POST GREAT SCHISM PARA-LITURGICAL DEVOTIONS
Lex orandi, lex credendi is a Latin maxim that addresses the centrality of worship in the life of the Church. Lex orandi, lex credendi means “the law of praying is the law of believing.” In other words liturgy and para-liturgical devotions can have a big impact on what we believe, and do indeed shape our beliefs.
While the Church recognizes that private devotions are private devotions, the Church has to be very cautious regarding contemporary Western para-liturgical devotions in light of the Orthodox Faith. This is because — due to the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi — public para-liturgical devotions bear the teaching authority of the Church in the eyes of the faithful. It must be remembered that the word Orthodox means both correct doctrine and correct worship. Two of the most common and yet problematic para-liturgical devotions in the West today are Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and Sacred Heart Devotions.
— Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament
According to the (Roman) Catholic Encyclopedia, “The idea of exposing the Blessed Sacrament for veneration in a monstrance appears to have been first evolved at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century. When the elevation of the Host at Mass was introduced in the early years of the thirteenth century… the idea by degrees took firm hold of the popular mind that special virtue and merit were attached to the act of looking at the Blessed Sacrament.”
The elevation of the Host after the Words of Institution in the Roman Rite is not ancient at all, but was only introduced early in the thirteenth century, some two centuries after the Great Schism. The elevations were introduced because the number of communicants declined to the point that people were seldom receiving Holy Communion — often only at Easter. At Mass it became common for the priest alone to communicate.
By introducing the elevations after the Words of Institution, non-communicants could at least look at what they were not receiving. “The idea of exposing the Blessed Sacrament for veneration in a monstrance appears to have been first evolved at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century” — about a century after the elevations were introduced. Rather than receiving the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, “the idea by degrees took firm hold of the popular mind that special virtue and merit were attached to the act of looking at the Blessed Sacrament.” In other words “looking at the Blessed Sacrament,” became a substitute for receiving the Blessed Sacrament.
Orthodox Christians certainly adore Christ in the Sacrament of Holy Communion, but the emphasis remains on partaking of the Blessed Sacrament. Our Lord said, “Take, eat.” Elevations and Benediction were introduced as a substitute for taking and eating. For the first twelve hundred years of Christianity in the West there were no elevations in the Mass after the Words of Institution, and for thirteen hundred years the para-liturgical devotion known as Benediction and the use of a monstrance were unknown. When they did come into use, they were substitutes for receiving Holy Communion. These are facts of history, and that is why Benediction is problematic from the Orthodox point of view and why a monstrance is not used in the Western Rite Communities of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
— Sacred Heart Devotions
The source for the contemporary Roman Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart was Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690), a nun of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, who claimed to have received apparitions of Jesus Christ in the Burgundian French village of Paray le Monial, beginning on December 27, 1673.
Margaret Mary Alacoque said that in her apparitions Jesus promised certain blessings to those who practice devotion to His Sacred Heart as revealed to her. The list of blessings was tabulated in 1863. In 1882 an American businessman spread the twelve promises throughout the world, in 238 languages.
Fr. Aidan Keller writes, “Sister Marie [Margaret Mary Alacoque] spent whole nights in ‘amorous colloquies with her beloved Jesus.’ One day, He permitted her to lean her head on His breast and asked for her heart. She consented. He removed her heart from her chest, placed it upon His own, then returned it to her chest. From that time she felt a continuous pain in that side, where her heart had been extracted and replaced. Jesus told her to bleed herself when the pain became too great.
“Marie Alacoque gave her heart to Jesus by a physical document, a deed, which she signed in her own blood. In return, Jesus gave her a deed, which designated her as the heiress to His heart for time and eternity. ‘Do not be stingy with It,’ He said to her, ‘I permit you to dispose of It as you wish, and you will be a plaything for My good pleasure.’ Upon hearing these words, Sister Marie took a pocket knife and carved the name of Jesus into the flesh of her breast ‘in large and deep letters.’
“Bishop Languet’s Life dwells upon the ‘promise of marriage’ which took place between Jesus and Sister Marie, on their ‘betrothals and espousals.’ (Actually, the terms he uses are too graphic to be used in a public Christian forum.) Languet also relates that the first Friday of every month the pains in sister Marie’s side were so sharp she had herself bled. Since this occurred from 1674 to 1690, she would have been bled 192 times in honour of the Sacred Heart, believing she was obeying Christ’s express injunctions.
“The Jesuits used their campaign of spreading devotion to the Sacred Heart as a means to spread other of their doctrines, including the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. Sister Marie Alacoque aspired also to sow the seeds of this belief: that the Mother of God was conceived in a manner beyond the human experience. She also insisted that those within her circle of influence swallow little slips of paper with pertinent messages written on them.
