DEVOTIONS

DEVOTIONS / PRACTICES

Devotions are popular prayers, rituals and pious practices of worship of God used by individuals or groups to worship God or venerate Mary and the saints. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops describes devotions as "expressions of love and fidelity that arise from the intersection of one's own faith, culture and the Gospel of Jesus Christ".
Eucharistic altar
Devotions are not considered part of liturgical worship, even if they are performed in a church or led by a priest, but rather they are paraliturgical. Here are few examples of Catholic devotions:
Catholic devotions have various forms, ranging from formalized, multi-day prayers such as novenas to activities, such as processions or the Eucharistic adoration, the wearing of scapulars, the veneration of the saints, the Canonical coronations of sacred Marian or Christological images and even horticultural practices such as maintaining a Mary garden.
Jesus challenges us to take up our own cross and follow him. He calls us to the spiritual discipline of submission. Paul says we must "have the same mindset as Christ Jesus," who submitted to God the Father all the way to "death on a cross." Some disciples become martyrs, but most must sacrifice only their self-interest for the good of others, which is hard enough. So we look to the courageous Christ, the epitome of submission (see Luke 22:39-46). Paul's advice is that if we take "encouragement from being united with Christ" and "have the same mindset as Christ Jesus," we will have all we need to follow Jesus wherever he is going.
God the Son submitted to the Father from the beginning (John 1:1-5, 9-14), knowing he would eventually die on the cross. Now we are called to sub­­mit to our Savior. This isn't easy, and it's for life, but this is the glorious way of his coming kingdom
The cross represents obedience. Remember Scripture tells us that Jesus was obedient unto death, and that same obedience marks the man or woman of faith who can honestly say, “Not my will, Lord, but yours be done today!”
The word Paul used when he said, “I have been crucified with Christ” is a past tense with present tense application. In other words, it began at a certain point. That was the day he shouldered His cross and began walking with God, but it continues day by day, with a renewal every morning. In 1693, the Christian hymn writer, Thomas Shepherd, “Must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world go free?” No, there’s a cross for everyone, and there’s a cross for me.”
Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament is the Queen of all devotions. It is the central devotion of the Church. All other devotions gather round it, and group themselves there as satellites; for other devotions celebrate his mysteries; this is Himself. It is the universal devotion. No one can be without it….How can a man be a Christian who does not worship the living presence of Christ?
All the attraction of the Church is in Jesus, and His chief attraction is the Blessed Sacrament. The Blessed Sacrament is the property of the souls of men….

Our hands hold Him…our tongue rests Him…our soul feels Him…our flesh feeds upon Him… the INFINITE, the INCOMPREHENSIBLE, the IMMENSE, the ETERNAL [God]. Must not all life be looked at in this light, just as the whole Church lies in this light and has no other? What [should be] more attentive, what more reverent, what more familiar, what more timid, what more happy, than the worship of the Blessed Sacrament

It [should] be every man’s trade, occupation, profession, leisure, and ambition, to worship the Blessed Sacrament…. But Oh! the awful solitude that reigns around the tabernacle!”

From The Blessed Sacrament, by F.W. Faber, taken, adapted and condensed from pages 400-452 (TAN Books).

If you walk into a Catholic church, you will immediately notice something unique. The tabernacle occupies a prominent place and the sanctuary lamp is always lit. The central positioning of the tabernacle bears testimony to the way the Church views the Eucharist in the life of faith. For us Catholics the Eucharist is the center and source of our spiritual life. All that we do outside the church converges on the Eucharist. And it is the Eucharist that gives us the motivation and the impetus to carry on the mission of Christ In the world.

