‘STAND FAST IN THE FAITH'

New Zealand Tablet, 11 September 1913, Page 3

‘STAND FAST IN THE FAITH'

(A Weekly Instruction specially written for the N.Z. Tablet by ‘Ghimel'.)

BENEDICTION OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT—I . Benediction is * one of the simplest and most natural, but also one of the. most sublime, and withal, most soothing of the rites of Catholic worship; nay, it has been described as being, next after the adorable Sacrifice of the Mass, the most solemn, beautiful, and profitable of the 'devotions sanctioned by the Church of God’ (Father M. Russell). It may be of interest, then, to trace its history. But first, a word on the external reverence we pay to the Blessed Sacrament. The loving adoration we show to our Lord in the Blessed Eucharist is the logical outcome of His Adorableness, and that again is a practical consequence of the permanence of His Real Presence on our altars. The same supreme worship that we give to the Blessed Trinity we give, -because it is due, to the God-Man, and indeed to Christ’s Humanity or any part of It, for His human nature is united personally to His Godhead. And since the God-Man is really present in the Blessed Eucharist, we adore Him there, and surround His Presence in the White Disguise with all possible splendour. ‘ But, it may be asked, why should we show our worship by external signs when there is nothing external or sensible to worship ? Does it not look as if we worshipped the species merely ? Might we not just as well worship the house in which our Lord lived on earth? We answer that we adore neither the house nor the species; but there is a wide difference between the house that shelters our Lord and the species that conceal Him. The house is a substantial and separate thing, which can never be an intimate belonging of our Lord; it would only cover or locate Him; whereas the species are not substance, but modes, and modes specially adopted or used by our Lord, to take, in our regard, the place of the modes of His own Body. The / connection between The species and His Body being thus practically as intimate as that between our Lord's own color or shape and Himself, there can be no danger or unseemliness in bowing down before them any more than in bowing down before our Lord’s own shape or color; for as no one would ever accuse a man, when he Bent the knee to Jesus, of worshipping His shape or His color, so no one in his senses can suppose that when we adore the Blessed Sacrament we adore the species. Our non-Catholic friends can never get rid of the idea that the Bread and the Wine are there still. If they would enter into our views, they would confess that the idea of idolatry was ridiculous. We adore the Host because it is our Lord; and as it is He, and as the species He has chosen to adopt are in that place and not in other places, we rightly say, though not in the strict sense, that He is there, in the tabernacle, in the ciborium, in’ the ostensorium, in the priest’s hands, where the Host or the Chalice is ’ (Hedley —The Holy Eucharist, p. 259). It is true that many features of our modern ' homage to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament are not very old, though at first we might be inclined to think them almost instinctive exhibitions of faith and devotion towards Him in this mystery. But the circumstances in which the Church was placed for many centuries explain the delay in that public worship of our hidden Saviour which is now shown in processions, expositions, and benedictions. The outward manifestations of devotion will always vary according to the various needs of men, in various times and places. ‘As far as devotion is not pure principle,’ writes Bishop Hedley, ‘ it will differ as men differ in feeling, sentiment, affection, and temperament, as they have inherited sympathies or antipathies, and as they attained new ideas.’ In the first days of the Church, say down to about the end of the sixth century, worship of the Blessed Sacrament was confined chiefly to the Sacrifice of the Mass and to Holy and these stays of

Catholic life bound the faithful into a compact whole that the powers of the world could neither bend nor break. During the long and harrowing years of trial the Blessed Eucharist was, in addition, the recognised source of strength and courage in persecution and difficulty, whereby the martyrs triumphed, the conr fessors stood firm in the faith, the virgins rose above the world, and the whole Church withstood the attacks of the devil.' The days of peace that followed allowed the Church to develop her Eucharistic liturgy, which now began to spread over Europe, ' establishing itself in the cathedral and parish churches, which by degrees covered the land, august in its uniformity, attracting the populations round its altars, dominating civil and even political life, and equally effective and impressive whether it was celebrated by a single minister or with all the aids and resources of Church and State' (Hedley). In answer to rising difficulties, doubts, and heresies, the abiding faith of the people during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries found expression in processions, in the public carrying of the Host to the dying, and in the institution of the Feast of Corpus Christi. Once more, as if to make reparation for the blasphemies of heresy, especially at the Reformation period, the Blessed Sacrament was exposed for public veneration upon the altars of the Church throughout the world. Between the years 1600 and 1900, the highest form of veneration of love and obedience—has been shown in the growing practice of frequent Communion. This development of outward devotion to the Blessed Sacrament should not surprise us; there is much to learn about it, and men cannot take in all at once. 'At first, Christians had to learn that it was a common banquet wherein Christ united Himself to the souls of His servants. They had to. come to see .that it was the "clean oblation" of the New Testament. Had it been presented to them, at first, with the incense and light of later days, with the genuflexions and elevations which came in their good time, it would appear that the Church could not have taken in to the full the great truths connected with the sacramental and sacrificial aspects of the august dispensation' (Hedley, p. 255).