PROMPT #1

There is this struggle within me in choosing the one distinct (in my opinion) and specific sacrament that draws one to a deeper union with Christ. Not because I believe it is a difficult choice but perhaps a bit too obvious choice. Every sacrament has its own purpose and significance in the lifeblood of the Church yet to me there is no other sacrament that stands above the rest (not out of importance but uniqueness) than that of the Eucharist. There is no other sacrament that has been written about more and studied more by both Catholic and non-Catholic theologians alike. And for good reason! I think it can be safely said that no other ritual is more identified with the Catholic faith (again by Catholic and non-Catholics alike) than the Eucharist. But why? This will then be the purpose and aim of this blog is to highlight the reasons why and more specifically how it brings into deep union with Christ those that partake of the blessed Eucharist.

I must first re-emphasize as I did in parenthesis above, that in no way is the intention of this blog to diminish or abdicate the other six sacraments from their importance within the Catholic Church. As O’Neill makes clear, there is no greater sacrament than Christ who is “the original and foundational Sacrament of Christianity” and all seven rites are “related to the foundational sacrament and share in its symbolism and its efficacy…. If we bear in mind their relative status, we may say that they are sacraments only because they transpose the humanity of Christ in to terms of Church ceremonial” (Colman E. O’Neill, Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, pg. 78).  So, in light of Christ, all seven sacraments are positioned to draw each person into a fuller and deeper union with Christ in each of the sacraments own and distinct way. Yet, I cannot betray my sensibilities to the uniqueness of the Eucharist amongst the other sacraments. This may come as somewhat of hypocritical presumption as I must first admit that as a lifelong (slightly to moderately annoyed) Protestant, I have indeed never partaken in the Eucharist. However, if it is admissible in any way, I have thoroughly been marveled while observing it many of times from my pew when I have attended the Mass. Though my only “experience” might be witnessing it “from afar”, my mind and soul compels me to believe that there is something that sets this particular sacrament apart not only from within the sacramental family but from perhaps anything else in the world.

The objection may arise that perhaps because the Eucharist is one of the most visual sacramental rituals that takes place in the Church that it is a most obvious choice to write about regarding a deeper union with Christ. I would not and for that matter, could not push back on that sentiment. The purpose of the sacraments is to visualize in the natural what is more deeply spiritual to which we may not be able to see or for that matter visualize. O’Neill observes that, “Men cannot communicate with each other by purely spiritual intercourse…. the Christian’s union with Christ is not purely spiritual; on the contrary, it is human; and this necessarily implies that, while faith is at its heart, bodily contact is essential to its fullness” (Colman E. O’Neill, Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, pg. 88). This is the reason the Eucharist stands out amongst the others is because it engages all the human senses within one beautiful sacrament. No other sacrament is fuller and rich in symbolism and meaning than the Eucharist. When Jesus stated in John 6:56 that “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (RSV), he was signifying the uniqueness of Eucharist as the defining sacrament that leads to experiencing the deepest union with Christ. There is contact and a communication that must be experienced by each of us; contact with the risen Lord and King who sits at the right hand of the Father ever interceding for us but also that “purity and worthiness of the Head of the race must still be communicated to individuals. In the Eucharist, above all this contact and communication are achieved. Because this sacrament contains the body that suffered for men and that has risen to glory to be the source of all graces, the Eucharist is the supreme sacrament” (Colman E. O’Neill, Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, pg. 171).

It is through the Eucharist that each person is bound more closely and intricately in love to every person that is a member of the mystical Body of Christ and through this, is bolstered against sin and is emboldened to rise above and meet head-on, the trials and temptations that are apart of the Christian life. This binding of love to one another within the Church cannot be separated from a more perfect both individually and corporately union with our Lord. The Eucharist is the only sacrament that is celebrated during every Mass and with that it is, in my humble opinion, that the Eucharist is the most unifying feature of the Catholic Church and her members. If I may add a brief subjective note here from personal experience, the Eucharist is the one ritual that brings a somewhat type of (hopefully righteous) jealousy upon the onlooker from the “outside”. There is also this wonderful and beautiful nourishment that is received by each partaker through the body and the blood that also creates a restorative power within each person. This spiritual nourishing of our souls is akin to the physical nourishing that our corporeal bodies need through food and drink. The Eucharist not only nourishes and restores but also sustains us in our earthly wanderings, gives us that spiritual growth that we so deeply desire and lastly but surely not least, it gives us joy and brings us pleasure to our spirits which is intoxicated with the goodness of God!

