www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Miraculous Medal

Spasi Khristos!

Alex is indeed right - there were even more than four - individual spiritual children of the great St. Seraphim have told about unique variations of his "rule" which he gave them for their own individual circumstances.

One very simple one he gave was this (a variation of the "Seven-Bow Beginning") revealed by one of the "orphans":

Lord, cleanse me of my sins and have mercy on me.
You have created me; have mercy on me.
There is no way to measure my sin; have mercy on me.
Lord, forgive the many times I disobey You.
Master, I bow down before Your cross and glorify Your resurrection.
Lord, when I sin in what I say and do, have mercy on me because of Your great compassion."

I personally like to use his "Rule of St. Pachomius" which he gave to his "orphans" (he called his sisters at Divayevo that because most were illiterate and refused by other convents):

Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us.

Amen. Glory to Thee, our God, glory to Thee.

O Heavenly King, Comforter...
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us. (Thrice)
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and unto the unto the ages of ages. Amen.
O Most Holy Trinity, have mercy on us...
Lord have mercy. (Thrice)
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Our Father...,
O Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. Amen.

Lord, Have mercy. (Twelve times)
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and unto the unto the ages of ages. Amen.
O come, let us worship God our King.
O come, let us worship and fall down before Christ our King and God.
O come, let us worship and fall down before Christ Himself, our King and God.

Psalm 50
The Creed

The Jesus Prayer:
O Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. (100 Times or as directed by your spiritual father)
More honorable than the Cherubim...
Glory...Both now and ever...
Lord have mercy (3X) O Lord, Bless.
The Dismissal

I also call it "The Rule of the Y" because one can do this while exercising, doing chores, etc. While certainly it has early origins likely of Thebaidic origin it was St. Seraphim especially who disseminated it (as well as later the Optina Elders). Dostoyevsky knew of it.

The beauty of it was to be something easily put to memory, so his illiterate "orphans" could use it for the Hours as they worked at the Divayevo mill.

Deacon Diak

(n.b. One can also add on the penetential troparia "Have mercy on us...Glory...O Lord have mercy on us...Both now and ever...Open unto us the portals of mercy... after the Creed as I was instructed by a spiritual father)

Dear Father DIAKon,

Thank you for this!

Also, would you know about the Old Believer method of praying the Divine Office using 12-Psalm groups - the Semeyskie Old Believer website makes reference to it . . .

Alex

I am sorry but I am new to the Eastern Rites and found this line of discussion both fascinating and confusing. I never realized that there was an Eastern form of the Rosary (sorry if my way of putting things offends. I am still learning the correct terms for things). Can someone point me in the direction of material that would explain it to me?
Thank you so much

Dear Friend,

Here is one site:

http://www.angelfire.com/pa3/OldWorldBasic/Rosary.htm

and

http://www.angelfire.com/pa3/OldWorldBasic/RuleofMotherofGod.htm

Alex

Thank you very much!!

Ah, Alex - I have a St. Benedict medal in my pocket right now. For a fine description of it and for a reminder of the prayers associated with it, see: http://www.osb.org/gen/medal.html.

I remember when *Getting to Yes* and *Leadership Secrets of Atilla the Hun* were so very popular as "management" books. I found them pretty empty - the bottom line of how to get people to do what you want is kind of selfish, whether by cajoling or by force. I visited a Trappist monastery nad picked up and read the *Rule of St. Benedict* and became convinced it was the greatest "management" book of all time because it focused not on how to win people over or influence them but on how to foster real community and higher spiritual purpose. It is available on line in several languages. See http://www.osb.org/rb/index.html.

My personal Marian devotions tend more Eastern. I prefer the Akhatist to the rosary. I relate to my own reflections of Mary better in the warm colors of icons than in the relatively chilly feel of medals and stone statues.

More on the Miraculous Medal. This medal was brought into China by Vincentian missionaries; of honorable mention: Saint John Gabriel Perboyre and Saint John Francis Regis, both martyrs. St. John Perboyre, martyred in China after horrible and disgusting torture, distributed thousands of these medals throughout China. Father Perboyre was ordained priest in the same chapel where Saint Catherine Laboure was favored with the apparition of Our Lady. I enjoyed the following story:

Tiny medals sustain couple's faith through persecution



By PAT McDONALD
Special to the WCR

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Several years ago an event occurred that has always given me pause to appreciate the power of spirituality. I was travelling on an overnight train from the northern Chinese city of Harbin, near the Russian border.
I had spent four months in China coaching and assisting the eventual China national junior men's basketball team and was on my way back to Beijing and Canada. Security was tight in China and practising any religion was dealt with harshly.

During my stay I had observed Catholic churches boarded up and many other churches sacked and desecrated by Red Guards ever since the days of the Cultural Revolution.

I remember being taken by my interpreter Tong Tzu to visit a once majestic Russian Orthodox cathedral in downtown Harbin that had been desecrated during the Cultural Revolution. Many Russians had fled during the Bolshevik Revolution and settled in Harbin.

