How We Start the Sacraments Course

What follows is my best effort to put into prose the first month of what we cover in the 11th grade sacraments course. We begin by introducing the concept of ‘sacramental imagination’ and 'eyes of faith' with students as a lead up to a deep dive on the seven sacraments one by one. 

As in all things, we start with the  Sign of the Cross and various symbols of the cross (Latin, Patriarchical, Greek, St, Andrew’s etc). Not only are we beginning the course with a focus on the meaning of the words and gesture of the Sign of the Cross as a prayer, sacramental and blessing, which is how every sacrament begins and ends, but we are simultaneously taking the opportunity to point out the difference between signs and symbols.

The sign of the cross is a sign of our Faith and our own personal faith. What is that faith based on? As Hebrews 11 says, it is certain and not a blind leap because its assurance and confidence is founded on the three trustworthy and credible pillars of reason, experience and belief. 

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the word 'sign' appears at least 157 times while the word ‘symbol’ appears just over 60 times. Yet so many theologians and textbooks conflate these two terms. But it is essential to see them as different but complementary. A sign can become efficacious (producing a result, effective) whereas a symbol can only call to mind an abstract idea. The best way to do this is to go through examples of signs and symbols in real life.

For example, a symbol of a heart represents love but a hug between spouses signifies love. Grasping the meaning of both signs and symbols as the mystical language of liturgy, is necessary for understanding the sacramental imagination. 

When combined, the sacred words, ritual gestures, signs, symbols, architecture, music all become a portal to the numinous, to the holy, to the possibility of a spiritual transformation for those who are open to the grace which is promised by Christ himself in instituting these moments of encountering God. We are seeking to re-mystify the Sacraments and restore or re-enchant a sense of awe and wonder in a world full of doubt and skepticism.

The next thing to examine is the question of how and why human beings are in need of an encounter with God, grace and the deep meaning and transformation that the sacraments bring to our lives.

Of course, in order to appreciate Catholic anthropology, we must start with the treasure trove of revelation regarding the human being that is found in the first three chapters of Genesis.  What were humans like before sin? We were immortal, impassible, full of moral integrity and infused with knowledge. We were made to be filled with communal and relational joy between both the marital oneness of a man and woman and the harmonious and ordered oneness between humanity and God, between the natural world and the supernatural world.

We must take the fall of man very seriously. It was a real event. As the CCC says,  “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.” CCC 390. If we are dismissive about the fall of Adam and Eve, then we are missing the lens through which reality must be viewed. Worse we are minimizing Jesus as a Savior if we fail to see the fall as an utterly hopeless catastrophe. 

What is the fall? What damage did the fall bring about to human beings? The freely chosen action of human beings who willfully abused their gift of free will resulted in pain, suffering, sickness, death and worst of all separation from God’s presence. Human beings are ‘lost’, ‘seasick’, ‘homesick’, ‘disillusioned’ and out of place in the fallen world. The fallen world is disordered and cut off from God. It retains some order, design, beauty, goodness and truth. But it’s mostly thorns and thistles: it’s basically like living in ‘Gotham’. 

As Rocky put it when imparting wisdom to his son, "Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are. It will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!"

I like how Rocky adds a bit of optimism at the end when he mentioned winning. Jesus did the same thing, ”In this world you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world.” John 16. We are reminded that our only hope is Jesus. 

What is the God-shaped hole and infinite void left in every human person post fall? Why does Psalm 42 describe our deepest most innate desire for God as hunger and thirst? Why do we have ‘restless hearts’ as Saint Augustine famously said? “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”.

Why did Tom Brady (and other dissatisfied celebrities) say, ‘There has to be more than this!’ Perhaps C. S. Lewis was right when he said, “If I find in myself a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world”.

This begs the question, ‘Can we ever access the world of God again?’ Most people have given up on this question and are too busy desperately trying to fill the God-shaped hole with sex, consumerism, food and drink, escapism, technology, money, pleasure power, possessions and self adulation. 

We are like the Twilightzone’s Five Characters in Search of an Exit. Like the clown, the major, the ballet dancer, the bagpiper and the hobo stuck in the fallen world, a deep depository of sub-reality, we are surrounded by ignorant, jaded and cynical characters looking for an exit.

It was the major who stumbled upon a theological clue when he said, “We have had a life cut away from us and we need to get it back.” That is the perfect summation of our predicament in the fallen world. Like Plato’s allegory of the cave, the prisoners who are living in a darkened world full of lies will be set free and ascend to a new world full of light and truth.