In closing, I understand that this blog barely takes a few minute grain sands off the surface of the vast richness of the Eucharist and its singular aim to bring each partaker to a wonderfully deeper and more amplified union with Jesus Christ. But my hope is that this would at least provoke and produce a spark within the reader to dive deeper into the beauty and power of the Eucharist and for that matter, all of the sacraments! I would like to quote O’Neill once more when he marvels about St. Thomas writing in his Summa about a saint who likened the Eucharist being “like the live coal taken by a seraph from the altar with tongs and touched to the mouth of Isaiah; it is aflame with God” (Colman E. O’Neill, Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, pg. 172). As already stated, my aim was not to designate the other six sacraments to a lesser prestige as they each have their own purpose and power within the Church. Yet, the Eucharist gives each of us that powerful ritual that engages not only our five physical senses, not only brings the Church together in unity to celebrate and partake in, but perhaps above all, to experience Christ in a way that is powerfully and wonderfully transcendent upon and within each individual who receives the Eucharist. There is nothing that I can see that is more powerfully unifying within the Catholic Church and perhaps within all of Christendom to our risen Lord Jesus Christ that one can experience in this life.

Pastoral: You’re in a meeting with someone, who says that the sacraments are just part of a generally graced world. The world is full of grace and so are the sacraments. How would you respond to this person based on what you read in de Lubac?

There has been (especially more recently) a push to “gracify” everything in this world both seen and unseen and yet there is a very real distinction between both nature and grace. Of course, regarding the sacraments, if you were to only see them as a mindless and robotic ritual over the millennia then that very sentiment betrays your very own perceptibility. Let us briefly then, peer deeper at the distinction of grace and its place in this world and in each of our lives so that we can truly discern whether the sacraments are just another part of this “graced world”.

We first need to ask ourselves to define what “grace” truly is. For that I will borrow from Henri De Lubac when he defines grace as “supernatural in the fundamental sense that it is superior to any created or creatable nature, but it is in no sense a ‘supernature’. It is, so to speak, a new ‘accident’, hidden in and penetrating the substance of the soul and rendering it, as a soul, capable of living God’s own life, his divine life” (Henri De Lubac, A Brief Catechesis on Nature & Grace, pg. 46). In essence, grace is a quality that is infused into each of our souls. It is this grace that is hidden in each of our souls and penetrating the substance of our souls so that we can be capable of living God’s own divine life. But if the world is full of grace than this cannot be something sacred. I am not proposing that we cannot see God’s grace so to speak throughout the world and within His creation. But to make an assumption that the sacraments are a part of a “generally graced world” is the product of not looking deeper into what the sacraments are. Grace is not melded into the formation of creation neither the construct of human nature. In fact, as De Lubac opines, nature and grace should be seen as two separate gifts with both being distinct from each other. When we look at the constitution of nature, we are able to see that it is incongruous as it can only find and receive its final end through Christ who is the one that gives to us all freely. When you are able to see that each sacrament is an action of Jesus Christ working through the Church that is the Body of Christ, it brings us to a place of surrendering ourselves to the work of Christ in our lives and through each of the sacraments.

This grace that we have been talking about is intricately linked to the sacraments as the sacraments are outward signs of this inward grace which Christ set in motion to help each of us in our spiritual life so that we can grow in holiness. The sacraments by their very “nature” are mysteries and they point our focus towards the sacred presence of Jesus in our daily lives. For that however, they are not just signs but impartations of grace as they help you and me become more holy and grow the body of Christ. Through the sacraments we are able to relate to a supernatural God and draw us to worship and praise Him. And finally, not to put too fine of a point on this, they also strengthen us and nourish our being and our souls to better help us express the faith that is within us.

