A deeper question is why you show no humility in the face of ancient practice. Who annointed you arbiter of things to be considered acceptible? This practice shows evidence of being in use virtually from the beginning, yet you have the nerve to ask: “Where is that in the Bible?” You’d do better to wonder why your ecclesial community jettisoned traditions that the Church adopted virtually - if not literally - from the time of the Apostles. You rail against anything not specifically found in the Bible, but in doing so you unintentioanlly point out how much the Catholic Church brings forth from apostolic times.
Not everything spanning the time of historical Christianity can be found in the Bible. For 1500 years, in traceable organic development, the Church, East and West, found no problem in these types of sacramentals. Only in the 16th Century did your spiritual forebears decide (on their own authority) that there was suddenly a problem with anything not specifically “mandated” by Scripture. If they were right, then there is little evidence that God, in the preceding 1500 years, showed any providential care for His Church, for He would never suffer such practices to develop if He cared for the Church. If they were wrong - and they were - then you should shudder at how much you and your ancestors threw away with no evidence of God’s mandate or authorization at all.
Your cry of “the Bible alone” is not correct, for it is not found in Scripture itself and its sudden appearance 3/4 of the way to our own time demonstrates clearly that it is a man-made concept. Your argument only holds true if the concept is demonstrably of apostolic origin. That cannot be proven. Therefore, your protests are founded on sand, and it is not our fault if you have built a mere shell of a theological edifice on that sand.
For 2000 years, the Church has upheld the three-fold teaching authority of Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium. The evidence of God’s design and positive will in this setup is perfectly clear. For you to remove two of the legs holding up God’s arrangement puts your balance entirely at the mercy of your ability to ride a spiritual unicycle - a very inefficient mode of transportation - spiritual or otherwise - indeed!
Excellent post, thank you.
Many people will be quite surprised when they meet the Lord at their Particular Judgment at the moment of death and they are questioned about why they questioned the Holy Trinity.
Even in the Baptism of Christ, we have the voice of the Father, the Baptism of the Son, and the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. All this — at the very beginning of Jesus Christ’s public life!
There IS a message here!
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now,
and ever shall be.
Amen!