By Marie Mischel
Intermountain Catholic
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| Father Clement J. Machado, a member of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, followed by lay minister Cy Curran (carrying vessel) and Deacon Mark Bourget Sr., sprinkles water that had just been blessed on the St. George congregation.
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ST. GEORGE — A blessing of sacramentals, intercessory prayers for healing and a Mass celebrated by Father Clement J. Machado brought members of Saint George Parish together for an evening of Lenten ministry on March 4.
Sacramentals are things such as holy water or oils (see sidebar, page 5).
“Retreats are done so people have the opportunity to encounter the Lord again,” said Father Gustavo Adolfo Vidal, pastor of Saint George Parish. “We are doing this retreat during the Lenten season because we want people to think about reconciliation, forgiveness, coming back to the Lord and reestablishing the relationship that probably is broken, and this is an opportunity to re-establish that relationship with God.”
Fr. Machado, now based in Rome, Italy, is a Canadian-born member of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity. He has presented television series on Saint Pio of Pietrelcina and Purgatory on EWTN, and he promotes healing of the whole person through intercessory prayer, the sacraments and use of sacramentals such as rosaries, holy medals and crucifixes.
“He’s an excellent preacher” as well as an exorcist, Fr. Vidal said, pointing out that these prayers can be for buildings, not just people.
The parish plans to dedicate its remodeled church in August.
“When there is a community in trouble, going through a difficult time, in division or anything like that, there are some prayers that are said to exorcise or to expel the demon or the demons,” Fr. Vidal said. He added that he hoped Fr. Machado’s visit would bring peace and unity to the parish. “I think that those are the two most important things that we need at this time here in the parish.”
In his homily, Fr. Machado said that the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, abstinence, mortification, detachment and sacrifice bring Catholics to the essentials of our faith: Christ and the Paschal Mystery. “As a Christian, your currency is your prayer life and the sacramentals of the Church and devotions and the blessings of the Lord.”
He also asked parishioners how their Lent was going, and said the Word of God is the key to responding to the devil’s temptations. Sacramentals such as rosaries, holy medals and other religious articles “remind us of the Lord and we call upon the presence of the Lord. The more we do that, the more the Lord comes to us,” he said.
Terry Wittry, a parishioner at St. George since 2000, said she attended the retreat because it was a way of deepening her spirituality during the Lenten observance. The message she took from Fr. Machado’s homily, she said, was “we need to get back to prayer in our lives.”
Parishioner Marty Amateis said he likes the priest because “he states the obvious, the troubles of the day, how people are neglecting God and shoving him away for materialistic things. He doesn’t hide anything. He just says it straight out.”
Like Amateis, David Chapman attended Fr. Machado’s retreat in St. George three years ago and had never before seen the special blessings of the salt and oil. “He does the blessing much broader than a lot of the priests and deacons do. For instance, he has people bring their cooking oils and cooking salts and bless all of their sacramentals,” said Chapman, who coordinated the retreat. “He just makes a special presentation and he has some special gifts and it’s nice to have him back to share with us again, even here, this week, with our church being remodeled, and we’re in very, very humble circumstances. I think that impresses on me more about the Lenten season and our need to become more basic and Christ-like.”
Catholic exorcism defined
According to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, “Exorcism is nothing more than a prayer to God (sometimes made publicly in the name of the Church, sometimes made privately) to restrain the power of the demons over men and things.”
It continues, “Exorcisms also form a part of the blessing of such things as water, salt, and oil; and these, in turn, are used in personal exorcisms and in blessing or consecrating places (e.g. churches) and objects (e.g. altars, sacred vessels, church bells) connected with public worship or intended for private devotion. In exorcising and blessing these objects, the Church prays that those who use them may be protected against the attacks of the devil…. Exorcisms are rarely performed today, not because the Church has lost its belief in the power and activity of Satan but because it recognizes that true cases of possession are rare.”
The current Code of Canon Law defines sacramentals “as sacred signs by which effects, especially spiritual effects, are signified in some imitation of the sacraments and are obtained through the intercession of the Church.”
Sacramentals may be either things or actions, e.g., holy water, blessed palms or ashes, oils, salt, blessed candles, prayers or blessings. Sacramentals usually involve a brief liturgy of the word, and they always include a prayer; often a prayer is accompanied by a distinctive gesture, such as the laying on of hands, the sign of the cross, or the sprinkling of holy water which recalls baptism.
An exorcism is a sacramental by which “the Church asks publicly and authoritatively in the name of Jesus Christ that a person or object be protected against the power of the Evil One and withdrawn from his dominion” (Cfr. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1673 and Code of Canon Law, canon 1172).
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