“‘You promised,’ she wrote to her brother, a priest, ‘that you would take the notes which I am sending you, one each day, on an empty stomach, and that you would have said nine masses, on nine Saturdays, in honour of the Immaculate Conception [of the Virgin Mary] and as many masses of the Passion, on nine Fridays, in honour of the Sacred Heart. I believe that none of those who shall be particularly devoted to It shall perish.’
“After these vigorous promotional campaigns, Rome’s Congregation of Rites was solicited to establish a feast of the Sacred Heart, a request denied in 1697. Thirty years the Order waited, using images, medals, booklets, pictures, stories, sermons, confraternities, and exhortations at confession to advance the Sacred Heart devotion.
“In 1727 and 1729, two more requests for a feast of the Sacred Heart were submitted. The Promotor of the Faith for the Congregation at that time was named Prospero Lambertini. He was a well-educated man and not much inclined towards the Jesuit programs, and he denied the requests. In his work ‘On the Canonization of Saints,’ Lambertini left us an account of the affair. ‘If one requests a feast for the Sacred Heart of Jesus,’ he marvels, ‘Why not also ask for one for the Sacred Side or the Sacred Eyes of Jesus? Or, even for the Heart of the Blessed Virgin!?’ Prospero Lambertini later became the Pope-scholar Benedict XIV. Little could he have foreseen that what he knew to be so preposterous would, after his day, infect the entire Roman Church. In the 19th century, the Roman Church established a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Mary, and even instituted a feast day in its honour” (The Error of the Sacred Heart Devotion, by heiromonk Aidan Keller).
Besides being bizarre to say the least, the visions and actions of Margaret Mary Alacoque are contrary to the Orthodox Faith. The Orthodox Church disapproves of the worship of the physical, human heart of Jesus as being a form of Nestorianism, separating the divine and human natures of Christ.
The great St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote: “We do not worship a created thing, but the Master of created things, the Word of God made flesh. Although the flesh itself, considered separately, is a part of created things, yet it has become the body of God. We do not worship this body after having separated it from the Word. Likewise, we do not separate the Word from the body when we wish to worship Him. But knowing that ‘the Word was made flesh,’ we recognize the Word existing in the flesh as God.” (Ep. ad Adelph., par. 3)
Anglican Bishop Chandler Holder Jones agrees with the Orthodox position. He writes, “Anglo-Papalists included this feast in the Anglican and English Missals, but the Sacred Heart tradition is relatively modern and certainly post-Tridentine, originating as it does in the seventeenth and eighteenth century… As such, it is not part of the devotional tradition of the ancient and patristic catholicism of the undivided Church.”
By Fr. Victor Novak
While the Church recognizes that private devotions are private devotions, the Church has to be very cautious regarding contemporary Western para-liturgical devotions in light of the Orthodox Faith. This is because — due to the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi — public para-liturgical devotions bear the teaching authority of the Church in the eyes of the faithful. It must be remembered that the word Orthodox means both correct doctrine and correct worship. Two of the most common and yet problematic para-liturgical devotions in the West today are Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and Sacred Heart Devotions.
— Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament
According to the (Roman) Catholic Encyclopedia, “The idea of exposing the Blessed Sacrament for veneration in a monstrance appears to have been first evolved at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century. When the elevation of the Host at Mass was introduced in the early years of the thirteenth century… the idea by degrees took firm hold of the popular mind that special virtue and merit were attached to the act of looking at the Blessed Sacrament.”
The elevation of the Host after the Words of Institution in the Roman Rite is not ancient at all, but was only introduced early in the thirteenth century, some two centuries after the Great Schism. The elevations were introduced because the number of communicants declined to the point that people were seldom receiving Holy Communion — often only at Easter. At Mass it became common for the priest alone to communicate.
By introducing the elevations after the Words of Institution, non-communicants could at least look at what they were not receiving. “The idea of exposing the Blessed Sacrament for veneration in a monstrance appears to have been first evolved at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century” — about a century after the elevations were introduced. Rather than receiving the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, “the idea by degrees took firm hold of the popular mind that special virtue and merit were attached to the act of looking at the Blessed Sacrament.” In other words “looking at the Blessed Sacrament,” became a substitute for receiving the Blessed Sacrament.
Orthodox Christians certainly adore Christ in the Sacrament of Holy Communion, but the emphasis remains on partaking of the Blessed Sacrament. Our Lord said, “Take, eat.” Elevations and Benediction were introduced as a substitute for taking and eating. For the first twelve hundred years of Christianity in the West there were no elevations in the Mass after the Words of Institution, and for thirteen hundred years the para-liturgical devotion known as Benediction and the use of a monstrance were unknown. When they did come into use, they were substitutes for receiving Holy Communion. These are facts of history, and that is why Benediction is problematic from the Orthodox point of view and why a monstrance is not used in the Western Rite Communities of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
— Sacred Heart Devotions
The source for the contemporary Roman Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart was Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690), a nun of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, who claimed to have received apparitions of Jesus Christ in the Burgundian French village of Paray le Monial, beginning on December 27, 1673.
