ORATORY

Holy Mass is the source and summit of our Christian life. All that the Guild does is nourished by the Sacrament of Salvation, the Eucharist, in which Christ reconciles the world to Father by His perfect offering of Himself. We are joined to this Sacrifice by our full, conscious and active participation in it. 

Vespers and Compline form part of the Divine Office, or Liturgy of the Hours: the official prayer of the Church. Priests and religious are bound to recite the Divine Office in full every day, but Christ’s Faithful are strongly encouraged to participate whenever possible. The Divine Office has a special place in the liturgical life of the Oratory, providing the perfect means to sanctify the day and equip Christ’s Faithful for their daily round.

Contemporary music commonly known as ‘Praise & Worship’ is another expression of devotion to Our Lord that serves to lift hearts and minds to contemplation of God, sometimes through energy and exuberance; other times through meditation and mystery. Often this genre has its roots outside of the visible bounds of the Catholic Church, but anything that is truly good already belongs to her by right and finds its culmination in full, visible communion. Perhaps because it expresses the yearning of the human heart for Christ so earnestly, Praise & Worship music is notably well-suited to Eucharistic Adoration outside of the formality of strictly Liturgical Worship. 

Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament is cherished by Catholics as a poignant way of extending the mystery of the Mass for quiet devotion. Many people find the possibility of adoring the Lord, who makes Himself vulnerable for us in the Host, a source of great strength. To gaze upon the Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament is to enter into the depth of His Love as He gazes upon us. To adore the Lord in the Eucharist is to savor the gap between Consecration and the salutary moment when each Host is consumed. He concedes to us His fragility because our worship of Him in this way is so beneficial to us.

The Angelus is a devotion of long-standing custom, recording as it does the very moment at which the Lord took flesh in the womb of the Virgin by dint of her fiat, consenting to God’s plan to save us. In Georgetown, the Oratory bell is named Gabriel, and his voice echoes through the Norwalk Valley three times a day to announce to the world that God has triumphed over sin and death, because the Blessed Mother said yes.

First Fridays are, by Papal approval, set aside for devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, recalling as they do Our Lord’s Passion and Death on Good Friday and the piercing of His adorable Heart by the soldier’s lance. From that wound flowed blood and water – the very life of the Church – in the Sacraments. Here at the Oratory we dedicate every First Friday to our Feast of Title, the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, by means of Holy Mass and the traditional Act of Reparation.