Catholic Lent
At this time of the year, back home in Ecuador, parents are planning vacations to go enjoy holly week with their families. As a family, we usually spend these days enjoying each other’s company at the beaches nearby our city. Being born and raced in Ecuador, a country with a majority of catholic population, I have observed that for the parishioners the path to holly week is very serious.
To learn about the importance and rituals that happen during this time called lent, I have asked a catholic friend to introduce me to the practices and let me have a peek on it. As explained to me, lent is the moment of conversion, in order to get prepared for Easter. It is an occasion to repent of sins. It seems like a time of reflection where Catholics try to mend their errors to become better persons. For conversion, Catholics want to give the Lord all their heart in fasting, in weeping, and in mourning.
The period of conversion lasts forty days, starting with Ash Wednesday. On this day parishioners go to mass and get the sign of the cross on their forehead marked with ashes. The colors observed for the decoration of the church and the clothing of the priest is purple which means mourning and penitence. The ashes are made out of blessed palms used in Palm Sunday the previous year; they are christened with holy water and scented with incense. At the moment where the faithful get the ashes, the priest who is the person marking the cross tells them a remainder saying: dust you are and dust you will become. The remainder is there to help achieve a spirit o humility and sacrifice.
The distribution of ashes comes from a ceremony of ages past. Christians who had committed grave faults performed public penance. On Ash Wednesday, th...
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... are there to remind you how much love God has for you. She says God sent his loved child as a sacrifice to die for the sins of the world so that we can all be saved. She explains to me that even though this took place, humans tend to forget, and so the images are there to remind us how much better persons we can be, and how we can offer our pain for the recovery of others.
My friend explains to me that the idea of being free of sin is to achieve eternal life, and that this is a personal achievement. Although I observe groups of people walking from one station to the other, she lets me know that usually families spend this time of the year together and do the different events of Lint as a group, or join their praying groups to go through the events.
Works Cited
Joel 2:12-18
Catholic Online
Genesis
Catholic Online,
Etymologies
Catholic News Agency
Source 1 displays the aspects of the Indigenous culture and spirituality during the festive season. It acknowledges the native Indigenous Aboriginals of Australia; specifically their land, sea, and their inhabitants. This source is almost a manual, giving instructions to what is to be done, being a step by step process in acknowledging “the light Jesus brought into the world”. “The light”, as Jesus is described, is a symbol of Truth and Righteousness, opposite to Darkness as that of Hell and Evil. The ceremony starts with a spiritual act of a coolamon being placed with stones every week, including the act of placing
The work begins with Section I, ‘The Background’ which consists of a general overview in medieval women’s social and religious history. The first section delineates the basic societal framework for Western European women in the High Middle Ages and outlines the cultural forces at work in shaping their lives. The second part of this section reviews the changes in religious consciousness concerning sacramental practices and fasting, from the Church Fathers to the late medieval hagiographers. It should be noted here that although more careful attention is given to the practice of ‘fasting,’ especially in the latter portion of the work which I will be examining in more detail, the ‘feasting’ in question more generally denotes the ‘love feast’ of the Eucharist than the fe...
Inquisitively I asked, "I don't get it. So you perform this ritual for different reasons? What are you trying to accomplish when you do it, get into Heaven or just avoid going to Hell? Or could it be that it's just to do the same thing Catholics have always done?"
Every year, on the day before Easter, one of the biggest and most important masses of the year happens on that night. The mass is called the Easter Vigil. The Vigil brings out the true and full nature of the Catholic Church and all of its people. It celebrates Jesus Christ, as he rises from the dead and ascends into heaven. Since this mass is so large, it is split into four parts. The first, the Service of Light, and is the most solemn part of the mass the Church celebrates. The second part is the Liturgy of the Word, in which you listen to a reader who reads from the books of the Bible such as Genesis and Exodus. The third part of the celebration is known as the Celebration of the Rites of Initiation. At this point people become part of the Church and receive such sacraments as Baptism, Communion, and Confirmation. The fourth part of the vigil is the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The Liturgy of the Eucharist is the climax of the Easter Vigil. The Easter Vigil is the biggest mass in the Church and it requires four parts in the Service of Light, The Liturgy of the Word, the Celebration of the Rights of Initiation, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, but also requires much more faith and concentration to fully appreciate it.
When someone dies their bones are burned and crushed into ash and consumed by the relatives. It puts a persons soul at peace to find a resting place within their family, it would be an abomination to bury them in the ground. Once this ceremony is finished the person is gone. Their name or person is never to be mentioned again.
The purpose of the liturgical year, according to Chittister, is to chronologically immerse us into Christ’s life through the gospels in mass. This means to follow a year that is unlike the calendar so we can begin the year with Jesus’ birth, in advent, and end with the ministry of his apostles, in ordinary time .
