A Faith Journey: Part Second

Within the pages of The Catholic Girl’s Guide I discovered a moving record of Joanna’s faith journey, captured in a collection of prayer cards.

Catholic prayer cards or holy cards are tiny bits of paper, just a few inches square, bearing sacred images and religious inscriptions. The custom of distributing prayer cards goes back many centuries. The oldest surviving Catholic prayer card bears an image of St. Christopher and dates to 1423.

Prayer cards are used to commemorate important religious holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, and special spiritual milestones including First Communion and Confirmation.

Prayer cards are commonly distributed at funerals printed with a favorite prayer, a religious image, the name of the deceased, their birthday and date of death. It’s common practice to accumulate these cards over the years, storing them in a secure location.

An early milestone of Joanna’s faith journey is a prayer card inscribed with A Child’s Night Prayer, signed by Sister Edwina and dated 1937. An image of My Guardian Angel, and a young Jesus as the Gentle Shepherd, all speak to a child’s need for comfort and protection.

A holy card bearing the image of Jesus, the Shepherd and Lamb of God, dated 1940, is inscribed, “O Jesus, I give thee my soul, that it may be free from sin. To dear Joanna, pray for Sister M. Edwina. 1940.”  Treasured gifts from a beloved teacher, the cards would have been carried everywhere contained within The Catholic Girl’s Guide, portable and personal devotional objects.

Memorial cards from the 1950s attest to a maturing faith as Joanna learns to deal with the reality of death and loss.  A prayer card for the Novena for Souls in Purgatory recognizes every Catholics’ responsibility to pray for the souls of those in purgatory, and the efficacy of these prayers. The Catholic Girl’s Guide continues to offer guidance and appropriate prayers for every step in Joanna’s spiritual life.

Many Catholic women share a strong devotion to Mary, the Mother of Jesus, as these holy cards reflect. The crowning feature of The Catholic Girl’s Guide is a section devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, including devotions for the Month of May and, in Latin and English, the Regina Coeli, Alma Redemptoris, Salve Regina and Ave Regina Coelorum, as well as inspiring reflections on all the events of Our Lady’s life.

Later in life, Joanna may well have suffered physical, mental or spiritual sorrow. One holy card addresses Resignation: “Thy Will, O God, be done!” St. Odilia, Patron Saint of the Blind and Afflicted, is appealed to. A hand written note addressed to Dear Joan prays “…may Our Blessed Mother heal the wound in your heart…”

Finally, a Ticket to Heaven offers the promise of salvation to come.

Home-grown devotions

The growth of home businesses supplying Catholic devotional objects suggests the demand for these items may be growing.  Tracy L. Christianson’s artwork is delightful. I particularly like her print, God Bless Our Home: Grace Before & After Meals, with its vintage look.

Elise Faurote provides a modern flavor for traditional prayer cards. Her devotional images have a contemporary flare I find very appealing.

And Ann Beckemeyer, Mary Diehl & Charlene Ryan show us where we can put it all.  Prayer Pockets remind me of those small pocket shrines, wallets, and hand-made devotional objects my parents and grandparents carried.  Being hand-crafted gives them extra meaning and value.

A handful of new Catholic home businesses have cropped up lately that allow their owners to create products that promote prayer and devotion to the saints. Here is a look at three businesses that give their owners a creative outlet while spreading the Good News.

Read the full article from Our Sunday Visitor here

Holy card

I discovered a collection of holy cards and prayer cards at a local flea market.  Young Margaret O’Neill received her first Holy Communion in June 1898.  Margaret’s Irish-seeming surname, O’Neill, and the suggestion that her school teachers are nuns, makes me confident in assuming she attended a Roman Catholic parochial school.

Several of the cards have inscriptions written on the back in pencil:

From Sr. Victoria June 23, 1898; From Sr. Maria to Maggie for first Communion; From my Teacher Sr. Adelaide to Maggie for first Holy Communion; From Sr. Nichola

Devotional pictures such as these holy cards embody memories, serving as material reminders of important events.  Such mementos condense and compress memories, capturing traces of the unrepeatable original experience.  They bridge the gap between human and divine as they invoke emotion in the viewer, helping to create and maintain our relationship with God.

 First Holy Communion is an important milestone in the faith life of a Catholic and deserves to be celebrated, the date remembered.  These paper holy cards are the material ephemera of Maggie’s personal Christian history, serving as perpetual sources of recollection.  It saddens me to find them anonymously piled in the dust heap of an estate sale, forgotten and apparently valueless.

Devotional pictures such as these holy cards embody memories, serving as material reminders of important events.  Such mementos condense and compress memories, capturing traces of the unrepeatable original experience.  They bridge the gap between human and divine as they invoke emotion in the viewer, helping to create and maintain our relationship with God.

Several of the cards are marked as produced by Benziger & Co., an international ecclesiastical supply company that met the material needs of Catholic churches and parishioners in the 19^th and 20^th centuries in both Europe and the United States.  The Swiss company’s New York branch was established in 1853.

The history of holy cards

Christian, Save Your Soul

The custom of distributing Catholic prayer cards, also called holy cards, or sometimes mass cards, is a centuries old tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. The oldest surviving Catholic prayer card is St. Christopher and dates back to 1423. Holy cards bear a religious image with a favorite verse or prayer and are used to commemorate special moments such as First Communion, Confirmation or even a family reunion. Prayer cards are commonly distributed at funerals with a favorite prayer, the name and dates of the deceased and serve as a reminder to pray for the dead. These holy cards have an unlimited amount of use and may be creatively imprinted as long-term keepsakes.  The circulation of these cards is an important part of the visual folk culture of Roman Catholics.

This holy card commemorates a mission held in 1966 at the Our Lady of the Assumption Church  in Copiague, N.Y.  Such a home or parish mission consisted of systematic preaching and instruction, extending over a period of days, performed by authorized missionaries, and meant to strengthen the faith and practice of Catholic parish members.  Conducted by the Vincentian Fathers, a religious order established to evangelise the poor and to minister to the clergy.

The theme of the mission is a powerful one:

Christian, only one thing is necessary:
SAVE YOUR SOUL

1.  Receive regularly the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist
2. Say your morning and evening prayers. Make acts of Faith, Hope and Charity every day; at night, before retiring examine your Conscience and make an act of Contrition.
3. Attend Mass on all Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.
4. If there exist any Church Societies in your parish join at least one of them.
5. It is an obligation to contribute to the support of the Church, binding under sin.
6. You are obliged to avoid the occasion of sin; an occasion of sin is any person, place or thing which will likely lead you into sin.
7. Practice Daily Devotion to the Blessed Virgin; pray to her particularly for the grace of a Happy Death.
8. Remember:  Death —  Judgement — Heaven — Hell, and you will persevere unto the end.

The image of Christ portrayed here, captioned the Ecumenical Head of Christ, is a portrait emphasizing the humanity of Jesus.  The image is an ecumenical one, very much a product of the Second Vatican Council, lacking those objects commonly associated with Catholic images of Jesus: the halo, crown of thorns, and sacred heart.