Crossword clues for viaticum
viaticum
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Viaticum \Vi*at"i*cum\, n. [L., from viaticus, a. See Viatic.]
(Rom. Antiq.) An allowance for traveling expenses made to those who were sent into the provinces to exercise any office or perform any service.
Provisions for a journey.
--Davies (Wit's Pilgr.).(R. C. Ch.) The communion, or eucharist, when given to persons in danger of death.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1560s, from Latin viaticum "travelling money; provision for a journey," noun use of neuter of adjective viaticus, from via "way" (see via). In Late Latin also "money to pay the expenses of one studying abroad," and in Church Latin, "the eucharist given to a dying person."
Wiktionary
n. 1 The eucharist, when given to a person who is dying or one in danger of death. 2 Provisions, money, or other supplies given to someone setting off on a long journey (often figurative).
Wikipedia
Viaticum is a term used especially in the Catholic Church for the Eucharist (communion) administered, with or without anointing of the sick, to a person who is dying, and is thus a part of the last rites. According to Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, "The Catholic tradition of giving the Eucharist to the dying ensures that instead of dying alone they die with Christ who promises them eternal life." For Communion as Viaticum, the Eucharist is given in the usual form, with the added words "May the Lord Jesus Christ protect you and lead you to eternal life".
The word viaticum is a Latin word meaning "provision for a journey," from via, or "way." The Eucharist is seen as the ideal spiritual food to strengthen a dying person for the journey from this world to life after death.
The desire to have the bread and wine consecrated in the Eucharist available for the sick and dying led to the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, a practice which has endured from the earliest days of the Christian Church. Saint Justin Martyr, writing less than fifty years after the death of Saint John the Apostle, mentions that “the deacons communicate each of those present, and carry away to the absent the consecrated Bread, and wine and water.” (Just. M. Apol. I. cap. lxv.)
If the dying person cannot take solid food, the Eucharist may be administered in the "species" of wine alone, since the bread and wine are the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ.
The sacrament of Anointing of the Sick is often administered immediately before giving Viaticum if a priest is available to do so. Unlike the Anointing of the Sick, Viaticum may be administered by a priest, deacon or by an extraordinary minister, using the reserved Blessed Sacrament.
Alternatively, viaticum can refer to an ancient Roman provision or allowance for traveling, originally of transportation and supplies, later of money, made to officials on public missions; mostly simply, the word, a haplology of viā tēcum ("with you on the way"), indicates money or necessities for any journey. Contrary to church doctrine, during late Antiquity and the early medieval period the host was sometimes placed in the mouth of a person already dead, perhaps owing to traditional superstition that scholars have compared to the pre-Christian custom of Charon's obol, a small coin placed in the mouth of the dead for passage to the afterlife and sometimes called a viaticum in Latin literary sources.
Finally, viaticum can also refer to the enlistment bonus received by a Roman legionary, auxiliary soldier or seaman in the Roman Imperial Navy.
Usage examples of "viaticum".
On other occasions, when Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after administering the viaticum to some sick person in the neighbourhood, caught sight of Charles playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the foot of a tree.
When we met a priest bearing the viaticum to some sick man, Senor Andrea would tell me imperatively to get out of my carriage, and then there was no choice but to kneel in the mud or dust as the case might be.
This bell betokened that a priest was passing by carrying the viaticum to some sick man.
The curate had collapsed, plague-stricken, between the hospital beds where he had been administering the viaticum to the dying.
He had never lost the habit of carrying a piece since the time when it used to be the only thing that broke his fast on the long journeys by dark and day, bearing the Viaticum to the stricken.
Sterrin dropped on her knees in reverence for the Viaticum he bore with him.
And now, in the gray dawn which broke upon that night of anxiety and excitement, alternating between hope and fear as frequent messengers, each guarded by a detachment of palace guards, appeared with fresh news from the convent, the weary senators strolled up and down in the great chambers opening on the sea facade of the Ducal Palace discussing the event in a more desultory way--its meaning, its dangers, the achievements of the great man who might, even now, be receiving the viaticum in the convent of the Servi.
He confessed, and receiving the Viaticum from the hands of Pere Suffren, bade farewell to his mother, his wife, and Richelieu.
From the snatches of Latin that reached his ears, Arnault realized that the old man was administering the viaticum, the Communion rite reserved by the Church for those at the point of death.
When he more closely examined the vessels he found in one pyx a number of Hosts, and so fetching thither from the church a consecrated altar-stone which it was the custom to carry when the Viaticum was taken to the dying in order that the ciborium might be decently set thereon, he covered the stone with a corporal or a friar linen cloth and reverently placed it beneath the pyx.
But for the ordinary man or woman to go with no viaticum but this relief is a very terrible thing.
On this rude bed, after confession and viaticum, he had stretched out his arms to simulate a cross, and so had made his end.
If the expenditure of energy were of but short duration, a few hours or a few days, we could gladly welcome this idea of a motor viaticum, the attribute of every creature born into the world.
When we met a priest bearing the viaticum to some sick man, Senor Andrea would tell me imperatively to get out of my carriage, and then there was no choice but to kneel in the mud or dust as the case might be.
This bell betokened that a priest was passing by carrying the viaticum to some sick man.