The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved February 21, 2010 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org
After the death of a person the eyes are closed, so the person can finally rest in peace. Some Jews place the body of the deceased on the floor immediately after death. This is done to cool the body to slow the deterioration of the body and also fulfill the biblical prognostication "for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return"(Genesis 3:19). A candle is then lit and placed near the corpse head to show respect to the soul that departed. In the past twenty-six candles were light around the body; twenty-six is the Jewish numerical number meaning "God." Today this is done only to show respect to the dead. Jewish people treat a close family members death similar to Americans. Relatives and friends of the deceased feel great distress, sorrow, and pain.
When death occurs, the body is prepared for viewing. People of the same gender prepare the body by laying their “hands across the chest, closing the eyelids, anointing the body with oil, and placing flower garlands around it.” (Leming & Dickinson, 2011, pg. 384). According to Leming and Dickinson, Hindus believe that cremation is “an act of sacrifice” because they are offering their body to God. The body is usually cremated on the bank of a sacred river. The book, Understanding dying, death, and bereavement offers an “invocation” that would be close to what a priest would recite, “Fire, you were lighted by him, so may he be lighted from you, that he may gain the regions of celestial bliss. May this offering prove auspicious.” Leming and Dickinson (2011) state that between 10-31 days post cremation, a feast (shraddha) is shared among mourners and priests. Shraddhas can last hours to days, depending on the wealth of the family. Once this shraddha is over, the mourning period comes to a close. It is said that the funeral is the second most important ritual, following a wedding, and that many families spend all the money they have on them, leading to impoverishment (Leming & Dickinson, 2011, p.
...t, monks will come and recite scriptures while mourners offer gifts. The body if taken to the cremation site on the fourth day while about eight monks carry a long white cord connected to the casket. At the place of cremation, family members take pictures by the casket and walk around the casket three times, symbolizing traveling through the cycle of death and rebirth. Ten “important people” then place a set of yellow robes on the white cord, after, the senior monk collects them. Buddhist tradition calls this symbolically contemplating the dead, which “brings merit to those who provide opportunity for the monks to do so (Cite text pg 366).” After the cremation the remaining ashes and bones are “made into the shape of a human being with the head facing east.” The remains are then put in a reliquary built in the monastery. Grief is not stressed in Buddhist ceremonies.
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptiz- ing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” ( Matt. 28:19-20 NIV ). The idea of sharing in the death of Christ connects remission of sins with baptism which the death of Christ effected. ( Act 2:38; 1 Pet. 3:21). Just as physical washing cleanses our bodies from filthiness, so also baptism symbolically cleanses our spirits through participation in the death of Christ. “For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink (I Cor. 12:13 NIV). In addition, baptism connects with spiritual birth along with the Spirit’s reception. Hence, participation in Christ’s resurrection indicates that the Holy Spirit is presently in our lives. Baptism is an indication of the relationship we have with Christ and wherever we find ourselves in the world, our deportment, attitude and disposition should be in alignment with our confession of faith. Jesus’ baptism should help us realize how much we are loved by God. Jesus died to pay a debt he did not owe to release from a debt we could not pay. Baptism is a two-fold operation because we are symbolically
Father Redmon explained in our interview that each person is to join his or her voice in united faith. My observation was of people outwardly participating e.g., kneeling, crossing themselves but vocal participation was minimal or left to the choir. During my interview with Father Redmon, I mentioned my observation regarding the various responses and he emphasized the centrality of the Eucharist, saying “Worship of the Holy Trinity through the Eucharist is the purpose of the church” and it is through this that they grow both individually and as the Church.
It is followed by years of catechesis before being completed late by Confirmation and the Eucharist, the summit of Christian initiation. Baptism is the Church 's way of celebrating and enacting the embrace of God and the promise of salvation. 'Peter replied, "Repent and be baptised..." ' (Acts 2: 38-39) Baptism happens not only to the individual, but also the wider Church. At the time of Christ it signified that the person being baptised became a follower of Christ and acquired a relationship with him. '... I (Paul) also baptised the household of Stephanas... ' (1 Corinthians 1:16) The rite is celebrated with the community present and actively participating. It is the community, who will journey with them throughout their
Easter is a religious holiday that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after his death by crucifixion about 2,000 years ago. For Christians, Easter is a day of religious services and the gathering of family. In many churches Easter comes after a season of prayer, abstinence, and fasting called Lent. This is observed in memory of the 40 days' fast of Christ in the desert. In Eastern Orthodox churches Lent is 50 days. In Western Christen religions Lent is observed for six weeks and four days.
Only through the words of consecration, “This is my Body… and this is my Blood”, can we truly experience the fruits of the Eucharist. This is only possible through God’s accordance with the Scriptures, Sacraments(the Eucharist in this case), minister(priest or bishop), and the people of the Church(The Body of Christ). Just like Jesus and his disciples during the Last Supper, all of the members of the Mass join in intercession in order to properly bestow power upon the Sacrament of the Eucharist. As the priest serves as a representation of Jesus, we serve as his disciples.