TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION If you could somehow transport a third-century Christian into your twenty-first-century Sunday Mass, once the initial shock wore off he or she would be more or less at home with the structure of the first part of the liturgy, the Word. The second part might be more difficult to comprehend. The stumbling block would be the book. We have a book, a missal that…

The origins of the custom of burning a lamp before the tabernacle are in Jewish worship, where a lamp called ner tamid or “eternal flame” burns before the ark in every synagogue. The ark contains the sacred scrolls of the Torah. The flame represents the menorah in the Temple, and therefore is never extinguished. In fact, the word “tabernacle” itself is derived from Hebrew, as taber is the Hebrew…

TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION Customs surrounding the naming of babies are interesting, and over time the Church has tried to offer some motherly advice to direct parents in this necessary chore. The ritual book used for baptism from the sixteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries advised priests to guard against giving ridiculous or pagan names to babies consigned to their ministry. In 1666 the diocesan ritual of Bourges in France…