persons, meals, objects or places; the blessing of people who are commissioned in the various Ministries of the Church and the blessing of objects and places for liturgical use; Consecrations of persons, objects, and places. Every blessing praises God and prays for his gifts. Consecration of a person is not to be confused with Sacramental Ordination.
“In addition to the liturgy, Christian life is nourished by the various forms of popular piety, rooted in the different cultures. While carefully clarifying them in the light of faith, the Church fosters the forms of popular piety that express an evangelical instinct and a human wisdom and that enrich human life” (Catechism of the Catholic Church No 1679).
Christian Prayer
The Word of God.
The Church ‘forcefully and specially exhorts all the Christian faithful …to learn “the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ” (Phil 3:9.) by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures …let them remember, however, that prayer accompany the reading of sacred Scripture, so that a dialogue takes place between God and man. For “we speak to Him when we pray; we listen to Him when we read the divine oracles” (St.Ambrose.) -(Catechism of the Catholic Church. No: 2653.)
Why is prayer a ‘battle’?
Prayer is a gift of grace but always presupposes a determined response on our part because those who pray “battle” against themselves, their surroundings, and especially the ‘tempter’ who does all he can to turn them away from prayer. The battle of prayer is inseparable from progress in the spiritual life. We pray as we live because we live as we pray. (Compendium Catechism of the Catholic Church .No.572.)
The Rosary
The ‘Rosary’ refers to both a set of devotional prayers, and the beads, which are traditionally used while reciting these prayers. Rosary beads, as they are often called have been in existence since at least the twelfth century.
With the great spiritual renewal, which took place in the church with the founding of the Franciscan Order by St. Francis of Assisi in 1223 and the Dominicans by St.Dominic de Guzman in 1216 a great need was felt to reconnect the Christian Faithful with the New Testament roots of their faith.
First the ‘Lord’s Prayer’, then the Angel’s greeting, the ‘Hail Mary’, and then the great prayer of the Saints the ‘Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit” were to be taught to all Christians. To these prayers were added the Mysteries of earthly life of Jesus, the beginning of the life the Church – the Bride of Christ- and it’s the final triumph proclaimed in the Book of Revelation:
A great portent appeared in Heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. (Rev.12:1)
To these three simple prayers was also added the Baptismal Creed – the Apostles Creed-.
From these Prayers, which people could easily memorise- The Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Gloria and the Apostles Creed - grew the Devotional Prayer of the Rosary. It quickly became the pray of the People. It served not only as a means of private, family and communal prayer but also as a catechism keeping all who used it in contact with the central truths of their Christian faith.
The late Holy Father Pope John Paul 11 in the introduction to his Apostolic Letter “Rosarium Virginis Mariae”, (2003), wrote;
The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a prayer loved by countless Saints and encouraged by the Magisterium. Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third millennium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness. It blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian life, which, after two thousand years, has lost none of the freshness of its beginnings and feels drawn by the Spirit of God to “set out into the deep” in order once more to proclaim, and even cry out, before the world that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour, “the Way, the Truth and the Life” the goal of human history and the point on which the desires of history and civilisation turn.
In our Parish of Clontibret the custom of praying the Rosary before and after Mass has developed.
A small group of parishioners gather before Weekday Mass in St.Mary’s church, Clontibret, and after Sunday Mass in All Saints’ church, Doohamlet, keeping alive this wonderful tradition of communal prayer.
The same of true of neighbouring parishes in our cluster. For example, the Rosary is also prayed each evening, Monday to Saturday, at 6.30pm and on Sundays at 6pm, in St. Mary’s church, Castleblayney.
Pope John Paul 11 ended his Apostolic Letter with the appeal:
Rediscover the Rosary in the light of Scripture, in harmony with the Liturgy, and the context of your daily lives. May this appeal of mine not go unheeded
How shall we pray?
Fr. Henry Garnet S.J. [who died as a martyr for his faith in 1606] in his book The Society of the Rosary, published in 1596 [when carrying a rosary was proscribed by law under penalty of death] gave the following advice as a help to praying the Rosary.
(1) Be open when you pray the Rosary. Let God lead you into new dimensions of it. Why are you praying anyway?
(2) Forget what you have been taught about the Rosary: make it your own.
(3) Relax. Don’t bring anything to the Rosary; just bring yourself.
(4) Pay attention. But not too much attention. Some of those distractions may be trying to tell you something.
(5) Don’t let yourself be discouraged. Be patient until the Rosary reveals itself.
(6) Don’t rush through the Rosary. Savour it, linger over it. Let it soak in.
(7) Don’t freak out if you actually get in touch with God!
(Taken from “A Scriptural Rosary- 1596 Peter Huyck.)
