Skip to main content

West meets East

I love being Catholic.  (Shocking, I know!).  Every once in a while, I have an experience that rekindles that love or opens me to a new portal of discovery of the richness of the Catholic Church. 

Last month, I had the chance to experience this richness and communion in a new and deeper way when, at the invitation of one of our students, a few of us sisters visited Assumption Ukrainian Catholic Church as they hosted a replica of the Shroud of Turin. Since I teach Theology of the Church each year to my Juniors, I am aware that there are 21 Eastern Catholic Rites that are in union with Rome.  And that’s about it…awareness.

Even walking through the doors of the church that evening (and then two more times within the following week) was an invitation to recognize and enjoy the universality of the Church.  Beauty flooded my senses as I walked through the doors.  The following Sunday, I was overwhelmed by even more beauty as we prayed the Divine Liturgy in Ukrainian.  I was glad that we chose to go to the Ukrainian Liturgy for my first full experience of the Byzantine Rite. Since I don’t speak a word of Ukrainian, I was pretty grateful for the missalettes that offered the English translation alongside what was being prayed and that our student joined us to help us follow along.  The icons, the chanted Liturgy, the incense, the golden sanctuary, the reverence: one cannot help but be open to the greatness of God and truly raise the heart and mind to Him in prayer and worship, just based on what can be seen, heard, smelled and tasted. 
Inside Assumption Ukrainian Catholic Church
Something that was particularly striking to me throughout the Liturgy was the emphasis on mercy.  I cannot even count how many times we prayed ‘Lord have mercy.’  It seemed that it was the response to just about everything.  And isn’t that the truth?!? Don’t we pray that the Lord will always respond to us in mercy? Should mercy not be our response to everything?

This past summer, one retreat master remarked that when we pray “Lord have mercy,” yes, we are asking mercy for our sinfulness, but we are also asking the Lord to make us more merciful.  I had never heard it put quite like that, but since our charism is to ‘make the merciful love of Christ visible,’ how appropriate and poignant that moment in the Liturgy has become for me.

During the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (prayed by most Byzantine Catholics), one cannot escape mercy…Asking for it…asking to become it…asking for the grace to make it visible.

P.S.  If you have never experienced the Liturgy in one of the Eastern Rites, make sure you do it before you die!  Whether Byzantine, Maronite, Melkite or Syro-Malabar, you do not want to miss the richness that exists within the communion of the Catholic Church.

- Sister M. Karolyn, FSGM, teaches in New Jersey

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Journey with Mary: Sacrificial Love of Spiritual Motherhood

                Recently, I found a reflection I had written during my first retreat as a postulant. The last conference that had been given was on Spiritual Motherhood. As I approached the 4 th Station where Jesus meets His Sorrowful Mother, this is what struck my heart:                 What is the sacrificial love of a mother? It is the self-sacrifice made to love her children. Mary’s self-sacrifice to be there with Christ, her Son, in His passion was the selfless love that united her with Him. Her heart was pierced with 7 swords in the agony of watching her beloved Son endure a cross that He did not deserve, but which He embraced for the love of the Father and mankind. Could she not have said to Jesus, “You don’t have to do this, there are other ways. Do you know how much pain You are causing me and those who love you?” She knew He could have chosen any other way t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Welcome to our Family, Postulants!!!

Today, on the Feast of the Birth of Mary, our new postulants entered the postulancy of our American Province of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George! We thank God for the gift of these vocations. Pictured above - on their very first full day in the convent - are (from left) Ashley Vola, Samantha Goodson, Miranda Edgar, Jennifer Clark and Erin Leis. Welcome, Postulants! We Sisters are grateful that you have accepted Christ's invitation to belong totally to Him in our Franciscan community, and we support you wholeheartedly with our prayers and help! If you would like to send a word of welcome and encouragement to these new postulants, we will pass the greetings along to them. Just leave them as a "comment"!
9 comments
Read more

To Gaze upon Christ

This Lent the Lord has put on my heart the awareness of gazing upon Christ.  In our Franciscan congregation, our spirituality flows from John 19:37 “they will look on the one whom they have pierced.”  With this spirituality, we gaze upon the pierced side of Christ and receive from His pierced heart His love and mercy. Then we may go forth to give what we have received.  Throughout this Lent, this action of gazing has been foremost in both my spiritual reading and in prayer.  It also brought to mind a graced trip to Assisi in 2014, by which this “gazing” became so real to me.            While in Assisi, there are many things to see and let soak into one’s soul. The first place where I was moved to gaze was in the side chapel in the Basilica of St. Clare in Assisi, where the Crucifix from which Our Lord spoke to St. Francis is now housed.  What an awe-filled moment it was to kneel before this Crucifix and to gaze into the e...
Post a Comment
Read more