made from the finest gemstones and precious metals
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The Original Source of Heirloom
Eastern Christian Prayer Beads made from the finest gemstones and precious metals |
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Many people do not realize that the Catholic Church is actually composed of some 23 different Churches sui juris. While the Roman Catholic Church is by far the largest and most powerful of these 23 churches, it is not the whole of the Catholic Church. But what of the other 22 Churches? This article is not intended as a comprehensive listing of all the Churches that comprise the One Catholic Church. Instead, I will be highlighting some of these Churches in order to give a comparison and contrast to the Roman Catholic Church, with which most everybody is familiar.
Each of the 23 churches belongs to a Rite, or follows certain specific liturgical traditions. The Latin Church, commonly referred to as the Roman Catholic Church, uses the Roman Rite to express their spirituality and patrimony. This would include the Tridentine and Novus Ordo Masses. The Latin Church practices a celibate priesthood, uses statues to help the faithful remember the saints, fasts from all meat except fish on Fridays during Lent, uses a rosary as a prayer counter, etc.
There are several Churches that belong to the Byzantine Rite, including the Melkites, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Ruthenians, and others. These churches all use the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of St. Basil for their worship services, have practiced for centuries both a married and celibate priesthood, venerate icons instead of statues, fast for the entire period of Lent instead of just on Fridays, use a beaded chotki or knotted komboschoinia as a prayer counter, etc. They bring their liturgical traditions from Greek and Slavic cultural backgrounds, so their Divine Liturgy (Mass) resembles a Greek or Russian Orthodox service. But they are not Orthodox; they are Catholic, in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church and completely under the jurisdictional authority of the Pope of Rome.
In addition to the Byzantine Catholic churches, there are several other Eastern Rite Catholic churches, including Maronite, Syriac, Ethiopian, and Armenian, among others. Most of these churches hail from the Middle East. These are the Christians that contend with daily persecution in countries such as Iraq and Egypt. Each has its own Liturgy, its own traditions, and its own way of expressing the Truth of the Catholic Faith. For example, the Ethiopians have a prayer staff with notches to count their prayers, instead of beads or knots.
Most of the Catholics in the United States are Roman Catholic. About 100 years ago, immigrants from Eastern Europe wanted to set up Byzantine Rite parishes here in order to continue their liturgical traditions. An agreement was signed with the Roman Catholic bishops, allowing these Byzantine Rite parishes jurisdictional autonomy from the Roman Catholic Church, as they had in the Old Country, if certain concessions were made on the part of the Byzantine Catholics. One of these concessions was a ban on ordaining married men to the priesthood in North America. The Roman Catholic bishops felt that their laity, who had never heard of married priests, would be scandalized by a married priesthood among the Byzantine Catholics living in the same towns and cities. But today, in this age of information, with the shortage of priests in view, and with the knowlege that married Anglican and Lutheran pastors are converting to Roman Catholicism and being ordained as Catholic priests, many Eastern Catholics are calling for a lifting of the ban. Meanwhile, married Eastern Catholic priests are arriving from Europe in order to pastor congregations that otherwise would be without a priest.
My Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, if you live in a large metropolitan area, there are probably several Eastern Catholic parishes within driving distance. You may have even driven past one and said to yourself, "what in the world is a Melkite?" Now you know. Stop in one of these days for Divine Liturgy. Attendance at an Eastern Catholic liturgy fulfills your Sunday obligation to attend Mass. You might want to call ahead first, and find out if they have an English service. Also, watch the other parishioners receive Communion so that you know what to do when you go forward! Most Eastern Rite parishes distribute Communion differently than the Latin Rite does.
And my Eastern Catholic brothers and sisters, if you have the opportunity to attend a Liturgy at a parish of another church sui juris, take advantage of it! It is a good cultural experience and keeps you aware of the uniqueness of your own church. For example, the Ruthenians and the Melkites are both Byzantine Rite, so it is fairly easy for a Ruthenian to follow along in a Melkite service, yet the tones have an Arabic sound, the icons may be mosaics instead of paintings, and the distribution of Communion is slightly different. I always enjoy comparing the two, and knowing that each is its own expression of faith and love for God.
And isn't that what it's all about? Expressing your love for God, within the context of the faith set forth by the ONE Holy Catholic Church?
We are the original Eastern Catholic source of artisan beaded Chotki and Komboschoinia. We invented the beaded wrist chotki, based on the knotted wool wrist chotki. But our artisan chotkis have started a trend. Many artisan rosary-makers have added chotkis, and even wrist chotkis, to their sites in recent months. But these people are not Eastern Rite and cannot create a chotki with the Eastern sensibilities that we have. They cannot provide you with a pamphlet on the traditional way of praying a chotki, because all they have is the Latinized chaplet version widely available in My Treasury of Chaplets. They cannot instill their chotkis with the ambiance of the Eastern Rites, as we strive to do.
In fact, when others began copying us, we saw that we were guilty of the same, by copying the imported Czech chotki we had purchased from The Slovak Shop. When we realized this, we phased out the Czech Hardwood standard prayer beads we were selling - except the wrist chotki, which we had developed ourselves - and we encourage you to visit The Slovak Shop if you want a generic hardwood chotki, except for Bethlehem Olivewood, which we do still provide.
Steeped in the Eastern traditions of the Church, we design our chotkis to reflect the Eastern spirituality from which they were born. We understand the Orthodox mindset and design our pieces accordingly. For example, we would never consider making a chotki from Rudraksha beads, as they are traditionally used for Hindu malas, and to use such a bead in a Chotki is an insult to the Eastern Churches. Except for custom orders, we do not make chained or wire-wrapped Chotkis, as this deviates too much from Byzantine tradition. (We do occasionally make chained or wire-wrapped Mequteria, but only because we have not been able to find any information to indicate that this is unacceptable among the Coptic churches.) Instead, as Byzantine Catholics ourselves, we choose materials and colors suited to the cultural and religious heritages of the Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox peoples.
If you have your heart set on a wire-wrapped chotki, we recommend Dianna of Novena Rosary. To our knowledge, she is the only other artisan rosary maker who has a desire to learn more of the Eastern Rites, rather than just make money from our traditions.
As far as the Western prayer beads go, we tend to focus on the use of flexwire. The Paternoster, which is the ancestor of Catholic prayer ropes, was made of stones tied on string, so we usually use flexwire for these. And we find that flexwire Rosaries and chaplets are more durable than traditional chain style Rosaries and they are less labor-intensive to make. They also tend to be more beautiful, with the many choices of seed beads to use as spacers between beads. For these reasons, we prefer to use flexwire when creating chaplets and Rosaries. We will make chain (or even wire-wrapped!) Rosaries, chaplets, Paternosters, or Mequteria if requested, but the additional labor involved means a higher cost for the customer. As stated above, we prefer not to make wire-wrapped Chotkis because this is too great a deviation from Byzantine tradition.
P.O. Box 10991
Bakersfield, CA 93389
