Red Scapular of the Passion
Encyclopedia
Sacramentals
Sacramentals are material objects, things or actions set apart or blessed by the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Churches, the Anglican Churches, and Old Catholic Churches to manifest the respect due to the Sacraments, and so to excite good thoughts and to increase devotion, and through these...
scapular
Scapular
The term scapular as used today refers to two specific, yet related, Christian Sacramentals, namely the monastic and devotional scapulars, although both forms may simply be referred to as "scapular"....
associated with the Lazarists
Lazarists
Congregation of the Mission is a vowed order of priests and brothers associated with the Vincentian Family, a loose federation of organizations who claim St. Vincent de Paul as their founder or Patron...
. It is often just called the Scapular of the Passion or simply the Red Scapular but it should not be confused with other similarly-termed scapular described below.
The Red Scapular of the Passion is a popular scapular and forms the uppermost portion of the Fivefold Scapular.
Description
The scapular and its bands must be made of red woolWool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....
and unlike most scapulars it is adorned with specifically described images which are essential to it.
One side of the scapular shows a crucifix
Crucifix
A crucifix is an independent image of Jesus on the cross with a representation of Jesus' body, referred to in English as the corpus , as distinct from a cross with no body....
, some of the Instruments of the Passion, and the words "Holy Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ Save Us." The other side depicts a small cross
Cross
A cross is a geometrical figure consisting of two lines or bars perpendicular to each other, dividing one or two of the lines in half. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally; if they run obliquely, the design is technically termed a saltire, although the arms of a saltire need not meet...
above the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Immaculate Heart of Mary
The Immaculate Heart of Mary originally The Sacred Heart of Mary is a devotional name used to refer to the interior life of Mary, her joys and sorrows, her virtues and hidden perfections, and, above all, her virginal love for God, her maternal love for her Son, Jesus, and her compassionate love for...
plus the words "Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, protect us." In the example shown above right, these symbols appear to above a red area representing the Precious Blood although other examples omit that non-essential element and include others, such as angel
Angel
Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...
s.
Origin
It is a Catholic belief that the Red Scapular of the Passion was divinely revealed to Sister Appoline Andriveau, a member of the Daughters of Charity founded by St.Saint
A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...
Vincent de Paul
Vincent de Paul
Vincent de Paul was a priest of the Catholic Church who became dedicated to serving the poor. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. He was canonized in 1737....
. According to this belief, from 26 July 1846 to 14 September 1846 visions of Jesus and Mary
Visions of Jesus and Mary
Since the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Calvary until today, a number of people have claimed to have had visions of Christ and personal conversations with him. Some people make similar claims regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary. Discussions about the authenticity of these visions have often invited...
appeared to the sister
Society of Apostolic Life
A society of apostolic life is a group of men or women within the Catholic Church who have come together for a specific purpose. Unlike members of an institute of consecrated life , members of apostolic societies do not make religious vows...
in her convent
Convent
A convent is either a community of priests, religious brothers, religious sisters, or nuns, or the building used by the community, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion...
in Troyes, France and promised her that those who wear the scapular faithfully and contemplated
Prayer
Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...
the Passion of Jesus Christ
Passion (Christianity)
The Passion is the Christian theological term used for the events and suffering – physical, spiritual, and mental – of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion...
would be granted a great increase of faith, hope and charity
Faith, Hope and Charity
Saints Faith, Hope and Charity , Church Slavonic: are a group of Christian martyred saints. Their mother is said to have been Sophia ; Sapientia is also mentioned in some accounts, though not as their mother. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, these were, in fact, two groups bearing the...
every Friday.
The sister described her visions as extremely specific and vivid. In letters to her spiritual director she wrote that Christ's face was so pale "that it threw me into a cold sweat. Our Lord's Head was bent forward. I thought that the long thorns
Crown of Thorns
In Christianity, the Crown of Thorns, one of the instruments of the Passion, was woven of thorn branches and placed on Jesus Christ before his crucifixion...
that encircled His sacred Brow had induced this painful posture." She also described a scene reminiscent of the Pietà
Pietà
The Pietà is a subject in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, most often found in sculpture. As such, it is a particular form of the Lamentation of Christ, a scene from the Passion of Christ found in cycles of the Life of Christ...
:
One Sunday evening, I was making the Stations of the CrossStations of the CrossStations of the Cross refers to the depiction of the final hours of Jesus, and the devotion commemorating the Passion. The tradition as chapel devotion began with St...
...then at the Thirteenth Station, it seemed to me that Our Blessed Lady placed the Body of our Divine Lord in my arms, saying as she did so, "The world is drawing down ruin upon itself because it never thinks of the Passion of Jesus Christ. Do your utmost to bring it to meditate thereon, to bring about its salvation."
In describing a vision on the eve of the octave
Octave (liturgical)
"Octave" has two senses in Christian liturgical usage. In the first sense, it is the eighth day after a feast, reckoning inclusively, and so always falls on the same day of the week as the feast itself. The word is derived from Latin octava , with dies understood...
of the Feast of St. Vincent
Vincent de Paul
Vincent de Paul was a priest of the Catholic Church who became dedicated to serving the poor. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. He was canonized in 1737....