The major also said, ‘None of us gets out unless one of us gets out’. Did he realize that he was subconsciously referring to the resurrection? Only Jesus, the Redeemer,  was able to break the curse of the fallen world by ultimately reversing death itself. Jesus showed us what it would look like to enter into a new world, a new dimension of reality. We too could go from this sub-reality to the super-reality of the New Heaven and New Earth (Rev 21).

With the gift of the sacraments, Jesus is saying, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5). One cup of wine at a time, one wafer of bread, water, oil, vestments, chalices and ciboriums, altars, statues, stained glass windows and churches are all bringing us closer and closer to a new, divinized, glorified, sanctified world. When it comes to transubstantiation, if he can do that to bread and wine, what will he do for us? What kind of transformation will his adopted sons and daughters undergo?

His glorified body experienced a qualitatively higher reality. It could appear and disappear, bi-locate, pass through walls, bear wounds yet not be weakened, eat food, emit light and ascend to heaven. At every Sunday mass we remind ourselves that Jesus was the first to rise bodily but that we too will experience this honor when as one body we say, ‘We believe in the resurrection of the dead (plural) and the life of the world to come.” 

We don’t have to wait for the end of time for the ‘life of the world to come’. Jesus said, “I came that you may have life and have it abundantly’(Jn 10:10). In the sacraments, beginning with Baptism we are born anew into this higher life, this ‘divine life’. Similar to biological life (which is also a gift from God but only a fore-runner), we are in need of preserving God’s life in us through nourishing, strengthening, healing and living it through the process of love and service for God’s people. Like a full eclipse of the sun, the fallenness of the world is temporary, it is passing. Eventually it will be replaced by a new world where God is fully, centrally present materially and spiritually as the source of eternal love and light.

In this new world he will “wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away” (Rev 21:4). 

This is the kind of life that is offered to us now but in a veiled way. Liturgical actions: Things Jesus did with His historical body that He continues to do today through His Mystical Body(the Church). God gives us a new kind of LIFE (Divine Life). This is the meaning of the term,  ‘sanctifying grace’. God nourishes, strengthens, directs and heals that baptismal, ‘super-real’ divine life in us through Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony.

By giving us a kind of life that can access God, the sacraments are a step through the veil. Like the cherubim guarding the entrance into Eden with a flaming sword or the veil in the temple which acted as a barrier of sin barring access to God. It serves as a sign of the spiritual, epic veil that separates the seen and then unseen, the natural and the supernatural. Jesus’s death on the cross tore it open from the top down. Perhaps this is what he meant as he said from the cross, “It is finished” and before that he said, “I am the way, I am the gate. No one comes to the Father except through me”. “When Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, He yielded up His spirit. At that moment the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Mt 27:51). This is why the CCC says, ‘By his death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has "opened" heaven to us.’ CCC 1026

That veil was first torn open in his baptism, a prefigurement of the cross.   “As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him” (Mt 3:16). The Holy Spirit descended from that opening into heaven and the Father’s voice spoke through the opening. 

Baptism is when we too penetrate through the veil for the first time with eyes of faith. We are like the man born blind whose eyes were covered with mud made from the saliva of God. We are told to be baptized, “go and wash with water”.  “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see” (Jn 9:15).  We need these eyes of faith which begin to be opened in baptism. Without them we would only see symbols but not see that the signs in the sacraments actually become what they signify. Faith and the sacramental imagination tells us that the mystical and the supernatural lie just on the other side of the ordinary, the mundane, and the natural. 

If two people were at Mass one with eyes of faith and the other without the one with eyes of faith would see in the consecrated Host, the Body and Blood of Christ and the other would see bread and wine. As the eucharistic hymn, Pange lingua gloriosi says, faith makes up for our feeble senses:

Down in adoration falling,
Lo! the sacred Host we hail;
Lo! over ancient form departing,
Newer rites of grace prevail;
Faith for all defects supplying,
Where the feeble senses fail.

We NEED the Sacraments because we were made for life in Christ. Our innate desire expressed as hunger and thirst for God begins to be satiated in the life of the Sacraments. The Eucharist as food and drink refers to ‘spiritual Nourishment”. People come together as one Body of Christ in the unity of Holy Spirit The God-shaped hole is finally being filled. As Mary said, “He has filled the hungry with Good Things”.

The Eucharist and other sacraments are manna for this world. Sacraments offer a way to penetrate the barrier of sin, the veil, to get us to the experience of a new life, a super-real Promised Land. We must approach them with a grateful heart, a sacramental imagination and with eyes of faith.