Devotions to Christ?

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wannabecatholic7

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Why are there not many Catholic Devotions to Jesus? I love devotions, since they help us develop a relationship with certain saints and of course God. I’ve just noticed that there are SO many devotions to the Blessed Mother (Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima, The Immaculate Heart, The sorrowful mother, and much more). So my question is why are there not as many devotions to Christ to develop a better relationship with Him? I know about certain ones like Divine Mercy and Sacred Heart, but is that all?
 
Holy Name? Precious Blood? Five Sacred Wounds? Way of the Cross? Eucharistic Adoration? Holy Face? Infant of Prague/Holy Child/Santo Nino?
 
porthos11 said:
Holy Name? Precious Blood? Five Sacred Wounds? Way of the Cross? Eucharistic Adoration? Holy Face? Infant of Prague/Holy Child/Santo Nino?
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Thom18 said:
We have lots- His Divine Mercy, His Sacred Heart, etc.
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Yup. Plus Adoration, First Fridays, various feasts (Trinity, Sacred Heart, etc.), His shoulder wound, etc.
 
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I think you need to do more research. There are boatloads of devotions to Jesus, including:

Eucharistic Adoration
Stations of the Cross
Sacred Heart/ First Fridays
Divine Mercy
Holy Face (chaplet, medal)
Holy Name
Holy Wounds
Precious Blood
St. Bridget’s Prayers (1-year and 15-year versions)
Infant of Prague
Shoulder Wound of Christ

I’m sure there are a bunch more of which I’m not aware.
But we’re certainly not short on devotions to Jesus.
 
Thank you all for the replies. I know of most of these, but some I did not. I guess I was just expecting there to be many more after 2000 years of the faith. Also I was thinking possibly there would be more that pertain to other events in the Bible like a devotion to his ascension or his miracles. Then again I guess there are more to the Blessed Virgin since she has far more apparitions.
 
wannabecatholic7 said:
Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima
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These are actually approved apparitions of Mary which have associated devotions.
If what you’re discussing is approved apparitions of Jesus, there aren’t very many approved apparitions of Jesus because the Church has a really high bar for approving an apparition of Jesus. So far there are only two formally approved apparitions of Jesus: The Sacred Heart apparitions to St. Margaret Mary, and the Divine Mercy to St. Faustina.

However, Jesus has also appeared in several of the approved Marian apparitions as a baby in Mary or Joseph’s arms or (at Guadalupe) as an unborn baby in Mary’s womb (she is pregnant in the apparition). There are also plenty of saints, people on the path to sainthood, and those who are not yet on the path but whose revelations are “approved for faith expression” who reported having some apparition or locution of Jesus as a baby, a child, or an adult. In some cases, like I said, there is a devotion associated with the apparition or locution that is “approved for faith expression” so we can do the devotion although the apparition itself has not been formally approved. You can read about many of these people on the Mystics of the Church website. We can’t discuss the apparitions here because the forum forbids discussion of unapproved apparitions. But we’re not short on appearances and locutions of Jesus either, or on devotions associated with those.
 
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wannabecatholic7 said:
I guess I was just expecting there to be many more after 2000 years of the faith.
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Is it the number of devotions that matters, or the quality? Perhaps there have been many more throughout the years, but only the best have survived to the present day.
wannabecatholic7 said:
Also I was thinking possibly there would be more that pertain to other events in the Bible like a devotion to his ascension or his miracles.
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The Rosary covers a number of these. The second Glorious Mystery is His Ascension. The Wedding at Cana, the Last Supper, His parables regarding the Kingdom of Heaven are all Luminous Mysteries.
 
wannabecatholic7 said:
Thank you all for the replies. I know of most of these, but some I did not. I guess I was just expecting there to be many more after 2000 years of the faith. Also I was thinking possibly there would be more that pertain to other events in the Bible like a devotion to his ascension or his miracles. Then again I guess there are more to the Blessed Virgin since she has far more apparitions.
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Devotions are relatively new in the grand scheme of those 2000 years. The centerpiece of Catholic worship has always been the liturgy. It’s only in later centuries when the liturgy became less available that devotions started to fill in the void.
 
porthos11 said:
Devotions are relatively new in the grand scheme of those 2000 years. The centerpiece of Catholic worship has always been the liturgy. It’s only in later centuries when the liturgy became less available that devotions started to fill in the void.
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Do you have a source for this? Many devotions date back to at least the Middle Ages and some of them before that. There are also devotions that were practiced in past centuries that fell out of popularity and were replaced by newer devotions. Devotions in general are not some new thing.

Early Christians would make pilgrimages to the Holy Land or to shrines - that was certainly a devotion.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
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porthos11:
Devotions are relatively new in the grand scheme of those 2000 years. The centerpiece of Catholic worship has always been the liturgy. It’s only in later centuries when the liturgy became less available that devotions started to fill in the void.
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Do you have a source for this? Many devotions date back to at least the Middle Ages and some of them before that. Devotions are not some new thing.
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Hence the term “relatively”. Middle ages is new, relative to the early church and the patristic period. Sure, the have been primitive forms of devotions from the earliest periods, mainly around the cult of the martyrs.

However, worship of Christ would have found its full expression in the Divine Liturgy and the Divine Office, both of which were still popular in the oldest times, but later to become regarded more as the area of clerics by the time of the Middle Ages.

Best source for this is the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, starting with #28.
 
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Good answers so far. Plus the entire liturgy and all the sacraments are centered on Christ, and all other devotions including to Mary and the Saints, are ordered to bring us closer to and more like Christ.

Those related to Mary and the Saints may “stick out” because all those acts more explicitly or directly focused on Christ are so common. It reminds me of someone on here years ago asking why there were more Marian Holy Days than those for Christ. A poster astutely answered that every single Sunday (in addition to Holy Week, Christmas, etc.) were Holy Days centered directly on the person of Christ.
 
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Good point. One time someone asked me why there are so many shrines to Mary, but I told him that every church is a shrine to Christ!
 
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