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207 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Symbolism, Ecclesiastical
meaning. Thus the Fathers delight to see in the censer the humanity of Christ, in the fire his divinity, and in the smoke his grace. The censer, says Augustine, is like the body of .the Lord, and the incense like the same body offered in sacrifice for the salvation of the world and received as a sweet perfume by the Heavenly Father (Hom. vi. in Apoc. x. 3).
The vestments of the officiating priest and his attendants leave each its reminder, either of the passion of Christ or of some virtue nec-
7. Sym- essary to his ministers. The amice bolism of figures the helmet of a warrior, and Vestments reminds the priest that he is a warrior; and Insignia. or it is a memorial of the veil with which the eyes of Christ were band aged by the soldiers. The alb is the white robe put upon him by Herod; the emblem of purity. The girdle brings to mind the manner in which Christ was bound, and typifies continence. The maniple, originally a kind of handkerchief intended to wipe the face during the holy offices, teaches the lesson that man must earn the bread of immortality in the sweat of his brow, and figures also the whips and scourges of the passion. The stole, even in its present diminished form, by its very name reminds us of the garment of innocence and immortality with which our first parents were clothed. The chasuble symbolizes the yoke of Christ; when he puts it on, the priest prays " O Lord, who hast said, My yoke is easy and my burden is light, grant that I may carry it in such a manner as to obtain thy grace "-and there are similar prayers alluding to the symbolic meaning with each of the other vestments. Of those peculiar to bishops, it will be sufficient here to mention the crosier or pastoral staff, in the shape of a shepherd's crook, which in his own diocese he carries with the curved part out, as a sign of jurisdiction; in that of another bishop, he turns it toward himself to express the opposite. The colors used for the sacerdotal garments under the old law were five-gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and white (linen); and as late as Gregory the Great (De pastorali cura, ii. 3) there seems to have been a tendency to retain the consecrated sequence. The modern Roman colors, however (increasingly fol lowed in the Anglican church), while still five ac cording to the traditional number, are partly differ ent. They are: white, a symbol of purity, on feasts of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, confessors (saints who were not martyrs), and virgins unless also martyrs; red, suggesting both blood and fire, on the feast of Pentecost and of all martyrs; green, the ordinary color of nature, on Sundays and weekdays not specially set apart; violet, the somber color of mourning and penitence, during Advent and Lent; black on Good Friday and in services for the dead. See MASS, II., 7.The usages accompanying the solemn administration of the sacrament of baptism at this day in the Roman Catholic Church, most of which have come down from very early times, are an admirable illustration of the manner in which every smallest action in sacred things was supposed to teach its mm lesson to the participants and spectators. The priest, wearing a violet stole, symbolic of the
miserable state of fallen man, meets the child at the door of the church to signify that in its original state it has no right to enter the house
8. Sym- of God. After the command to the bolism in devil to depart, the seal of a different Baptism. Master is impressed on the child's forehead and breast with the sign of the cross; and the priest lays his hand upon its head to denote that he takes possession of it in the name of God. Salt, which preserves from corrup tion and gives a relish to food, is then put into the mouth, and then, lest the devil should attempt to take away the gift of Christian wisdom and the relish for divine things, he is solemnly exorcised. A strange but very ancient ceremony, mentioned by Ambrose (De sacramentis, I., i.) is still retained at this point. In memory of Christ's curing of a deaf and-dumb man by touching his ears and tongue with spittle, the same is done by the priest to the ears and nostrils of the child, to symbolize the open ing of its ears to the truth and its mouth to the praise of the Lord. After the formal renunciation of Satan at the font (see RENUNCIATION OF THE DEVIL), the child is anointed with the " oil of cate chumens," on the breast to make it love the yoke of Christ and on the shoulders to give it strength to carry that, yoke. The actual essential ceremony of baptism proper has already been spoken of. It is followed by a fresh anointing with the sacred chrism, in token of the quality of prophet, priest, and king which has been bestowed upon the new member of Christ; and the child's head is covered with the white chrism-cloth (as the newly baptized adults in the primitive Church wore their white garments for eight days), as a reminder of the ne cessity of striving to preserve baptismal innocence unspotted to the end. A lighted taper is then placed in the child's hand, held by one of the godparents; and the words put into the priest's mouth express an allusion to the light which must be kept burning till the call comes to go out and meet the Bride groom.For one final illustration, the intricate ceremonies of the consecration of a church, as would naturally be expected; were in the Middle Ages, and are today in the Roman - Catholic Church,
9. Conse- full of an elaborate symbolism of their cration of own, including some unique features. a Church. One is that in which the bishop, with the end of his crosier, traces the let ters first of the Greek alphabet and then of the Latin in the shape of a great X from corner to corner of the church;, this corresponds to th3 taking posses sion of land and marking its boundaries. While not found in the East and not attested before the ninth century .in the West, this rite. goes back for its origin much further, and may have been sug gested by the, practise of Roman surveyors, who used to trace two transverse lines on land which they wished to measure. But it was easy to regard the formation of the big X as a taking possession of the floor space of the church in the name of Jesus Christ, the great Alpha and Omega, whose mono gram and title, so to speak, were written large upon the pavement by the tracing of the intervening letters. Lustration, with specially prepared holy
