temperateness of the seasons of the year, and the fruitful-. ness of the earth, and it is called Rogation from the verb Rogo, to ask, by reason of the petitions made to God in that behalf. Q. What means the Quatuor tempora, or four Ember weeks, or Ember Days? A. Those are times also of public prayer, fasting, and processions, partly instituted for the successful ordination of the priests and ministers of the church, and partly both to beg and render thanks to God for the fruits and blessings of the earth. And are called Ember days or days of Ashes, from the no less ancient than religious custom of using hair-cloth aud ashes, in time of public prayer and penance; or from the old custom of eating nothing on those days till night, and then only a cake baked under the embers or ashes, which was called, Panis subcineritius, or Ember bread. Q. What mean the two Festivals of the Holy Cross ? A. Those are two ancient feasts; the one in memory of the miraculous invention, or finding out of the holy cross by St. Helen, mother of Constantine the great, after it had been hid and buried by the Infidels one hundred and eighty years, who had erected a Statue of Venus in the place of it. The other in memory of the exaltation, or setting up the holy cross by Heraclius the emperor, who having regainea it a second time from the Persians, after it had been lost fourteen years, carried it on his own shoulders to Mount Calvary, and there exalted it with great solemnity; and it is called Holy Cross, for the great sanctity which it received by touching and bearing the oblation of the most precious body of Christ. CHAP. XXIV. Some Ceremonies of the Church Erpounded. Q. WHAT is holy water? A. A water sanctified by the word of God and prayer, 1 Tim. iv. 5. in order to certain spiritual effects. Q: What are those effects? A. The chief are, 1. To make us mindful of our bap tism, by which we entered into Christ's mystical body, and therefore we are taught to sprinkle ourselves with it as often as we enter the material Temple (which is a type thereof) to celebrate his praise. 2. To fortify against the illusions of evil spirits, against whom it hath great force, as witnessed Theodoret, Eccl. Hist. 1. 5. c. 31. And hence arose the proverb, He loves it (speaking of things we hate) as the Devil loves holy water. Q. How ancient is the use of holy water? A. Ever since the apostles' time: Pope Alexander I., who was but the seventh Pope from St. Peter, makes mention of it in one of his epistles. Q. Why is incense offered in the church? A. To raise in the mind of the people an awe of the mysteriousness in the action to which it is applied, and to beget a pious esteem of it, as also to signify, that our prayers ought to ascend like a sweet perfume in the sight of God. Q. Why is the cross carried before us in procession? A. To show that our pilgrimage in this life is nothing but a following of Christ crucified. Q. Why are our foreheads signed with holy ashes on Ash Wednesday? A. To remind us of what we are made, and to admonish us to do penance for our sins, as the Ninevites did in fasting, sack-cloth, and ashes, especially in the holy time of Lent. Q. Who ordained the solemn fast of Lent? A. The twelve Apostles, according to Hierom. Epist. ad Marcel. in memory and imitation of our Saviour's fasting forty days. Q. Why are the crosses and holy images covered in time of Lent ? A. To signify that our sins (for which we then do penance) interpose betwixt God and us, and to express an ecclesiastical kind of mourning in reference to our Saviour's passion. Q. Why is a veil drawn betwixt the altar-piece and the people in Lent time? A. To intimate, that, as our sins are as a veil which hinder us from seeing the beatific vision, or face of God; and as the veil of the temple was rent at the death of Christ, so is the veil of our sins by virtue of his cross and passion, if we apply it by worthy fruits of penance. Q. What means the fifteen lights set on the triangular figure on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in holy week? A. The number of lights corresponds to certain parts of the office. The triangular figure signifies, that all light of grace and glory is from the blessed Trinity; and fourteen of those lights are extinguished one by one after every Psalm, to show how all their light of spiritual comfort was extin guished for a time in those most Holy Saints, by the passion and burial of Christ. The fifteenth light is put under the altar to signify his being in the sepulchre, as also the darkness that overspread the whole earth at his death. Q. What signifies the noise made after a long silence at the end of the office of Tenebræ ? A. The silence signifies the horror of our Saviour's death; the noise, the cleaving of the rocks and rending the veil of the temple which then happened. Q. Why is the paschal candle blessed and set up at Easter? A. To signify the new light of the spiritual joy and comfort, which Christ brought us at his resurrection; and it is lighted from the beginning of the Gospel till after the communion, between Easter and Ascension, to signify the apparitions which Christ made to his disciples during that space. Q. Why is the font hallowed? A. Because the Apostles so ordered it, as tradition testifies. Q. Why is that ceremony performed at the feast of Easter and Whitsuntide ? A. To show, that as in baptism we are buried with Christ, so by virtue of his resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Ghost, we ought to rise again, and walk with him in newness of life. Q. Why are churches blessed or consecrated? A. Because they bear a figure of the spiritual, viz. the mys tical body of Christ, which is holy and unspotted. Ephes. v. 27. as also to move us to some special reverence and devotion in that place, and all things should be holy in some measure, which appertain to the service of our most Holy God. Q. Why is the altar consecrated? A. Because if the altar in the old law was so holy that it sanctified the gift, Matt. xxiii. 19. much more ought the altar of the new law to be holy, which is the place of the body and blood of Christ, according to Optatus, in his sixth book against Parmenian the Donatist: "We have an altar (saith St. Paul) whereof they (the Jews) have no power to eat, who serve the tabernacle." Heb. xiii. 10. THE END. |