Margaret Mary Alacoque said that in her apparitions Jesus promised certain blessings to those who practice devotion to His Sacred Heart as revealed to her. The list of blessings was tabulated in 1863. In 1882 an American businessman spread the twelve promises throughout the world, in 238 languages.
Fr. Aidan Keller writes, “Sister Marie [Margaret Mary Alacoque] spent whole nights in ‘amorous colloquies with her beloved Jesus.’ One day, He permitted her to lean her head on His breast and asked for her heart. She consented. He removed her heart from her chest, placed it upon His own, then returned it to her chest. From that time she felt a continuous pain in that side, where her heart had been extracted and replaced. Jesus told her to bleed herself when the pain became too great.
“Marie Alacoque gave her heart to Jesus by a physical document, a deed, which she signed in her own blood. In return, Jesus gave her a deed, which designated her as the heiress to His heart for time and eternity. ‘Do not be stingy with It,’ He said to her, ‘I permit you to dispose of It as you wish, and you will be a plaything for My good pleasure.’ Upon hearing these words, Sister Marie took a pocket knife and carved the name of Jesus into the flesh of her breast ‘in large and deep letters.’
“Bishop Languet’s Life dwells upon the ‘promise of marriage’ which took place between Jesus and Sister Marie, on their ‘betrothals and espousals.’ (Actually, the terms he uses are too graphic to be used in a public Christian forum.) Languet also relates that the first Friday of every month the pains in sister Marie’s side were so sharp she had herself bled. Since this occurred from 1674 to 1690, she would have been bled 192 times in honour of the Sacred Heart, believing she was obeying Christ’s express injunctions.
“The Jesuits used their campaign of spreading devotion to the Sacred Heart as a means to spread other of their doctrines, including the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. Sister Marie Alacoque aspired also to sow the seeds of this belief: that the Mother of God was conceived in a manner beyond the human experience. She also insisted that those within her circle of influence swallow little slips of paper with pertinent messages written on them.
“‘You promised,’ she wrote to her brother, a priest, ‘that you would take the notes which I am sending you, one each day, on an empty stomach, and that you would have said nine masses, on nine Saturdays, in honour of the Immaculate Conception [of the Virgin Mary] and as many masses of the Passion, on nine Fridays, in honour of the Sacred Heart. I believe that none of those who shall be particularly devoted to It shall perish.’
“After these vigorous promotional campaigns, Rome’s Congregation of Rites was solicited to establish a feast of the Sacred Heart, a request denied in 1697. Thirty years the Order waited, using images, medals, booklets, pictures, stories, sermons, confraternities, and exhortations at confession to advance the Sacred Heart devotion.
“In 1727 and 1729, two more requests for a feast of the Sacred Heart were submitted. The Promotor of the Faith for the Congregation at that time was named Prospero Lambertini. He was a well-educated man and not much inclined towards the Jesuit programs, and he denied the requests. In his work ‘On the Canonization of Saints,’ Lambertini left us an account of the affair. ‘If one requests a feast for the Sacred Heart of Jesus,’ he marvels, ‘Why not also ask for one for the Sacred Side or the Sacred Eyes of Jesus? Or, even for the Heart of the Blessed Virgin!?’ Prospero Lambertini later became the Pope-scholar Benedict XIV. Little could he have foreseen that what he knew to be so preposterous would, after his day, infect the entire Roman Church. In the 19th century, the Roman Church established a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Mary, and even instituted a feast day in its honour” (The Error of the Sacred Heart Devotion, by heiromonk Aidan Keller).
Besides being bizarre to say the least, the visions and actions of Margaret Mary Alacoque are contrary to the Orthodox Faith. The Orthodox Church disapproves of the worship of the physical, human heart of Jesus as being a form of Nestorianism, separating the divine and human natures of Christ.
The great St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote: “We do not worship a created thing, but the Master of created things, the Word of God made flesh. Although the flesh itself, considered separately, is a part of created things, yet it has become the body of God. We do not worship this body after having separated it from the Word. Likewise, we do not separate the Word from the body when we wish to worship Him. But knowing that ‘the Word was made flesh,’ we recognize the Word existing in the flesh as God.” (Ep. ad Adelph., par. 3)
Anglican Bishop Chandler Holder Jones agrees with the Orthodox position. He writes, “Anglo-Papalists included this feast in the Anglican and English Missals, but the Sacred Heart tradition is relatively modern and certainly post-Tridentine, originating as it does in the seventeenth and eighteenth century… As such, it is not part of the devotional tradition of the ancient and patristic catholicism of the undivided Church.”
By Fr. Victor Novak