Visits To The Blessed Sacrament
Visit to the Blessed Sacrament is a devotional practice of visiting a church and praying in front of the Eucharist, where Catholics believe Jesus is sacramentally present. According to John Paul XII, "The visit to the Blessed Sacrament is a great treasure of the Catholic faith." It is "the fountainhead of all devotional works," said St. Pius X. In 1965, Pope Paul VI issued the Encyclical Mysterium Fidei whereby he urged daily mass and communion and said that "In the course of the day the faithful should not omit to visit the Blessed Sacrament."
To emphasize the importance of this practice, a Doctor of the Church, St. Alphonsus Liguori, wrote a book on Visits to the Blessed Sacrament and he explained that a visit to the Blessed Sacrament is the "practice of loving Jesus Christ", since friends who love each other visit regularly.
  • The grace of adoration of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament is given to everybody. (St. Peter Julian Eymard)
  • Our Lord hears our prayers anywhere, but He has revealed to His servants that those who visit Him in the Eucharist will obtain a more abundant measure of grace. ( St. Alphonsus Liguori)
  • It is impossible in human terms to exaggerate the importance of being in adoration before the Eucharist as often and for as long as our duties and state of life allow. (Fr. John Hardon)
  • Do you want the Lord to give you many graces? Visit Him often. Do you want Him to give you few graces? Visit Him rarely
  • Do you want the devil to attack you? Visit Jesus rarely in the Blessed Sacrament. Do you want him to flee from you? Visit Jesus often! (St. John Bosco)
  • Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament has His hands full of graces and He is ready to bestow them on anyone who asks for them. (St. Peter of Alcantara).
  • A Holy Hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament is worth more than a thousand years of human glory. (St. Padre Pio)
  • Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament consoles a soul far beyond what the world can offer. (St. Alphonsus Ligouri)
  • A Holy Hour of adoration testifies to the fact that the Jesus who died on the cross, is present in the Eucharist, and reigns in Heaven, are identical. (Pope Pius XII)
  • Our Lord is hidden there in the Blessed Sacrament, waiting for us to come and visit Him, and make our requests to Him. (St. John Vianney)
  • I understand that, each time we contemplate with desire and devotion the Host in which is hidden Christ's Eucharistic Body, we increase our merits in heaven and secures special joys to be ours later in the beatific vision of God. (St. Gertrude)
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the love symbolized by the Lord’s heart, originated among Christian mystics in the 13th and 14th centuries. It spread more widely as the result of the vision of the Sacred Heart received by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French nun, in the 16th century. Over the years, it was associated with attending Mass and receiving Holy Communion on the first Friday of each month. It was common for Catholic families to hang a picture of the Sacred Heart in their home as a sign of their devotion. The feast of the Sacred Heart was added to the Church's liturgical calendar in 1856 and is celebrated on the Friday after Corpus Christi.
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Apostleship of Prayer: Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is promoted by the Apostleship of Prayer, founded in France in 1844. This world-wide organization encourages daily prayer for the church and the world, recitation of the Morning Offering, and prayers for the monthly intentions of the Holy Father.

Devotion to the Most Precious Blood arose out of a late medieval spirituality common in western Europe which stressed how salvation was rooted in the bloody sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The devotion may have originated in Flanders as early as the 13th century, prompted by a relic of the precious blood in the city of Bruges. The Feast of the Precious Blood was celebrated in Spain by the mid-16th century and was added to the liturgical calendar of the universal church in 1849 by Pope Pius IX. It was removed in the liturgical reforms following the Second Vatican Council on the grounds that the precious,blood was already honored in other liturgical feasts.
These devotions honoring God’s mercy revealed in Jesus Christ originated in revelations perceived by St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun and mystic, who lived in the first half of the twentieth century. During the course of Jesus’ revelations to St. Faustina he asked that a feast day dedicated to Divine Mercy be established on the Sunday after Easter, when the Gospel reading recounts the institution of the Sacrament of Penance. This feast was first celebrated in Poland and later in Vatican City. It was extended to the universal church by St. Pope John Paul II on the occasion of the canonization of St. Faustina in 2000. In addition to the annual feast, devotion to Divine Mercy includes a nine-day novena which precedes the feast and regular recitation of the Divine Mercy Chaplet.
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Although there is little historical evidence, it is likely that devotion to Mary began early on in the Christian tradition. For Christian believers, the gradual recognition that Jesus was both human and divine made Mary not only his human mother but also the "Mother of God" (“Theotokos” in Greek). By the 7th century, the church was celebrating five annual feasts of the Blessed Virgin. Although the Protestant Reformers rejected many of the claims made for Mary, the Catholic Counter-Reformation vigorously promoted them and popular devotion to Mary grew, especially in Spain and France. Mary’s Immaculate Conception, a feast first celebrated in the 15th century, was proclaimed a doctrine of the Church in 1854; her assumption into heaven was proclaimed a doctrine in 1950. In 1964, the Second Vatican Council recommended that devotion of the Blessed Virgin be generously fostered, but warned against exaggerations of Marian devotion which distract from focus on Christ, “the source of all truth, sanctity and piety” (Sacred Constitution on the Church, #67). Marian apparitions are considered to be private revelations; according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, apparitions don’t improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but help the faithful to live it more fully at a certain period of history” (cf. #67).
The primary Marian feasts which the church celebrates each year are:
  • Mother of God (January 1)
  • Purification (February 2)
  • Annunciation (March 25)
  • Queen of Heaven (May 31)
  • Assumption into heaven (August 15)
  • Birth (September 8)
  • Immaculate Conception (December 8)
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Rosary -- The Rosary as we know it was introduced by St. Dominic in the early 13th century and popularized by Alan of Rupe in the late 15th century. Some early forms of the Rosary consisted of fifteen “decades” (groups of ten beads), but the popular Rosary used today consists of five decades; each decade consists of the Lord’s Prayer, ten Hail Marys, and the Glory Be. The beads help occupy the senses so that the mind can contemplate the sacred mysteries of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. These mysteries, assigned to different days, are divided into Glorious (on Sundays and Wednesdays), Joyful (on Mondays and Saturdays), Sorrowful (on Tuesdays and Fridays) and Luminous Mysteries (on Thursdays).
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