We Need Sacramentals
The Church is filled with a multitude of sacramentals. The Church has officially established numerous ceremonies for the blessing of water, salt, oil, candles, bread, houses, cars, trains, children, pets, farm animals, crucifixes, Rosaries, and more. There are official blessings for those who are sick – one for children and another for adults. There are blessings for engaged couples, wedding rings, pregnant mothers, and mothers who have recently given birth. There are blessings for wheelchairs, fishing tackle, and cheese. There is even an official blessing for beer!
The Church blesses the ordinary things of everyday life – people that we love, things that we find in our homes, things that we eat, and things that we use every day. By having an official blessing for each of these things, the Church seeks to transform the world of our everyday experience into a place where God lives and acts and gives us his love in a special way. These ceremonies “sanctify almost every event of [our] lives with the divine grace that flows from the…Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ” (Catechism, 1670). What does that mean?
“…church, altar, and other such inanimate things…acquire special spiritual power…” - St. Thomas Aquinas
Jesus of Nazareth suffered and died for us. He is risen now, and living at the right hand of the Father. St. Paul says that Jesus is “the Bridegroom” and the Church is “his Bride.” Day and night Jesus is calling out to his Bride and showing her signs of love and favor. His Bride (the Church) too is calling upon the Bridegroom and asking him to show his love and give his grace. When he was on earth, Jesus made some very big promises to his Bride. “Whatever you ask in prayer you shall receive, if you have faith” (Mt. 21:22). So the Church is confident that whatever she asks of Jesus, he will grant. This confidence abounded in the early Church: “And this is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us “(1 Jn. 5:14). In short, the Church knows that whatever she asks the Bridegroom for she will receive.
In a sacramental, when a minister of the Church performs the ceremony, something supernatural happens. What happens is that the Bride is approaching the Bridegroom and asking him to show his love and transform in some way the people and things that are being blessed. Now, the Bridegroom does not deny his Bride what she sincerely and devoutly asks. When the Bride asks, Jesus fulfills his promise. He changes the people and the things blessed in whatever way it is that the minister asks for. For example, when water is blessed, the priest asks that the water become “an agent of divine grace” and that it would “drive away evil spirits and dispel sickness” and that sprinkling it with the name of Jesus on one’s lips will obtain good health. Jesus in turn fulfills that plea, and bestows upon the water what was asked. Through the ceremony of blessing the water becomes holy water. It drives away evil spirits, it dispels sickness, and gives health when sprinkled with faith in Jesus. Jesus has touched the water with his power, and now it carries something of his power in it. St. Thomas Aquinas says that through such ceremonies of blessing a “church, altar, and other such inanimate things…acquire special spiritual power…”
And so it is with the cord and medal of our Confraternity. In the enrollment ceremony, a Dominican priest (or another kind of priest who is specially authorized by the Director) speaks for the Bride. Through the mouth of the priest, the Bride asks Jesus so to transform the cord and medal and person who wears them so that “whoever reverently carries and wears them (the cord and medal) may be purified from all uncleanness of mind and body.” The Church asks the Lord to reach out and touch the cord and medal with his power and give to them something of his own spiritual power – the power to purify from sexual immorality the mind and body of the person who wears the cord and medal. And Jesus does so. That is why so many people notice that when they take off the blessed cord or medal for a time temptations increase, and when they put the blessed cord and medal back on temptations diminish. The cord and medal have acquired a “special spiritual power” that makes a difference for the person who wears them. That is why a worn out blessed cord should not simply be thrown away, but burned. It is a sacred article.
Catholics everywhere should seek out many sacramentals. It is very beneficial to take some salt to a priest, ask him to bless it, to sprinkle it in the four corners of one’s house and cook with it. One should take some oil to a priest, ask him to bless it, and use it to make the sign of the cross just like one does with holy water. It could be olive oil or oil from a shrine, e.g. the oil of S. Joseph from Oratory of St. Joseph in Montreal. Or take some candles to a priest and ask him to bless them. Everyone should invite a priest over to bless the house or apartment, the car, the candles, the sacred images, the kids, and the pets. Every room in the house should have at least one blessed image or crucifix in it. The spiritual treasures of the Church’s sacramentals are too many to count. It is high time for Catholics to take advantage of them. Through them all, Christ will touch and transform our world here and there, again and again, more and more, until all things are finally submitted to his love.