Each of the sacraments not only make us aware of this grace that has been infused in our souls but also enable us to experience this wonderful grace. When we look at nature and grace, we see that nature has embedded within itself a willingness to receive grace without it actually being grace itself or “gracified”. Since nature itself does not actually possess grace, it longs for it as the Apostle Paul proclaims that all creation groans/cries out for the revealing of the children of God. Again, I love what De Lubac states when referring to this infusion of grace within our natures that it does not “eliminate that nature. It neither disdains it nor replaces it. It informs it, remolds it; if necessary, it can exorcise it; it transfigures it in all of its concepts and activities” (Henri De Lubac, A Brief Catechesis on Nature & Grace, pg. 86). This is precisely why the sacraments cannot be a part of a “generally graced world” as they stand uniquely apart on their own infused with grace. As stated above, both are distinct gifts but the key word being “distinct”. Their relationship to one another is that the one (nature) can only achieve its culmination through Christ Jesus. In essence, grace is able to answer nature’s cry without becoming intermixed or becoming an extension of nature in any way.

In closing, I hope that in this limited space and time that we had, that the assumption that the sacraments are just an extension or in some way melded into the same pot with the a “generally graced world” is just not truth. These blessed sacraments are grace in themselves given to us freely by Christ so that the grace that He has infused into each of our souls may be realized and experienced. The structure of nature that is in the world has no ultimate end in itself but only through God and all of nature deeply longs for that which can only be freely be given through Christ. We have this freely given gift from Christ through the sacraments! I believe Holy Scripture and the Catechism are clear on this as well as De Lubac in his voluminous writings. My prayer then for you would be to first take time to contemplate the mysteries of the sacraments and the supernatural facets that are found within each of them. I am quite sure that you will find, that they are heavenly, unique and holy. And lastly, that this revealed grace bestowed and infused within your sinful nature being, will point your worship and praise to Christ for the rest of your days here on earth.

Pastoral: You’ve been invited to give a talk to those recently initiated (baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist) at the Easter Vigil. The focus of your talk is on the meaning of these three sacraments for the rest of Christian life. Using what you learned from Danielou around these sacraments, what would you say?

What an absolute joyous occasion which I am sure that each person will not ever forget celebrating this day and hour of Sacramental Initiation! Yet, to remember the journey that has led each of you to this moment is one thing but to continually remember throughout your life the beautiful and powerful meaning of the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist is entirely different endeavor altogether. I know that each person here has been wonderfully instructed and made powerfully aware of the sacraments and their blessings and so I will not revisit such things but instead focus on the importance of what all this means moving forward for all here.

I am reminded of the beautiful picture of the Church functioning like Noah’s ark from the book of Genesis. Yet, we see that unlike Noah’s ark, the Church does not just bring in men and women for the sole purpose of preserving them and protecting them as was the purpose of the ark. Protect and preserve, yes, but perhaps more importantly to transform each of them as well. This is the journey that began with each of your initiations. And as I am sure that each person understands, even though a person is baptized once and confirmed once, it does not mean that we do not continually need live out those sacraments each and every day of our lives. It is towards this point that I would like to expound on briefly.

Every person here will experience the power of Baptism nearly every single day of your lives if you are able to see it in such a manner. There will not be a day that goes by that the forces of darkness will not try to sway your mind into thinking that you do not truly belong to Christ and His Church. This is why Sacrament of Baptism is so powerful because it reminds you in the physical, what took place in the spiritual at that blessed moment. Just as Jean Danie Lou reminds each of us that “In the same way as Christ was truly crucified, truly buried, truly risen again, and as it has been granted to you in Baptism to be crucified with Him, buried with Him, risen again with Him in a certain imitation…and you also, when you came out of the pool of the sacred water, you received the anointing, the sacrament of that with which Christ was anointed, I mean to say, the Holy Spirit” (Danie Lou, The Bible and the Liturgy, pgs. 117-118). We now have the blessed hope that we belong to Christ and to Him alone and just as the Egyptians chased the Israelites only as far to the Red Sea before being swept away by those very waters, so Satan could only chase you as far as the baptismal fount before those cleansing waters sweeping him and the forces of darkness away. Now, this is the important point to drive home here. I implore you to not forget the powerful moment of Baptism that each of you experienced. When the forces of darkness try to dissuade you of your place and hope in Christ’s Church, you can come back to this point today and boldly declare that none of those evil forces have any claim to you or over you. Ever. You have been crucified and raised with Christ forever more!

