Ironic Catholic tagged me for the latest Meme: One's 5 favorite devotions.
So, in no particular order:
1. Eucharistic Adoration. I belong to a parish with Perpetual Adoration and I am perpetually thankful for the chance to perpetually throw myself at Our Lord's feet on demand.
2. The Jesus Prayer: ever since I learned it, I have found myself praying it constantly, especially in times of frustration, trouble, or absolute adoration (as in during the Consecration and Elevation at Mass)
3. The Sacred Heart of Jesus - I grew up with this devotion, left it forgotten as it was "Mom's" but experienced the Sacred Heart for myself one summer when I sought Christ...and He answered. It is a quiet, but profound devotion.
4. The Passion of Our Lord: when I pray, I pray through the Passion. When I suffer, when I want to understand the hardship of life, I flee to the shadow of the Cross and embrace the bloody wood. Nothing else suffices. Give me Our Lord crowned with thorns, those thorns originally meant for my own flesh as punishment for my own sin, or give me nothing at all.
5. Iconography: I'm still learning and will be for a lifetime (God willing that I continue). It is contemplative, forces one to live (and pray!) in the present, reveals all flaws, drawing one on to greater holiness with every step. It is a liturgical experience not just of the Creation narrative, but of liturgy itself, for it is a sacred ritual, intending to do what the Church does, meaning what the Church intends, opening a window to Heaven, and, deeply entering in.
** Please note that the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours are not devotions. They are Liturgy, and in the case of the Mass (especially every Sunday) it is NECESSARY. Both the Mass and the LOH are the formal prayer of the Church. While I also pray the rosary as a devotion, it is the Liturgy of the Hours that supersedes it in importance in the life of prayer in the Church and the world. This should suffice to explain why I listed neither in my 5 favorite devotions. :-)
I don't know who to tag as I think everyone has already done this one. So...tag thyself and note thy self-tagging in the combox!
9 comments:
I'll go with:
1) Rosary
2) Liturgy of the Hours
3) Stations of the Cross
4) Eucharistic Adoration
5) Scriptural Meditations
I'm not going to tag anyone else, though.
Great list and I'm smacking my head right now...why didn't I list LOH?
Then I realized...just as I consider Mass to be a necessity, not a devotion, so it is for the Liturgy of the Hours. As the LOH makes the Paschal Mystery present, it is not a devotion. It is Liturgy.
Are the two by necessity mutually exclusive? Mass is certainly an absolute necessity for all the Faithful; LOH, however, is optional for lay (though not for clergy), so I think it's still fair game to include it.
Equus ~ Nah, I didn't mean it's not valid to include as a devotion, I was just "writing out loud" when I realized the main part of my prayer life wasn't included in my post!
Certainly one who just, say, reads it devotionally, but not properly, it is merely a devotion.
But by your own comment, Daily Mass isn't *required* but even so, when one is doing what the Church intends (ie as with Mass which is liturgical worship), it is still Mass. Mass is *never* merely devotional.
So it is when one prays the LOH, even if one picks it up once per year and prays Morning Prayer of the Loh, or Vespers, etc, at the proper times and doing so properly (ie not skipping psalms or canticles, etc).
So, really....LOH is not normally a "devotion". It is akin to Mass, being an act of liturgical worship in union with the entire Church.
However, I am not sneezing at someone who includes the LOH as a "devotion". No worries!
Could you please tell me what is "The Jesus Prayer"? I note you list it very highly in your Devotions Memel. Any/all information/suggestions about it that you can share would be greatly appreciated. Thank you and AWESOME blog!!!
Anonymous~ Thanks for your comment.
"The Jesus Prayer" comes from the Eastern lung of the Church, meaning both from those who are in union with Rome and the Eastern Orthodox. I don't know much about how it's prayed on the "chotki" but that's a keyword you can use for further research.
In any case, the prayer is an ancient one and is a single line, prayed, "Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." You may find some renderings of it simply saying, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me."
Here is one link about it:
http://www.iconsexplained.com/iec/iec_idb3r.htm#prayer_of_the_heart
For the record, I pray it as a random, repetetive heartfelt prayer, not by using the chotki.
This blog post from a Byzantine Catholic may also be of assistance to you:
http://byztex.blogspot.com/2009/07/series-on-jesus-prayer.html
Also, Anon, if you would be so courteous, please note the commenting policy on my sidebar, and if you comment again, please leave some initials or a handle. It does not have to be your real name so be assured your anonymity is maintained while we here can still "speak" to you in such a way that recognizes your dignity as a human being.
Thank you and God bless you! I hope the Jesus Prayer bears as much fruit for you as it constantly does for me!
1 Divine Mercy Chaplet. I don't know exactly when I started doing this but I always pray at least one decade of the chaplet before Mass and it really helps to put the Mass into perspective in relating it to the crucifixion
2 Ditto to your number two.
3 The "forgotten wounds"
Again I don't know exactly when this started but I have come to love the shoulder wound, head wounds and lash wounds. This was greatly influenced by our Lady's appearing at Kebiho and the meditations she gave there
4 Our Lady of Perpetual Help
5 The Passion
JMJ+
Totus tuus Maria! Let's see what the good God wills.
PS On the topic of LOH
I was visiting the cloistered Dominican nuns in Farmington Hills and Sister Mary Rose said that the LOH is an elongation of the Mass. I thought that was quite an interesting way of looking at it
Miria Rose ~ Yes, she was right about that. :-) Good list you have!
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