A once-ornate altar now was splattered with paint and Maoist slogans. Frescoes and murals were all irretrievably scarred. The church was now used as a storage facility for a furniture factory. As I was leaving the main part of this church I spotted a marking on the wall that might have appeared as desecration but was not. Someone had painted the "sign of a fish" behind the altar.

Not everyone was abandoning his or her faith. One of those Red Guards, Susan, became a teacher, was befriended by my daughter at her Teachers School in Harbin, and went on to spend a year with us in Grande Prairie. It was Susan and Tong Zhu, at great risk to themselves, who had brought me to the Russian church.

Now two compartments down from me sat an elderly couple on their way to Beijing. My interpreter, whom I trusted, informed me that the old couple would like to talk to me as they had heard I was Canadian.

My interpreter, Tong Zhu (now out of China), had told me that the husband had been a mayor near Beijing prior to Chairman Mao's revolution and his wife had been a professor of music at Beijing University.

Uprooted during purge
During the "Purge of the Intellectuals" in China they were uprooted and sent to the northern part of China for "re-education." They had spent 24 harsh years digging ditches, being re-educated, carrying slop pails and being humiliated as they worked the rice fields. Now they were on their way home.
They showed me photos of their children whom they had not seen all these years. I showed them photos of my family. They had spotted my crucifix under my shirt and asked if I was a Christian. I told them yes I was - a Catholic Christian. There was an exchange of quick phrases and the elderly woman clasped her coarse, weather beaten hands in mine.

With my limited Mandarin and the help of my interpreter I was able to determine that Catholic missionaries had baptized them Catholic many years before during the Second World War. Since the Communist takeover by Mao Tse Tung, they had not met any believers nor seen a church or had any opportunity to receive the Eucharist. Indeed any outward sign would have been ruthlessly dealt with.

Even now foreigners were immediately expelled from China if caught promoting any religion. I had an idea. They had some bread and I went back and got some wine that had been given to me by a Communist Party official when I boarded the train in Harbin. Little did he know to what use I would now put that wine.

With the bread and wine I began to recall as best I could the Last Supper of Jesus. Although they spoke no English and I very little Mandarin they understood and shared the meaning and nodded as I related the events of the Last Supper.

When I recalled the words of Jesus "This is my body, . . . this is my blood" in Latin and we broke the bread and shared, this lovely old couple each made the Sign of the Cross. It was as if all the previous 24 years of hardship, devoid of any Eucharist or companions for this faith-filled couple, had evaporated. They were in community.

Medals inside lapel
It was then the elderly gentleman showed me the inside of his lapel where he had sewn a small miraculous medal of Mary. His wife had a medal of the Sacred Heart of Jesus sewn into the hem of her jacket. This had sustained them somehow all these years.
It was I who was overwhelmed in that tiny compartment on a Chinese train in one of the most oppressive of anti-Catholic countries. I asked if I might take a photograph of them. I have looked at it many times in the intervening years.

Dear Annie,

Yes indeed!

But Eastern Christians likewise wear medals, along with their neck crosses, of the Mother of God and the Saints.

The Miraculous Medal is a version of an older medal that was very popular among the Orthodox in the time of the Kyivan Baroque era.

In fact, the OCA website describes the front of the Miraculous Medal as an actual Orthodox icon for the feast of the Conception of St Anne!

Although this is based upon a personal vision, Bl. Catherine Emmerich, in her "Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary" discusses how an image of the Mother of God as portrayed on the Miraculous Medal was examined by Greek theologians who had never seen it before.

They examined ancient icons to see if there were examples of this in Eastern iconography before.

They found that there were and so, according to Emmerich, approved the image.

In addition, this was also how the Mother of God appeared over the Coptic Church in Zeitun in 1968-1969.

They have a new Cathedral of our Lady of Zeitun there with an iconographic version of the Mother of God portrayed EXACTLY as she is on the front of the Miraculous Medal.

I received some photos of this Cathedral from a priest who visited there and I myself had to stop in surprise for a moment when I saw the iconography of the Cathedral . . .

The miraculous Medal was and is popular with our Greek-Catholic people in Eastern Europe. At Zarvanytsia, many don this medal as well.

In L'viv, there is an RC fountain-shrine with a statue of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal where many Ukrainian Catholic newlyweds visit after their Crownings to lay wreaths. My Godson's mother was over there for a wedding last year and saw a line-up of newly-married Eastern Catholics going with flower wreaths to lay at the feet of the Mother of God there and ask her blessing.

The Miraculous Medal image is simply one that has been adopted by many Eastern Christians, INCLUDING Orthodox, as at Zeitun ("Zeitun" incidentally means "olive oil").

There are what can be called "superstitious" uses of this (i.e. placing one over a home to protect it from ever being robbed and the like), but Christians will be Christians!

Alex