The Douai Catechism, 1649 - CHAPTER XXV. Some Ceremonies of the Church Expounded.

Some Ceremonies of the Church Expounded.

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 baptism, 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. l. 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 fourth Pope from St. Peter, makes mention of it in one of his epistles. Exod. xxxvii. 8., 2 Par. iv. 6.; 4 Kings ii. 21.; Ps. I. 9.; Heb. ix. 19.; x. 22; De Cons. Dist. iii. c. 20; B. Greg. Pastor, Pars ii. c. 5.
    Q. Why is incense offered in the church?
    A. To raise in the mind of the people an awe of the mysterious in the action to which it is applied, and to beget a pious esteem of it, as also to signify, that out prayers ought to ascend like a sweet perfume in the sight of God. "Tis mentioned by St. Dionysius, Eccles Hierarch. c. 3.
    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, sackcloth, and ashes, especially in the holy time of Lent.
    Q. Who ordained the solemn fast of Lent?
    A. The twelve Apostles, according to Heirom 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 between God and us, and to express an ecclesiastical kind of mourning in reference to our Saviour's passion.
    Q. Why is a veil drawn between the altar-piece and the people in Lent time?
    A. To intimate, that, as our sins are as a veil which binder 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 three upper lights signify Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; the twelve lower, the twelve Apostles. The triangular figure signifies, that all light of grace and glory is from the blessed Trinity; and fourteen of those lights are extinguished on by one after every Psalm, to show how all their light of spiritual comfort was extinguished 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 hallowed 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, according to St. Dionysius, who lived in their time. 1 Eccl. Hier. c. 2.
    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 is the material church or temple hallowed?
    A. Because it bears a figure of the spiritual, viz. the mystical 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.

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