Category: Sacred Liturgy & Sacraments

Blessing of Cars 2024

Today, in honor of Saint Elia (Elijah), the Holy Prophet, Fr. Dennis blessed cars and the riding lawnmower. The blessing has become an annual event to honor the Holy Prophet.

Why do we bless cars and various modes of transportation? We bless modes of transportation for several reasons:

~to protect you and also to help others
~to remind ourselves that we are to be courteous drivers and giving into road aggression
~to not be reckless in driving, especially being distracted
~since the Middle Ages priests blessed horses, wagons, boats
with the rise of pilgrimage, the Church asked for divine protection upon for pilgrims to the Holy Land or to Canterbury, or to Santiago de Compostela due to the arduous adventure fighting disease and criminals.

So, prayer seeks a blessing, it expresses gratitude for the material gift of vehicles, and it asks for a defense against evil with the help of God. Our seeking divine protection over material things and actions, we express our dependence upon the Creator who gives and sustains us.

Greek Catholics, like we Melkites, invoke the intercession of Saint Elias and Saint Nicholas while the Latin Catholics invoke the intercession of Saint Frances of Rome, Saint Michael and Saint Christopher.

The prayer reads:

O Master, Lord our God, hearken unto the prayer which we now send up to You and bless these vehicles with your holy right hand + ; send down upon it they guardian Angel, that all who desire to journey therein may be safely preserved and shielded from every end; and as the Ethiopian, riding in the chariot and reading your holy prophecy, was granted faith and grace through your Apostle Philip.

So do you now manifest the path of salvation who shall travel in this conveyance, that with your helping grace they may be vouchsafed everlasting joy in your heavenly Kingdom. For yours is the might, and the Kingdom, and the power, and unto you do we send up glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

May Christ our true God, through the intercession of His all-pure Mother, through the protection of the bodily powers, of the holy, glorious and all praise-worthy Apostles, and Saint Nicholas, the Holy Prophet Elias and all the saints, have mercy on and save us, as He is good and loves mankind.

(Sprinkling each of the vehicles with holy water, says:)

The car is blessed in the name of the Father +, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

At the Altar

At the altar comes the focus we ought to have: Jesus Christ as the center. Holy Mass centers our attention on what it means to be in relationship with all that is by grace. I am convinced that the sacred Liturgy is the vehicle of faith, the lex orandi [the law of prayer], is theologia prima serves powerfully to teach, to form, and to unite us.

One should read Benedict XVI’s Sacramentum Caritatis which speaks to the centrality of the Eucharist as the identity of the Church. We know from experience that the Eucharist is irreducible to another religious practice. That is, the Eucharist is not one ritual among others. It is, however, the privileged way that the Church encounters the mystery of love in Jesus Christ.

Our goal is for true worship

Today, the Roman Church recalls the memory of the first century philosopher and Christian apologist, St. Justin Martyr. The question before every Christian is the one based on what Justin taught, “No one who is right thinking stoops from true worship to false worship.” Are we right thinking? How do we objectively measure this notion of right thinking and true worship? What does it matter? Is there a societal and personal impact of false worship? And, what is right and true worship versus false worship, anyways, since much has been changed since the 16th century?

Some will explain these ideas away to justify almost anything. While to interrogate the truth of the experience we have before the Triune God and Tradition ought to speak for itself.

Happy feast of Saint Justin, martyr!

The Liturgical Vocation of Man

In the liturgy of St John Chrysostom, the Cherubic Hymn (“We who mystically represent the Cherubim”) shows the icon of the angelic ministry of adoration and of prayer in man. It is also the moment where the angelic hosts join the liturgical celebration. Man is associated with their song first in the Trisagion (“Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal”) and then the Sanctus resumes the theme of the Anaphora, the eucharistic praise of the Trinity. Men and angels are united in the same élan of adoration (“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of Thy Glory”). The content of the age to come, “full of glory,” begins already on earth.

A saint is not a superman, but one who discovers and lives his truth as a liturgical being. The best definition of man comes from the Liturgy: The human being is the one of the Trisagion and of the Sanctus (*I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live”). St Antony speaks of a doctor who gave the poor all that he did not need and sang the Trisagion all day long, uniting himself to the choir of angels. It is for this “action” that man is “set apart,” made holy. To sing to God is his one preoccupation, his unique “labor”: “And there came from the throne a voice that said: ‘Praise God, all you his servants’ ” (Rv 7:11). In the catacombs, the most frequent image is the figure of a woman in prayer, the Orant; she represents the one true attitude of the human soul. It is not enough to say prayers; one must become, be prayer, prayer incarnate. It is not enough to have moments of praise. All of life, each act, every gesture, even the smile of the human face, must become a hymn of adoration, an offering, a prayer. One should offer not what one has, but what one is. This is a favored subject in iconography. It translates the message of the Gospel: chaire, “rejoice and be glad,” “let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” This is the astonishing lightening of the weight of the world, when man’s own heaviness vanishes. “The King of Kings, the Christ is coming, and this is the “one thing needful.” The doxology of the Lord’s Prayer (“the kingdom and the power, and the glory”) is the heart of the liturgy. It is to respond to his vocation as a liturgical being that man is charismatic, the one who bears the gifts of the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit Himself: “You have been sealed with the Holy Spirit … you whom God has taken for His own, to make His glory praised” (Eph 1:14). One could not state more precisely the liturgical essence and destiny of man.

