Creating a Catholic Culture at Home

In my post, "Can we keep our children Catholic?" I mentioned Pat McDonough's article which refers to the importance of creating a Catholic culture at home for our children's faith formation. There I mentioned that Pope Benedict XVI recounts being a child and the parental blessing he received when leaving home. In his wonderful book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, here is what Benedict says:

Through the Cross, we can become sources of blessing for one another. I shall never forget the devotion and heartfelt care with which my father and mother made the sign of the Cross on the forehead, mouth, and breast of us children when we went away from home, especially when the parting was a long one. This blessing was like an escort that we knew would guide us on our way. It made visible the prayer of our parents, which went with us, and it gave us the assurance that this prayer was supported by the blessing of the Savior. The blessing was also a challenge to us not to go outside the sphere of this blessing. Blessing is a priestly gesture, and so in this sign of the Cross we felt the priesthood of parents, its special dignity and power. I believe that this blessing, which is a perfect expression of the common priesthood of the baptized, should come back in a much stronger way into our daily life and permeate it with the power of the love that comes from the Lord (p. 184).

There is so much in this brief passage. "Through the Cross, we can become sources of blessing for one another." Although the sign of the Cross is usually used in blessing, we don't usually think of the Cross itself as a source of how we can bless each other. As baptized Christians, we have a share in the priesthood of Christ, something else we don't much think about. But as parents we are called to be a blessing to our children. And I was very moved by the Holy Father's urging that parental blessings "should come back in a much stronger way into our daily life and permeate it with the power of the love that comes from the Lord." I was so moved that my wife and I now bless our children at night with the sign of the Cross before they go to bed, and we say a family blessing in the morning when one or all of us leave the house. We need to find more ways to permeate our daily life with visible signs of our Catholic faith.

Holy Saturday

Today is the day we remember Jesus in the tomb. We remember the grief of His blessed mother, of His followers. We remember, like the seed growing beneath the ground, His "harrowing of hell" so often depicted, especially in the Middle Ages.

What I am reminded of today is baptism. My wife and I help with baptism preparation at our parish, and I always begin those sessions with reading Romans 6:1-11. Most pertinent for Holy Saturday is this part of that passage:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Romans 6:3-5)

By our baptism, we were buried with Him. Especially when baptism involves immersion, we see the symbolism of this burial. We share in His time in the tomb, as we die to sin, die to self, so that we may experience the Easter joy of a resurrection with Him.

St. Cyprian of Carthage - Matter Matters

I have been reading more of William Jurgens' Faith of the Early Fathers. St. Cyprian (ca. 200 -258) was bishop of Carthage; he survived the Decian persecution but ultimately was martyred by beheading. Among his writings are passages about the Eucharist. One of his letters ("To a Certain Cecil," 63, 9) indicates the nature of Catholic sacramental theology in which a certain form and matter is necessary. The form is the words or actions being said or performed, and the matter is the material used in the sacrament. For example, in baptism the form is the Trinitarian formula: "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." (That is why last year the Vatican re-affirmed the teaching that baptisms not using the Trinitarian form are not valid.) The matter in baptism is the water.







In the Eucharist, the form is the Eucharistic prayer, and the matter is the bread and wine (mixed with water). Cyprian addresses a practice of using water instead of wine, rather than wine mixed with water:





We find that the cup which the Lord offered was mixed; and that what was wine, He called Blood. From this it is apparent that the Blood of Christ is not offered if there is no wine in the cup; nor is the Sacrifice of the Lord celebrated with a legitimate consecration unless our offering and sacrifice corresponds to the passion... I wonder, indeed, whence this practice has come, that, contrary to evangelic and apostolic tradition, in certain places water alone, which cannot signify the Blood of Christ, is offered in the cup of the Lord. (Faith of the Early Fathers, Volume 1, #582, p. 232).


Because the matter used does not conform to the matter required (no wine is used) in accord with the "evangelic and apostolic tradition," the sacrament does not take place. We cannot simply make it up as we go along. The power of the sacraments comes from the One who instituted them, and the One who instituted them knew that the physicality of the sacraments (and thus how the sacraments signify what they effect) matters. When we are tempted to think that the Church has too many rules about things, it is important for us to remember the reasons why she has such rules. Again, we see the truth of lex orandi, lex credendi (literally, "the law of praying, the law of believing"). What the phrase means is that the way we worship affects how we believe, so orthodox worship leads to orthodox belief and theology. It is also true that heterodox worship leads to heterodox belief and theology. So in our liturgy and in our sacraments, what we say and do has far-reaching consequences.