It is the same with the Sacrament of Confirmation. As Baptism is the Sacrament of beginning, Confirmation is the Sacrament of those who are making progress and moving resolutely forward in Christ’s body. As you all know and have been dutifully taught; Confirmation is a sealing by the Holy Spirit. Now that each of you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit, what does that mean moving forward? It means that each of you now has the Holy Spirit living in each of you and this great Counselor will be with you always. Never leaving you nor forsaking you as Christ Himself promised. Confirmation is a visible sign to your consecration as a Christian and with that the sharing in a more complete way in the mission of Christ and the fullness of the Holy Spirt. But is a seal only a sign of protection? No, it is also a sign of authority and that of personal ownership the marks each of you as belonging solely and wholly to Jesus. This authority comes with the beckoning of our Lord to share and partake continually in His kingly, prophetic and priestly mission here on earth.

Now some may say the Eucharist is something that is quite clearly the Sacrament of Initiation that cannot be forgotten or only seen as an initial step into the Church since each person here will partake in the Eucharist moving forward regularly. Yet, I would caution that sentiment if it is to be found in anyone here because there are many in the Church that have knowingly or unknowingly “taken the Eucharist for granted”. The challenge for each person here is to continually see the blessedness and the power in the Eucharist. As with many things in life especially as humans, we can grow to take certain things in life for granted and unfortunately the Eucharist is not immune to this. There is no sacrament that is richer in symbolism and perhaps meaning. When we partake in the Eucharist, we are being nourished by Christ’s sacramental presence in the bread and wine. Additionally, there is this beautiful picture of each of us being simultaneously transported from earth to heaven to unite our voices with that of the angels during the Eucharist. Jean Danie Lou alludes to this when he states, “The Eucharistic liturgy is a participation in the heavenly liturgy and the dispositions of holy fear which should be possessed by those who participate in this liturgy” (Danie Lou, The Bible and the Liturgy, pg. 135). And he continues on a little later to remind us that “The Eucharist brings about the forgetfulness of past errors; it transports us into a new world; and this world is one of spiritual joy” (Danie Lou, The Bible and the Liturgy, pg. 185). It is through the Eucharist that each of us are bound more closely in love to all who are apart of the mystical Body of Christ.

In closing, I hope that each person here not only sees but makes a commitment to remember that each of the sacraments that each person has just participated in, is a perpetual sacrament to not only behold but partake in every single day of your lives. It is through each sacrament that Jesus Christ works through the Body of Christ and through them one enters fully into the life of the Church. My hope and plea to each of you today is to never lose sight of this fact. What we experience through all of the sacraments is so very precious and so my continual prayer for each of you today is that you will not only remember this for yourselves, but also to continually remind and encourage those beautiful brothers and sisters of ours in the wonderous mystical Body of Christ throughout each of your blessed lives.

Pastoral: You’re talking to a group of parents on the sacraments of the Church. Many of them have been through Catholic school for years. They think they know everything about the sacraments. In fact, many think they’re just pleasant rites of passage. Tell them a story about what the sacraments really are based on your reading of Bouyer’s Cosmos.

There is this challenge for us as individuals to see something that we have “seen and known” for nearly the entirety of our lives in a new and exciting way. Yes, we have been taught and experienced the sacraments since we can remember, and they are foundational to the Catholic faith. Yet, I would ask, can you see the sacraments before you in your everyday life every single day or even every hour? That is exactly what the sacraments are to those who continually desire to have “eyes to see and ears to hear”. There is a breadth and depth that unfortunately many never are able to see or experience. This is precisely the journey that writers like Louis Bouyer bid us to come alongside to see and experience so as not to miss out on the fullness of their measure.

