When wearing more than one scapular, is it okay to get the scapulars stitched together to avoid tangles? Do the scapulars have to be re-blessed, like a rosary that gets repaired? I've also attached a couple of medals onto my brown scapular because I didn't want to have them on a separate chain. Any thoughts on that?
Hi Boots, I can't comment on the stitching of scapulars together, but when I started attending Mass with the SSPX Fr Girouard (now of the resistance) got me enrolled in the brown scapular right away and he hung a miraculous medal on my scapular and told me to keep it there. Thanks Fr G!
Edited to add: This Scapular of Benediction looks interesting. Where can I buy one? or find some more info on it?
Luke
The Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is unique, like the
St. Benedict Medal is also unique but in a different way. They are both
uniquely unique, I guess you could say.
When you are INVESTED with the Brown Scapular, it is YOU who receive
the blessing, as well as the scapular, but once that one wears out, as
all of them do in time, since they are made of fibrous materials, you
can get a new one, but you do not have to have your new Brown
Scapular blessed! All you have to do is PUT IT ON, piously of course,
and the fact that you have put it on makes it become blessed. There is
no other sacramental that has this unique quality. The priest invests
(that is, clothes you) with the scapular by placing it over your head as
he says the investment prayer. He intends to invest you and you
cooperate by intending to receive investment. This is the image of the
Church Teaching or Blessing and the Church Receiving same.
Of course, when you no longer are using an old scapular, you ought to
either bury it or burn it. Some people have been known to keep them
lying around, but that is not a good idea, because they tend to become
abused by others who do not know or care about what they are. They
should not be thrown in the trash, for example, but that is exactly what
happens to them when servants or caretakers of the elderly, for
example, are "cleaning up." If you have a dear one in hospice or
assisted living, you should both tell the person(s) doing the care, as well
as their supervisor(s), as well as the owner of the company (if there is
such a one), not only that this is not merely 'symbolic' but it is a real
sacramental which must be treated with due respect, and that when
your father, or mother, or friend wears out the scapular, you would like
them to set it aside and give it to you so you can take proper care of it.
And you should write this down on a 3x5 card to keep with the
patient's personal effects, where the caretakers can read it.
The background of the Brown Scapular rests in the fact that it is a sort
of mini version of the habit that Carmelite religious wear. The habit is
a very large front and back panel of brown woven sheep's wool cloth
that reaches from shoulders to the floor and covers side to side of the
body. Over the years, the panels became smaller, for 3rd order
members and such, until it was two swatches of wool cloth connected
by ribbons over the shoulders. Some societies and associations have
swatches about 5" wide and 7" tall for this purpose even today. But
the swatches got smaller over time to be finally the size they are now,
which is 1-1/4" X 1-3/4". (The width of things is always given first and
the height second, with apparently only two exceptions. Guess what
those are? Hint: one of them is on this page, the other is not.)
Therefore, since the wearing of the Carmelite habit is the use of a
sacramental integral with the life of the religious, they do not need to get
their new garment blessed, but all they have to do is to put it on, piously
(they have prayers for that, just as a priest who vests for Mass has a
prayer for each item that he dons) of course, and their new habit is
then blessed by the fact that they are putting it on. This makes the
Carmelite habit one that endures a lifetime, even if they do not have
recourse to a priest for the rest of his life ('his' meaning the Carmelite's).
Now, as for sewing another scapular on it, I have not heard specifically,
but it would seem to me that just as a religious might sew another
scapular inside his habit, out of view but yet always there, so to speak,
so too a layman might be able to sew another scapular to his Brown
Scapular. I'm not answering the question because I have not been given
the answer, but I'm just putting 2 and 2 together here. Also, as another
member, Luker, said, above, the great Fr. Girouard hung a Miraculous
Medal on Luker's Brown Scapular and told him to "keep it there." Now,
I don't have to wonder, for if the great Fr. Girouard said that, the issue
is therefore no longer open to debate, IMHO. Also, consider how not
a few Brown Scapulars come with A) a St. Benedict Medal clipped to
one strand and B) a crucifix clipped to the other strand, such that you
then DO need to have your Scapular blessed -- not for the scapular, but
for the two medals attached! The Crucifix can be blessed with a
regular blessing, or that is, the standard blessing for crucifixes, but the
St. Benedict Medal is a horse of a different color.
I already have 6 paragraphs here, and adequate description of the
ominous St. Benedict Medal would need at LEAST another 6 paragraphs.
I recently was privileged to hear a sermon where the priest spent about
half the time talking only about the power, signification, history, efficacy,
usefulness, blessing and appropriateness of this one particular medal for
Catholics today. I would like to only mention one testimony that I was
given by a friend. She was working a booth for a pro-life rally and they
had set up the booth carefully placing one properly blessed St. Benedict
Medal in each corner of the booth (the blessing is very important, for
this Medal has a unique blessing that even requires a unique faculty for
the priest to bless it - which means that there are many priests who do
not have this faculty, and even if the WANT to bless a St. Benedict
Medal and use the proper formula, they cannot effect the unique blessing
until such time as they would obtain the faculty, which is independent of
their priestly ordination).
During the course of the event, a pair of
obviously ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ men approached the booth, but when they came
close to the line that would be as if a string were taut between the two
Medals placed in the front of the booth, these two Sodomites seemed
to BUMP INTO A WALL! They appeared to be put off by this, when they
physically bounced backward, so then they approached again, and the
same thing happened. Neither were they able to reach their hands or
any part of their bodies past this invisible force field, as it were. They
stood there and had a brief, polite conversation with the booth attendants,
if though not a bit bewildered, and then they walked away. This
phenomenon did not happen to any other visitors that day to the booth,
only to those two men.
The purpose of my telling this story is to show that there is real evidence
that the St. Benedict Medal is a formidable reality against which the devil
has no power.
En Espanol, el nombre es San Benito - Ruega por nosotros.
Topic: Scapular of Benediction (Read 9992 times)