Paul Evdokimov (1901-70)

Blessing of Flowers

Melkite Blessing of Flowers
Dormition of the Holy Theotokos, August 15

At the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy

Deacon: Let us pray to the Lord.
All: Lord have mercy.

Priest:

Lord Jesus Christ, our God, you admired the lilies of the fields and asked us to imitate them by putting aside worldly care and depending on your Divine Providence. We ask you to bless these flowers which were offered in honor of your all-holy Mother, the Ever-virgin Mary, on the occasion of her passing to heavenly glory.

Accept, O Lord, these flowers as a sweet fragrance. Fill the hearts of those who offered them and those who will receive them with love for You and your Holy Mother who is also the heavenly mother of us all. And through her intercession, make us worthy to cast off the old man and put on the new man created in your likeness.

For You are the source of all holiness, and to You we render glory and to your Eternal Father and your All-Holy, Good and Living-giving Spirit, now and always and forever and ever.

Amen.

Honoring St Elias with a blessing of cars

Today (and on his July 20th feast day) Father Dennis blessed cars and bicycles.

The prayer for the blessing:

Lord our God, You make the clouds your chariot. You ride on the wings of the wind. You sent to your servant Elias a fiery chariot to carry him up to heaven. You guided man to invent amazing means of transportation.

Therefore, O Lord, we humbly ask You to bless our cars and bicycles. Send to their drivers Guardian Angels to protect them from all harm.

Make them arrive safely to their destination through the intercession of Our Lady of Guidance and St Elias-the-Living and all your saints.

For in your ineffable Providence, You are the Provider of all good things and to You we render glory, thanksgiving and worship, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and always and forever and ever. Amen.

The priest sprinkles each care with Holy Water saying:

May this car be blessed in the of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Procession of the Holy Cross

According to the Synaxarion, the feast celebrates the veneration of the Holy Cross in Constantinople. The early days of August were dangerous in antiquity. Because of the heat, many diseases became strong, and so the Cross was displayed in various places in the city for fourteen days. This feast was then introduced into Rus in the fifteenth century.

Today it announces the coming of the great feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14, approximately forty days from now. I think in may ways we misunderstand the Cross, we equate it with pain and suffering, as a negative sign that Christians were made to be miserable. That is not what St. Paul says in today’s epistle, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God …. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 18:18.23-24).

St. John calls the Cross the glory of Jesus, not because of its ugliness, but because it witnesses to the infinite love of God for his people. Because of love the cross is a “trophy of victory.”

In the Ambon Prayer of the Feast of the Exaltation, we pray, “You are glorified by the exaltation of your venerable Cross and by it accomplish our purification from the pride of demons.” As the people of Constantinople centuries ago looked to the Cross for deliverance from illness, we look at it today as our hope for deliverance from sin and evil.

Meditation by Archpriest David Petras

Blessing of a Car

In honor of St. Elijah (Elias), we have the car blessed. Here is the Melkite text:

Priest: Let us pray to the Lord.

Response: Lord, have mercy.

Priest: Lord our God, You make the clouds your conveyance; You travel on the wings of the wind; you sent to your servant Elijah a fiery chariot as a means of conveyance; You guided man to invent this car which is as fast as the wind: Therefore, O Lord, pour now upon it your heavenly blessings. Grant unto it a guardian angel that it may be guided upon the rightful road and be preserved against all harm. Enable those who ride in this car to arrive safely at their destination.

For in your ineffable Providence, You are the Provider of all things, and to You we give glory, to Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and always and for ever and ever. Amen.

[The priest sprinkles the car three times with holy water, each time saying:]

May this car be blessed + in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Gospel Proclaimed in Greek at St Peter’s, 2020

The Gospel Proclaimed in Greek at Pope’s Easter Mass doesn’t seem newsworthy unless you have a special concern for the catholic Church’s Sacred (Divine) Liturgy. Yesterday caught our attention.

If you watched Pope Francis’ Easter Mass at St Peter’s Basilica yesterday, then you may have noticed the very moving gospel of the Resurrection sung in Greek. The deacon, Gianpiero Vaccaro, from the Italo-Albanian Eparchy of Lungro (Calabria, Italy, is also a student of the Pontifical Greek College in Rome.

It was a good thing to see this “tradition” for Easter as it gives one the sense of greater universality of the Catholic Church. As you know, the Church is much more that Latin; for that matter, it is much larger than the Greek Churches, too. We do have the Armenian, Chaldean, Coptic, and Syriac families! Wouldn’t be nice to hear the Gospel sung in liturgical Armenian or Syriac (or Aramaic)?

In the meantime, let us pray for Deacon Gianpiero Vaccaro and his ministry for the Eparchy of Lungro.

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