How the Scapular Actually Works (feat. Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.)

we got a tough question for you i think okay well just like scapulars i'm ready scapulars are the thing for some people it's a confusing thing [Music] hey i'm father mark mary i'm father gregory pine i'm francisco freya renewal and i am a dominican friar of the province of saint joseph and uh this is ascension presents welcome back thanks can you explain scapulars i can i can try to explain scapulars um so there are a handful of different scapulars out there you may have come across the one that's most popular popular is the carmelite scapula the brown scapular but little-known fact other people wear scapulars as part of their religious habits and then there are kind of small versions of those types of scapulars so like i he stands up he pulls his scapular up i am wearing a scapular the scapular was given to the dominican order in the first years uh just during the time of saint dominic st dominic was a cannon of the cathedral of osma in spain so he would have worn the tunic like this thing and then he would have worn a capous which is like this thing and they would have worn a surplus which is like what ultra servers wear when they have cassacon yeah he wouldn't have had a scapular but there was this professor who was thinking about becoming a dominican and he was on his way to jerusalem making a pilgrimage a lot of this details aren't terribly important but he felt sick and saint dominic prayed for his healing the blessed mother appeared to him and healed him for one good start of any encounter and then showed him the full habit of the dominican order so specifically she gave him the scapular since its incorporation by many religious orders the scapular has been a sign of marian devotion of marian consecration of a certain sort i think like originally the scapular signified that you were yoked with the sweet yoke of christ so the word scapular actually comes from the latin scapula which just means shoulder right so it's a thing that you would wear over your shoulders so as to signify that you were consecrated that you were given to the lord but yeah during the middle ages became more associated with marian piety and then there were promises attached to the scapular specifically that if you know with the brown scapular if you were to die wearing the brown scapular that you would be assured not to suffer eternal punishment in hell so it's like uh you provided that you wear this devoutly can have some confidence some assurance some hope that you're going to go to heaven uh there are different um kind of rules and regulations for wearing a scapular and i think that sometimes when people read them they get a little bit nervous because it sounds like you're making a deal with the blessed virgin mary it's like okay it has to be a of wool it has to be worn on the skin it has to be both front and back connected by a cord um you know like yeah you can take it off to shower but you shouldn't take it off too much and i don't know i think i think sometimes people can get like a little bit scrupulous about it or begin to treat it as if it were magical or as if it were a talisman what we want to do is cultivate like a real sacramental sensibility about the scapular and the sacraments are different than magic because with magic you say whatever you say whatever harry potter says and then the thing happens whereas with sacraments sacraments work by virtue of belief right so they work provided that one performs them and receives them faithfully okay so you can't deal faith out of the equation and so what's important for us when approaching when approaching this here devotion of the scapular is to cultivate right faith not to say like manage your expectations because it might not work out for you right but to say that we should believe and we should believe with them and vigor right but believe okay now i'm going to conveniently look to my left and find out what i'm going to say the sacraments kind of they extend the logic of the incarnation into the world so saint augustine says that a sacrament is a sign of a sacred thing making men and women holy all right so it's a sign that makes people holy so it it causes grace it causes grace in the life of the believer and it does so specifically by sign value okay so you can think of like the sacrament of baptism for instance the priest or the deacon or in cases of emergency whomever pours water over the head of the individual and says i baptize you in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit so it's a sign of cleansing it's a sign of washing and that sign communicates cleansing or washing from sin so it does what it signifies provided that the priest intends what the church intends all right so he's like i'm doing this sacramental thing and provided that the recipient receives it worthily right so it's not just like um with respect to the sacrament of baptism like somebody just goes about in their neighborhood just pouring water on the heads of all the children who are playing street hockey and just like kind of mutters i baptize you i baptize you i baptize you right that that begins to get a little bit magical because the recipient who is probably capable of believing you know if you know these children are the age of reason um they aren't being addressed as believers they're being addressed as you know kind of objects of magical acts all right so with with the scapular it's not like we should go around hospitals finding convicted felons and serial killers and whomever right as they're about to expire we should like sneak scapulars over them and then just be basically assured that they're going to heaven because it's it's not it's not that type of sign rather it's it's a sacramentol okay so it's not a sacrament in the way that baptism or confession or the eucharist are but it's a sacramental which extends the logic of the sacraments into the world how do they do that well they cause grace not in the same way that the sacraments cause grace so you may have heard the phrase ex operae operato so the sacraments cause grace ex-operate operato which means by the very work having been done by the very work having been performed or worked okay so provided that it's done by a minister who intends what the church intends and provided that you receive with faith it does the thing okay whereas with the sacramentals it's more so dependent on your disposition okay so if you are very pious and very devout in your use of the scapular or your use of the rosary or etc then you are better disposed to receive the grace of god so it's a little more dependent upon how piously how devoutly you do the thing and that's true of the scapular so the devotion to the blessed virgin mary which is signified by the wearing of the scapular as a kind of sweet yoke of marian devotion it is fruitful right it's efficacious um it extends the logic of the sacraments into the world and it does in us right what the sacraments do by this kind of um yes supplementary or i don't know that i love that word um but but but it extends the work of the sacraments in our lives i don't think that we should permit this to distract us from the most uh basic or fundamental teachings of the faith right we're always going to point to the blessed trinity and to the incarnation as bedrock foundational of greatest importance but but from those most basic teachings of the faith which are enshrined in the creed there are other hugely important teachings of the faith right like the place of the blessed virgin mary in the dispensation of salvation and we believe that what christ merits right injustice by virtue of his god well by virtue of the grace at work in his life the charity and obedience that he exhibits throughout the course of his life our blessed mother also merits for us right by a kind of friendship with her with her son by a kind of association with her son and so though christ though it is true decidedly true as expressed in the letter to the hebrews the christ is the the soul the unique the one mediator of salvation so too our lady has a role or a kind of part to play in the lord's mediation and when the lord came into the world um you know at the incarnation he did so through her and so when christ is made anew in us right when when we fill up as it were what is lacking in the sufferings of christ then our lady plays a role in that right um and and the scapular is is part of that it reminds us of our marian devotion it reminds us of the place of the blessed virgin mary and the dispensation of salvation and it charges us it kind of fires us with love for the mysteries that she mediates through you know the mediation of our lord jesus christ her most beloved son so yeah it's not magic it's not a talisman it's not like a get out of purgatory automatically card right but it's part it's a it's a feature of our life of faith which um is related to the sacraments but ultimately draws us to the very life of god one of the things i like about having you give these videos is i don't have to add anything for more from father gregory check out god's planning where he has other friends i do have other friends yeah the other friends yeah at least four four pretty good pretty good for dominican yeah i know right i'm taking the same thing over here yeah uh for more from the friars and myself you can check out habits for holiness and then the podcast first podcast pokebook podcast all right we'll see you again next week have a good week everybody we are pilgrims on this earth somos peregrinos poco poco little by little we're gonna make it

Channel: Ascension Presents

Views: 41,142

Rating: 4.9686985 out of 5

Keywords: ascension, ascension presents, ascension press, cfrs, Franciscan friars of the renewal, fr. mark-mary, fr. gregory pine, fr. gregory pine o.p., Dominican friars, scapulars, carmelites, carmelite scapulars, marian consecrations, marian devotion, sacraments vs magic, are scapulars magic, scapular talisman, what do scapulars do, why do people wear scapulars, what is a scapular, how do sacraments work, catholic sacramentals, guide to scapulars, fr. mark-mary and fr. gregory pine

Id: KzxGWI1b7go

Length: 9min 14sec (554 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021