(July 26, 1846) the nun described Christ:
...clad in a long red robe and blue mantle. Oh! Love of Jesus Christ, how You filled my heart at that moment! Oh! How beautiful He was! It was no longer the painful expression, the sorrowful face worn with suffering that I had seen in Pilate's hall a few days before during MassMass (liturgy)"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...
. It was beauty itself! In his right Hand He held a scapular upon which was a crucifix surrounded by those instruments of the Passion which caused His Sacred Humanity to suffer most. I read around the crucifix: "Holy Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, save us." At the other end of the red woolWoolWool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....
en braid was a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary, the one surrounded with thorns, the other pierced by a lanceHoly LanceThe Holy Lance is the name given to the lance that pierced Jesus' side as he hung on the cross in John's account of the Crucifixion.-Biblical references:The lance is mentioned only in the Gospel of John and not in any of the...
, and both surrounded by a cross.
Sister Apolline described how she "shuddered" upon seeing Jesus "rudely struck against the wood of the cross
True Cross
The True Cross is the name for physical remnants which, by a Christian tradition, are believed to be from the cross upon which Jesus was crucified.According to post-Nicene historians, Socrates Scholasticus and others, the Empress Helena The True Cross is the name for physical remnants which, by a...
" and quoted the Blessed Virgin Mary as saying that the "world is hurrying to its perdition
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
because it considers not the Passion of Christ...Do all you can to bring and consider His sufferings. Do all you can to save the world. Sister Apolline said she was told that to wear the blood-red scapular was to be "clad in the livery
Livery
A livery is a uniform, insignia or symbol adorning, in a non-military context, a person, an object or a vehicle that denotes a relationship between the wearer of the livery and an individual or corporate body. Often, elements of the heraldry relating to the individual or corporate body feature in...
" of Christ's passion and that it "will prove to us a strong armor against infernal assaults, an impenetrable buckler against the arrows of our spiritual enemies and, according to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all who wear it with faith and piety it will be a pledge of pardon, a source of grace."
Sister Apolline also described a vision she received on the Feast of the Blessed Trinity in which she saw a beautiful river representing Christ's mercy in which those immersed glowed with bright light and "sheaves of diamonds and gold" while those refusing immersion "were covered with a dark vapor."
The redemptive theme of the apparitions and its promises regarding the wearing of a sacramental featuring the Immaculate Heart of Mary are similar to two other Marian apparitions
Marian apparitions
A Marian apparition is an event in which the Blessed Virgin Mary is believed to have supernaturally appeared to one or more people. They are often given names based on the town in which they were reported, or on the sobriquet which was given to Mary on the occasion of the apparition...
that took place in France that earlier that century: the Miraculous Medal
Miraculous Medal
The Miraculous Medal, also known as the Medal of the Immaculate Conception, is a medal created by Saint Catherine Labouré following a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary...
apparitions of 1830 and the Green Scapular
Green Scapular
The Green Scapular or Scapular of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is sold as a Roman Catholic devotional scapular by the Society of the Green Scapular...
apparitions of 1840.
Approval
Sister Apolline's spiritual director, Father J. B. Etienne, made a trip to Rome the following year. The Holy SeeHoly See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
accepted the nun's claims with unusual alacrity and Pius IX
Pope Pius IX
Blessed Pope Pius IX , born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was the longest-reigning elected Pope in the history of the Catholic Church, serving from 16 June 1846 until his death, a period of nearly 32 years. During his pontificate, he convened the First Vatican Council in 1869, which decreed papal...
sanctified and approved the use of this sacramental by a rescript
Rescript
A rescript is a document that is issued not on the initiative of the author, but in response to a specific demand made by its addressee...
on June 25, 1857. The pope granted various indulgence
Indulgence
In Catholic theology, an indulgence is the full or partial remission of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been forgiven. The indulgence is granted by the Catholic Church after the sinner has confessed and received absolution...
s to the wearing of this scapular and granted the Lazarists
Lazarists
Congregation of the Mission is a vowed order of priests and brothers associated with the Vincentian Family, a loose federation of organizations who claim St. Vincent de Paul as their founder or Patron...
the faculty of blessing the scapular and investing the faithful with it. The Superior-General of the Lazarists was allowed to communicate the faculty of blessing and investing the scapular to priests outside the Lazarist order and such a scapular can now be invested by any Catholic priest
Priesthood (Catholic Church)
The ministerial orders of the Catholic Church include the orders of bishops, deacons and presbyters, which in Latin is sacerdos. The ordained priesthood and common priesthood are different in function and essence....
.
Similar scapulars
The Red Scapular of the Passion described herein should not be confused with:- The Black Scapular of the PassionBlack Scapular of the PassionThe Black Scapular of the Passion is a Roman Catholic devotional scapular associated with the Passionists.The tradition of the Passionists holds that before St. Paul of the Cross founded the Congregation of the Passionists he had a Marian apparition during which he received the black habit of the...
associated with the Passionists - The Red Scapular of the Most Precious Blood
- The White Scapular of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary associated with the Daughters of the Sacred HeartDaughters of the Sacred HeartDaughters of the Sacred Heart is a religious order of Roman Catholic nuns founded by Madre Teresa Nuzzo in 1903....
.