An altar stone is a piece of natural stone containing relics in a cavity and intended to serve as the essential part of an altar for the celebration of Mass in the Latin Church. Consecration by a bishop of the same rite was required. In the Byzantine Rite, the antimension, blessed and signed by the bishop, serves a similar function.
Read more about Altar Stone: History, Early 20th-century Practice in The Latin Church, Present Canonical Rules For The Latin Church
Famous quotes containing the words altar and/or stone:
“The drama’s altar isn’t on the stage: it is candle-sticked and flowered in the box office. There is the gold, though there be no frankincense or myrrh; and the gospel for the day always The Play will Run for a Year. The Dove of Inspiration, of the desire for inspiration, has flown away from it; and on it’s roof, now, the commonplace crow caws candidly.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“It was a cruel city, but it was a lovely one, a savage city, yet it had such tenderness, a bitter, harsh, and violent catacomb of stone and steel and tunneled rock, slashed savagely with light, and roaring, fighting a constant ceaseless warfare of men and of machinery; and yet it was so sweetly and so delicately pulsed, as full of warmth, of passion, and of love, as it was full of hate.”
—Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938)