Catholics use different terms for our responses to what the great Dietrich von Hildebrand would refer to as the hierarchy of values, especially in response to Almighty God in the Holy Trinity, and his angels and saints. Most properly: we worship and adore God; we venerate the saints and offer greater devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph. When we participate in the Holy Mass, our response is worship through the sacrifice taking place on the Altar: we offer our sacrifices in union with Jesus Christ's. When we "make a visit" to the Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacle, or pray before the Host exposed in a monstrance, we adore His Real Presence and demonstrate our devotion. In The Catholic Herald, Father Ian Ker, the great Newman biographer writes about how Blessed John Henry Newman's devotion to Jesus as an Anglican led him to love His Real Presence in Catholic churches:
It is remarkable how it was the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament in Catholic churches that more than anything else impressed and moved Newman, even more than the Mass itself. And it tells us something very important not only about Newman but also about a central aspect of the impact of Catholicism on the imagination of the 19th-century English Protestant convert. Thus Newman is not only making a devotional and spiritual point when he writes to an Anglican friend:
I am writing next room to the Chapel – It is such an incomprehensible blessing to have Christ in bodily presence in one’s house, within one’s walls, as swallows up all other privileges … To know that He is close by – to be able again and again through the day to go in to Him …Newman is saying something very significant about objectivity and reality. For it was that concrete presence of Jesus in a material tabernacle which, for Newman, above all produced that “deep impression of religion as an objective fact” and which so impressed him about Catholicism. He admired “every where the signs of an awful and real system”. . . .
His almost obsessive preoccupation with this “Real Presence” was more than simply devotional: “It is really most wonderful to see this Divine Presence looking out almost into the open streets from the various Churches … I never knew what worship was, as an objective fact, till I entered the Catholic Church.” . . .
Newman’s fascination with the reservation of the Sacrament reflects his celebrated philosophical distinction between the notional and real, notions being intellectual abstractions and the real what we personally and concretely experience. Catholics, he insisted, worshipped not dogmatic definitions but “Christ Himself”, believing in the “[Real] Presence in the sacred Tabernacle not as a form of words”, or “as a notion, but as an Object as real as we are real”.
In his Meditations and Devotions, Newman offers this prayer for a visit to the Blessed Sacrament:
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
I place myself in the presence of Him, in whose Incarnate Presence I am before I place myself there.
I adore Thee, O my Saviour, present here as God and man, in soul and body, in true flesh and blood.
I acknowledge and confess that I kneel before that Sacred Humanity, which was conceived in Mary's womb, and lay in Mary's bosom; which grew up to man's estate, and by the Sea of Galilee called the Twelve, wrought miracles, and spoke words of wisdom and peace; which in due season hung on the cross, lay in the tomb, rose from the dead, and now reigns in heaven.
I praise, and bless, and give myself wholly to Him, who is the true Bread of my soul, and my everlasting joy.
Newman mentions a visit to the Blessed Sacrament as part of "the round of the day" in his "A Short Road to Perfection":
No comments:
Post a Comment