I would ask the question then; do you see the sacraments as a tangible sign of the invisible grace of God? In each of the seven sacraments, there is a tangible and clear sign that reveals the redeeming grace that would be otherwise beyond our grasp of our five senses. One can clearly see this in the bread and wine that is consecrated or the oil that is used in baptism. As humans we can perceive more than just water in baptism, we can see our story, our connection to God through rituals, through the liturgy, through the sacraments. We can receive God’s communication to us in this manner because of our ability to connect, perceive, and think about the world. This is exactly what having a sacramental worldview looks like with the “proper lenses” on. A sacramental worldview is just this, when we view the entire world (and for that matter the entire cosmos) as sacrament. It is my ambition for each person here to see that the sacraments are truly points in time where the unseen grace of God is not only made able to be seen but palpable and their continual workings in and through each of our lives.

Louis Bouyer makes the observation that the knowledge of the world is essentially traditional because it is either a subjective experience searching out what is true for one personally or gaining that “truth” from some other source that very well may be subjective as well. Bouyer sees the individual and the communal human experience as a type of “quest” in a partaking with what is truth. This truth has many of times been passed down from person to person whether that be through language and culture or through other modes of human dissemination throughout history. This “string of consciousness” which is the mechanism in and of itself, ends up being the sum total of human history which has been communicated organically in each of our traditions and culture. This mysterious mechanism is the vehicle that connects our personal lived experiences and illuminates much of our lives. Perhaps then one here can see that our liturgical lives follow a comparable arc where the string of tradition comes into our lives and draws each of us into a knowledge that albeit may be beyond us yet is able to perfect each of us from within. This is why we refer the sacraments as a mystery.

This is why Bouyer wants all of us to see that the physical world, like the nature that we see around us, is much more than only the material aspect of the cosmos. It is sacramental in its own way. In fact, he goes further and states, “its material aspect is but the envelope, the external clothing of a wholly spiritual world, without which the existence of matter becomes incomprehensible, for the essence of the cosmos then falls back into nothingness” (Bouyer, Cosmos: The World and the Glory of God, pg. 195). He goes on to show us that there are everyday mysteries that confound us when we allow ourselves to stop and be confounded! Think about the highly mysterious presence of the animal, plant, insect etc. world that surrounds us and how their world can be just as mysterious (perhaps in some instances more so) as the angelic world that is around us. This is not to say that perhaps every leaf or blade of grass is truly the transubstantiated body of Christ, but it does cry to us to wake up and be able to see God in all things in the cosmos! Once each of us are able to put on these sacramental-colored lenses on, we will be able to see the world itself as sacramental. Bouyer brilliantly reminds us (without flirting with pantheism) that everything that consists of the cosmos (everything!) is within God as it all came from Him! And here is the kicker, utilizing this gift is where we will then be able to see this fallen world for what it truly is and that is a tactile sign of the unseen realm and the redeeming grace of God. May we be able to see that even the dirt is a window to seeing God and all of his beauty and creative essence. Even when you scoop up a handful of dirt or pick a daffodil or hold an ant in your hand (or almost anything you can think of right now), you are in essence holding God’s boundlessness and infiniteness in your hands at that moment! This is the beauty of being able to see and experience the sacraments EVERYWHERE around us.

In closing, I hope that each of you are able to see the sacraments in, if not a new light, perhaps brighter light than before. I love how Bouyer makes the point that as with Jacob’s Ladder in the book of Genesis, it was not that the angelic activity or the invisible realm all of a sudden “invaded” the visible realm; but that we can see that it always was there from the start and is only just “behind” the visible realm. This is how Bouyer wanted us to see the sacraments in and throughout the cosmos and I believe it is just how God designed it to be. My hope that in some way, this very brief address at the very least whetted each of your appetites to seek brighter “eyes to see” and clearer “ears to hear” as this is my prayer. Louis Bouyer opens this door to us that is too often overlooked or hidden and bids us to come to see and experience the cosmos in such a beautiful, sacramental way that I believe it would be a near tragedy to miss out on this wonderful revelation. I just want to close with a final quote from Bouyer that I think not only beautifully but also masterfully culminates what the end “goal” for us as part of His mystical body to look forward to. He states, “When this mystical body-in which is found the extension of Christ’s physical body in the Eucharistic body-reaches its cosmic fullness, when the last of the elect have been absorbed and conformed to it, then Christ will have reached maturity in all his members, and his own Parousia, the event toward which this entire growth had been straining, will finally take place” (Bouyer, Cosmos: The World and the Glory of God, pg. 230).

AMEN!